The Golden Age of Vaccine Development (worksinprogress.co) 118
Microbiology had its golden age in the late nineteenth century, when researchers identified the bacterial causes of tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid, and a dozen other diseases in rapid succession. Antibiotics had theirs in the mid-twentieth century. Both booms eventually slowed. Vaccine development, by contrast, appears to be speeding up -- and the most productive era may still lie ahead, Works in Progress writes in a story.
In the first half of the 2020s alone, researchers delivered the first effective vaccines against four different diseases: Covid-19, malaria, RSV and chikungunya. No previous decade matched that output. The acceleration rests on infrastructure that took two centuries to assemble. Edward Jenner's 1796 smallpox vaccine was a lucky accident he didn't understand. Louis Pasteur needed ninety years to turn that luck into systematic methods -- attenuation and inactivation -- that could be applied to other diseases. Generations of scientists then built the supporting machinery: Petri dishes for bacterial culture, techniques to keep animal cells alive outside the body, bioreactors for industrial production, sterilization and cold-chain logistics.
Those tools have now compounded. Cryo-electron microscopy reveals viral proteins atom by atom, a capability that directly enabled the RSV vaccine after earlier attempts failed. Genome sequencing costs collapsed from roughly $100 million per human genome in 2001 to under $1,000 by 2014, according to data from the National Human Genome Research Institute. The mRNA platform, refined through work by Katalin Kariko, Drew Weissman, and others, allows vaccines to be redesigned in weeks rather than years. The trajectory suggests more breakthroughs are possible. Whether they arrive depends on continued investment, however.
In the first half of the 2020s alone, researchers delivered the first effective vaccines against four different diseases: Covid-19, malaria, RSV and chikungunya. No previous decade matched that output. The acceleration rests on infrastructure that took two centuries to assemble. Edward Jenner's 1796 smallpox vaccine was a lucky accident he didn't understand. Louis Pasteur needed ninety years to turn that luck into systematic methods -- attenuation and inactivation -- that could be applied to other diseases. Generations of scientists then built the supporting machinery: Petri dishes for bacterial culture, techniques to keep animal cells alive outside the body, bioreactors for industrial production, sterilization and cold-chain logistics.
Those tools have now compounded. Cryo-electron microscopy reveals viral proteins atom by atom, a capability that directly enabled the RSV vaccine after earlier attempts failed. Genome sequencing costs collapsed from roughly $100 million per human genome in 2001 to under $1,000 by 2014, according to data from the National Human Genome Research Institute. The mRNA platform, refined through work by Katalin Kariko, Drew Weissman, and others, allows vaccines to be redesigned in weeks rather than years. The trajectory suggests more breakthroughs are possible. Whether they arrive depends on continued investment, however.
300 years of scientific progress (Score:5, Insightful)
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Only in the US. The rest of the world will reap huge benefits.
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You really should get a proper education on the relevant facts before forming opinions on such important topics, and especially before you go trying to convince others that you know what you are talking about.
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You're the angelosphere of medicine.
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The reason for the chicken pox/shingles issue is that if you contract the VZV it colonizes your nervous system and remains latent. It periodically reactivates and sort of gives you a free exposure over the years, basically a recurring booster shot.
People have been fine with this in the past but some researchers suspect that the latent infection has long term potential damage and there could be a benefit in preventing a latent infection in the first place. (Similar issues with latent herpes infection have be
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Trump is still blocking the release of the files he promised.
Re:Golden age coincides with 5G!? (Score:4, Informative)
Huh.
So you're here to kick up dust. The only explanation I can think of is that you know the republican position on vaccines is just stupid and yet you cannot ever bring yourself to directly and unequivocally criticise the right for anything.
I guess we got through to you a little bit though.
hrm, maybe you're on to something here (Score:4, Funny)
Can we describe the vaccines themselves as golden? As in .. made of gold? That seems to be one of the few things that gets Trump's interest.
For the US, it's a combo golden age and dark age (Score:5, Insightful)
In the end, this might sort itself out. The smart people will vaccinate, and the dumb people will die more often. If the effect is severe enough, the differential death rates might just offset the idiocracy effect.
