[HN Gopher] Moderna Is About to Begin Trials for HIV Vaccine
___________________________________________________________________
Moderna Is About to Begin Trials for HIV Vaccine
Author : Saint_Genet
Score : 787 points
Date : 2021-08-17 11:20 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.them.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.them.us)
| tannhauser23 wrote:
| So, umm, how do you test this vaccine? Are the participants
| expected to have unprotected sex with HIV-positive people?
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| No, you give it to 10k people, and give a placebo to another
| 10k, and let them live their lives, and after 5 years or so you
| see how many of each group have contracted HIV.
| tannhauser23 wrote:
| They're asking for 50-ish volunteers ATM.
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Yeah, it's a phase 1 trial. In phase 1 they aren't even
| really looking at if the vaccine is effective, they're
| making sure that it's safe/side effects are reasonable, and
| maybe getting some dosage information out of it.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| The participants can have unprotected sex with HIV+ people if
| they want. It's like the COVID-19 vaccine trials. The study
| designers didn't set any parameters around mask use, social
| distancing, etc. It's up to each participant to apply harm
| reduction practices as they see fit.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Notably covid vaccines were approved early because idiots
| in both arms didn't wear masks, and those in the control
| arms got very sick and died soon after the trial began.
| missedthecue wrote:
| What is the statistical likelihood of someone in a 10,000
| sample size of people catching HIV in any 5 year period?
| Probably less than 1%?
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Depends where you sample from.
|
| In the USA, estimated new HIV infections in 2019 35k.
| Assuming 350 million Americans, that gives a very rough
| estimate of 1 case out of 10,000 per year.
|
| You can enrich this by shifting target population. You
| could do this in the USA by targetting high risk
| communities, or by moving the trial overseas.
|
| An trial in the USA with 10k in each arm could very likely
| be constructed to generate at least 10 cases per year.
| Likely up to 50.
|
| https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-
| trends/stat...
| JBorrow wrote:
| What you just described is a 'Challenge Trial'. These have been
| avoided for COVID and would likely be avoided for other
| diseases too on ethical grounds.
|
| For a common cold, or other lower-impact disease, you could do
| a challenge trial.
| dempedempe wrote:
| The Bug Chasers would make good volunteers.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugchasing
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Looks like finding participants for a challenge trial won't
| be hard.
| epmatsw wrote:
| It's amazing how many awful comments this is drawing. Is this
| just bots getting autotriggered on keywords or something?
| seattle_spring wrote:
| I doubt it's bots. Unfortunately being a tech enthusiast
| doesn't preclude one from being an awful person. Spend some
| time on Blind for additional proof.
| cletus wrote:
| HIV is incredibly sophisticated. It's actually kind of amazing
| how effective it is. I mean obviously the resulting disease is
| bad, no question. You can still appreciate the sophistication.
|
| HIV has resisted efforts to develop a vaccine for 30+ years at
| this point.
|
| I am already beginning to wonder if the 2020s will be the story
| of the social transformation caused by mRNA vaccines. An
| effective and relatively cheap HIV vaccine will be huge.
|
| Apart from Covid and HIV, mRNA is going to have a huge effect on
| the flu vaccine too. For anyone who doesn't know, predictions are
| made about what flu strains will dominate the coming winter 4-6+
| months ahead of time and the vaccine is made from that. Those
| predictions may not be accurate, which largely explains the
| variance of efficacy. mRNA has the potential to reduce that down
| to 1-2 months so you can potentially react to the actual dominant
| strains.
|
| Cancer of course isn't a single disease. Even something like lung
| cancer are a collection of different diseases. But some cancers
| are caused by viruses. A notable example is cervical cancer where
| it seems like most cases are caused by HPV strains. Australia is
| on track to essentially eliminate cervical cancer by 2035 [1]. To
| be clear, this isn't an mRNA vaccine.
|
| But mRNA vaccines may greatly reduce the time required to develop
| a vaccine and make it possible to eliminate whole classes of
| diseases.
|
| This is all super-exciting.
|
| [1]: https://www.vcs.org.au/blog/our-impact/news/australia-can-
| co....
| agumonkey wrote:
| I have a similar feeling regarding cancer. It's a seemingly
| uncontrolled chaos that manages to paint itself into the
| sweetest spot to keep growing .. so many positive reinforcement
| failures it's eery
| Yajirobe wrote:
| How is HIV sophisticated? What makes it effective?
| betterunix2 wrote:
| A person with HIV will actually be infected by multiple
| variants simultaneously, since the virus mutates rapidly
| within a single host (tons of variants will be produced in a
| single day). So, even though the immune system will fight the
| virus and produce antibodies, the virus stays one step ahead.
| That also means that a person will not develop long-term
| immunity after being exposed to the live virus (and can even
| be infected multiple times with different variants and
| strains), and is the main challenge with developing an HIV
| vaccine.
|
| I am no expert but my understanding is that AIDS occurs when
| a variant targeting receptors more specific to CD4 T-cells
| begins replicating (or begins replicating at too high a
| rate), which results in T-cell counts falling below some
| threshold. So a person will go through an extended period
| without feeling any symptoms, possibly transmitting the virus
| to others (hence the importance of widespread, easy access to
| testing), only to be incapacitated by AIDS later when the
| "balance" of the variants changes (assuming they do not
| receive HIV-suppressing medications).
| ingalls wrote:
| If you want a more-than-surface-deep (but not academic deep)
| article on what makes HIV fascinating -
| https://www.avert.org/professionals/hiv-science/overview is a
| good quick read
| inasio wrote:
| To me the "coolest" feature is that it saves dormant copies
| in cells, so that even if there is no detectable virus in the
| blood, a few months after stopping taking anti-HIV drugs the
| virus will reappear. If you sample the virus right when the
| first spike reappears, you will see a bunch of different HIV
| virus types, essentially the history of each mutation on that
| person, as each virus strain saves its own copies... (soon
| after the strongest strain dominates)
| klipt wrote:
| > cervical cancer where it seems like most cases are caused by
| HPV strains
|
| What's funny is the US initially only vaccinated women against
| HPV because "men can't get cervical cancer". Then it turned out
| lots of men were getting oral/throat cancers from oral HPV
| acquired from oral sex. Oops!
| inasio wrote:
| The bigger issue was anal cancer among men that have sex with
| men, if I remember correctly the risk was around 100x than in
| the general population, and also completely preventable by
| the HPV vaccine.
| lebuffon wrote:
| I am still wondering how many other cancers are caused by
| viruses that we have not isolated or maybe choose not to
| search for because "conventional wisdom"
|
| The trail of bread crumbs seems to be there. - HPV - Hep C
| - Human T-cell leukemia/lymphoma virus (HTLV)
| kcarter80 wrote:
| Source?
| klipt wrote:
| https://www.mdanderson.org/publications/focused-on-
| health/wh...
|
| > HPV-related throat cancer is on the rise, and the typical
| patient is a male in his 50s or 60s.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Source for this, and the amount of time that we were only
| vaccinating women? If it was just a year or so, that's a very
| different story from decades.
|
| I recall there being a sudden, loud push 10ish years ago, for
| everyone to get the HPV vaccine.
|
| There were some anti-vax arguments against it for the same
| reason as there's resistance to sex ed; but no "men can't get
| cervical cancer" arguments, that I recall.
| klipt wrote:
| As of 2017 WHO was still recommending prioritizing girls
| under 15 for vaccination: https://www.who.int/immunization/
| policy/position_papers/pp_h...
|
| > Vaccination of secondary target populations e.g. females
| aged >=15 years or males, is only recommended if feasible,
| affordable, cost-effective and does not divert resources
| from vaccinating primary target population or from
| effective cervical cancer screening programmes.
| vmception wrote:
| I've been having difficulty trying to think about how much
| Moderna will charge for their other products
|
| like the covid one is sold at super low prices compared to what
| would normally be possible
|
| but the other products won't have nearly as many customers
| either
|
| what do you guys think?
| hinkley wrote:
| If the argument is that you can make mRNA vaccines faster,
| that would also tend to imply cheaper. Which could mean they
| can make it up on volume.
| athenot wrote:
| Agreed this very exciting. Malaria is also being targeted using
| the same technology. BioNTech announced they were working on it
| last month and some results[1] in mice are already looking
| promising.
|
| [1] _Messenger RNA expressing PfCSP induces functional,
| protective immune responses against malaria in mice._
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-021-00345-0
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Given the track record of the COVID vaccines (take a look at
| current Israel stats) I'm not optimistic about an HIV vaccine.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| This is a very bad comment.
|
| Delta is one of the most transmissive and dangerous viruses
| in history. Many times worse than previous strains of COVID.
| Delta has the capability of burning through communities even
| with relatively high vaccine coverage. We are dealing with a
| historically dangerous strain!
|
| And despite this, daily deaths are significantly lower per
| capita than previous outbreaks in Isreal despite daily case
| loads being already as high as previous outbreaks.
|
| If anything, what's happening in Isreal is an indicator that
| not only are vaccines working, but they are working well.
| Even as efficacy has reduced over time.
|
| And lastly, efficacy of a COVID vaccine feels kinda
| orthogonal to efficacy of an HIV vaccine, no?
| mrfusion wrote:
| This says the delta variant is less deadly.
| https://nypost.com/2021/07/08/dont-buy-the-hysteria-the-
| delt...
