Malaria is a pretty complicated eukaryote. Makes it much harder to figure out and target and it can evade. A non living virus or a simpler bacteria can be much less evasive.
By two major varieties of a parasite, one of which notably used to ravage England up to nearly the Scottish border, and the US East Coast up to the lower reaches of New England. Tons and tons of malaria deaths at surprisingly-high latitudes, not all that long ago.
[edit] My mom remembers how all the kids would run and ride bikes behind the city pesticide spray trucks when they came around a few times each Summer, trailing thick clouds of… DDT.
"1491" is already a Hacker News favorite (rightfully so), but Charles Mann's "1493" is also a superb book, which contains a long section covering the impact of malaria on Europe and the Americas.
In the early days of the Holy (Western) Roman Empire, the various Germanic Emperors would only come down into Rome during the colder months when it was safe from malaria, and head out north to the cold when it got warm because Rome was a hotbed for malaria.
<Unless I'm missing something ... quick mutation of the virus>
It is a long article but you missed the part at the beginning of the article explaining that malaria is not caused by a virus or bacteria but a parasite.
Also the chart labelled 'Vaccine Discovery' which clearly shows no previously existing vaccines against parasites.
Also, the world map showing where Malaria has not been eradicated clearly indicates that it is found in the tropical belt where unfortunately a lot of poor countries exist.
That's not what that paper says. That paper says that the parasite can itself be infected with certain viruses, and maybe we should look into how those viruses affect hosts infected with malaria.
That paper just reports the discovery of a virus that is a parasite of the plasmodium parasite that causes malaria in humans.
Plasmodium and all its relatives have become parasites a very long time ago, causing a variety of diseases in many animals.
How the Apicomplexa, including the plasmodia, have become parasites has nothing to do with the viruses that may be parasites of these parasites (a.k.a. hyperparasites), which are most likely to diminish the speed of the multiplication of the plasmodia.
When Malaria stopped infecting and killing the people in poor countries, and on to places like Europe and USA, gee golly whillikers... I wonder why it's now being invested and being treated?
Its all about the money. And most questions of this type is the same response as well.
Various forms of malaria have been already described in the works of Hippocrates, more than 2400 years ago, and from them it appears to have been one of the most frequent infectious diseases in ancient Greece, certainly the most frequent among those that could have serious consequences, including death.
While the role played by mosquitos was not known, one of the ancient theories about the cause of such infectious diseases (which was described by Varro) was not essentially different from modern theories. It supposed that the wind brings from the swamps a large number of small animals, which are so small that they cannot be seen, and which enter the human body causing the disease. Therefore the proximity of swamps should be avoided, to avoid the diseases.
You are essentially noting your own idea doesn't make sense. You can't identify any profit motive changing, because the motive wasn't profit.
No one got rich off from malaria vaccine development. As the article mentions, the funding was the Gates foundation. A charity gave away money to make it happen.
I was reading about the terms "vaccine" and "vaccination" and learned what a vaccine really is. I used to think of injections and syringes when I would hear of vaccination.
According to wikipedia,
A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. [1]
Does that mean a vaccine can also be administered in forms other than an injection such as an oral tablet?
Right because I'm an old man (although if I was a young person in a poor country with endemic Polio this could still be my story today) I actually went to school one day and they fed me a sugar lump with a dot of green syrup on it. The syrup is Oral Polio Vaccine, you are eating the literal working Polio virus, but the makers have deliberately grown it somewhere very cold, so it's adapted to run much too slowly so as to not die. In your body it's too slow and when it tries to escape from the digestive system into your body a normal healthy human immune systems says - "Hey, you're not food, you're a virus. Die die die" and your body learns specifically to kill Polio as a result, successful immunisation before the virus can grow and spread.
In a rich country like mine (or statistically, yours) today, the vaccine given to school kids is an injection and doesn't have a working virus in it. As a result, when things go wrong (and very rarely they do go wrong) it can't cause Polio. But, there are two costs. One, literally this is an expensive product. Poor countries can't afford to dose their kids with the expensive harder to store and use injection. Two though, maybe even more important. It doesn't work so well. If you live in a country with no Polio, "not as well" is good enough. But in countries with endemic Polio, you want the best option and that's arguably OPV at least for now.
There's a historical practice called variolation which involved inoculating healthy people with ground scabs/pus from people with smallpox. They'd make a small scrape on the skin and introduce the material. It was a reasonably protective practice, especially considering the options available at the time.
Iirc, Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine was based on cowpox, a related but less serious disease.
From what I recall about 2% of people who got the procedure died. On the other hand actually catching smallpox had something like a 30% fatality rate, so the procedure became fairly popular.
> This consisted of transferring to healthy people small amounts of material from smallpox sores, resulting in milder forms of illness and much lower mortality than natural infection. Some sources suggest practices of variolation were taking place as early as 200 BCE.
You also might see different immune preparations, even. Immune cells in different locations make different types of antibodies and which type of antibody recognizes the antigen in the vaccine partly determines which type of resistant you build up.
IgG and IgM are common in the blood, while IgE is found in places like the intestines.
When I went to Namibia recently, which had some new cases of malaria, I was given "Malarone", an oral pill taken a couple days before, and each day during, and a couple days after. Luckily, I didn't see any mosquitos at all, the main vehicle for malaria.
Malarone is a prophylaxis rather than a vaccine, you're taking the drug to treat malaria preemptively to prevent an infection from taking hold. Unlike a vaccine it does not trigger your immune system into developing immunity that would work after you stop taking it.
Malarone (an antimalarial prophylaxis, not a vaccine) has been around for a couple of decades already. It is still new enough to be costly, however. In the overlanding-through-Africa community, those using Malarone are often seen as relatively posh compared to e.g. the skint backpackers that have to resort to the cheap standard doxycycline.
Yes, there is an oral vaccine for typhoid fever that is more effective than the injected vaccine, but it can’t be taken by immunocompromised people because it contains live bacteria.
Yes, there's nasally administered flu vaccines, and Covid as well, I believe. For a long time jet injectors were used for vaccination, which is an injector, but not a needle (but have a risk of cross-contamination). Looks like there's an oral vaccine for rotavirus as well, which I just learned about. It makes sense because that's the route of infection for this virus.
I don’t think this is necessarily a question of money. The U.S. eradicated malaria within the last 75 years and it seems like it was a pretty massive undertaking. If people at the time could developed a vaccine, I’m sure they would have.
Without a robust public health infrastructure, I'm guessing any effort to eliminate malaria from sub-Saharan Africa will fail badly. In the southern USA for example, the mosquitos that carry malaria are fairly common, but malaria outbreaks haven't happened since 1950 - malarial cases in the USA are typically international traveller-borne and health care providers are required by law to immediately report all malaria cases to the CDC - where the return of endemic malaria to the USA is a constant concern:
Incidentally this vaccine doesn't look very effective in terms of preventing malarial cases in the vast majority of susceptible people. Though it may reduce childhood mortality, alone it won't do much if anything to eliminate the disease.
> " The vaccine reduced the risk of clinical malaria by 56 percent in children aged 5 to 17 months and by 31 percent in those aged 6 to 12 weeks - although as in previous trials, this protection declined after a year."
If we had to do it again, we'd do it differently—not least because the way we did it the first time was by fogging entire neighborhoods with truckloads of DDT.
I worked in a lab studying malaria vaccinology. There a bunch of difficulties with trying to develop a vaccine that I think are well covered here. I also learned some about the history of malaria research.
1. It is a pain in the ass to study malaria. You need to have an insectary to grow mosquitoes (through their muktiple life stages, of course) and have them feed on infected mice just to passage the parasite. This isn't like viruses where you just throw then into vero cells or bacteria that will grow in LB overnight. Parasites require dedication. This kind of operation costs a university hundreds of thousands of dollars to get up and running, and there are not too many places in the US that have robust malaria research because of it. UW and the Boston area are two that I know with good malaria research centers.