During COVID, I knew a family that was 100% covid denier. To them, covid was a liberal conspiracy, the vaccines were mind control, masking was fraudulent and ineffective and social distancing was a form of government control. They went about their lives like everything was normal, right at the start of the pandemic when the virus had just made the species jump and was at peak deadliness. The dad caught covid. Then his son caught covid. Then the dad died. Then the son died. The son was reproductive age. It was really, really sad, but it was like watching a nature special about evolution, complete with Attenborough's narration. Straight-up evolution in action. They made some stupid choices, of their own free will, and now that genetic line is *gone*.
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They made some stupid choices, of their own free will, and now that genetic line is *gone*.
Thanks, I needed some cheering up today.
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I gotta assume that you're trolling.
Re: For the US, it's a combo golden age and dark a (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: For the US, it's a combo golden age and dark (Score:2)
Some of them have anecdotal evidence. There's a mismatch in how people understand "safe and effective" and if something is described as safe and effective but you're one of the unlucky in the minority who gets undesirable side effect, or if you're close to one, it can be hard to hear that "safe and effective" doesn't apply to everyone.
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They also have no appreciation of causation vs correlation. They are the centre of the universe, so if something bad happened to them after they had a vaccine, then it cannot be random, it must be the nasty medics who did it with their nasty vaccines. Toddler thinking.
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They also have no appreciation of causation vs correlation. They are the centre of the universe, so if something bad happened to them after they had a vaccine, then it cannot be random, it must be the nasty medics who did it with their nasty vaccines. Toddler thinking.
Oh yeah? Well, My car had a flat tire a week after I had the oil change, so obviously the oil change made the car run over that damn nail! No more oil changes -- it's all a Big JiffyLube conspiracy anyways. MAGA!!
Re:For the US, it's a combo golden age and dark ag (Score:5, Insightful)
chemistry to biomedical engineering to neuroscience to oncology etc. All of them are vaccinating themselves and their families and are disgusted by RFK Jr. But hey, I guess we are "midwits".
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COVID vaccinations stats say there is positive correlation between cognitive ability and vaccination rate (the more clever, the more likely to be COVID vaccinated).
We examine the relationship between cognitive ability and prompt COVID-19 vaccination [...] We find a strong positive association between cognitive ability and swift vaccination, [...] The results suggest that the complexity of the vaccination decision may make it difficult for individuals with lower cognitive abilities to understand the benefits of vaccination https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhea... [doi.org]
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Got it.
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No-one [sic] I know with an IQ over 130 is even considering vaccinating their kids any more (or themselves).
Let me guess. You think you have an IQ over 130, but you've never been professionally tested. You took some online test.
That's backed up by the actual paper cited in the response to you by another commenter, that actually compares vaccinations with scores on a cognitive test and has the exact opposite conclusion to your...if we're generous, anecdotal data, but much more likely to be just made up bullshit.
Re: For the US, it's a combo golden age and dark a (Score:3)
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Here ya go, glad to help;
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
"Clinical trials have shown COVID-19 vaccines to be immunogenic against SARS-CoV-2 infection and safe, with their efficacy ranging from 86% and 95% for the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines BNT162b2 (19) and mRNA-1273 (20), respectively, to 74% for the AZD1222 (ChAdOx1 nCoV-19) vaccine (21) in those aged 18 years and older. "
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Boy, am I relieved we have a proper expert here.
Someone who really knows what’s what when it comes to vaccines. I’m really hoping you can clear up something that’s been bothering me.
It’s about that old chestnut, endothelial–immune crosstalk and immunothrombosis. I keep seeing these claims that Covid is unusually thrombo-inflammatory. Obviously, we all know that endothelial cells express ACE2 and respond strongly to cytokines. That’s just basic molecular cell biology, amir
I predict that... (Score:2, Flamebait)
...Trump and the MAGAts will declare vaccine researchers enemies of the state and have them imprisoned or executed
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...Trump and the MAGAts will declare vaccine researchers enemies of the state and have them imprisoned or executed
Of course, that's just hyperbole. What's not hyperbole is using federal funding of research and programs to cancel ideas and people that they don't like. Tens of billions of dollars and at least tens of thousands of researchers and medical personnel have lost their funding and some of them their jobs. There's no need to imprison or execute when simply killing their programs does the same thing.
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The rest of the world will gladly make them very nice offers before that happens.