|
| Edit. I'm not completely happy with that source so here's
| at least one paper I found:
|
| https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3886341
| sjg007 wrote:
| These sources are not reliable. The increased
| hospitalizations in recent weeks discount this theory
| entirely.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| You do realize that the article you're posting is saying
| exactly what my comment was saying, that vaccines are
| effective, right?
| mrfusion wrote:
| I was just replying to the alarmist part:
|
| > Delta is one of the most transmissive and dangerous
| viruses in history. Many times worse than previous
| strains of COVID.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| I think I'm done with HN. It has become like a hivemind,
| it's absolutely impossible to say anything contrarian
| about the vaccines and COVID in general.
|
| You have a perfectly sensible comment, you're already
| downvoted as if you said the earth is flat.
|
| Very disappointing.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Stick with it. If the opposing voices leave then it will
| get even more one sided. Just save up karma for the rainy
| days.
| weaksauce wrote:
| yeah, maybe just maybe it's because you are spreading
| nonsense on a forum that likes the thoughts to be backed
| by evidence and not wild speculation and spurious
| conclusions. reflect.
|
| honestly if you weren't on the internet you'd just be
| that weird guy at the bar spouting conspiracy theories
| and blaming the "man" but instead you're here on an
| international forum doing the same with the same "weight"
| as some industry titans and other thought leaders.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| > you're already downvoted as if you said the earth is
| flat.
|
| That's because you're drawing conclusions from data that
| are not that far off from "the earth is flat".
| native_samples wrote:
| Claims about Delta being "more infectious" are the same
| claim that was made for all the others. Dig into how they
| try to calculate that and you'll find the exact type of
| models that have repeatedly failed so far.
|
| Remember: the UK released most of its restrictions,
| including masks and lockdowns in a so-called "freedom
| day". Experts said the country was performing a dangerous
| experiment on the entire world. Cases started plunging
| just three days later. To compare people pointing out the
| proven, beyond any doubt unreliability of claims about
| COVID to flat earthers shows just how ideological and
| blind this whole thing has become.
| Izkata wrote:
| Most Republican states in the US dropped restrictions
| last _year_ and cases aren 't skyrocketing. People just
| don't talk about them.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| Cases aren't skyrocketing? Have you...looked at the South
| recently?
| Izkata wrote:
| > recently
|
| So you're confirming what I said? "Last year" isn't
| "recently", meaning the current rise has nothing to do
| with dropping restrictions.
|
| More than anything else it looks like it's fully
| seasonal, with timing of the the drops and rises this
| year matching last year pretty closely regardless of
| restrictions.
| phillipcarter wrote:
| > just how ideological and blind this whole thing has
| become.
|
| Yes, I agree that COVID denialism and antivax feelings
| are this way. :)
| Omnius wrote:
| I site based on tech and science and you are confused why
| the majority or pro vax? Did you ever consider you just
| flat out wrong?
| bigcorp-slave wrote:
| Good riddance. You and your Neanderthal ilk are poison
| and killing people. History will remember people like you
| as murderers and cowards.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Thanks for your kind words I guess. Please remember your
| comment and reflect on it in 10 years when the
| politicians will have stole all of your freedoms and you
| won't be able to do anything in life without being
| tracked, judged and denied.
| bigcorp-slave wrote:
| You're twenty years too late for this sentiment. You're
| already tracked constantly by everything around you. The
| vaccines are not a useful method of tracking or control.
| Computers and cameras are much better.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| I was speaking about the QRCODES which are mandatory to
| vote, go to the hospital, shopping mall and restaurants
| in France.
| native_samples wrote:
| My god the insanity here is wildly out of control. As he
| has pointed out, vaccines don't stop transmission in any
| way, so people's individual choices about whether to get
| vaccinated or not is absolutely not making them "killing
| people" or "murderers". If you really want to go there,
| consider that people are definitely being killed by the
| vaccines themselves, that is proven beyond doubt now. So
| it's easy to turn that around and say those trying to
| push vaccines on people who don't need them are the
| "murderers".
| octaonalocto wrote:
| This is a ridiculous comment.
|
| 1. Vaccines do stop transmission because they make it
| less likely your internal systems will get infected
|
| 2. Vaccines also prevent hospitalizations very
| effectively
|
| 3. Known side effects from the vaccine are very, very
| low. Much lower than the risk of getting COVID, for the
| same health outcomes.
|
| 4. Getting COVID (the bad outcome caused by the virus)
| has some chance at Long Covid. The vaccine reduces this
| because it makes it less likely you get the syndrome
| after infection.
| bigcorp-slave wrote:
| 4.5 million dead people disagree with your conspiracy.
|
| No one is getting killed from the vaccines. It's rounding
| error.
| bdamm wrote:
| Israel isn't even 60% vaccinated. Hospitalizations are way
| down. Serious infection in vaccinated people is 1/6th the
| rate compared to unvaccinated. That's an 84% reduction in
| risk. Looks to me like things are going well for vaccinated
| people in Israel. What's the story I'm missing here?
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Look at my comment here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28211268
| outworlder wrote:
| You mean the _fantastic_ track record? They are better than
| most other vaccines in history.
| whafro wrote:
| This is quite cynical. I think the vaccines are doing pretty
| dang well considering they were developed in a matter of
| weeks following discovery of the virus, and work very
| robustly against not only the variants that were targeted,
| but also many that were not.
|
| HIV has decades of study and literature behind it, so why not
| be more optimistic about the prospects for progress?
| jmnicolas wrote:
| First think that poped in DDG:
|
| >Israel reinstates some virus restrictions to avoid a full
| lockdown.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/04/world/israel-covid-
| restri...
|
| Sorry it's a paywall but the title is enough. Doesn't
| scream vaccine efficacy to me since they are in the top
| vaccinated country list.
| moogleii wrote:
| Infection rate is just an umbrella stat. Hospitalization
| and death rates are much improved for those with the
| vaccine.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/10/us/covid-
| brea...
| jmnicolas wrote:
| I'd like to know what the downvoters think. Those
| vaccines have become a kind of dogma...
| FartyMcFarter wrote:
| Israel has vaccinated 60-70% of its population, which
| isn't enough for herd immunity.
|
| As for your comment specifically, "the title is enough"
| isn't a very convincing argument for anything.
| native_samples wrote:
| That is the exact threshold that was previously being
| presented as good enough for herd immunity.
|
| But herd immunity stats are all made up anyway. Fauci
| admitted the US value for herd immunity threshold was
| being picked based on opinion polling, not science.
| zibzab wrote:
| No dogma. Most people are just tired of anti-vaxers and
| their excuses.
|
| Edit: this went downhill rather quickly :(
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Did you consider that I'm tired too? I have become a
| pariah in my own country (France), I am now forbidden to
| vote, go to a hospital (unless it's an emergency) , go in
| a shopping mall and go in a restaurant.
|
| But just explain me one thing please. If you trust the
| vaccine, why are you afraid of me, if it works you will
| be protected right?
| majormajor wrote:
| > But just explain me one thing please. If you trust the
| vaccine, why are you afraid of me, if it works you will
| be protected right?
|
| I care more about the people who a vaccine can't help
| (hopefullly I don't have to give you citations of why no
| existing vaccine we have for any disease can perfectly
| protect everyone) than I care about your decision to
| declare not getting a vaccine the "freedom!!!" hill you
| want to die on.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I have become a pariah in my own country (France), I am
| now forbidden to vote, go to a hospital (unless it's an
| emergency) , go in a shopping mall and go in a
| restaurant.
|
| None of this is true; you have the option of presenting a
| recent negative test result as an alternative.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| All of it is true since I refuse to be tracked like some
| cattle. This is a matter of principle. I'm a human being,
| not some cog in an inhuman system.
|
| Where's the logic to let people use the metro without any
| QRCODE but they can't go in a shopping mall?
|
| Anyway, soon the tests won't be free anymore. To have the
| same "freedom" as a vaccinated person would require to
| spend about 300EUR per month.
| tadfisher wrote:
| You could also get vaccinated.
| logicchains wrote:
| Someone is as much anti-vax for not wanting the mRNA vax
| as someone is anti-Linux for not wanting to run the
| Gentoo nightly build as their operating systemm.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Nah. It's like Bill Gates in the 1990s writing a blog
| post about the latest Linux distribution and how
| dangerous the viral GPL within it is.
|
| You know they'll say it about any vaccine, and have been,
| and that the criticisms are disingenuous and frequently
| based in deliberate misconceptions.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You're not addressing the point you're replying to; that
| these vaccines were developed in weeks as an emergency.
| They're non-sterilizing. We wish they were sterilizing
| vaccines, but that's gonna be the next round now.
|
| They're also not at 80% of the full population; most of
| the vaccination percentages you see batted around are in
| adults only, because most countries have vaccinated 0% of
| their under-12s.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-644288348135
|
| > Israel has a population of approximately 9.3 million
| people, of which more than 60% are fully vaccinated,
| according toJuly 21 numbers from the online scientific
| publication, Our World In Data. The country has had one
| of the swiftest vaccine rollouts in the world. By
| February, 80% of those over 60 had already received
| shots.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > that these vaccines were developed in weeks as an
| emergency.
|
| I shouldn't have to address this point since the vaccines
| are presented as ultra efficient (94% or more).
|
| > because most countries have vaccinated 0% of their
| under-12s.
|
| They're not at risk, why should they get vaccinated?
|
| So now you're going to tell me they're transmitting the
| virus. OK, but if the vaccine works, who cares?