2. The lifecycle of malaria is very difficult to make a vaccine against. This is described in the article. Essentially, you go from mosquito -> skin parasite (few hr) -> liver parasite (7d also no symptoms) -> blood parasite -> mosquito. Also, the prevailing idea is that the amplification during the liver stage through red blood cell stage is so great that once the blood stage is established, it's game over. You are going to get sick as a dog. So you have a few options: target the sporozoite in the skin and blood within a couple hours, or target the liver stage where the parasite is essentially dormant and is nearly impossible to find. (My research was finding antigens in the liver stage, there are very few and they don't produce very good immune responses with standard vaccination techniques). You have to remember that for the immune system to work, you need to see the signs of the pathogen, then give yourself 5 days at the absolute minimum to expand your T cells to eradicate the pathogen. And oftentimes we're talking less than 10 infected cells in the entire liver, which is a huge organ with famously tortuous circulation. So good luck on the liver stage.
All this ignoring the fact thatthe mouse model of malaria goes through the liver stage in just 4 days, which doesn't allow expansion of T cells for killing the bug. So even if we found the perfect antigen to vaccinate against, we don't have good models in mice to actually evaluate how effective a vaccine would be because of the differing biology of the model. There are some people who reconstitute human livers in mice so they can use the 7 day parasite, but those mice are pretty messed up and very expensive. And handling mosquitoes that carry human malaria is much more annoying than the mouse malaria. Still a very interesting and compelling model for research.
3. Interest in protein based vaccinations. There was a study long ago that used irradiated parasites that protected people from subsequent infections. The problem is that it took a LOT of parasites, and 5 doses of the vaccine. This strategy is similar to the inactivated virus kind of vaccinations that we all likely have received. But these parasites needed to be injected IV, 5 doses, and the parasites need to be kept at -80C until injection time. That might work for a vaccine delivered in a metropolitan area, but good luck finding -80 freezers in an African village. Around this time, researchers got interested in protein based vaccines, like the pertussis vaccine. So people went looking for a protein that was highly immunogenic, and they landed on CSP, which the article describes nicely. However, this again is mostly expressed on the skin parasite so you have just hours to recognize that protein and kill the parasite. Much less than the ideal 5-7 days.
4. Financial incentives are of course a problem. Though many would argue that financial incentives are bad for vaccine development in general because they prevent any disease from occuring, so you are eliminating your market if they work well.
So where does this leave us? If we keep thinking of vaccines as we typically do, we are going to just create marginally better versions of RTS,S, which i...
> This isnʼt the typical narrative we hear about new discoveries and technologies. We tend to think of them emerging as soon as they’re technically possible.
I don't know where this narrative comes from, but it can't really come from anybody who specializes in making brand new technologies.
There are soooooo many amazing technologies that have never been brought to market because of the roadblocks like this vaccine encountered.
It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think? Years before the pandemic, I knew of Moderna and BioNTech because they had the capability to make customized therapeutic vaccines to train a person's immune system to fight their particular cancer's unique neoantigens. The hurdles seemed somewhat enormous even then for them. Without the kick start of money and trials that the pandemic provided, it would have taken so many more years to do the discovery needed.
The problem is that we have a massive unexplored terrain in R&D and trivial amounts of funds compared to the area we can explore. We have to be extremely picky about what gets money to move forward. This is a social problem, as much as a finance problem, we simply use dollars to express our societal wishes of what we want to encourage.
In the mean time, it would be good if the media would stop spreading the idea that if you build a better mouse trap, the word will bear a path to your door. It's quite the opposite.
>It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think?
Have they made it to market? It's been like 4 years and there are no other ones to be found outside of trials. This is kind of strange because we were told this is so much easier, safer and faster than other technologies. If the US wasn't accepting for whatever weird reason, then you'd think they'd pop up in lots of other countries. But doesn't seem like that is happening.
This is the pace of typical development these days, outside of pandemic rushes. And four years ago was pre-pandemic, it's only been a couple years of pushing on other targets.
mRNA vaccine tech is one of the biggest advances in biotech in a long time, the other apparatus has not necessarily caught up.
> It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think?
I’m by no means an anti-vaxxer and believe that even if the “vaccines” did reduce the severity and number of deaths it was a win. But, I think it was a disservice to call something a vaccine that didn’t seem to reduce the chance of you catching it, the effects of the vaccine completely disappeared within 6-9 months and it didn’t keep you from catching Covid.
We wouldn’t accept that definition for any of the other vaccines like Smallpox, measles, etc
I agree and I said as much. I am arguing more about definitions and marketing than anything else that led to skepticism. Besides the looney bins, very few were anti vax about the traditional vaccines we all had to get to attend school. We saw those as effective to prevent the diseases they were meant to.
I was first in line when it came to Covid “vaccines” and kept up to date with boosters because I knew even the common cold can trigger my overactive immune system/asthma.
I’ve had Covid twice and I was coughing for a couple of weeks. It was more irritating than anything else. I attribute my not having a more severe reaction to the vaccines. It probably wouldn’t have been that bad with the other preventive asthma meds I take now.
But the marketing by the government behind the vaccines and the early suppression by the government and the tech industry of information about the long term effectiveness has set us back.
Sounds like you are moving the goalposts from “it doesn’t help at all (after 9 months) and isn’t even a vaccine” to “there was poor government marketing and tech industry actions were bad”, which are very different things.
I think that downplaying the benefits of the vaccines is somewhere between uninformed and irresponsible. I don’t care nearly as much about criticism of government commas and the tech industry.
> But, I think it was a disservice to call something a vaccine
It was a severe disservice because it increased skepticism and reduced uptake
> I think that downplaying the benefits of the vaccines is somewhere between uninformed and irresponsible
What part do you disagree with? Even the pro-vaccine side which I’m one of says effectiveness declines to near zero after six to nine months without a booster.
> I don’t care nearly as much about criticism of government commas and the tech industry.
You should care because they are a major cause of the anti-vaxxers and causing people to die and be hospitalized unnecessarily because of ineffective messaging
I’m not sure we are having a productive conversation about the word “vaccine” or vaccine effectiveness, so I don’t have anything else to add there.
When I said I don’t care as much about criticism of government comms (commas was a typo) and the tech industry, I meant I’m not too concerned that you are criticizing them. I don’t think I fully agree with you, but I don’t feel strongly enough that I would have replied to your comment if that was all it appeared to be about.
The government repeatedly pressured tech companies to suppress information about the short term effects of the vaccine and that it didn’t prevent infection.
It was only later on that they admitted as much. This led to many people not trusting anything the government said.
People don't like the answer "we don't know that", so they will ask experts until they get one who answers the question.
People don't have time to understand the context of complicated subjects, so they ask experts who answer quickly.
People can't test every statement for truth, so they ask experts who answer confidently.
And then people feel like they've been lied to, because we don't know all the answers, the answers are complicated, and we need to change our minds sometimes because we were wrong.
It's easy to blame "the media" or "the experts" or "the elite" for these problems, but there are a lot of hard problems in this world that need a lot of context to really understand in a meaningful way.
Yes, media, experts, and elites abuse their position. Solving this problem requires more work than just replacing them.
Your instinct that something is wrong with authority figures is correct, but I feel like you've gone down a narrow channel for the answers.
> Your instinct that something is wrong with authority figures is correct, but I feel like you've gone down a narrow channel for the answers.
I am not doubting the science or the statements that come from the CDC, DHHS, or the established respected medical community.
I’m criticizing the government more for actively, denying and suppressing information that they admit now to be true.