It's weird (Score:1)
Because ten years ago they couldn't even get mRNA treatments for cancer approved on safety grounds, and many companies in the field abandoned it because they believed mRNA would always be too toxic to use on a large scale.
https://archive.is/KMWgt [archive.is]
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hey here's a protip, you should read the articles you post because none of that is in there, the story is "they're working to figure mRNA vaccines out" and guess what, they did, and not only did they but a whole ass other company did too.
time moves in one direction
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They never passed actual safety testing, they just had the government tell everyone they had to get injected, then claimed that proved it was safe. Despite many years of trying to get it through actual testing.
A direct lie. Yes, they may have not passed that testing in the US. They did just fine in the rest of the world.
Re: It's weird (Score:2)
Applications which required getting mRNA into particular cells had problems with delivery, unless those cells were in the liver where everything tends to end up eventually. But getting cells in muscles in one arm to present antigens of a respiratory disease turns out to be fine for producing an immune response to the disease when it shows up in the lungs, so delivery isn't an issue for vaccines. This was known at the time of the article, but all the diseases with known proteins that would make good antigens
Re: It's weird (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: It's weird (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no such thing as "turbo cancer". If anyone who got the shot then got cancer, they had cancer prior to the shot. There is no other way it could happen.
Now back to your inane ramblings.
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The people who claim they don't trust the science are the same ones who will tell you they did their own research.
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didn't have cancer before the shot because they'd had cancer a few years before and were being regularly monitored
You're exactly saying that they had cancer before the shot. Why do you think is the purpose of monitoring cancer patients?
rapidly-growing cancer much worse than they had before.
That's the problem with cancer, exponential growth. It was always a rapidly-growing cancer. But it stayed a long time multiplying at 1, 2, 4, 8 cells level, where it was not seen medically because too small. When it reached 1 million, 2 million, 4 million cells etc. cells you called it "rapidly-growing"
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There is no such thing as "turbo cancer".
I have an odd lesion on my turbine. Does that count?
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Only if it is in form of a crab.
Re: Ruzkie troll posts again (Score:2)
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It is known that the death rate from the vaccine was much less than one per million. You would need to know one million people just to have a chance of knowing one person who died from the vaccine.
That isn't the way statistics work, and you probably know it. That's like saying if you flip a coin twice, you'll get one heads and one tails. All you need is to know the one person that died, not the 999,999 who didn't.
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Nonetheless, you would have to be pretty unlucky to know several people who it happened to. Are you sure they didn't die with the vaccine and not from the vaccine?
Re: It's weird (Score:2)
Youtube partly to blame (Score:4, Interesting)
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Indeed. These defectives will think that YT only showing them anti-vaxx crap means it is the truth!
Re: Covid 19 (Score:3)
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A direct lie. Do you get off on this?
Re: Covid 19 (Score:2)
Re: Covid 19 (Score:2)
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The only way the vaccination helps the elderly is if the vaccinated do not catch the disease and therefore do not expose them to it.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
If different vaccination rates by age are driving changes in COVID-19 mortality by age, another way to see this should be to compare elderly to nonelderly COVID-19 mortality rates, over the course of the pandemic. We would expect the ratio of elderly/nonelderly mortality rates to be high in 2020, when no vaccines were available, but to fall in the first half of 2021, both because vaccines were available earlier on to the elderly, and because elderly vaccination rates were higher. The ratio might rise again in the second half of 2021, because non-elderly vaccination rates rose more rapidly than elderly rates during this period. In Figure 7, we confirm these expectations. The figure report three ratios of PFRs in the three Midwest areas by month during the pandemic: for age 85+, ages 65–84, and all elderly, each relative to middle-aged adults aged 45–64. Consider first the PFR ratio for elderly aged 85+ to adults aged 45–64. This ratio is generally above 20 during 2020 and is over 40 in December 2020. It then plunges in early 2021, a period in which the eldest were offered vaccines, generally ahead of everyone else other than health care workers and continues to fall to about 5 by June 2021. For persons aged 65–84, there is a modest fall during the first quarter of 2021, a period in which many people in this age group could not obtain vaccines, and a sharper fall in the second quarter of 2021, as the vaccines became widely available. The ratios then rise somewhat in the second half of 2021, as vaccination rates for the non-elderly rise faster than rates for the elderly. This is association, not causation, but strongly supports the protective effect of vaccination.