|
| If the vaccine works why are vaccinated people afraid of
| the unvaccinated. If it doesn't work why get vaccinated
| and why insist everyone gets it?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > the vaccines are presented as ultra efficient (94% or
| more)
|
| At _preventing severe disease_. Which has been stated
| since the beginning, remains accurate, and your not
| understanding that seems to be core to your confusion.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > At preventing severe disease.
|
| Why the hate for the unvaccinated if all you risk as a
| vaccinated person is a mild disease? There was no such
| paranoia for the flu which was still deadly.
|
| I'm sorry but I fail to see the logic of what is
| happening in the world right now. As I said in another
| comment, I became a pariah in my country, France, for no
| good stated reason.
| tadfisher wrote:
| 85% of patients currently hospitalized for COVID-19 in
| Oregon have not received any dose of the available
| vaccines [1]. Oregon hospitals are almost at capacity for
| ICU beds and are expected to exceed capacity soon. The
| consequences are drastic for anyone requiring
| hospitalization; essentially you have to wait for an
| available bed (e.g. wait for its occupant to die or be
| discharged) or be flown to a hospital with capacity.
|
| TL;DR: The unvaccinated are using 6 times the available
| medical care capacity of the vaccinated and are impacting
| the health outcomes for anyone who needs access to those
| medical resources, not just those who are suffering from
| a COVID-19 infection.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.ohsu.edu/sites/default/files/2021-08/Oregon-
| Tren...
| vkou wrote:
| Why are we wasting limited medical resources on people
| who refuse to take the full COVID treatment regimen?
| (Which starts with vaccination.)
|
| If we had limited ability to treat cancer patients, and
| someone refused treatment of their Phase 1 cancer, we
| wouldn't give them a bed over someone else, when they
| come back to the hospital in Phase 3.
|
| There are trauma victims waiting in ERs, who can't get
| treatment because of this self-inflicted disaster. There
| are people waiting on life-saving surgeries, who can't
| come in for them, because all the doctors are busy, and
| all the beds are full.
|
| Not getting vaccinated is a choice, but choices should
| have consequences.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| What about drug addicts, alcoholics, extreme sports
| people we let them die too?
|
| This is called solidarity, we pay taxes for that too.
|
| Anyway I would still take my chance.
| vkou wrote:
| Can we expect that people who aren't vaccinated show some
| solidarity... And vaccinate themselves?
|
| Solidarity with defectors only works when there are
| enough resources for everyone. When there aren't, we
| triage. First come first serve, at the expense of people
| who have not defected is a stupid way to allocate those
| resources, when there's such a simple preventative
| measure available.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Probably for the same reason why you don't reject obese
| people. 1.5 yrs of pandemic is a lot of time to lose
| weight and help with overloading hospitals. They should
| start using scales in front of pubs too or measure body
| fat :)
| vkou wrote:
| If obesity were preventable by two free shots, and the
| ICUs were flooded by an obesity epidemic, I'd consider it
| acceptable to take that into consideration during triage,
| too.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| Obesity is the biggest co factor for people over flooding
| the ICUs, hence my comment. It's preventable by eating
| less.
| vkou wrote:
| Eating less isn't that simple, there's a bloody powerful
| biological imperative to eat, and modern diets, plus
| industrialized societies hijack a lot of the negative
| feedback loops that are supposed to prevent us from
| overeating... Also, crappy, addictive junk food - or
| empty carbs - tend to be the most affordable option at
| the grocery.
|
| Vaccination is two free ten-minute appointments at any
| doctor's office, UCU, or grocery.
|
| Comparing the two the way you do severely undersells why
| obesity is such a difficult problem to solve. If it could
| be solved by two free shots, it wouldn't be a difficult
| problem to solve.
| ac2u wrote:
| >I became a pariah in my country, France, for no good
| stated reason.
|
| It's probably because you throw about strong opinions
| while demonstrating here that you haven't thought much
| about them.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| No it's because I can't vote, go to an hospital, shopping
| mall or restaurant without a QRCODE.
| ac2u wrote:
| It doesn't really change the fact that you haven't put
| much thought into your opinions. Even when people have
| given answers to your easily googleable questions "why
| fear unvaxxed people if the disease is mild?", instead of
| taking in the information, maybe even thanking them, you
| move on to your next grievance instead.
|
| That's typical anti-vaxxer behaviour, so the reaction
| you're getting is understandable. Your outrage is
| preventing you from even admitting one mistake in your
| reasoning before you move onto the next point.
|
| I'd go into further detail about unvaxxed populations
| being breeding grounds for mutations which might even
| escape the serious disease efficacy that the current
| vaccines give us (didn't see you arguing against that),
| but I think it would be wasted on you.
|
| >I can't vote, go to an hospital, shopping mall or
| restaurant without a QRCODE.
|
| As others have informed you, you can with a negative test
| result. For what it's worth, I agree code based systems
| should be time limited to prevent long term abuse of such
| systems.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > you move on to your next grievance instead. > you move
| onto the next point.
|
| I'm not moving anywhere. I'm trying to show you nothing
| is logical.
|
| If the vaccine is 94% effective at preventing serious
| disease it means the harsh measures are absolutely
| uncalled for.
|
| Yes vulnerable people will die, it's a sad truth but you
| don't install the premises of dictatorship in a country,
| kill the economy just because a few people will die. They
| would die of something else if not COVID.
|
| Right now in France we have about 60 deaths a day due to
| COVID. 1400 are dying everyday too for other reasons. On
| a country of 67 millions, this is a non event.
|
| > I'd go into further detail about unvaxxed populations
| being breeding grounds for mutations
|
| You see I have read the exact opposite because the
| vaccine puts pressure on the virus to evolve to bypass
| it. Anyway it's absolutely impossible to prove one way or
| another.
|
| > As others have informed you, you can with a negative
| test result.
|
| I know this perfectly well mind you. My problem isn't the
| test it's the QRCODE: this is the slippery slope that
| gets us directly toward worse than China.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I'm trying to show you nothing is logical.
|
| Oh, this you've accomplished.
|
| > Right now in France we have about 60 deaths a day due
| to COVID. 1400 are dying everyday too for other reasons.
|
| In other words, the onerous mitigations you're
| complaining about are working?
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > In other words, the onerous mitigations you're
| complaining about are working?
|
| The QRCODE has been in place since 1 week. Deaths were
| previously at the same level.
|
| Then explain Sweden, India or Africa. It should be
| terrible there, it's not though.
|
| FYI in Paris region, between march 2020 and march 2021
| intensive care beds have been reduced from 2500 to 1700.
| And this is like that all other France.
|
| It's a much better explanation why we have so much worse
| stats than Sweden.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You're objecting to a public health and safety rule that
| saves lives. Wait until you find out about those
| tyrannical seat belt laws, and the need to show a
| government-issued Car Passport in order to drive a car
| and a Beer Passport in order to buy alcohol.
| Dictatorship, indeed.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| "public health and safety rule that saves lives" Citation
| needed. https://www.covidchartsquiz.com/
| codezero wrote:
| Not everyone only risks mild disease, the vaccine isn't
| 100% effective on anyone and some have less ability to
| defend against the virus.
|
| Elderly, and immunocompromised are the ones who willfully
| unvaccinated people put at risk. I don't want my parents
| to die so you can argue on the internet. There's also a
| timeline on this, the longer people wait to get
| vaccinated, the less time we have a strongly effective
| vaccine as it appears to reduce in effectiveness after
| six months.
|
| You're helping to cause this vicious cycle.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| imagine being this fanatical about something that is not
| true.
| ikerdanzel wrote:
| At current stage, covid vaccines are mainly to reduce
| severity of infections with significant reduction in
| mortality. It doesn't really reduce spread of infections.
| Research has shown vaccinated individuals at least the
| same amount of load as unvacccinated. The general sayings
| of herd immunity with vaccinations can protect those
| unable to get vaccines don't apply for this situation. In
| fact, it will pretty much condemn those who don't get
| vaccinated when vast majority have been vaccinated and
| actively spread the infections.
| 34679 wrote:
| The confusion you are spreading is the same as ignoring
| the difference between HIV and AIDs. If a vaccine was
| developed that prevented an HIV infection from causing
| AIDs, you would be the guy telling people it's safe to
| have unprotected sex even if you have HIV, as long as
| you're vaccinated. The mRNA vaccine does not prevent the
| infection from taking place, it prevents the infection
| from developing into the disease.
|
| mRNA vaccines do not prevent the spread of SARS-COV-2,
| they are highly effective at preventing a SARS-COV-2
| infection from causing COVID-19.
| codezero wrote:
| Which is why it's also important to wear a mask.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| Even the CDC admits you can still transmit the virus if
| you're vaccinated and that the viral load is equal to an
| unvaccinated person, so my vaccination wouldn't protect
| your parents anyway.
|
| As you say, I "argue on the internet" because my freedom
| is stolen with the help of people so in fear that they
| can't think rationally anymore. I will NEVER let anyone
| dictate what to inject in my body and I would defend your
| right and anyone's to choose for themselves.
|
| In 10 years your country and mine won't be recognizable
| because we will have let the politicians transform
| democracies in dictatorships since the majority was
| blindsided by an overblown fear.
|
| Make no mistakes, I am not your enemy, the politicians
| that are pitting us against each other are.
| bdamm wrote:
| A vaccinated person has equal viral load to an
| unvaccinated person? That's not substantiated by any of
| the available evidence AFAIK.