On another note almost everything that the government has done in handling Covid since the vaccines have come out has done more harm than good:
1. Vaccine mandates for a vaccine that has since been shown not to be effective long term without a booster. I for the J and J vaccine March 2021. I could show that as proof of vaccination and that alone and I would still be in compliance even though all of the science shows it doesn’t mean anything two years later without boosters (which I’ve done on schedule and still got Covid twice. It was mild each time)
2. Mask mandates after the vaccine was widely available - in practice mostly ineffective because people were wearing cloth masks and not wearing them correctly. At that point I had no sympathy for people who died from Covid who refused to get vaccinated. They made their choice using their own free will.
> the effects of the vaccine completely disappeared within 6-9 months
I don't know if you are anti-vax person disguising as a "just asking reasonable question" type of person (it's a common tactic), but I had to reply to be sure that anyone reading that understood this was absolutely false.
The impact on the death rate and severe outcome of COVID is being seen even years later, so this is absolutely false this entirely disappear within 6-9 months, this is very well documented. This vaccine allowed us to move forward and make sure our hospitals and entire healthcare system stopped being overrun even when we had a 30-40% of the population contracting the virus, this is an absolute win.
“even if the “vaccines” did reduce the severity and number of deaths it was a win”
I said in another reply that I have “virus induced asthma”. A simple cold will cause my immune system to overact and cause me severe difficultly breathing. I was first in line for the vaccines and I did an MRNA booster before it was recommended in the US because I read what I thought were credible studies from other countries about needing it after the J and J one shot.
I’ve also said before that “I retired my wife” who was working as a school bus driver because I didn’t feel it was safe before the vaccine came out.
> The impact on the death rate and severe outcome of COVID is being seen even years later
I’m not disagreeing with that. You’re preaching to the choir. I am saying it was a messaging problem to call it a vaccine if it doesn’t prevent you from getting the disease.
I'm not sure where this idea that vaccines 100% prevent disease (or infection) came from. The main reason previous vaccination programs like measles have worked so well is they allowed near eradication so most people never even get exposed, or just less exposed in cases like influenza where there is too much mutation or waning to get close to eradication. That's why immunization requirements at places like schools are useful, if you add too many unvaccinated kids to the mix then even some of the vaccinated kids are likely to get infected and sick. More to the point, lots of people get the flu vaccine and hit or miss whether you still get sick (probably less, but still a bit).
And how many of the other vaccines that were mandated by any government for instance to go to school, required you to get boosters to stay effective and how many lost almost all effectiveness within a year?
Do you really not see the difference in people’s mind why all except a few crazies were willing to get a vaccine that prevented a disease and maybe lost effectiveness after a decade compared to one that didn’t prevent infections and that did require you to get boosters?
It was beyond silly that a cruise I went on in December of 2021 required everyone to be vaccinated (that part is not silly). But at the same time would have accepted my J&J one shot I did in March 2021 where all of the studies showed had lost effectiveness by December.
I had an mRNA booster about a month before it was part of the officially guidelines because I read credible studies by government agencies in other countries about it. But they still would have let me on without it. At that point it was “Covid theater”.
Yeah I got Covid on the cruise and didn’t even realize I had it until I got home. I’m not saying that to poo poo the vaccine. Usually even a simple cold makes my immune system over react. I credit the vaccine to the mild symptoms
“ that even if the “vaccines” did reduce the severity and number of deaths it was a win”
> I’m not sure about odds of catching it, but reduced odds of hospitalization and death do persist beyond 9 months.
We don’t know that. Most people who cared enough to get the vaccine, also probably cared enough to get booster shots as recommended. Every study shows that the effectiveness completely disappears within 6-9 months without a booster.
I am one of those who got the booster.
And you arguing with me about the effectiveness when I’m arguing about the messaging shows how out of touch people are on HN with the significant number of Covid/anti-vaxxers.
You should apply a bit more critical thinking to the lines you have been fed.
We have to create new flu vaccines every single year, because flu is so varied. They don't see a ton of use, but they save a lot of lives.
So thinking that we don't accept this definition of vaccine is just not based in reality. SARS-CoV-2 evolves, particularly under the pressure of resistant hosts, and even people that were infected once can get it many times!
Secondly, the vaccines absolutely did reduce the chances of catching covid, by massive amounts. Take even a glance at any of the studies:
I would beg you to look back at where you picked up these bits of misinformation, and completely eliminate those sources from your information diet. They can not be trusted, and will infect you again with bad info that puts your health at risk.
> The mRNA-1273 vaccine showed 94.1% efficacy at preventing Covid-19 illness, including severe disease
It prevented “severe illness”. I agree with that completely. I said as much. It didn’t say it prevented you from “getting in”. Preventing severe illness is a win. I’ve taken Covid shots every six months for that reason - especially since I have virus induced asthma. But the government originally marketed it as preventing Covid. This and going out of its way to pressure tech companies to suppress what we all agree is the truth now has led to Covid anti-vaxxers.
The vaccine prevents illness, that's exactly what you are quoting. Thats what the trial was looking for. Look at the chart, about incidence. It absolutely did prevent getting Covid.
I don't understand what you are trying to say. It doesn't merely prevent sever disease, it prevents all incidence of disease.
I’m saying that the government claimed that getting the vaccine would “prevent Covid”. Traditionally, when people take “vaccines” that’s the expectation.
When the government was suppressing information that now everyone agrees is true - that the vaccines don’t prevent Covid and that the effects were short lived, they lost credibility and the same people who didn’t fight traditional vaccines like we all took as kids became anti-vaxxers and now are railing against vaccines that do actually prevent you from getting diseases
None of this is true. The vaccines prevent covid. The government suppressed nothing.
I'm not sure what confusion leads you to say these things, but it is misinformation that you should stop spreading. If I were to encounter somebody saying things like this in a professional context I would immediately question their judgement on all matters, because somebody repeatedly spouting misinformation in the face of contrary data and then claiming there was a conspiracy on top of it all are not the words of a reliable person.
Really? Not even the governments official line anymore is that the vaccines “prevent” Covid. The official line which I agree with completely is that it reduces the risk of serious illness and hospitalizations
It’s beyond silly to still argue in 2023 that the vaccine prevents Covid.
You cannot possibly tell me that you don’t know a number of people who have gotten vaccinated and still got Covid.
Notice that nowhere does the government claim that the vaccine prevents it.
> Prevents serious illness: COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are safe and effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying.
>A safer way to build protection: Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is a safer, more reliable way to build protection than getting sick with COVID-19.
> Offers added protection: COVID-19 vaccines can offer added protection to people who had COVID-19, including protection against being hospitalized from a new infection.
> It’s beyond silly to still argue in 2023 that the vaccine prevents Covid.
This is a unthinking semantic misdirection.
It is clear that vaccination does not prevent every case of covid in the vaccinated. No-one is seriously saying that, and you don't seem stupid enough to actually think that this "all or nothing" reading is the intended meaning.
it is equally clear that vaccination lowers the risk of catching covid. That is to say: it prevents some cases. As well as reducing the risk of serious illness and hospitalizations.
Vaccination prevents covid, a percentage of the time. It is not perfect, but gives you better odds no not catching the infection. Therefor: Vaccination prevents covid.
As the parent poster said, "you should stop spreading misinformation". Are you usually prone to simplistic, conspiratorial thinking, or do you just have a poor diet of sources of information?
Can you show any evidence that you are less likely to catch Covid if you have been vaccinated? None of the official wording that I have seen from the CDC or the medical industry has said that
> As well as reducing the risk of serious illness and hospitalizations.
I’m not arguing that.
> As the parent poster said, "you should stop spreading misinformation". Are you usually prone to simplistic, conspiratorial thinking, or do you just have a poor diet of sources of information?
So it’s a conspiracy that I’m arguing based on information I’m citing from the CDC? If you find reliable information from the CDC, DHHS, etc I’ll concede that point.
> Can you show any evidence that you are less likely to catch Covid if you have been vaccinated
Can you show me evidence that it's the same likelihood? I am curious as to why you would think that. And I don't see anywhere where the CDC says so. The "serious outcomes" that they talk about are simply easier to measure. But you must have got this deeply misguided idea from somewhere.