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Correct, as everyone was going to be infected and masking was kubuki theatre.
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as everyone was going to be infected and masking was
Masking allowed everyone to delay possible infections by months and years. Which is very important for both individual and collective-level health.
Re: Covid 19 (Score:2)
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That’s a false premise. While the C19 vax did some immune training, it didn’t prevent you getting infected and passing it on. In fact in some cases vaccination had negative effectivity where people were getting reinfected more often than those not vaccinated. The vaccine did provide some effectiveness with those with high comorobidity, which were primarily age and obesity.
In the traditional sense of a vaccine preventing infection, mRNA vaccination was an abject failure and ended up causing harm
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Re: Covid 19 (Score:2)
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You are full of crap. You just faked a "result" by ignoring most dimensions of the data-space, like spread, damage from people going on ventilators (but not dying), higher death rates in those over 50, etc. etc.
You sicken me.
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Maybe stick with the engineering (or perhaps “engineering”, as we’ve only got your word for it), and stop cosplaying as an epidemiologist.
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I didn’t pretend to be an epidemiologist. I recorded data produced by our government health authorities, and was super clear that C19 vaccination did nothing for those under 50. /.’s are acting like religious nutters on this topic.
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Trying to interpret mortality data is exactly what I mean by cosplaying as an epidemiologist. And indeed, it’s blindingly obvious straight away that this is what you’re doing, because of all the obvious fundamental errors you’ve made. Just as one example: you’ve only considered mortality data and yet you have concluded that “C19 vaccination did noting for those under 50”, thus failing to account for impacts on morbidity (including but not limited to long COVID, hospitalis
Science is moving ahead very fast. (Score:3)
It often happens that mistakes are made, and are later corrected.
For the whiners (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're adamant that, like the anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, vaccines are not safe, let's here your excuses for why disease cases plummeted when vaccines were administered [imgur.com].
Side note, if you look below the first heat map, you'll notice the CDC no longer published measels cases after 2002. Think real hard why that might be and why we now have over 2,100 cases in five months.
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Think real hard why that might be and why we now have over 2,100 cases in five months.
That is your mistake right there. These people cannot think. They can only believe and repeat what their cult-leaders tell them to believe and repeat.
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If you're adamant that, like the anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, vaccines are not safe, let's here your excuses for why disease cases plummeted when vaccines were administered [imgur.com].
No fair using facts! Also, factual information is a lie! Every statistic is lie! /s
The first effective vaccine against Covid-19 (Score:1)
Then why the need for repeated booster Covid-19 shots? Because repeated Covid-19 vaccination of an already infected population accelerated the mutations.
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Then why the need for repeated booster Covid-19 shots? Because repeated Covid-19 vaccination of an already infected population accelerated the mutations.
That is complete nonsense and the very opposite of how that works. Go away cretin.
That was good for a laugh (Score:2)
If a tree falls in the forest ... (Score:2)
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?
Progress in vaccine development is a good thing! But in the end that may not matter, because (a) you are not taking the vaccine because you have become prey to the anti-vaxxer way of thinking, or (b) you are getting medical anti-advice from your own government that tells you not to take vaccines, or (c) you cannot afford the vaccine, or (d) vaccines are otherwise somehow not available to you, or (e) your body does not tolerate
Sad reflection on efficacy of the dumbass right (Score:4, Insightful)
Even here on Slashdot, where people used to like science and tech, this discussion is absolutely framed and dominated by idiot arguments from the dumbass right about vaccine efficacy, ensuring that there is no space for the discussion of the actual story itself, and how important this could be. The dumbass right have got incredibly good at ensuring they are debated with, rather than ignored. Imagine how different this comment section would be if the first few antivaxx comments had just been modded down and ignored, and instead we had some conversation about this advance and the wider context of antibiotic resistance, rising pandemic risk from population movements, etc. The effect of the malaria vaccine on life expectancy in sub Saharan Africa alone could be incredibly significant, changing birth rates (which tend to drop dramatically with female education and higher childhood survival rates). But the space is all drowned out by idiots and people taking them to task (me included!)
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That is exactly the wrong way to do it. Are you a moron?
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I am not laughing with you. I am laughing at you.
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Like the fool you are. Well done, you are wasting your life being stupid and proud of it.