Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

freethink.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 258 posts

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#241

Post by oldgradstudent »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #229
oldgradstudent wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the invader losing very quickly and the patient never noticing. That's called preventing Covid. Covid is the disease, not simply an infection. The problem is that the vast majority of people who got the vaccine did in fact notice very well they've had Covid. > That's what they got against Covid/Wuhan and the world actually did achieve herd immunity--against Covid/Wuhan. (The Wuhan strain has been extinct for some t…

We knew it would eventually mutate and reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine. The vaccine remained effective in the time it was developed and for a while afterwards. And, yes, nobody has tested the severity reduction in a proper trial. It would be expensive, difficult and serve little purpose. What we can observe is that given matched populations the unvaccinated die at a considerably higher rate than the vaccinate…

> And, yes, nobody has tested the severity reduction in a proper trial. It would be expensive, difficult and serve little purpose.

No purpose except for actually knowing whether it actually reduces severity.

> What we can observe is that given matched populations the unvaccinated die at a considerably higher rate than the vaccinated. Beware of some bogus "studies" to the opposite--which didn't use matched populations. Those at higher risk are more likely to be vaccinated and a vaccinated high risk individual can easily still be more likely to die than an unvaccinated low risk individual.

The sad reality is that you can't do matched population without a randomized controlled trial. You can't control for confounders you don't understand.

A recent hillarious example is the well-publicized paper that showed a drop of over 90% in Covid-related mortality after the first booster. Other researchers managed to obtain the data and it turned out there was also a similar drop in non Covid related morality. This resulted in the following correspondece, which is well worth reading:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2306683

A choice quote from the authors of the original paper:

> During the B.1.617.2 (delta) wave in the United States, similar associations were observed between the use of mRNA vaccines and lower mortality not related to Covid-191 and mortality from any cause.

They mean that many of the studies showing a drop in Covid mortality after the mRNA vaccines, also showed a similar drops in non-Covid related mortality. In other words, the vaccinated population were healthier at the outset and the drop was bogus.

You need a proper clinical trial here to make this claim, as the observational data is ridiculously confounded.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#242

Post by phpisthebest »

vaidhy wrote: post #240
phpisthebest wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are all kinds of problems first and foremost is incentives if tax payers (i.e government) are paying for the losses why should they care if they injure anyone? removing product liability is universally a bad idea Further there is all kinds of Due process issues that make filing a Vaccine claim problematic and very expensive to appeal, there are all kinds of horror stories out there about denied claims, and to a…

That is why vaccines need FDA approval in the first place. Everything else you said is true for all kinds of appeal and not just for vaccines. There are horror stories about everything and lawyers not wanting to take things up without upfront payment. But that does not stop those things. Marriage and divorce, child custody, DUI cases, police excess, companies overcharging for things, DMCA being used incorrectly, tech…

>>That is why vaccines need FDA approval in the first place.

this is probably where the most of our different world view comes from, I believe the FDA is just a corrupt organization rubber stamping big Pharma, and serves no actual safety purpose. Given the revolving door between the major companies and top level positions in the FDA and the actions of the FDA during COVID I have lots of examples to prove my position.

>>Everything else you said is true for all kinds of appeal and not just for vaccines

Incorrect, the Vaccine process establishes an extra Judicial process where by a committee at the DHHS gets to choose if you were actually injured by the vaccine or not, skipping the jury process completely. if you are denied by the DHHS you have to jump right to the Expensive Appeals process, there is no way to fine a standard civil lawsuit and get a Jury of your peers.

Also there is no way to form a class if the FDA screws up and a vaccine causes harm to 100's. 1000's or 10'000s of people, each case has to go through the process individually

I understand that this point you believe the FDA is infallible organization that only cares for the individual, but the FDA has proven time and time again that to be false.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#243

Post by base698 »

LorenPechtel wrote: post #228
base698 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it transcribes something from a gene?

But it doesn't. There's no transcribing going on. mRNA is the *result* of transcribing from DNA. The genes aren't touched. In normal operation the genes are the master blueprints from which work orders (in the form of mRNA) are generated. The cells use that mRNA to build the requested proteins. The mRNA vaccines are bogus work orders slipped into the production queue and they go nowhere near the DNA.

I mistyped translation. Been 20 years since biochem.

If you think of the gene in RNA form (transcribed from DNA), it's a gene being translated to aminos. The gene is therapy.

I get gene therapy isn't used that way but I was trying to fairly interpret what people could mean.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#244

Post by Auracle »

throwaway8877 wrote: post #219
Auracle wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that’s just plain revisionist history. Name another example. The flu vaccine, maybe? But that’s because they don’t know which strains to target. Both the CDC director at the time and Biden said the vaccine would prevent you from getting COVID. It’s insane we’re changing the definition of words because the COVID vaccines were kinda crappy and that would be bad politically. Not that the vaccine discussed here shou…

No, covid vaccines were not kind of crappy, just the virus itself evolved so rapidly that the virus had evolved enough even before complete rollout of the vaccines. Yet even then the boosted vaccination was highly effective against the delta variant and still effective against omicron on the level par with flu vaccines. Omicron was just infectious on the level of measles and with very short incubation period giving t…

I'd argue that a vaccine that allowed the virus to evolve rapidly out of it because it's only targeting on small section of the virus is pretty crappy by definition.