|
| Early on the question was "can a vaccinated person
| transmit the virus?" and the answer to that question is
| yes; but, even with a low viral load, that can still be
| the case. So the vaccinated person can end up
| transmitting, but not as much, as an unvaccinated person.
| If the person asking the question wants just a yes or no
| answer, then the answer has to be yes. But that's not the
| full picture.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > As the Associated Press notes, Walensky cited data from
| the last few days, still unpublished, taken from 100
| samples from vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals with
| COVID infections. They found that the amount of virus in
| the noses and throats of vaccinated infected people was
| nearly "indistinguishable" from what was found in
| unvaccinated people, confirming what some experts have
| suspected.
|
| https://sfist.com/2021/07/27/cdc-confirms-that-viral-
| loads-i...
| tptacek wrote:
| Yes, but the information we have now is that viral load
| declines much more quickly in vaccinated people than non-
| vaccinated people. These kinds of discussions where we
| just fling links we've barely read at each other never go
| anywhere, and it'd better if this unproductive thread
| wound itself up now.
| fidesomnes wrote:
| mrna therapy is not a vaccine. it's a viral preload. all
| of the shots will be ineffective in six months time and
| require booster shots for life.
| hackbinary wrote:
| Almost no vaccines are sterilising and that is a very
| high threshold to meet.
|
| Polio and measles vaccines are not even sterilising. It
| is much more realistic to achieve herd immunity with
| vaccines than it is to create a sterilising vaccine.
| teknopaul wrote:
| Government reaction to case spikes does not reflect at
| all on the efficiency of vaccines. Vaccines don't stop
| you getting a disease they prepare your immune system for
| it, so when it happens you are more likely to survive.
|
| Seems to me Spanish government bodies (where I live) look
| at headline case rates and then start making bizarre
| rules without talking to the scientists.
| jmnicolas wrote:
| > Government reaction to case spikes does not reflect at
| all on the efficiency of vaccines.
|
| Living in France I can agree on that.
|
| Yet vaccinated people are still having severe problems up
| to dying from COVID.
| vanadium wrote:
| It's worth posting Moderna's research pipeline to understand
| the breadth and depth of where they plan to take mRNA vaccines:
| https://www.modernatx.com/pipeline
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| Wow flu & RSV elimination would be great, especially for
| infants/toddlers
| wizardofmysore wrote:
| What a wonderful time to be alive!
| bananapub wrote:
| (some strains of) HPV already have vaccines, social
| conservatism is what is allowing much of cervical cancer to
| continue in the rich world.
| classichasclass wrote:
| Although true to a certain extent, it doesn't mean minds
| can't be changed, just as it is for any other population's
| negative perception of any vaccine. In my own church I've had
| this discussion with parents, and I know of at least one who
| changed their position on HPV vaccination. I credit them with
| giving the matter thought.
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| There was a lot of hoopla at the time the vaccine was
| announced, but other than that I'm not sure where you are
| getting your information? HPV vaccination rates are
| increasing, and there is almost no resistance at this point.
| The US vaccination rates are in line with Europe.
| hobofan wrote:
| Not sure exactly what you mean with social conservatism, but
| I'd rather call out misplaced optimism.
|
| In the past the approch was to only target young girls before
| they had sex for the first time, which turned out to not
| reduce the spread of HPV as much as hoped. Only in recent
| years the recommendation changed to also vaccinate boys and
| increasingly also people with previous sexual encounters.
| gibrown wrote:
| > Not sure exactly what you mean with social conservatism
|
| "This is also why social conservatives don't like it when
| scientific progress makes sex safer or better. Sex outside
| of their ideal scenario (in marriage, at the husband's
| wish, for reproduction) should be punished, and steps to
| mitigate that punishment (STD prevention, pregnancy
| prevention) should be discouraged or lambasted as immoral."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/16/conse
| r...
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/why-the-
| pol...
| slumdev wrote:
| The people who oppose that vaccine value ethical behavior
| more than they value specific health outcomes.
| txru wrote:
| Ethics is by definition subjective. You should define why
| your subjective ethical good should override the real good
| of much less cancer.
| slumdev wrote:
| "Can't stop my kid from sleeping around, but at least
| he/she won't get cancer", and harm reduction efforts, in
| general, are consequentialist. Some academics devote
| their entire lives to the development of moral theories,
| and the majority of them aren't consequentialist. There
| are other ways to reason about decision making.
|
| These efforts don't work, anyway. Thanks to the sexual
| "revolution" and promiscuity being viewed as morally
| neutral (if not positive) in today's world, we now have
| multi-drug-resistant strains of gonorrhea, syphilis, and
| chlamydia. No doubt, if we develop leaky vaccines against
| common STDs, we'll just end up breeding vaccine-resistant
| strains of them.
| txru wrote:
| The problem with deontological arguments is, they tend to
| develop along lines that people are comfortable with.
| Isn't it interesting that we find it immoral to think of
| people besides ourselves having sex, or sex that we
| dislike? As a gay man, I'm thrilled your deontology
| doesn't define my world anymore.
|
| Your drug-resistant STI argument is circular. If we
| hadn't treated those, we would've been breeding grounds
| for rampant STIs anyway-- whether they would've been
| drug-resistant would be immaterial.
|
| And in a world where we acknowledge that promiscuity is a
| trait that displays in humans, whether they're shunned
| for it or not, we can provide open and honest education
| on how to handle that sex safely.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Believe it or not but for some of us making love with
| different people is part of what makes life worth being
| lived. But why do you care? You are not "sleeping around"
| or, are you? Btw, ever heard of condoms?
| slumdev wrote:
| Previous partner count correlates with likelihood of
| divorce.
|
| People who sleep around are damaged goods, both
| physiologically and psychologically.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Previous partner count correlates with likelihood of
| divorce.
|
| Neat! People have a better baseline for what's acceptable
| in a relationship, and don't settle for "at least they're
| not beating me" out of ignorance.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > we now have multi-drug-resistant strains of gonorrhea,
| syphilis, and chlamydia
|
| Each of these were quite prevalent before we had the
| drugs. They just went untreated.
| h8hawk wrote:
| What do you mean by ethical value? Being not homosexual is
| ethical value in your logic?
| vmception wrote:
| This thread started about HIV, and then pivoted to HPV,
| which has no correlation with male homosexual activities
| and is primarily a heterosexual spread when any sexual
| activity is involved at all
| ben_w wrote:
| In the case of the HPV vaccine it's about monogamy and
| sex before marriage.
|
| To avoid misapprehension, I think people whose ethics
| cause them to withhold medication have bad ethics --
| Acknowledging the existence of such people does not imply
| agreement with them.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Yes allowing people to die from preventable diseases, both
| ones in your control such as your own kids and strangers
| who you expose to them, seems highly ethical.
| portpecos wrote:
| Right, blame it on social conservatism when the HPV vaccine
| costs $1000 even if you have Medicaid or ACA. In fact,
| Medicaid and ACA don't even cover it. The cheapest price for
| the HPV vaccine in rural America is at the nearby Walmart.
| But it is $330 per shot, and you have to take 3 shots, and
| Medicaid and ACA won't even cover it.
|
| If you're blaming social conservatism, then I'm calling you
| out for an out-of-touch liberal.
| bananapub wrote:
| what are you talking about?
|
| Australia negotiated some deal with the manufacturer and
| immunises every child and found it to be a great deal: http
| s://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
|
| I don't know or care about the US's inability to negotiate
| drug prices or unwillingness to fund useful programs -
| which is a choice.
|
| > I'm calling you out for an out-of-touch liberal.
|
| lol
|
| this site is amazing sometimes. people have the knowledge
| of the world available at their fingertips, can read the
| experiences of people from all around the world and still
| end up making some strongly worded reply about how the
| important thing is how much you can buy an HPV vaccine at a
| discount retail chain in the countryside after a country
| failed to work towards an obvious public good? what a time
| to be alive.
| s5300 wrote:
| >>this site is amazing sometimes. people have the
| knowledge of the world available at their fingertips, can
| read the experiences of people from all around the world
| and still end up making some strongly worded reply about
| how the important thing is how much you can buy an HPV
| vaccine at a discount retail chain in the countryside
| after a country failed to work towards an obvious public
| good? what a time to be alive.
|
| Their typical reply to this is that all of that
| information is fake subterfuge by Big Tech^tm
|
| It's just like... damn dude. What went wrong in these
| people's lives to make them so stupid and angry at
| data/information
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The HPV vaccine is available to all children regardless of
| ability to pay. https://www.kff.org/womens-health-
| policy/fact-sheet/the-hpv-...
|
| The ACA also dramatically increased access to it:
| https://publichealth.uga.edu/hpv-vaccination-rates-
| increased...
|
| > The results showed that participants post-ACA were 3.3
| times more likely to get the HPV vaccine, and more people
| reported completing the full series of vaccinations.
|
| Conservative opposition to it isn't hard to find:
| https://www.christianpost.com/news/conservatives-raise-
| red-f...
| portpecos wrote:
| Here's the phone number for Walmart in Lansing Michigan.
| Tell me if you get a different price. You probably won't.
|
| 517 622 1451.
|
| In fact, I'll do the legwork for you and report to you
| exactly what they say. I'll be right back.
|
| Update:
|
| I was wrong! Massive price deduction. It will cost me
| only $567 for 3 shots total!! That's such a small amount
| of money for rural America right? An entire month's small
| apartment rent for a vaccine. And Medicaid and ACA still
| don't cover it.
| portpecos wrote:
| New price update, if you're over 26 with Medicaid or ACA
| in Blue Wall Michigan:
|
| http://www.med.umich.edu/1info/FHP/practiceguides/adult.i
| mms...
|
| Then it's $666.
|
| $195 per shot + $27 administrative fee per shot x 3
| shots.
| mattkrause wrote:
| Right...because another program covers it instead:
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/hcp/payment.html
|
| Click through to the FAQ to see a) a list of covered
| vaccines AND b) the statement that they're free of cost
| for "Medicaid-eligible" kids.
