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Scientists are working on "everything vaccines"

economist.com

41–50 of 65 posts

Re: Scientists are working on "everything vaccines"

#41
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has taken the HPV vaccine, I'd take the other side of that trade. It's been 6 years since covid mania, who is taking these booster shots now? Anyone?

I hadn't since the pandemic was (more or less) over, but last November I got a booster shot, as people seemed to be getting more sick than before. I know someone who (probably) has long-term covid, and you definitely don't want to catch that. However, I always become sick the next day, so I'm not too eager to get it.

If someone got the jabs and has long COVID now, it'd be best to assume that it's not long COVID but vaccine injury, unless we acknowledge that the vaccines aren't all that effective (nor safe for that matter). At least the few people around me willing to consider this got this confirmed by their doctors after many tests and lots of gaslighting.

Re: Scientists are working on "everything vaccines"

#43
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>we can do better because we're purposeful. "Purposeful" does not help if we are mostly clueless.

We know enough specific things about immunology and about the illnesses we're trying to avoid to be something more than clueless and we're learning more all the time, including about the potential applications of "everything vaccines" that are being tested for potential programmatic use.

Don't we have a problem of ever increasing auto-immune diseases? If we know "enough" then I think we should be able to make it go away. Until that happens, I don't think humanity can claim to know "enough".

Also, evolved systems are hard to reverse engineer.

https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/

If something simple like an electronic circuit with comparatively short evolution can end up with mysterious, un-intutive and complex inter-dependent behavior, imagine how non-understandable an immune system that evolved over millions of years can be..

So I still think we are mostly clueless, and it is nearly impossible to safely engineer changes into something that was not engineered in the first place...

Re: Scientists are working on "everything vaccines"

#44
post #6

> put the lungs into a constant state of readiness, allowing fast responses to almost any invading germ Succeeding at this would prove that our bodies have the capacity to do that but evolution "tuned" the system differently. A corollary would be that this vaccination is probably a net negative for public health, even if nobody'd really know why.

We're not really calorie constrained anymore and most humans live in much denser environments than they used to. You would expect rate of exposure, the rate of mutation / change and the rate at which new pathogens appear to be higher than in the past. Consequently, you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal for modern environments.

> you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal

I like the term ancestral defaults and indeed, we've come a long way since then and our biological and environmental reality is substantially different.

There is this book series Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada which imagines a future where technology has advanced enough to allow one to tweak their genome as easily as we use apps on our phone today. It was a fascinating read.

Re: Scientists are working on "everything vaccines"

#45
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not really calorie constrained anymore and most humans live in much denser environments than they used to. You would expect rate of exposure, the rate of mutation / change and the rate at which new pathogens appear to be higher than in the past. Consequently, you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal for modern environments.

> you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal I like the term ancestral defaults and indeed, we've come a long way since then and our biological and environmental reality is substantially different. There is this book series Mortal Coil by Emily Suvada which imagines a future where technology has advanced enough to allow one to tweak their genome as easily as we use apps on our phone today. It…

>our biological and environmental reality is substantially different.

As true as it might be, that does not mean that it is possible to work around evolution to change ourselves to fit better with the new reality.

Re: Scientists are working on "everything vaccines"

#47

How much you want to bet that you'll have to get a yearly booster shot so their stock prices can keep going up?

As someone who has taken the HPV vaccine, I'd take the other side of that trade. It's been 6 years since covid mania, who is taking these booster shots now? Anyone?

People with lung disease and the elderly still get them. Anyone who is seriously concerned about getting the flu vaccine every year because of poor health is getting covid boosters too because it is just as bad. There is no reason not to.

Re: Scientists are working on "everything vaccines"

#48
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not really calorie constrained anymore and most humans live in much denser environments than they used to. You would expect rate of exposure, the rate of mutation / change and the rate at which new pathogens appear to be higher than in the past. Consequently, you wouldn't necessarily expect ancestral "defaults" to be optimal for modern environments.

>We're not really calorie constrained anymore Why do you bring this up? It seems a weird hypothesis to bring up given that the parent comment did not suggest the possibility...

Not the OP, but evolution will often select for less energy expenditure as most animals are calorie constrained or at least during certain times of the year (c.f. animals that hibernate to survive low calorie availability).

It seems plausible to me that the immune system might be calorie intensive to be on full alert all the time. However, I suspect that having the immune system be more active will likely lead to other complications such as autoimmune disorders or even something as common as hayfever.

Re: Scientists are working on "everything vaccines"

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in my armchair thinking autoimmune diseases.

Autoimmune diseases often are due to suboptimal vitamin D3 softgel intake (typically 4-5K IU) or suboptimal magnesium intake (300-400 mg). Bringing both to highly optimal levels should minimize the risk of development of new or worsening autoimmune diseases, although it won't revert any existing ones. Low dosing either one doesn't work in this context. Those who reject this even after reading the following 100% deser…

Whilst I agree that there's a lot of people with D3 deficiency (at least during winter), it's also worth being careful of taking too much D3. Typical signs of too much D/D3 are nausea, loss of appetite, more frequent urination, thirst, weakness, confusion or brain fog.

It's worth being aware of that as the recommended limits for vitamin D are laughably too small, so it's common for people to take much larger amounts. I believe that 4k IU is considered a safe adult dosage.

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