I didn't say that, I just decided that I'm not doing your googling for you. As the saying goes "Dude, I've known you for ten seconds & enjoyed none of them, I'm not taking homework assignments from you. "
The usual play by anti-vax trolls is to act persuadable enough to send people off on long excursions. They're not actually convincible of course, no matter what you say to them they'll trot out the same garbage talking points to some else soon.
So I’m acting as an “anti-vax” troll by citing from the CDC and DHHS and saying that I agree with what they say?
It seems like you are acting more like the troll by refusing to believe the exact words that come from the CDC and DHHS and just having a “belief” system without proof.
I have posted from only three websites to support my arguments - the CDC, DHHS, and Yale medicine.
You're reading between the lines of those sources, and seeing what you want to see, things that they simply never say. And to these you cling, lest you learn more. It's dishonest.
If it ducks like a quack...
Multiple people have now told you to stop spreading misinformation. But, keep digging.
> You should apply a bit more critical thinking to the lines you have been fed.
That's incredibly ironic coming from someone who unironically uses the term "misinformation", which is an anti-science emotional manipulation tool meant to suppress dissension, and uses manipulative language like:
> I would beg you to look back at where you picked up these bits of misinformation, and completely eliminate those sources from your information diet. They can not be trusted, and will infect you again with bad info that puts your health at risk.
> But, I think it was a disservice to call something a vaccine that didn’t seem to reduce the chance of you catching it, the effects of the vaccine completely disappeared within 6-9 months and it didn’t keep you from catching Covid.
I think that that's because the public is used to super-effective vaccines that are so good at preventing you from getting the disease at all that they've started associating that term with that level of effectiveness.
I don't think that's entirely fair, though - whenever we develop a new variant on any technology (e.g. Li-Ion batteries, after NiMh), the new technology usually has some initial performance deficits (e.g. lower capacity), so it seems reasonable to accept that in the case of vaccines as well. "Vaccine" was originally intended to be an indicator of what it was, not how effective it was.
That doesn't excuse the poor and dishonest communication from many governments, though. They should have been very clear about the numbers: "This reduces your chance of contacting Covid by about 60%, and reduces your chance of severe illness by 80% if you do get it" or something.
> We wouldn’t accept that definition for any of the other vaccines like Smallpox, measles, etc
Well, the smallpox vaccine is only 95% effective - it doesn't completely prevent you from getting smallpox, either, and I suspect that that's the case for basically every vaccine in existence.
> didn’t seem to reduce the chance of you catching it, the effects of the vaccine completely disappeared within 6-9 months and it didn’t keep you from catching Covid
These claims seem a bit far-fetched, but I'm open to looking at the evidence if you'll bring it forth.
> Do you see the term “immunity” anywhere on the CDCs sight today with regards to the Covid vaccine?
No, but that could be because individuals like you have extremely opinionated views of what "vaccine" and "immunity" mean, and they don't want further confusion to spread.
> Are you disagreeing that the Covid vaccine looses almost all effectiveness after 6 to 9 months?
OK, I was open-minded and willing to examine evidence that you provided, but you instead provided zero evidence and responded in a hostile manner. It's clear that you're not arguing in good faith. We're done here.
> No, but that could be because individuals like you have extremely opinionated views of what "vaccine" and "immunity" mean, and they don't want further confusion to spread.
So now your excuse is that the CDC is not being truthful or when evidence from reliable sources doesn’t agree with your worldview you dispute the evidence? How are you any better than the anti-cancers who do the same.
I haven’t in this entire thread cited any evidence that didn’t come from either the CDC or the DHHS.
> OK, I was open-minded and willing to examine evidence that you provided, but you instead provided zero evidence and responded in a hostile manner. It's clear that you're not arguing in good faith. We're done here.
Really? You mean the evidence you are ignoring from the CDC? Why do you think the government recommended booster shots six months later before there were any changes in the formulation.
I’m presenting quotes from the CDC. Not sone website I found while sitting on the toilet.
> Really? You mean the evidence you are ignoring from the CDC?
Where is the evidence? You never presented it. You linked to https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/s0901-covid-19-boost..., which literally does not contain the word "month". There's nothing in there about the vaccine "looses almost all effectiveness after 6 to 9 months".
> I haven’t in this entire thread cited any evidence that didn’t come from either the CDC or the DHHS.
Then it will be trivial for you to drop links supporting your position, right here, in a response to me. You still haven't done that. You don't even have to provide links to CDC or DHHS - I'll take something from a medical journal. Just don't get all uppity when you haven't actually provided that evidence yet.
> Why do you think the government recommended booster shots six months later before there were any changes in the formulation.
The human immune system slowly loses its resistance to disease over time after an immune response. This is normal. This does not imply that it's worthless after 9 months. That's the evidence that I'm asking for that you have not provided.
One more try: in your comment, place your evidence in a block formatted like this:
HERE: [link] "quoted section of text that provides evidence for your claim that the Covid vaccine looses almost all effectiveness after 6 to 9 months"
> Data about the vaccines waning contributed to a decision in the fall of 2021 to make booster shots available
Why do you think boosters are being made available? Do you really think that if all I did was the J&J in March 2021 I would have any defense in September of 2023?
The CDC did actually change their definition of vaccination in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. The updated definition is more scientifically accurate, but the timing of the change caused a lot of public confusion and the CDC did a bad job of communicating the reason for the change.
And this exactly the point I’ve been making, the incompetence of the CDCs messaging and even worse suppressing information that we all know to be true now based on the latest messaging of the CDC has done harm to vaccine programs that have been generally accepted by everyone.
> It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think?
Maybe then they would have gone through proper testing before unleashing them onto the world population.
They did go through proper testing. They had been going through lots of testing for years, incrementally, slowly, just like the vaccines in this article. It was only the pandemic that provided the money and urgency to do it sooner rather than later.
A couple of months of human trials (that started before animal trials were finished) isn't proper testing. Each mRNA vaccine (like any other type of vaccine) is a standalone product. Testing the general viability of mRNA technology isn't the same as testing a specific mRNA vaccine.
Says who? Seriously? Some random paper taken out of context and copied onto lists that anti-backers uncritically copy and paste? And animal trials? That's not going to tell you much of anything about human safety!
In any case, if it was a gamble, the gamble paid off, because deployment has proven to be incredibly safe.
The only vaccine that has safety questions was the more traditional vaccine from Johnson and Johnson, and they are very very rare, if they exist.
All this data is out there, anybody who has safety concerns has not bothered to educate themselves, think critically, and examine the data.
We all have different risk tolerances, but along any possible health metric, not being vaccinated is far less safe than being vaccinated for the people the vaccine is indicated for.
Yes, of course! It's required of every single drug.
Earlier in the pandemic, the fear mongering was that the existence of these standard monitoring trials (phase 4) meant that the vaccine was inadequate tested before. See for example:
Ongoing monitoring of complaints is a required part of all quality systems. The core of our regulation system requires the ability to detect subtle problems that can only appear after lots and lots of people have been treated.
There are forces within our society that are spreading FUD about basic institutions, transforming our society from a high trust, efficient, informed society to a low-trust inefficient corruption-prone society. Fearmongering about well established safety practices is at the core of it all, IMHO.
You tell me they're monitoring the vacciness, but what I asked for is proof of your statement about proven safety.
> Fearmongering about well established safety practices is at the core of it all, IMHO.
These vaccines didn't go through well established safety practices. They skipped them to be put to use as soon as possible. People who pointed this out were outright called "antivaxxers."
> There are forces within our society that are spreading FUD about basic institutions, transforming our society from a high trust, efficient, informed society to a low-trust inefficient corruption-prone society.
There's no need for conspiratorial thinking. Basic institutions proved themselves to the general public to be highly incompetent and corrupt.
