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New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study

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Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study

#271
post #3

While HIV vaccine research is an exciting field, it's worth pointing out that halting HIV transmission is, practically speaking, a solved problem with oral and injectable reverse transcriptase inhibitors. The ongoing loss of life and health due to HIV could be stopped if we cared enough to invest resources in wide-scale PrEP availability and public health education. Waiting for an HIV vaccine is the domain equivalent…

It is endemic in the simian population. It will keep crossing over into humans again and again. It has done it before several times. People who live near forests would have to be on Prep everyday of their lives. The reason they eat bushmeat is the because they are poor and will be too poor to afford daily medication. A once-and-done vaccine would at least stop new crossovers. Only then could we really get a handle on…

>The reason they eat bushmeat is the because they are poor

This doesn't cover all the reasons

Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so what are we supposed to do. If you over vaccinate is bad, if you under vaccinate is bad, but if you vaccinate a little bit you can end up on the wrong strain. Great! /s

actually, the 'little bit' one is probably correct, unless you are in a susceptible group like the elderly then probably vaccinate a lot we can also get better at predicting what each year's mutations are going to be, though that takes funding but the idea that more vaccination is always better is technically not true, especially for a virus that is extremely good at mutating/shuffling its genome like the flu does. b…

Yeah I'm not in the anti-vaxxers thing, I was thinking more about the COVID vaccine we are given basically every year. After... I think 6 iterations (or 7?!) me and my family decided to go for the flu shot only, mainly because the flu shot can be given as a nasal shot, which is way less problematic.

Also the COVID shot is damn painful for some reason

Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but I don't think #3 is possible. For a variety of reasons, both biological and societal, the older people get the less likely they are to have kids, and fewer of them.

Kiryas Joel, New York, has astronomically high fertility, but also extremely low rates of under-18 pregnancy - which proves the combination is possible.

That is an exceptional outlier. It's almost entirely (>90%) made up of one religious group that has strict cultural rules about early marriage and having many children.

That's not something typical outside of that one particular group, nor can you copy-paste that anywhere else.

I think in fact it's the opposite. Because of how universal below-replacement rates are in EVERY developed nation, it shows just how independent it is from factors of culture, economics, environment, etc. It takes a seriously unusual situation like the one in Kiryas Joel for below-replacement to not be the norm.

Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study

#274
post #125
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is someone irresponsible enough to pursue causal, unprotected sex with random partners also likely to be responsible enough to visit a doctor proactively and comply with a prep regimen? Yeah, me. What a wild statement to make. It’s a big world out there, my friend.

You may have missed the word likely.

“Is someone irresponsible enough to drive a car (the second leading cause of accidental death) also likely to be responsible enough to comply with seatbelt laws?”

The word likely doesn’t make this argument any less dumb

Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study

#275
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost and compliance are still 2 major factors that have not been solved. We also have education and stigma. While within the LGBT community it is far more common to be open about status and taking prep and doxy (far from perfect though), it still feels like outside of that the conversations are not happening as much as they should. Throw in doctors that are not being proactive about the conversation. Right now it see…

[flagged]

The “LGBT community” broadly does not engage in risky sex practices. Lesbians don’t have regular, no strings attached sex and are at lower risk of contracting HIV than straight women. The common denominator is horny men, specifically horny men that have access to a variety of different sex partners.

Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study

#276

The most interesting point of the article for me is that this vaccine appears to be a series of shots which act as a curriculum for the immune system. Each one slightly different and targeting a different stage of B-cell development. I've never thought of vaccine series working like that, so it was a new and impressive idea.

The way the HIV evades effective antibodies is by tricking the immune system to generate antibodies for fake decoy targets that the virus will immediately mutate. So each turn, B-cells are presented with the latest version of the virus, they generate various antibodies to the various parts, and are graded at the end by how well the generated antibodies bind to the virus. The problem is that you have 1 million cells w…

This sounds a lot like the firewall technique of port knocking. Poke this thing to enable a ruleset, then another thing in that state for a different ruleset, etc.

Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study

#277
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that teen pregnancy very much does have a solution that has empirically worked quite well at preventing it when it's actually practiced (i.e. high quality sex education and ample access to contraceptives), and pushing abstinence as a solution has demonstrably caused teen pregnancy rates in increase whenever it's used as a replacement for that; the only actual impetus for abstinence as a "solution" is ideo…

Talking about road safety. In South Africa we have 12,000+ road fatalities a year, by comparison Australia (renowned for strong law enforcement) with about half of our population size has 1,200 or something. (And they apparently happen to have about 4,500 teen pregnancies a year.) Australia’s (or maybe it was New Zealand’s which I visited on the same trip) road safety campaign is called “Towards Zero”, while South Af…

  Perhaps road accidents, or at least fatalities, can be reduced more than you realize.
You are talking past each others. The exemple of Australia (or was it new Zealand?) shows that accidents can be lowered, as much as thé exemple of south Africa shows they can't.

I've always found this misunderstanding fascinating; it touches on the physical reality of sociological laws, the origin and purpose of morality, as well of course as supporting in part the modern political divides.

Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the original assertion is "punching down" on poor people. While you're correct that poverty isn't the "only reason" for high HIV transmission, poverty certainly contributes to it, via lack of access to health care and lack of access to education. How is it less "punching down" to attribute it to social behavior and culture? Isn't needle sharing associated with poverty, or would you also call that "cultu…

I was poor, grew up in social housing. I did not use drugs. "I share needles because I can't afford my own" is an INSANE take. Don't shoot drugs in the first place! Poor people are normal humans, they have willpower, agency. It is a rich people myth that poor people are cattle, devoid of any chance of doing the right thing. It is culture, behavior, social norms. Being poor does not force you to abandon the nuclear fa…

Lmao “South Korea never had a severe drug problem”

I’ve got bad news for you about methamphetamine in postwar east Asia

Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study

#279
post #3

While HIV vaccine research is an exciting field, it's worth pointing out that halting HIV transmission is, practically speaking, a solved problem with oral and injectable reverse transcriptase inhibitors. The ongoing loss of life and health due to HIV could be stopped if we cared enough to invest resources in wide-scale PrEP availability and public health education. Waiting for an HIV vaccine is the domain equivalent…

> The ongoing loss of life and health due to HIV could be stopped if we cared enough to invest resources in wide-scale PrEP availability and public health education.

I take it you've never been to rural parts of Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America.

Re: New HIV vaccine shows unprecedented success in preclinical study

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say the same about teen pregnancy being a practically solved problem, except there is still the problem of teen pregnancy. Or even something more mundane as driving consistently safely all the time to solve the problem of accidents. If everyone was disciplined all the time in regard to everything, many problems in the world would simply not exist. But we live in reality where for whatever reason, people don…

FYI teen pregnancy in the US is the lowest it’s ever been in the history of the country.

The overall US fertility rate is at/near all-time lows.
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