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The them.us article [0] says: > but we’ll be praying ... that by next year, LGBTQ+ communities around the globe will have a new reason to celebrate. This perpetuates the myth that HIV is mainly a problem for gay people. Can we change to another article, such as [1]? The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation supports Moderna's HIV vaccine research [2]. [0] https://www.them.us/story/hiv-aids-vaccine-human-trials-mode... [1]…
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> If mRNA vaccine was as magical as it was marketed, we wouldn’t be getting 3-4(and soon 5?) doses of the same vaccine with the emergence of new variants. Rather, there would be delta- and omicron-specific vaccine. Is this a problem with mRNA, a problem with the approval-for-vaccine-variants process, a problem with funding, or a problem with the politicians who thought COVID would magically go away by August 2021 (Ne…
What I’m trying to say is that mRNA vaccines might not be faster to deliver to market because you still need to go though testing and approval.
As I understand it, the reason an HIV vaccine has been so difficult to create is that HIV mutates so easily. I understand the basics behind how mRNA vaccines are generated, but I don't understand why this approach would be expected to have any more success in evading the high mutation potential of HIV than other vaccine types. After all, it was even a concern with new coronavirus variants that the original Moderna va…
I’m not a doctor, but as a gay man: it’s my understanding HIV doesn’t mutate in the same way a disease like Covid does, at least not in the sense that there’s as many opportunities to spread (i.e. not airborne), so while HIV may actually mutate more in theory, it gets less chances to spread, so less completely-different variants become widespread. Also, as part of “stopping the spread” PrEP has existed for years. It’…
Obviously the human brain statistician goes out the window when comparing a lifelong illness with a few hours of discomfort, but would it be generally safe/worth it to put the entire population on PrEP during sexual activity? I heard that HIV patients have noticable side effects with their meds.
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So you think for other vaccine you know the "long term effects" What you define as "long term"? Because in my definition, in the "long term" we're all dead. The "long term" effects of many pathologies is also death for example.
My wife's studio got a "everyone who takes the vaccine will die!" pamphlet pushed under the door, which gave us a good chuckle.
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It's a cute common conspiracy theory but it doesn't really hold up. Modern pharma is making progress all the time. E.g. as shown, an HIV vaccine.
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I think unprotected sex is more common than many people in wealthy countries realise.
sure but the set of all people who engage in frequent unprotected sex so as to be possibly susceptible to HIV is strictly smaller than the set of all people who could be possibly affected by covid.
I'm not sure how we're lost in translation here, so I'll try to express this another way.
I think the majority of sexually promiscuous adults aren't particularly concerned about COVID infection, because the likelihood that they'll die from it is low. If they do catch it, they will most likely recover without long-term damage.
I think those same adults however are indeed concerned about HIV infection, because it is [so far] incurable, and has an enormous social stigma attached to it, and without constant treatment will eventually kill you.
The number of people who would benefit from a drug against COVID is larger than those who would benefit from a drug against HIV, however, of those who would buy either drug, I think the latter drug is the one that would have much higher market demand because of just how consequential an infection with that disease is.
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Strictly speaking you can, and not knowing the exact reasons this approach is moved to human trials where others have not, I can only conjecture. However, the mRNA vaccine may be more stable in a way that makes it easier to make or store or for entrance into the body. Not to mention purification steps may be easier. You don't need to make this in some exotic cell line which creates a protein soup you have to purify.…
> this approach is moved to human trials where others have not, I can only conjecture. Actually, a whole lot of recombinant approaches have moved to human trials (along with viral vector approaches). They early ones showed no efficacy; the newer ones we just don't know (yet). The main benefit of mRNA is iteration: you can try a whole lot of different protein mixes and see what works best in an animal model. A seconda…
I should have been more clear here, I meant specifically trials of what I presume could have been attempted if the vaccine was expressed as protein instead of mRNA. But thanks for the clarification. And the mention of viral vectors which are an area I was less aware of till recently but it has been cool to see them in more places.
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I’m not a doctor, but as a gay man: it’s my understanding HIV doesn’t mutate in the same way a disease like Covid does, at least not in the sense that there’s as many opportunities to spread (i.e. not airborne), so while HIV may actually mutate more in theory, it gets less chances to spread, so less completely-different variants become widespread. Also, as part of “stopping the spread” PrEP has existed for years. It’…
I agree in that no straight people (that i know) consider PrEP, although according to a quick search the HIV prevalence rate is twenty times lower in my country compared to the US. Obviously the human brain statistician goes out the window when comparing a lifelong illness with a few hours of discomfort, but would it be generally safe/worth it to put the entire population on PrEP during sexual activity? I heard that…
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One reason is that mRNA vaccines can be developed much faster than traditional vaccines. So the idea is you have a better chance of "outrunning" a strain.
I think slowly will come the realization that mRNA vaccines aren’t as fast to develop as people thought. Sputnik/AstraZeneca vaccines were released almost at the same time as Moderna/Pfizer. Yes, the latter were first commercial mRNA vaccines, but the technology is nevertheless rather mature. I watched a lecture by the people credited with creating mRNA vaccines and it turns out people have been working on the techno…
> Now, the thing is that you can’t just sequence a virus, do bioinformatics, synthesize mRNA and package it into a nano particle.
You can, and that's exactly what was done. However, out of the 10 or so candidates, they selected a few of the more promising ones to continue research.
They are fast to develop. However, there are other steps in the pipeline that aren't so fast.
> The mRNA that gets packaged needs to be modified (I believe with alternative bases) to achieve desired effect.
That's the easy part. The full mRNA sequence is not that large (https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...) and many of such substitutions can be done by algorithms. Now, maybe the modified protein won't fold right. That's not as easy (although, we can compute how it will fold now).
> If mRNA vaccine was as magical as it was marketed, we wouldn’t be getting 3-4(and soon 5?) doses of the same vaccine with the emergence of new variants.
If we were reckless and just wanted to inject someone with the latest update, this could be done in a matter of days. Human trials took months and people still complained that it was 'developed too quickly'. Then there's logistics.