It never proved safe enough to test in humans, according to several former Moderna employees and collaborators who worked closely on the project
mRNA is a tricky technology. Several major pharmaceutical companies have tried and abandoned the idea, struggling to get mRNA into cells without triggering nasty side effects.
The problems were big enough that Moderna was being written up as an impending car crash. As recently as 2017 their drugs weren't safe enough to deploy in humans because the body reacted badly after being exposed to multiple doses.
So what did they do? Well, unfortunately for us, they didn't know how to solve the safety problems and gave up. Instead they switched from drug development to vaccine development, and why did they do that?
The indefinite delay on the Crigler-Najjar project signals persistent and troubling safety concerns for any mRNA treatment that needs to be delivered in multiple doses, covering almost everything that isn’t a vaccine, former employees and collaborators said.
Oh dear. Safe only if you don't take it more than once.
The reason no further mRNA tech has come to market since isn't because the pandemic made the same things happen faster. It's because the problems with mRNA drugs were never actually solved. The pandemic obliterated all standards and safety mechanisms, creating a mass hysteria that steamrollered any objections in its path. Now the hysteria has faded, the problems are reasserting themselves.
I think we would be better off wiping out the disease carrying species of mosquitoes. Not only would you get rid of malaria, you would also get rid of a lot of other mosquito borne diseases.
There are attempts to do exactly this where certain types of mosquitos are given something that makes them impotent after some number of generations. It can create other issues, though, in regards to the disruption of that part of the food chain.
This is from memory from a few years ago and I don't have a source on hand.
> The sporozoite preparation came directly from the salivary glands of mosquitoes, which had been dissected, ground up, and irradiated. But how to purify this preparation remained an open question. It mattered because waste material from mosquitoes’ salivary glands could be dangerous, causing embolisms or severe reactions if injected.
I'm amazed that dissecting mosquitoes to extract malaria parasites for use in a vaccine actually produced enough material to test it on animals, and even more amazed that they've kept working on this approach since 1967. The article links to https://www.wired.com/story/tiny-guillotine-decapitates-mosq... which mentions that they had people dissecting 300 mosquitoes an hour before introducing some automation to handle 30 simultaneously.
(It doesn't mention though how they deal with the dangerous waste material problem.)
I really feel sad every time I read about mosquito born diseases. It is very hard for a person in the US to understand how terrible of a problem this is 600000 people each year!!!
I really hope to see the day when we eradicate all disease carrying mosquitos.
One of species we should have eradicated. Whatever their niche is, it doesn't seem like unique anyway. Ironically we may not have that much power over nature as we think we have.
> Malaria had become a common treatment for syphilis between the 1920s and 1940s. This was because the Austrian scientist Julius Wagner-Jauregg had discovered ‘fever therapy’: that patients could be cleared of advanced syphilis if they experienced persistently high fevers, such as those caused by malaria.
We used to use mercury compounds to treat syphilis. Sometimes effectively, because mercury is a pretty good anti microbial and early stages of an infection start with skin sores that could be treated with topical applications. Once the infection got to later stages, though you'd need enough to cause mercury poisoning.
- vaccines are typically developed against viruses and bacteria; malaria is caused by a parasite. vaccination against parasites is harder.
- TFA posits that, since the worst malaria strains mostly affect impoverished areas, there's less profit motive. I suspect this is true, but would love to see proof.
It's not just a parasite - it's a protist. An online search led me to a snippet from a paywalled online study site that has this text:
"Biologically, a protist-disease vaccine is more difficult to develop due to the mechanism and pathophysiology of diseases such as malaria and chagas."
would not have thought that malaria was prevalent in Sweden and Finland
"However, up until the early twentieth century, malaria also plagued the population in regions with a temperate climate. It was even endemic up to sub-Arctic regions in e.g. Finland and European Russia."
119 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadIt's surprising that there's no mention of quick mutation of the virus, people have been trying to make vaccines for a few centuries now.
Coincidentally, this is also the reason we went from COVID vaccines "eradicating COVID" to just "slowing the spread".
Science is hard, even without social issues potentially being a compounding factor.
Also having lived in West Africa, it's a very bad market so financial incentives are low. Plus they can't dev it themselves.
[edit] My mom remembers how all the kids would run and ride bikes behind the city pesticide spray trucks when they came around a few times each Summer, trailing thick clouds of… DDT.
It is a long article but you missed the part at the beginning of the article explaining that malaria is not caused by a virus or bacteria but a parasite.
Also the chart labelled 'Vaccine Discovery' which clearly shows no previously existing vaccines against parasites.
Also, the world map showing where Malaria has not been eradicated clearly indicates that it is found in the tropical belt where unfortunately a lot of poor countries exist.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6953888/
The condition Malaria is caused by the parasite.
That paper just reports the discovery of a virus that is a parasite of the plasmodium parasite that causes malaria in humans.
Plasmodium and all its relatives have become parasites a very long time ago, causing a variety of diseases in many animals.
How the Apicomplexa, including the plasmodia, have become parasites has nothing to do with the viruses that may be parasites of these parasites (a.k.a. hyperparasites), which are most likely to diminish the speed of the multiplication of the plasmodia.
Look how fast HIV switched from death sentence to you-can-live-with-it
Edit: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/5th-person-likely...
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patie...
Curing disease absolutely is a sustainable business model.
Its all about the money. And most questions of this type is the same response as well.
While the role played by mosquitos was not known, one of the ancient theories about the cause of such infectious diseases (which was described by Varro) was not essentially different from modern theories. It supposed that the wind brings from the swamps a large number of small animals, which are so small that they cannot be seen, and which enter the human body causing the disease. Therefore the proximity of swamps should be avoided, to avoid the diseases.
No one got rich off from malaria vaccine development. As the article mentions, the funding was the Gates foundation. A charity gave away money to make it happen.
According to wikipedia, A vaccine is a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious or malignant disease. [1]
Does that mean a vaccine can also be administered in forms other than an injection such as an oral tablet?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccine
Oral, nasal, transdermal are all common delivery routes.
In a rich country like mine (or statistically, yours) today, the vaccine given to school kids is an injection and doesn't have a working virus in it. As a result, when things go wrong (and very rarely they do go wrong) it can't cause Polio. But, there are two costs. One, literally this is an expensive product. Poor countries can't afford to dose their kids with the expensive harder to store and use injection. Two though, maybe even more important. It doesn't work so well. If you live in a country with no Polio, "not as well" is good enough. But in countries with endemic Polio, you want the best option and that's arguably OPV at least for now.
Iirc, Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine was based on cowpox, a related but less serious disease.
> This consisted of transferring to healthy people small amounts of material from smallpox sores, resulting in milder forms of illness and much lower mortality than natural infection. Some sources suggest practices of variolation were taking place as early as 200 BCE.
[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/history-of-vaccinati...
It’s a bit disappointing your comment was disliked. It’s on topic and completely relevant.
IgG and IgM are common in the blood, while IgE is found in places like the intestines.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/admin/administer-vaccines.h...
https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/activities.html
Incidentally this vaccine doesn't look very effective in terms of preventing malarial cases in the vast majority of susceptible people. Though it may reduce childhood mortality, alone it won't do much if anything to eliminate the disease.
> " The vaccine reduced the risk of clinical malaria by 56 percent in children aged 5 to 17 months and by 31 percent in those aged 6 to 12 weeks - although as in previous trials, this protection declined after a year."
1. It is a pain in the ass to study malaria. You need to have an insectary to grow mosquitoes (through their muktiple life stages, of course) and have them feed on infected mice just to passage the parasite. This isn't like viruses where you just throw then into vero cells or bacteria that will grow in LB overnight. Parasites require dedication. This kind of operation costs a university hundreds of thousands of dollars to get up and running, and there are not too many places in the US that have robust malaria research because of it. UW and the Boston area are two that I know with good malaria research centers.