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| Somebody is still paying for it.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The reduction in expensive-to-treat cervical cancers is
| paying for it.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Seriously, haha. "Who's paying for all those COVID
| vaccines?!" - the people who aren't on ventilators. It's
| almost like socialized medicine works.
| portpecos wrote:
| Right, all your programs cover HPV vaccines for the under
| 26 market. Medicaid and ACA doesn't cover HPV vaccines
| for people over 26. The over 26 population is 70% of the
| US population?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It was only approved in 2018 for over-26, so it'd be a
| bit rich to blame that on the ACA. Yell at your insurer
| if they don't cover it.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Social conservatives tried to KILL the ACA over and over
| again.
|
| Social Conservatism is what causes medications to not be
| subsidized.
|
| Social Conservatism is what keeps America the only
| developed nation without universal healthcare.
| CrazyPyroLinux wrote:
| Mr. Commie, this is your daily reminder that Communism
| has killed more people than anything else.
| owisd wrote:
| Makes you wonder how all those western democracies with
| socialised healthcare still manage to have a longer life
| expectancy than the US with all the executions for
| subversion.
| davidjade wrote:
| How about we let the US government fund or negotiate a
| better price for health services instead of hoping that the
| free market will solve everything? Seems like everyone
| should have free access to something that has such great
| benefits to society. I know that's where I want my tax
| dollars to go.
| standapart wrote:
| There hasn't been a free market in health care in the US
| for decades-- thankfully though, the pig has kept it's
| lipstick and we give you the illusion of choice.
| Hopefully, in the next few years, we can just do away
| with this facade.
|
| It may not be worth trumpeting this as an achievement,
| though. Just go ask any doc what they think of CMS.
| arcticbull wrote:
| There's no platonic 'free' market anywhere on earth, and
| I'm not sure there ever has been. Each society is a
| collection of socialized and privatized services. America
| has socialized fire departments, police departments,
| regulators, courts, health care for the poorest and old,
| army, passenger rail, mail delivery etc.
|
| Some services are better provided collectively (schools,
| prisons, healthcare) and some are better provided by the
| private markets (Apple). The former strengthens the
| latter.
|
| At the end of the day even the 'socialized medicine'
| debate isn't such a big decision. It's just about
| extending socialized medicine in the US from 40% of the
| population (today covered by Medicare and Medicaid) to
| 100%. It's clearly better of course - as John Oliver
| expressed 'there's a right way and a wrong way to do
| healthcare and we do it the _wrong_ way '. But it is, on
| the spectrum of absolute socialism to absolute
| capitalism, a small tweak.
| khuey wrote:
| Gardasil is covered for essentially all children and most
| adults 26 or under. After that it's a bit more tricky but a
| lot of plans still covered it.
| [deleted]
| himinlomax wrote:
| Religion is a non issue outside of the US. The fundamentalist
| view on that issue would not just be laughed out of the room
| in Europe, it would result in aggressive reactions. The main
| hurdle is vaccine hesitancy, fueled by new age nonsense.
| ipaddr wrote:
| What about the middle east or Africa or South America?
| saalweachter wrote:
| Building out the capacity to manufacture and distribute ten
| billion doses of new vaccines as quickly as we can validate
| their safety and efficacy would also be quite the feat.
|
| It's nice for a first-world citizen that we were getting
| vaccinated against a new disease 12-18 months after it was
| first discovered, but with a big enough supply chain we could
| potentially be aiming to _finish_ a world-wide vaccination
| campaign in 6-12 months, before we begin running up against the
| limits of our current methodologies for clinical trials.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| If all mRNA have side effects like the current crop of COVID
| vaccines I'm honestly not sure they are worth it as a seasonal
| flu shot.
|
| I'm not talking about the scare mongering of long term effects.
| Just the immediate.
|
| The day after my second moderna shot was worse than any flu I
| can remember and many of my friends in their 20s and 30s had to
| take a day off after their shot. I know several people in their
| 60s who had to take several days to a week in bed from vaccine
| side effects.
|
| That's fine for ending a pandemic or curing HIV, but for
| seasonal flu?
|
| In terms of lost labor days, my anec-data points to this
| vaccine seeming worse than a seasonal flu.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I don't know. The last time I had a seasonal flu, I was sick
| for a week. I cried because I needed to do laundry and simply
| didn't have the energy and I ate poorly - I lived alone at
| the time. All of my energy went to surviving work.
|
| Compared to having a sore arm for a couple of days? Or even
| getting sick for a day or two - at a time I can choose - to
| just not deal with getting sick later on? Sure. And I'm
| awfully sure that the flu kills more than the vaccine for it.
| So many complications for so many people.
|
| And to be fair: The folks you knew in their 60's had an
| unusual reaction. Older people with their aging immune
| systems are actually more likely to get little to know side
| effects to vaccines - younger folks tend to get more. The
| same goes for folks that are genetically female: You tend to
| get more side effects (they think this is because so many
| immune genes are on sex chromosomes, and women have more
| genes here.).
|
| And to be fair: Taking a day off of work when you are sick
| isn't such a big deal if you live somewhere with labor
| protection laws that allow you sick days. It is a little less
| of a big deal if you live in the US and get paid sick time,
| but a lot of folks just don't have this so it makes being
| sick after a vaccine a bigger deal that it should be.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The worst case of flu I had lasted a month. It's usually
| several days of chills, aches, and coughing.
|
| With the second phizer shot, I mild symptoms for a day.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| It may be that the vaccine side effect severity is
| proportional to the severity of the disease it prevents.
|
| Also, these vaccines were very rapidly developed so perhaps
| the next generation of them will be a bit easier on the body.
| incrudible wrote:
| It is more likely the opposite - a strong immune system
| causes a strong vaccine reaction.
| Kluny wrote:
| Like you said, it's anec-data. Among my friends, two were
| very sleepy the following day and otherwise fine. I had a
| sore arm for two days, and no other effects. My parents
| didn't have any noticeable effects.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| But there _is_ significant real data that the side effects
| from Moderna were _significantly_ worse (but, again, not
| severe, and time-limited) than a flu shot.
|
| I know this is just another anecdote, but I get a flu shot
| every year and have never experienced anything more than a
| sore arm. With 2nd Moderna dose I had a fever of 103 and
| was completely out of commission for 36 hours.
| callmeal wrote:
| >But there is significant real data that the side effects
| from Moderna were significantly worse (but, again, not
| severe, and time-limited) than a flu shot.
|
| It's all relative. The side effects from a flu shot are
| mild compared to the flu. Ditto for the Moderna vaccine.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| I think they just took the highest dose that had
| acceptable side effects because they had no time to
| figure out the perfect dose.
| tayo42 wrote:
| It's possible you never had a flu. It's pretty rough
| Smaug123 wrote:
| I've had Moderna and the flu, and they were about equally
| bad ("I can move, but only because I'll wet the bed
| otherwise, please God let me sleep so it stops feeling like
| my bones are dissolving") but Moderna lasted only a day
| whereas the flu lasted several. I think you'll struggle to
| argue convincingly that Moderna doesn't commonly have awful
| side effects :P
| octaonalocto wrote:
| You also didn't pass the Moderna side-effects to anyone
| else, unlike with the flu.
| purple_ferret wrote:
| do all mRNA vaccines have to be multi-dose?
|
| I'm sure a second shot of the traditional flu vaccine
| wouldn't feel great.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| The question is simple, does the benefit of using said
| vaccine or medication outweigh the risk of not using it. In
| the case of covid being sick for a couple of days and a
| guarantee of preventing future death is better than a
| resulting death had the user not taken it.
|
| I would say a couple of days of flu is vastly better than
| some of the other side effects I've seen with other
| medications. Take for instance:
|
| - Suicidal thoughts - Abnormal heart rhythms - Internal
| bleeding - Cancer
|
| At the end of the day, we rely on medical professionals to
| help us with these decisions and weigh the treatment of said
| ailments against the side effects we may incur if we do or
| don't take treatment. For what it's worth I've seen the
| opposite, most folks took the day off just in case there was
| a side effect, but ultimately everyone was fine. I know I
| scheduled my vaccine shots for a Thursday so I could have a 3
| day weekend assuming I wasn't feeling ill, and I felt fine so
| I enjoyed my 3 day weekend.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Dude, you're not worshipping the vaccine the proper amount.
| Please stay on narrative.