Don't get me wrong, it saved a lot of lives. Compared to every other vaccine we've all taken in our lives it's the absolute bottom of the barrel, and the fact that politically (and possibly for public health reasons) a good portion of politicians effectively lied about that made it so companies didn't feel like they should invest in making a better vaccine. I've had Covid twice and both times I was very sick - I'd love a better, more broad, vaccine.

I'd argue it's definitely not as effective as flu vaccines vs omicron. On a good year the flu vaccine can prevent 50% of flu cases in those that take it. Everyone I know has gotten Covid, vaccinated or not.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#245

Post by vaidhy »

phpisthebest wrote: post #242
vaidhy wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why vaccines need FDA approval in the first place. Everything else you said is true for all kinds of appeal and not just for vaccines. There are horror stories about everything and lawyers not wanting to take things up without upfront payment. But that does not stop those things. Marriage and divorce, child custody, DUI cases, police excess, companies overcharging for things, DMCA being used incorrectly, tech…

>>That is why vaccines need FDA approval in the first place. this is probably where the most of our different world view comes from, I believe the FDA is just a corrupt organization rubber stamping big Pharma, and serves no actual safety purpose. Given the revolving door between the major companies and top level positions in the FDA and the actions of the FDA during COVID I have lots of examples to prove my position.…

I think our worldviews are different. While I do not think everything is perfect with FDA, the world without FDA is much, much worse than the one with it.

Just because criminals break laws does not mean no laws should be passed. Just because corruption happens in FDA does not mean FDA is entirely corrupt and we should let everyone sell whatever drugs they can think of into the market.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#246

Post by lern_too_spel »

noitpmeder wrote: post #223
lern_too_spel wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaccines that people are getting ridiculed about have been administered to more than 5 billion people. If there were any such extremely damaging long term effects, we would have seen some already.

I think many people would disagree with your idea of what "long term" means...

I think most people understand that the physical processes that would result in long term complications would show signs earlier in some individuals and later in others.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#247

Post by mikewarot »

lawlessone wrote: post #233
mikewarot wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if some of that mRNA happens to land in cells that don't readily get replaced, like heart muscle, what happens next? >There is no known pathway of persistence in this mechanism No known, and published in a paper, pathway. Engineering is about using things in practice we don't yet understand. They didn't know why suspension bridges kept falling down, so they just used a "safety factor" to decide how much to over-b…

>We have no idea what the long term consequences are of this gene treatment. It's mRNA for a start. So it isn't treating genes.

>mRNA can be used as indirect vaccine, by manipulating cellular factories

That sounds like genetic manipulation to me.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#248

Post by gytdev »

bsder wrote: post #184
throwup238 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of them are awful but only in rare cases do they cause permanent damage beyond what is already happening with the cancer and usually the patient can recover after the treatment is stopped. Anything that stimulates the immune system runs the risk of increasing its sensitivity too much till it attacks normal cells and at that point, a lot of horrible things can happen ranging from a new mild allergy to neurologica…

> Most of them are awful but only in rare cases do they cause permanent damage beyond what is already happening with the cancer That's simply not true. Chemotherapy, in particular, is ridiculously bad . Chemo brain is a thing. Another example, people have to wear cold packs on their hands and feet in order to minimize the neuropathy that some chemotherapies can cause. Other chemotherapies cause your veins to leak wit…

The puke and diarrhea after every chemotherapy session might feel bad acutely, but the real killer is neuropathy. When it gets bad, it's impossible to operate zippers, pens, shoe laces, walking like made from wood, nails falling off due to nerve degeneration, teeth gums getting swollen. In cold climates (-10 below freezing) it is especially hard.

It beats being dead, surely.

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#249

Post by throwaway29812 »

kemotep wrote: post #185
throwaway29812 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blood clotting in COVID is higher than instances of Vaccine induced clotting, in every measure. For every example like your colleague, there are many more for COVID itself.

Which begs the question, how do they know that it was vaccine induced blood clots and not covid or any other possible cause of blood clots? Since at the same time mass vaccination rolled out, essentially all lockdowns were lifted and at least speaking for myself, that is when I caught Covid (and got sick in general again, no colds for almost two years was nice).

It would take a specific study isolating people that got the vaccine but never tested positive for COVID, which of course is open to some misreporting (1/3 of COVID cases are asymptomatic and most likely never identified).

Re: Moderna's mRNA cancer vaccine works better than thought

#250

Post by throwaway8877 »

Auracle wrote: post #244
throwaway8877 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, covid vaccines were not kind of crappy, just the virus itself evolved so rapidly that the virus had evolved enough even before complete rollout of the vaccines. Yet even then the boosted vaccination was highly effective against the delta variant and still effective against omicron on the level par with flu vaccines. Omicron was just infectious on the level of measles and with very short incubation period giving t…

I'd argue that a vaccine that allowed the virus to evolve rapidly out of it because it's only targeting on small section of the virus is pretty crappy by definition. Don't get me wrong, it saved a lot of lives. Compared to every other vaccine we've all taken in our lives it's the absolute bottom of the barrel, and the fact that politically (and possibly for public health reasons) a good portion of politicians effecti…

Do you have any studies to share that confirm this claim? As far I am aware the new variants evolved from regions that were not highly vaccinated like South Africa.

Omicron was considerably more virulent than flu - the risk of getting an infection is also a function of prevalence.

Post reply on HN