2. The lifecycle of malaria is very difficult to make a vaccine against. This is described in the article. Essentially, you go from mosquito -> skin parasite (few hr) -> liver parasite (7d also no symptoms) -> blood parasite -> mosquito. Also, the prevailing idea is that the amplification during the liver stage through red blood cell stage is so great that once the blood stage is established, it's game over. You are going to get sick as a dog. So you have a few options: target the sporozoite in the skin and blood within a couple hours, or target the liver stage where the parasite is essentially dormant and is nearly impossible to find. (My research was finding antigens in the liver stage, there are very few and they don't produce very good immune responses with standard vaccination techniques). You have to remember that for the immune system to work, you need to see the signs of the pathogen, then give yourself 5 days at the absolute minimum to expand your T cells to eradicate the pathogen. And oftentimes we're talking less than 10 infected cells in the entire liver, which is a huge organ with famously tortuous circulation. So good luck on the liver stage.
All this ignoring the fact thatthe mouse model of malaria goes through the liver stage in just 4 days, which doesn't allow expansion of T cells for killing the bug. So even if we found the perfect antigen to vaccinate against, we don't have good models in mice to actually evaluate how effective a vaccine would be because of the differing biology of the model. There are some people who reconstitute human livers in mice so they can use the 7 day parasite, but those mice are pretty messed up and very expensive. And handling mosquitoes that carry human malaria is much more annoying than the mouse malaria. Still a very interesting and compelling model for research.
3. Interest in protein based vaccinations. There was a study long ago that used irradiated parasites that protected people from subsequent infections. The problem is that it took a LOT of parasites, and 5 doses of the vaccine. This strategy is similar to the inactivated virus kind of vaccinations that we all likely have received. But these parasites needed to be injected IV, 5 doses, and the parasites need to be kept at -80C until injection time. That might work for a vaccine delivered in a metropolitan area, but good luck finding -80 freezers in an African village. Around this time, researchers got interested in protein based vaccines, like the pertussis vaccine. So people went looking for a protein that was highly immunogenic, and they landed on CSP, which the article describes nicely. However, this again is mostly expressed on the skin parasite so you have just hours to recognize that protein and kill the parasite. Much less than the ideal 5-7 days.
4. Financial incentives are of course a problem. Though many would argue that financial incentives are bad for vaccine development in general because they prevent any disease from occuring, so you are eliminating your market if they work well.
So where does this leave us? If we keep thinking of vaccines as we typically do, we are going to just create marginally better versions of RTS,S, which i...
I don't know where this narrative comes from, but it can't really come from anybody who specializes in making brand new technologies.
There are soooooo many amazing technologies that have never been brought to market because of the roadblocks like this vaccine encountered.
It's even amazing that mRNA vaccines actually made it to the market, and if it hadn't been for the pandemic, there's a good chance that it would be another 15 years before they do, and this mRNA vaccination tech has been brewing since the 90s, I think? Years before the pandemic, I knew of Moderna and BioNTech because they had the capability to make customized therapeutic vaccines to train a person's immune system to fight their particular cancer's unique neoantigens. The hurdles seemed somewhat enormous even then for them. Without the kick start of money and trials that the pandemic provided, it would have taken so many more years to do the discovery needed.
The problem is that we have a massive unexplored terrain in R&D and trivial amounts of funds compared to the area we can explore. We have to be extremely picky about what gets money to move forward. This is a social problem, as much as a finance problem, we simply use dollars to express our societal wishes of what we want to encourage.
In the mean time, it would be good if the media would stop spreading the idea that if you build a better mouse trap, the word will bear a path to your door. It's quite the opposite.
Have they made it to market? It's been like 4 years and there are no other ones to be found outside of trials. This is kind of strange because we were told this is so much easier, safer and faster than other technologies. If the US wasn't accepting for whatever weird reason, then you'd think they'd pop up in lots of other countries. But doesn't seem like that is happening.
mRNA vaccine tech is one of the biggest advances in biotech in a long time, the other apparatus has not necessarily caught up.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31079849/ (2019)
https://jitc.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40425-015-0... (2015)
I’m by no means an anti-vaxxer and believe that even if the “vaccines” did reduce the severity and number of deaths it was a win. But, I think it was a disservice to call something a vaccine that didn’t seem to reduce the chance of you catching it, the effects of the vaccine completely disappeared within 6-9 months and it didn’t keep you from catching Covid.
We wouldn’t accept that definition for any of the other vaccines like Smallpox, measles, etc
Flu vaccine. I'm talking about the flu vaccine.
I was first in line when it came to Covid “vaccines” and kept up to date with boosters because I knew even the common cold can trigger my overactive immune system/asthma.
I’ve had Covid twice and I was coughing for a couple of weeks. It was more irritating than anything else. I attribute my not having a more severe reaction to the vaccines. It probably wouldn’t have been that bad with the other preventive asthma meds I take now.
But the marketing by the government behind the vaccines and the early suppression by the government and the tech industry of information about the long term effectiveness has set us back.
I think that downplaying the benefits of the vaccines is somewhere between uninformed and irresponsible. I don’t care nearly as much about criticism of government commas and the tech industry.
> But, I think it was a disservice to call something a vaccine
It was a severe disservice because it increased skepticism and reduced uptake
> I think that downplaying the benefits of the vaccines is somewhere between uninformed and irresponsible
What part do you disagree with? Even the pro-vaccine side which I’m one of says effectiveness declines to near zero after six to nine months without a booster.
> I don’t care nearly as much about criticism of government commas and the tech industry.
You should care because they are a major cause of the anti-vaxxers and causing people to die and be hospitalized unnecessarily because of ineffective messaging
When I said I don’t care as much about criticism of government comms (commas was a typo) and the tech industry, I meant I’m not too concerned that you are criticizing them. I don’t think I fully agree with you, but I don’t feel strongly enough that I would have replied to your comment if that was all it appeared to be about.
It was only later on that they admitted as much. This led to many people not trusting anything the government said.
People don't have time to understand the context of complicated subjects, so they ask experts who answer quickly.
People can't test every statement for truth, so they ask experts who answer confidently.
And then people feel like they've been lied to, because we don't know all the answers, the answers are complicated, and we need to change our minds sometimes because we were wrong.
It's easy to blame "the media" or "the experts" or "the elite" for these problems, but there are a lot of hard problems in this world that need a lot of context to really understand in a meaningful way.
Yes, media, experts, and elites abuse their position. Solving this problem requires more work than just replacing them.
Your instinct that something is wrong with authority figures is correct, but I feel like you've gone down a narrow channel for the answers.
I am not doubting the science or the statements that come from the CDC, DHHS, or the established respected medical community.
I’m criticizing the government more for actively, denying and suppressing information that they admit now to be true.
On another note almost everything that the government has done in handling Covid since the vaccines have come out has done more harm than good:
1. Vaccine mandates for a vaccine that has since been shown not to be effective long term without a booster. I for the J and J vaccine March 2021. I could show that as proof of vaccination and that alone and I would still be in compliance even though all of the science shows it doesn’t mean anything two years later without boosters (which I’ve done on schedule and still got Covid twice. It was mild each time)
2. Mask mandates after the vaccine was widely available - in practice mostly ineffective because people were wearing cloth masks and not wearing them correctly. At that point I had no sympathy for people who died from Covid who refused to get vaccinated. They made their choice using their own free will.
I don't know if you are anti-vax person disguising as a "just asking reasonable question" type of person (it's a common tactic), but I had to reply to be sure that anyone reading that understood this was absolutely false.
The impact on the death rate and severe outcome of COVID is being seen even years later, so this is absolutely false this entirely disappear within 6-9 months, this is very well documented. This vaccine allowed us to move forward and make sure our hospitals and entire healthcare system stopped being overrun even when we had a 30-40% of the population contracting the virus, this is an absolute win.