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| Amazing how every retard in this thread thinks that they are
| better at virology & biology than Peter Duesberg.
| spleeder wrote:
| How would this vaccine work for people who are already infected?
| lnanek2 wrote:
| It wouldn't. Their immune system already has a sample of the
| virus. Giving them a vaccine would give them nothing they don't
| already have.
|
| The idea behind a vaccine is the give the immune system a
| sample before it encounters the real virus, which allows it to
| respond quicker when the real virus arrives, which allows it to
| prevent the virus to replicate sufficiently to make the person
| sick.
|
| For someone who already has the virus, the vaccine won't do
| anything.
| Uberphallus wrote:
| Some vaccines are effective after infection; it's called
| _post-exposure prophylaxis_. Some examples are tetanus and
| rabies.
| koheripbal wrote:
| This is true for many vaccines, but given the unique
| mechanism HIV uses to attack the immune system, it might
| actually work in actively infected HIV patients.
| markenqualitaet wrote:
| I don't think it works this way with HIV. As you stated
| having immunity to a specific HIV presentation does not
| prevent infection. Any vaccine effective would need to make
| the body see a pattern it cannot find on it's own. Something
| universal to HIV, which cannot be evolved around.
|
| This is different from other disease where the immune system
| doesn't have enough time to response before the disease
| kills/damages the body.
|
| If the vaccine can prevent HIV signature evasion, it may very
| well help control/treat the disease, I think.
| dagmx wrote:
| This is somewhat incorrect. Not all vaccines include a sample
| of the virus they're protecting against (see the mRNA
| vaccines for covid-19).
|
| Also for some viruses (again see covid-19), it's still
| advisable to get a vaccine even if you've already been
| infected. The protection rate and longevity of the vaccines
| can outweigh infection based antibodies dramatically.
|
| In the case of HIV, it's potentially quite different, because
| HIV is such a unique disease, that yeah, a vaccine might not
| help anyway. But otherwise, your comment doesn't apply to
| vaccines in general (and it didn't seem like you were
| replying towards any specifics of HIV)
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| Vaccine for coronavirus recommended for its immune-building
| benefit even in persons who had infection, this is to
| reduce likelihood for more infection in the future. I am
| doubting that this applys on the HIV since nobody is
| getting it then beating the infection, just supressing it.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Also some evidence that vaccines are helping with long
| covid https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/18/long-
| covid-s...
|
| The difference with mRNA vaccines is they let your body
| build antibodies without it even knowing the virus itself
| Unklejoe wrote:
| > Also some evidence that vaccines are helping with long
| covid
|
| By what possible mechanism? Does this imply that long
| COVID is a result of some small amount of lingering
| virus?
|
| I was under the impression that long COVID was a result
| of damage caused by the initial infection - not some
| continuous infection of the actual virus.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It's still unknown what causes long covid. Lingering
| virus is one hypothesis that's still plausible. Indeed
| some people believe it precisely because the vaccines
| seem to be helping significant numbers of people (but not
| everyone, they can also make it worse for some people).
| whimsicalism wrote:
| A substantial proportion of long covid cases share
| similarities (particularly demographics) with other
| syndromes of unknown mechanism, particularly chronic
| fatigue syndrome.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Long covid is not sufficiently studied to indicate
| whether vaccines help.
|
| Many of the patterns associated with long covid suggest
| that is a mix of one condition that has a mechanism
| probably similar to chronic fatigue syndrome and the
| other is the manifestation of long term sequelae that is
| common with other respiratory viruses.
|
| My guess is that the vaccine might help with the CFS-like
| symptoms.
| hfkrjfjfj wrote:
| > _It wouldn 't. Their immune system already has a sample of
| the virus. Giving them a vaccine would give them nothing they
| don't already have._
|
| What you said applies to most viruses (flu, corona, ...), but
| not to HIV.
|
| There is a reason we failed to create a HIV vaccine for 30
| years, and that reason is that simply presenting the virus
| just doesn't work.
|
| So this vaccine uses a new quite amazing methodology, instead
| of presenting the virus, it presents something else designed
| to trigger the 1 in the million B cell from our bodies which
| are actually capable of producing a neutralizing antibody.
| Regular vaccine trigger randomly the other 999999 B cells
| which produce useless antibodies.
|
| Typically that process takes 10 years for a HIV infected
| person, after which they produce the proper antibodies.
|
| This approach is called germ-line targeting, and tries to
| accelerate that 10 year process in 2-3 shots.
| amluto wrote:
| Depends on the vaccine. There are research programs to
| develop vaccines that induce people to make broadly
| neutralizing HIV antibodies. Most people don't naturally
| produce these. Such a vaccine could plausibly help people who
| are already infected.
| leroy_masochist wrote:
| > Moderna is seeking 56 individuals, aged 18 to 50 and who are
| HIV-negative, for the trial, which is estimated to begin on
| August 19 and conclude in spring 2023.
|
| Probably a dumb question given that I have little domain
| knowledge here, but are they really going to get valuable data
| from 56 individuals? Like, isn't that N really small? How many of
| them would be expected to contract HIV?
|
| And, I'd imagine that if they are selecting a high-risk
| population for the trials (e.g., sexually active young gay men),
| wouldn't a lot of the individuals already be on PREP? Would they
| have to go off of PREP, and run a potentially much greater risk
| of contracting HIV if the vaccine doesn't actually work?
| tuankiet65 wrote:
| From the trial page
| (https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05001373), it's a just
| phase one study to figure out the safety of the vaccine:
|
| > A Phase 1, Randomized, First-in-human, Open-label Study to
| Evaluate the Safety and Immunogenicity
| nikkinana wrote:
| Isn't that another Dr. Falsie vaccine?
| treyhuffine wrote:
| Will the microchips in this be better than the ones in the Covid
| vaccine?
| arsome wrote:
| I hear this one might be 6G compatible.
|
| Personally I'm just hoping for Bluetooth LE support.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Very good news. I have known _many_ people that have died of the
| virus.
|
| AIDS is a tough one. It has a shifting antigen. If anyone
| remembers Stephen King's _The Stand_ , that was the premise for
| Captain Trips.
|
| If they can inoculate against AIDS, then the human race may just
| survive the next millennium.
| unixhero wrote:
| It also means, PARTYTIME.
| captainredbeard wrote:
| This is a disastrous attitude.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| AIDS can already be treated in a way that doesn't shorten
| lifespans significantly.
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| Yes but we can still increase quality of life (not taking
| pills everyday) and global accessibility with developing a
| vaccine.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| I was purely speaking about lifespan.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| In (Southern) Africa, HIV/AIDS is considered more manageable
| than Type II diabetes.
| mellavora wrote:
| Indeed, as long as the health system is willing to pay for
| the medications.
|
| That's not necessarily a given.
|
| Even in EU countries (former HIV researcher, had MD
| colleagues in a country with budget issues).
| weimerica wrote:
| > Very good news. I have known many people that have died of
| the virus.
|
| Unfortunate what happens when people engage in unnecessary
| social interaction during a pandemic.
| xattt wrote:
| Are you referring to the AIDS epidemic where access to care
| for individuals was withheld as a result of bigotry?
| weimerica wrote:
| Perhaps we should abolish the NIH then. They seem to have a
| repeated history of failing to grapple with pandemics.
| dang wrote:
| Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments
| and/or flamebait, and stop using HN for political battle?
| You've been doing a lot of that, unfortunately, and we
| ban such accounts (regardless of what they're battling
| for or against). We're trying for a different sort of
| forum here.
|
| Also, trollish usernames aren't allowed on HN, because
| they end up trolling every thread the account posts to (h
| ttps://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=com
| me...).
|
| I've banned this account until we get some reason to
| believe that you will use HN as intended in the future.
| If you'd like to do that, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is
| probably best.
| throwthisting wrote:
| I'm pretty sure OP was referring to AIDS
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yeah, I deliberately said AIDS, as opposed to "HIV" (which
| is more accurate), because that's what most folks key on.
|
| I have done a lot of work in a community that is
| disproportionately represented in the HIV-positive
| demographic (It isn't just gay people).
| leppr wrote:
| I'm curious what that other demographic is? (Totally
| understand if you prefer not say though)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Drug addicts.
| wheybags wrote:
| Read the title, it's about HIV/AIDS, not covid. Not to imply
| that would be an appropriate response if they were talking
| about covid.
| weimerica wrote:
| I wear two masks. Why can't those irresponsible men double
| bag it?
|
| (I do feel bad for the hemophiliacs and Haitians, however)
| Darmody wrote:
| I guess you didn't even read the headline.
|
| HIV != Covid-19
| weimerica wrote:
| I read the headline. I feel the same about both virii.
| refurb wrote:
| Current anti-viral therapy has made AIDS a chronic disease. We
| don't need a vaccine to survive, though it would be helpful in
| eliminating the disease.
| lode wrote:
| Let's not forget the huge success of PrEP (Pre-exposure
| prophylaxis, or treatment-as-prevention).
|
| But a vaccine, especially if it is affordable and works for a
| long time will go even further in ending this pandemic that
| has gone one for 40+ years.
| Frost1x wrote:
| Helpful is an understatement, it would be life changing for
| many worldwide. Therapy and prevention measures exist but
| they're still not available to everyone and can be a
| significant financial cost, even with insurance. For some,
| it's still not an affordable option. Mutations and resistance
| also still occur and although life has been extended
| significantly, it's still a lingering health issue that
| requires careful professional monitoring and treatment.
|
| The assumption is that a vaccine would be long lasting,
| preventative, and likely cheaper if not cheap. That's not
| only a significant improvement in quality of life in
| developed countries, that's truly life changing/giving if
| available in less developed countries. The COVID vaccines and
| potentially this are examples of capitalism done right.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Could an HIV vaccine actually cure those already infected?
