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Making Vaccine

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Re: Making Vaccine

#371

Post by pazimzadeh »

Symmetry wrote: post #302
fabian2k wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said that the immune system can cause damage. Vaccines have a very high safety standard as they are given to large numbers of healthy people, so the tolerance for serious side effects is very low. So the development there is very careful, and anything that looks too dangerous is hopefully caught in animal experiments or at worst at phase I. A well known example of how dangerous the immune system can be is the follo…

That's true in general but I'd be very surprised if an inhaled rather than injected vaccine that didn't use any adjuvants or live virus was going to cause a serious problem.

Pretty sure omitting adjuvant would probably tolerize you to the peptide, which means you'd be more susceptible to COVID.

Re: Making Vaccine

#372

Post by mattmaroon »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #367
mattmaroon wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there would clearly be some people who would be much more likely to be successful than others. I can’t imagine it’s a good idea in our current situation, in which there are very effective vaccines that have gone through extensive testing that will soon be readily available. Several of the vaccine candidates from a year ago have failed. So even pros with virtually unlimited budgets fail a decent amount of the…

It's so strange to see people switch to the other side in an open source/hacking debate, when it comes to hacking systems that are not 'traditional' computers. Of course in this case the systems in question are actually most definitely Turing complete on many levels; and much, much older. 'Life' is ultra-advanced (non-artificially) intelligent (non-alien) nano-technology. If that doesn't seem totally fascinating and…

Yeah it’s interesting. I read the article and enjoyed it. I’ve really got no problem with someone doing it. I’m not suggesting people shouldn’t be able to so I don’t feel I’ve switched sides.

But someone said that your risk from covid was higher than your risk from a home made vaccine, and to me that’s almost certainly untrue for nearly everyone at best. That’s where the thread started. I was disagreeing with someone’s obviously poor risk assessment.

Re: Making Vaccine

#373

Post by Kim_Bruning »

mattmaroon wrote: post #372
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so strange to see people switch to the other side in an open source/hacking debate, when it comes to hacking systems that are not 'traditional' computers. Of course in this case the systems in question are actually most definitely Turing complete on many levels; and much, much older. 'Life' is ultra-advanced (non-artificially) intelligent (non-alien) nano-technology. If that doesn't seem totally fascinating and…

Yeah it’s interesting. I read the article and enjoyed it. I’ve really got no problem with someone doing it. I’m not suggesting people shouldn’t be able to so I don’t feel I’ve switched sides. But someone said that your risk from covid was higher than your risk from a home made vaccine, and to me that’s almost certainly untrue for nearly everyone at best. That’s where the thread started. I was disagreeing with someone…

Fair enough. Thanks for taking the time to explain your thinking!

Re: Making Vaccine

#374

Post by logicchains »

tibbetts wrote: post #308
logicchains wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is obviously false in the case that an error is made in the process. E.g. someone vaccinates themselves with a live virus, or possibly accidentally engineers an even more virulent strain.

If you are making your vaccine from artificial peptides that are a hundred times shorter than a live virus, this seems unlikely. There was no way for live virus to be introduced into this process.

The parent said "Homemade vaccines are not contagious (just stating the obvious). ", they didn't say "homemade vaccines made from artificial peptides are not contagious".

Re: Making Vaccine

#375

Post by goatcode »

pas wrote: post #23
goatcode wrote: post #4

> In principle one can run a similar antibody test on a mucus sample, but I'd really like to know what those reasons are. It seems like a pretty important detail.

tl;dr a partial/localized immune response just in the nose; and to confirm the vaccine worked you want to be sure It seems "the basic issue is that immunity response in the mucus lining (i.e. nose, lung, airway surfaces) can occur independently of response in the bloodstream". Which I guess means a false positive for post-vaccination verification. (The sentence you have copied is shortly after this: "The key problem…

I took what the author wrote to indicate that there was no available test to do what he'd wanted to do. I really wish people would drop the whole "because reasons" thing, especially when writing something meant to be read by many other people.

Re: Making Vaccine

#376

Post by bawolff »

concordDance wrote: post #361
bawolff wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is. The author has made no attempt to test whether he is immune to covid as of this writing. He talks vaugely about future blood tests, but its unclear what test specificly, if a positive result would actually mean he is immune, if a Negative test would mean he is not, so its basically a test that tells us nothing, and he hasn't even done it yet. If your experiment is not falsifiable, you are not doing science…

He explicitly has not "assumed it worked", nor has there been "no further investigation" (there has been some and will be more). Both parts of the great grandparent's sentence are false. I don't think saying false things for rhetorical effect is good for the health of hackernews discourse.

I maintain my statements are neither false nor are they being made purely for rhetorical effect.

I do think context and implication do need to be taken into account when evaluating the authors statements. The authors present this article as if they were making an actual vaccine. They talk about how you too can make one. With strong implication that its likely to do something. Admittedly, they do talk about follow up, but its follow up that by their own admission is not likely to show anything, and that's after having an incredibly rosy view of it, to the point where i don't believe anyone could reasonably call it a follow up.

As far as healthy discussions go, i would say that assuming the people you disagree with are arguing in good faith and while they might be mistaken, ultumately believe their premises and not simply intentionally making false statements to further their rhetorical point, is important too :)

Re: Making Vaccine

#377

Post by dragontamer »

maxerickson wrote: post #162
dragontamer wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 41659144 That's the total population of all 35 to 44 year olds in all of the USA. > 99.983% That's 0.02% of all 35 to 44 year olds have died, including those who never had COVID. IN ONE MONTH, not including the people who died two months ago, or 3 months ago.

"from 1/1/2020 to 1/30/2021" It's for the entire period of the pandemic. You are correct in pointing out that it isn't looking at deaths/infection.

I do appreciate the correction by the way.

Re: Making Vaccine

#378

Post by PoignardAzur »

dcposch wrote: post #362
reilly3000 wrote: post #251

Rough comments here... I admire the spirit of DIY in his project. He asked for and received good data, consumed the process and risk, and proceeded. He wasn't trying to save the world, he took a calculated risk on himself, and wrote a blog post about it. I'm most happy to have the process demystified for me. I don't think the world would be a better place if more people made their own vaccines unless there was some u…

The negativity might be warranted if they had encouraged other people to follow, or if they were trying to DIY-vaccinate others. But that's not what happened here. These are two capable adults experimenting strictly on themselves and being transparent about it. That deserves respect. You might think "that seems like a stupid risk, I would never do that", and that's a fine take. But don't judge. Where's the "hacker" i…

My thoughts exactly. The level of contempt and tribe-bashing ("screw these rationalists who think they're smarter than us!") in this thread is depressing.
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