“even if the “vaccines” did reduce the severity and number of deaths it was a win”
I said in another reply that I have “virus induced asthma”. A simple cold will cause my immune system to overact and cause me severe difficultly breathing. I was first in line for the vaccines and I did an MRNA booster before it was recommended in the US because I read what I thought were credible studies from other countries about needing it after the J and J one shot.
I’ve also said before that “I retired my wife” who was working as a school bus driver because I didn’t feel it was safe before the vaccine came out.
> The impact on the death rate and severe outcome of COVID is being seen even years later
I’m not disagreeing with that. You’re preaching to the choir. I am saying it was a messaging problem to call it a vaccine if it doesn’t prevent you from getting the disease.
Do you really not see the difference in people’s mind why all except a few crazies were willing to get a vaccine that prevented a disease and maybe lost effectiveness after a decade compared to one that didn’t prevent infections and that did require you to get boosters?
It was beyond silly that a cruise I went on in December of 2021 required everyone to be vaccinated (that part is not silly). But at the same time would have accepted my J&J one shot I did in March 2021 where all of the studies showed had lost effectiveness by December.
I had an mRNA booster about a month before it was part of the officially guidelines because I read credible studies by government agencies in other countries about it. But they still would have let me on without it. At that point it was “Covid theater”.
Yeah I got Covid on the cruise and didn’t even realize I had it until I got home. I’m not saying that to poo poo the vaccine. Usually even a simple cold makes my immune system over react. I credit the vaccine to the mild symptoms
It absolutely did reduce chances of catching/testing positive for COVID early on, and that benefit shrank over time as the virus mutated.
“the effects of the vaccine completely disappeared within 6-9 months”
I’m not sure about odds of catching it, but reduced odds of hospitalization and death do persist beyond 9 months.
Also, see the flu vaccine, as someone else has already referenced. Do you put quotes around “vaccine” when you refer to those?
“ that even if the “vaccines” did reduce the severity and number of deaths it was a win”
> I’m not sure about odds of catching it, but reduced odds of hospitalization and death do persist beyond 9 months.
We don’t know that. Most people who cared enough to get the vaccine, also probably cared enough to get booster shots as recommended. Every study shows that the effectiveness completely disappears within 6-9 months without a booster.
I am one of those who got the booster.
And you arguing with me about the effectiveness when I’m arguing about the messaging shows how out of touch people are on HN with the significant number of Covid/anti-vaxxers.
I did. You said “if” as if maybe they didn’t.
“We don’t know that.”
Yes we do. Boosted vs not boosted is differentiated in case, hospitalization, and death data.
As someone else mentioned, unfortunately “I’m not anti-vax, but…” is a common anti-vax opening line. I believe you now, though.
We have to create new flu vaccines every single year, because flu is so varied. They don't see a ton of use, but they save a lot of lives.
So thinking that we don't accept this definition of vaccine is just not based in reality. SARS-CoV-2 evolves, particularly under the pressure of resistant hosts, and even people that were infected once can get it many times!
Secondly, the vaccines absolutely did reduce the chances of catching covid, by massive amounts. Take even a glance at any of the studies:
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2035389
I would beg you to look back at where you picked up these bits of misinformation, and completely eliminate those sources from your information diet. They can not be trusted, and will infect you again with bad info that puts your health at risk.
> The mRNA-1273 vaccine showed 94.1% efficacy at preventing Covid-19 illness, including severe disease
It prevented “severe illness”. I agree with that completely. I said as much. It didn’t say it prevented you from “getting in”. Preventing severe illness is a win. I’ve taken Covid shots every six months for that reason - especially since I have virus induced asthma. But the government originally marketed it as preventing Covid. This and going out of its way to pressure tech companies to suppress what we all agree is the truth now has led to Covid anti-vaxxers.
I don't understand what you are trying to say. It doesn't merely prevent sever disease, it prevents all incidence of disease.
When the government was suppressing information that now everyone agrees is true - that the vaccines don’t prevent Covid and that the effects were short lived, they lost credibility and the same people who didn’t fight traditional vaccines like we all took as kids became anti-vaxxers and now are railing against vaccines that do actually prevent you from getting diseases
I'm not sure what confusion leads you to say these things, but it is misinformation that you should stop spreading. If I were to encounter somebody saying things like this in a professional context I would immediately question their judgement on all matters, because somebody repeatedly spouting misinformation in the face of contrary data and then claiming there was a conspiracy on top of it all are not the words of a reliable person.
It’s beyond silly to still argue in 2023 that the vaccine prevents Covid.
You cannot possibly tell me that you don’t know a number of people who have gotten vaccinated and still got Covid.
Notice that nowhere does the government claim that the vaccine prevents it.
From the CDC
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/vaccine-b...
> Prevents serious illness: COVID-19 vaccines available in the United States are safe and effective at protecting people from getting seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying.
>A safer way to build protection: Getting a COVID-19 vaccine is a safer, more reliable way to build protection than getting sick with COVID-19.
> Offers added protection: COVID-19 vaccines can offer added protection to people who had COVID-19, including protection against being hospitalized from a new infection.
This is a unthinking semantic misdirection.
It is clear that vaccination does not prevent every case of covid in the vaccinated. No-one is seriously saying that, and you don't seem stupid enough to actually think that this "all or nothing" reading is the intended meaning.
it is equally clear that vaccination lowers the risk of catching covid. That is to say: it prevents some cases. As well as reducing the risk of serious illness and hospitalizations.
Vaccination prevents covid, a percentage of the time. It is not perfect, but gives you better odds no not catching the infection. Therefor: Vaccination prevents covid.
As the parent poster said, "you should stop spreading misinformation". Are you usually prone to simplistic, conspiratorial thinking, or do you just have a poor diet of sources of information?
> As well as reducing the risk of serious illness and hospitalizations.
I’m not arguing that.
> As the parent poster said, "you should stop spreading misinformation". Are you usually prone to simplistic, conspiratorial thinking, or do you just have a poor diet of sources of information?
So it’s a conspiracy that I’m arguing based on information I’m citing from the CDC? If you find reliable information from the CDC, DHHS, etc I’ll concede that point.
Can you show me evidence that it's the same likelihood? I am curious as to why you would think that. And I don't see anywhere where the CDC says so. The "serious outcomes" that they talk about are simply easier to measure. But you must have got this deeply misguided idea from somewhere.
I didn't say that, I just decided that I'm not doing your googling for you. As the saying goes "Dude, I've known you for ten seconds & enjoyed none of them, I'm not taking homework assignments from you. "
The usual play by anti-vax trolls is to act persuadable enough to send people off on long excursions. They're not actually convincible of course, no matter what you say to them they'll trot out the same garbage talking points to some else soon.
It seems like you are acting more like the troll by refusing to believe the exact words that come from the CDC and DHHS and just having a “belief” system without proof.
I have posted from only three websites to support my arguments - the CDC, DHHS, and Yale medicine.
You have posted…nothing
If it ducks like a quack...
Multiple people have now told you to stop spreading misinformation. But, keep digging.
That's incredibly ironic coming from someone who unironically uses the term "misinformation", which is an anti-science emotional manipulation tool meant to suppress dissension, and uses manipulative language like:
> I would beg you to look back at where you picked up these bits of misinformation, and completely eliminate those sources from your information diet. They can not be trusted, and will infect you again with bad info that puts your health at risk.
I think that that's because the public is used to super-effective vaccines that are so good at preventing you from getting the disease at all that they've started associating that term with that level of effectiveness.
I don't think that's entirely fair, though - whenever we develop a new variant on any technology (e.g. Li-Ion batteries, after NiMh), the new technology usually has some initial performance deficits (e.g. lower capacity), so it seems reasonable to accept that in the case of vaccines as well. "Vaccine" was originally intended to be an indicator of what it was, not how effective it was.