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| Because of the way HIV "works" any preventative vaccine
| would almost certainly be curative or as good as.
|
| The HI virus is very slow (not called "Lentivirus" for
| nothing) and invests itself in the very stemcells of the
| cells that would be fighting it. This means it can hide
| from the immune system, and even the antiviral drugs can
| only push it back. But by the same token, if it is pushed
| back into the deepest refuge, it can't really "flood"
| back into the rest of the body, it has to do so at a a
| trickle.
|
| If there is a viable vaccine around, even if the virus
| manages to hide from total extinction in a host at first,
| it will get squashed whenever it tries to come back into
| the "light" of the immune system.
|
| At least I hope it will work that way...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I'm a bit confused since HIV works by disabling the
| immune system, and a vaccine works by priming the immune
| system.
|
| So... if HIV has already damaged your immune system, can
| it take advantage of the vaccine?
|
| Perhaps figuring out that is what the tests are for.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| Actually the immune system does fight HIV during the
| acute infection stage after a person is first exposed,
| and antibodies are generated. The immune response to HIV
| is what does most of the damage to the immune system,
| since a typical immune response to virus infection
| involves the destruction of infected cells. HIV infects
| certain immune cells, which will either self-destruct
| when the infection is detected or will be destroyed by
| other immune cells.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| You are confusing HIV infection and AIDS. The former is
| the virus, the latter is the end-stage disease.
|
| It takes the virus years to reach the viral loads
| necessary to damage the immune system to a noticeable
| degree. Sure, HIV has some tricks before that point, but
| patients are generally not immunocompromised until AIDS
| enters the picture.
| adrianN wrote:
| Antivirals are too expensive for most of the world.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Exactly this. PreP costs >$20,000 a year.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| It's around US$350 a year in Australia [1] under the
| Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (Around US$500 without
| subsidies). For low-income people, it's around $40 a
| year. No idea how much less the Indian generics they'd be
| using in South Africa cost.
|
| Unaffordable pharmaceuticals is a purely American problem
| and I have no idea why you guys think it's normal or put
| up with it.
|
| [1]
| https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/100885/tenofovir-
| dis...
| Kye wrote:
| What are we supposed to do? Corporations own the
| government and the people who can afford guns support it.
| talideon wrote:
| There are two relatively straightforward things you can
| do that will help the situation: (a) vote, and (b)
| campaign to move to get some form of proportional
| representation become the voting system in your state,
| both for statewide and national elections.
|
| A major reason why you've entrenched interests is that
| they have safe seats they can depend on. The US has major
| issues with acts of gerrymandering that create those safe
| seats. Most forms of PR are much more resistant to
| gerrymandering than FPTP is. And if you want people
| who'll do something regarding healthcare costs, you need
| to get rid of those safe seats and make them accountable.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| You mention guns, but I'm honestly surprised that
| pharmaceutical executives being gunned down by grieving
| family members isn't a daily occurrence.
|
| Given the number of gun owners and the number of
| pharmaceutical companies that let people die in agony to
| keep the medical insurance industry afloat, it should
| surely be a serious enough problem to warrant changes in
| corporate policy.
| refurb wrote:
| Ummm... no?
|
| It's cheap in Australia because it's generic. It's
| generic now in the US too, and guess what? It's $40 per
| month in the US.
|
| https://m.goodrx.com/truvada?sort_type=popularity
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| start showing up for elections, for example
| sidlls wrote:
| Some of us don't think it's normal, nor do we want to put
| up with it. Fully 60% of the voting population is deeply
| invested in seeing their team win regardless of what
| policies they support. We have to fight both democrats
| and republicans to make any progress. It's a tough row to
| hoe.
| lode wrote:
| At least in Belgium (where there are several generics
| available besides the 'brand' Truvada), my out of pocket
| cost is 5 euro for a month's supply.
|
| If you take PrEP periodically (2+1+1) that will even last
| you a lot longer (depending on the frequency of course).
| I am very glad PrEP exists, and already optimistic about
| its impact in reducing transmissions. But if we can
| replace this with a one-shot vaccine, that would be
| groundbreaking.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| AIDS killed a million people in 2016. HIV medications help
| only when taken diligently, which is actually problematic
| even in developed countries where the most advanced
| treatments are available, and is much more difficult in
| poorer countries. Even with treatment HIV infections are a
| burden on people, interfering with normal adult activities
| like sex (convincing people to use condoms is a challenge)
| and having children.
|
| To quote Seven of Nine, survival is insufficient. We could
| survive without a vaccine or a treatment, it would mean tens
| of thousands of years and billions of people dying from AIDS
| until our species adapts and HIV becomes just another
| retrovirus (as some other primate species have with related
| SIV viruses). We should aim higher than "survival" and end
| the suffering caused by HIV, and with a vaccine we could do
| so in this century.
| refurb wrote:
| No, just no.
|
| AIDS killed 700,000 in 2020.[1]. That's worldwide. It's not
| even in the top 10.
|
| Diarrheal diseases, entirely preventable with clean water
| supply, kill _three times as many_.[2]
|
| Or heart disease which killed _ten times as many_.
|
| [1] https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/fact-sheet [2]
| https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-
| top-10-...
| betterunix2 wrote:
| ...what exactly is your point? That other preventable
| illnesses exist and kill more people, therefore an HIV
| vaccine is uninteresting? That 700k dead does not justify
| the effort to eradicate HIV, and that we should just
| continue to rely on long-term treatment regiments?
| refurb wrote:
| Does nobody read comments before replying?
|
| My entire statement was "we don't need an AIDS vaccine to
| survive as the human race".
|
| If AIDS was risking our survival than diarrheal diseases
| should as well?
| woodruffw wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the person you're responding to is _very_
| in favor of eliminating deaths from diarrhea and heart
| disease as well. Why would advocating for an AIDS vaccine
| imply otherwise?
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| I think he was pointing that massive dollars have gone
| for AIDS research but it is not what should be our high
| priority compared to other death causes. In America and
| world both, AIDS is small fries for death cause.
| m0llusk wrote:
| That is a really difficult call to make because research
| into HIV/AIDS has generated a great deal of information
| about viruses and potential ways of treating or
| controlling them. This is similar to the arguments about
| the space program being an expensive and largely
| irrelevant exercise even though all sorts of critical
| technology for weather satellites, solar power,
| electronic communications and so on came more or less
| directly from exploration and development of space.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > In America and world both, AIDS is small fries for
| death cause.
|
| The _critical_ distinction is outcomes: until relatively
| recently, the only outcome of an HIV infection was
| eventual death from AIDS. This is _still_ the default
| outcome in most of the world.
|
| Plenty of things kill more people than AIDS, but most of
| them have _substantially_ less severe individual
| outcomes: many people survive them, or the social
| /political solutions are _substantially_ more tenable
| (healthier eating, access to potable water). And that 's
| even before we consider how AIDS research has advanced
| the field of medical virology as a whole.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| By that logic we shouldn't use a vaccine for most
| illnesses since they are not heart disease...
|
| After all, we are only saving a small cities worth of
| people per year.
| refurb wrote:
| Is heart disease risking survival of the human race?
| corin_ wrote:
| Shall we stop bothering about the past 1000 years of
| medical advances while we're at it, since the human race
| was surviving fine without?
|
| What point are you actually trying to make?
| voxelc4L wrote:
| Why does something have to be full-on existential threat
| to humanity to qualify for
| research/development/treatment?
| koheripbal wrote:
| Is this a serious comment? We shouldn't stop a cause of
| death because it's not in the top ten?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| In the developed world. It's still a death sentence in Africa
| (as is being gay).
|
| I'm actually thinking more about the vaccination against a
| shifting-antigen bug.
|
| That's big juju.
| throwaway210222 wrote:
| It's still a death sentence in [some parts of] Africa (as
| is being gay).
|
| Precision is next to godliness.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| >It's still a death sentence in Africa (as is being gay).
|
| Just to be somewhat anal, AIDS is much more common in
| Southern Africa, where homosexuality is generally either
| legal or the laws against it weak and unenforced.
|
| It's also much more correlated with race than sexuality. In
| South Africa, it affects something like 15% of blacks vs
| 0.3% of whites. Women are also far more likely to have HIV,
| especially younger ones. I think it's around 30% for
| pregnant women.
|
| Outside of the West, AIDS is definitely not something that
| mainly gay men get.
| gregoriol wrote:
| It's way better not to catch a disease than to survive it.
| Vaccines, while they may not entirely get us rid of a
| disease, will improve the way of life by helping people not
| getting ill.
| f6v wrote:
| > We don't need a vaccine to survive
|
| As long as there's no antiviral therapy resistance.
| prvc wrote:
| >If they can inoculate against AIDS, then the human race may
| just survive the next millennium.
|
| Can you elaborate as to how this would improve the prospects of
| humanity as a whole? If anything, such a development would
| enable a greater proliferation of other dangerous pathogens.
| bluepizza wrote:
| ?
| echelon wrote:
| > If anything, such a development would enable a greater
| proliferation of other dangerous pathogens.
|
| No, it wouldn't necessarily.
|
| While it's true that a vaccine would apply selection pressure
| and create a fitness gradient for HIV to evolve against, the
| virus is still bound by its genetics.
|
| The rate at which we're developing vaccines is increasing
| dramatically. If our new methods are good enough to quickly
| adapt, then HIV may have a limited state space left to
| explore. A single remarkable vaccine could even do this on
| its own if we're lucky.