That doesn't excuse the poor and dishonest communication from many governments, though. They should have been very clear about the numbers: "This reduces your chance of contacting Covid by about 60%, and reduces your chance of severe illness by 80% if you do get it" or something.
> We wouldn’t accept that definition for any of the other vaccines like Smallpox, measles, etc
Well, the smallpox vaccine is only 95% effective - it doesn't completely prevent you from getting smallpox, either, and I suspect that that's the case for basically every vaccine in existence.
> didn’t seem to reduce the chance of you catching it, the effects of the vaccine completely disappeared within 6-9 months and it didn’t keep you from catching Covid
These claims seem a bit far-fetched, but I'm open to looking at the evidence if you'll bring it forth.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/vaccine-basics/index.html
> The smallpox vaccine protects people from smallpox by helping their bodies develop immunity to smallpox.
Do you see the term “immunity” anywhere on the CDCs sight today with regards to the Covid vaccine?
Are you disagreeing that the Covid vaccine looses almost all effectiveness after 6 to 9 months?
Again from the CDC.
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/s0901-covid-19-boost...
> They can help restore protection that has waned since previous vaccination
No, but that could be because individuals like you have extremely opinionated views of what "vaccine" and "immunity" mean, and they don't want further confusion to spread.
> Are you disagreeing that the Covid vaccine looses almost all effectiveness after 6 to 9 months?
OK, I was open-minded and willing to examine evidence that you provided, but you instead provided zero evidence and responded in a hostile manner. It's clear that you're not arguing in good faith. We're done here.
So now your excuse is that the CDC is not being truthful or when evidence from reliable sources doesn’t agree with your worldview you dispute the evidence? How are you any better than the anti-cancers who do the same.
I haven’t in this entire thread cited any evidence that didn’t come from either the CDC or the DHHS.
> OK, I was open-minded and willing to examine evidence that you provided, but you instead provided zero evidence and responded in a hostile manner. It's clear that you're not arguing in good faith. We're done here.
Really? You mean the evidence you are ignoring from the CDC? Why do you think the government recommended booster shots six months later before there were any changes in the formulation.
I’m presenting quotes from the CDC. Not sone website I found while sitting on the toilet.
Where is the evidence? You never presented it. You linked to https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2022/s0901-covid-19-boost..., which literally does not contain the word "month". There's nothing in there about the vaccine "looses almost all effectiveness after 6 to 9 months".
> I haven’t in this entire thread cited any evidence that didn’t come from either the CDC or the DHHS.
Then it will be trivial for you to drop links supporting your position, right here, in a response to me. You still haven't done that. You don't even have to provide links to CDC or DHHS - I'll take something from a medical journal. Just don't get all uppity when you haven't actually provided that evidence yet.
> Why do you think the government recommended booster shots six months later before there were any changes in the formulation.
The human immune system slowly loses its resistance to disease over time after an immune response. This is normal. This does not imply that it's worthless after 9 months. That's the evidence that I'm asking for that you have not provided.
One more try: in your comment, place your evidence in a block formatted like this:
HERE: [link] "quoted section of text that provides evidence for your claim that the Covid vaccine looses almost all effectiveness after 6 to 9 months"
> Data about the vaccines waning contributed to a decision in the fall of 2021 to make booster shots available
Why do you think boosters are being made available? Do you really think that if all I did was the J&J in March 2021 I would have any defense in September of 2023?
https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-976069264061
Maybe then they would have gone through proper testing before unleashing them onto the world population.
Please do not let politics bleed into science.
In any case, if it was a gamble, the gamble paid off, because deployment has proven to be incredibly safe.
The only vaccine that has safety questions was the more traditional vaccine from Johnson and Johnson, and they are very very rare, if they exist.
All this data is out there, anybody who has safety concerns has not bothered to educate themselves, think critically, and examine the data.
We all have different risk tolerances, but along any possible health metric, not being vaccinated is far less safe than being vaccinated for the people the vaccine is indicated for.
Has it? What long term trials have been carried that show that?
Earlier in the pandemic, the fear mongering was that the existence of these standard monitoring trials (phase 4) meant that the vaccine was inadequate tested before. See for example:
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-vaccine-monitor...
Ongoing monitoring of complaints is a required part of all quality systems. The core of our regulation system requires the ability to detect subtle problems that can only appear after lots and lots of people have been treated.
There are forces within our society that are spreading FUD about basic institutions, transforming our society from a high trust, efficient, informed society to a low-trust inefficient corruption-prone society. Fearmongering about well established safety practices is at the core of it all, IMHO.
> Fearmongering about well established safety practices is at the core of it all, IMHO.
These vaccines didn't go through well established safety practices. They skipped them to be put to use as soon as possible. People who pointed this out were outright called "antivaxxers."
> There are forces within our society that are spreading FUD about basic institutions, transforming our society from a high trust, efficient, informed society to a low-trust inefficient corruption-prone society.
There's no need for conspiratorial thinking. Basic institutions proved themselves to the general public to be highly incompetent and corrupt.
Yes, mRNA based meds had been going through proper testing. They kept failing due to severe safety problems that only appeared after multiple doses.
https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/moderna-trouble-mrna/
It never proved safe enough to test in humans, according to several former Moderna employees and collaborators who worked closely on the project
mRNA is a tricky technology. Several major pharmaceutical companies have tried and abandoned the idea, struggling to get mRNA into cells without triggering nasty side effects.
The problems were big enough that Moderna was being written up as an impending car crash. As recently as 2017 their drugs weren't safe enough to deploy in humans because the body reacted badly after being exposed to multiple doses.
So what did they do? Well, unfortunately for us, they didn't know how to solve the safety problems and gave up. Instead they switched from drug development to vaccine development, and why did they do that?
The indefinite delay on the Crigler-Najjar project signals persistent and troubling safety concerns for any mRNA treatment that needs to be delivered in multiple doses, covering almost everything that isn’t a vaccine, former employees and collaborators said.
Oh dear. Safe only if you don't take it more than once.
The reason no further mRNA tech has come to market since isn't because the pandemic made the same things happen faster. It's because the problems with mRNA drugs were never actually solved. The pandemic obliterated all standards and safety mechanisms, creating a mass hysteria that steamrollered any objections in its path. Now the hysteria has faded, the problems are reasserting themselves.
This is from memory from a few years ago and I don't have a source on hand.
I'm amazed that dissecting mosquitoes to extract malaria parasites for use in a vaccine actually produced enough material to test it on animals, and even more amazed that they've kept working on this approach since 1967. The article links to https://www.wired.com/story/tiny-guillotine-decapitates-mosq... which mentions that they had people dissecting 300 mosquitoes an hour before introducing some automation to handle 30 simultaneously.
(It doesn't mention though how they deal with the dangerous waste material problem.)
I really hope to see the day when we eradicate all disease carrying mosquitos.
> Malaria had become a common treatment for syphilis between the 1920s and 1940s. This was because the Austrian scientist Julius Wagner-Jauregg had discovered ‘fever therapy’: that patients could be cleared of advanced syphilis if they experienced persistently high fevers, such as those caused by malaria.
We used malaria to treat syphilis.
- vaccines are typically developed against viruses and bacteria; malaria is caused by a parasite. vaccination against parasites is harder.
- TFA posits that, since the worst malaria strains mostly affect impoverished areas, there's less profit motive. I suspect this is true, but would love to see proof.
"Biologically, a protist-disease vaccine is more difficult to develop due to the mechanism and pathophysiology of diseases such as malaria and chagas."
More on vaccines for protozoal diseases:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3961066/
Specifics on the difficulty with a vaccine for malaria:
https://www.malariavaccine.org/malaria-and-vaccines/vaccine-...
would not have thought that malaria was prevalent in Sweden and Finland
"However, up until the early twentieth century, malaria also plagued the population in regions with a temperate climate. It was even endemic up to sub-Arctic regions in e.g. Finland and European Russia."
https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s1...