|
| The virus can't easily descend down a fitness well to make a
| jump to a new gradient (ie. dramatic change of receptor
| bindings).
|
| If you're talking about novel viruses, that's a wholly
| unrelated issue. There's of course a giant reservoir of
| zoonotic viruses that may one day make a leap to humans, but
| if anything, our work to rapidly develop vaccines may give us
| an increased advantage against new viruses if and when they
| arise.
|
| Finally, if you're talking "hygiene hypothesis", that under-
| stimulation of the immune system creates auto immune
| disorders, has increased interaction with gut flora, or
| changes the dynamics with which cancer clearance happens,
| then you may be onto something. But this is a huge unknown
| where we have a lot of study left to do.
|
| (On a personal note, I left my pursuit of biochem because
| when I studied it, the prospects looked to be moving at
| glacial pace and the tools felt akin to using punch cards and
| truth tables. The problems are massive, dynamical, and it
| looked too daunting. After the last decade and a half of bio
| discoveries and innovations, I've changed my outlook
| completely and am incredibly bullish on biotech. We are going
| to make incredible strides in the next few decades that will
| in many ways mirror the rise of tech. I want to find my way
| back to the field someday.)
| mellavora wrote:
| Former HIV researcher here.
|
| Right now, HIV is a manageable condition, but ONLY because of
| the availability of drugs which suppress the virus. The virus
| eventually learns how to get around the drugs, at which point
| the patient either switches drugs or dies in a few years.
|
| Without drugs, HIV is (near) 100% fatal. And since it takes a
| few years to kill, infected people have plenty of time to
| pass it on. Which they do.
|
| Also, the first HIV infection feels like a minor cold. Most
| people would not even know they were HIV positive (until
| their immune system collapsed), were it not for lab testing.
|
| Then just apply some basic epidemiology to these facts, and
| you see that you have a disease which has the potential to
| infect (and thus kill) a sizeable percent of the population.
| As in double-digit percentages.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| What's your perspective on the future effectivity (or
| decline) of current PrEP treatments?
| JshWright wrote:
| I don't think the GP comment was being that specific. An
| HIV vaccine would be huge, but the fundamental research
| that was necessary to get to the point of a viable vaccine
| (pending successful trials, obviously) would pay dividends
| far beyond just HIV.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Until we develop an inoculation against nuclear war, I wouldn't
| get overly excited about the next millennium.
| [deleted]
| jatone wrote:
| dont forget global warming.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| my understanding is that by itself global warming won't
| kill a large proportion of humans (heat waves and extreme
| weather events). it's the famine that will get us. That
| will lead, inevitably, to war.
| inawarminister wrote:
| bioengineering more heat-tolerant plants and mechanisms to
| carbon sink seem to be more easily solved than
| bioengineering radiation-resistant humans, but then again
| predicting future development is almost impossible.
| markenqualitaet wrote:
| Idk. The body seems to adapt to radiation and some excess
| guardian genes may prevent malignant growth. Of course
| you cannot live through the gamma blast area, but surely
| the fallout zones may be manageable.
|
| On the other hand chemistry is highly temperature
| sensitive and at some point proteins will just denature.
| Then again you cannot have rapid growth without water, as
| plants need evaporation to transport minerals and such
| from the soil into the plant. And what about phosphorus
| anyway? Soon most soils may be nothing but dirt. You
| cannot work around the phosphorus erosion. Once it's
| lost, it's lost. We better start recycling our feces and
| the dead now. You kinda need to harden all life, not just
| humans and crops.
| Iolaum wrote:
| Bioengineering can have its own negative externalities,
| and in practice incentives may misalign in such a way
| that we solve an immediate problem but also create a new
| one that will manifest later and hence someone else will
| have to deal with it. I d much rather we address the
| current problem directly by bringing the climate back to
| where it would be without human pollution.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Neither nuclear war nor climate change has the ability to
| destroy ALL of humanity.
| wiz21c wrote:
| just a question of time
| NDizzle wrote:
| Is it back to being "Warming" again? I thought it was still
| "Climate Change".
| mhh__ wrote:
| Warming is by definition a change
| onion2k wrote:
| The good news is that nuclear war will stop global warming.
| srgpqt wrote:
| Right, we just need to find the right balance between
| nuclear winter and global warming!
| sadfev wrote:
| Easy! that's a simple multi-objective optimization
| problem!
| anovikov wrote:
| It is so excruciatingly difficult to trial a HIV vaccine that we
| can easily expect it to take decades.
| markenqualitaet wrote:
| I assume the effectiveness of PrEP doesn't help the case, as
| infection can now be prevented for those at high risk.
|
| Might be important to keep an eye out for PrEP access
| progression and these trails around the world...
| anchpop wrote:
| What makes it so difficult?
| blamestross wrote:
| At some point, somebody needs to be exposed to HIV with an
| unproven vaccine. Current design is just "give it to enough
| people to show they get HIV statistically lower than their
| origin populations.
| standardUser wrote:
| According to the article, the Phase 1 clinical trail will take
| under 2 years.
|
| "Moderna is seeking 56 individuals, aged 18 to 50 and who are
| HIV-negative, for the trial, which is estimated to begin on
| August 19 and conclude in spring 2023"
|
| I would imagine that larger trials would be conducted in places
| with rampant HIV spread, right? Which shouldn't take an
| inordinate amount of time.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Phase 1 is not the difficulty here....
| standardUser wrote:
| With the COVID vaccines, the locations of the clinical
| trials were chosen for how rapidly the virus was spreading.
| Some trials even added new geographic areas with high
| transmission rates while they were still ongoing. Why
| wouldn't any large scale HIV trial not choose one of the
| many countries with a high transmission rate?
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| That's for phase III trials, which I am sure will be
| conducted in countries like South Africa. This is not
| there yet, and phase I safety trials are easiest to
| conduct in the vicinity of the researchers and good
| hospital infrastructure.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| It is maybe that Moderna makes a partnership with larger
| drug companies for phase ii iii trials. Also maybe they try
| to conduct in subsaharan aferica where there are large
| spread rates among straights and disease is more endemic in
| populations.
| anovikov wrote:
| Phase 1 is just a safety trial. Imagine how many years it
| will take to make a statistically sound conclusion of the
| efficacy rate?
| sonicggg wrote:
| People seem overly optimistic then. Phase 1 trials are only
| used to test the safety of the drug, nothing else. Not sure
| why they plan to take such a long time for this initial
| phase. Covid was just a couple of weeks.
|
| If the initial stage is already 2 years, I don't see a Phase
| 3 trial taking less than 3 times that amount of time. It will
| be super difficult to test. The R0 value of HIV is relatively
| low.
| xutopia wrote:
| Phase 1 just checks to see what is the highest dose that can
| be given without adverse effects. It does not test the
| effectiveness of the vaccine.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| The graveyard of HIV vaccines that failed at Phase II is
| unfortunately large, and this isn't even there yet. I won't be
| holding my breath on this one. HIV is _tricky_.
| vibrio wrote:
| I came here to say make this (lonely) comment. HIV and CoV are
| very different viruses. Different pathogenesis, different
| tropism, different social drivers for transmission... mRNA
| technology did well in 2020, but it was a very well-funded
| technology in clinical development for ~10 years before SARS-
| CoV2 arrived. HIV and Cancer are not low-hanging fruit. I wish
| them the best, as I hate both those diseases, but I'm not aware
| that there is anything in the technology that uniquely provides
| a solution to the problem.
| sterlind wrote:
| from what I've read, it's not really mRNA that gives Moderna
| any advantage, as much as being able to raise broadly-
| neutralizing antibodies (BNAbs) against HIV membrane protein.
|
| but.. it's still not a polyvalent vaccine, it's only
| targeting one such highly-conserved region, and there's HIV
| out there that evades BNAbs (5% of HIV+ patients have BNAbs
| after all, and they eventually progress.. though maybe after
| changing tropism or something.)
|
| so it may not be all that effective as a strategy, but
| there's at least some monkey data suggesting it delays or
| sometimes prevents infection.
|
| More info here: https://www.aidsmap.com/news/mar-2020/hiv-
| vaccine-generates-...
| slumdev wrote:
| Pray that the side effects are well-studied before the CDC
| decides to administer it to every infant within minutes of birth
| (like they did with Hep B, another sexually-transmitted disease
| to which most people will never even be exposed.)
| Manozco wrote:
| Given that you can enter in life with HIV "given" by the
| mother, it does not seem too crazy to administer it to some
| babies (given there is no counter indication for that
| obviously)
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| At one point, we should stop saying that hep-* or HIV are STDs,
| in several countries the bulk of transmissions are from mother
| to infant during delivery or other means that sex
| transmissions. With the way the world is connected, these virus
| can travel easily.
| slumdev wrote:
| > in several countries the bulk of transmissions are from
| mother to infant during delivery
|
| Is this the case in the United States, where the CDC makes
| recommendations?
|
| And if so, why not administer it only to those children of
| mothers who test positive?
|
| We don't put _everyone_ on a statin simply because _most_
| (i.e. more than half of) people will eventually develop heart
| disease. Instead, we test and administer statins to only
| those people who have heart disease risk factors.
|
| We don't give _everyone_ bariatric surgery or weight loss
| drugs simply because _most_ Americans are overweight or
| obese. Instead, these remedies are administered only to those
| who are most likely to benefit.
|
| No drug or vaccine is without side effects. It's clear that
| there's no such thing as informed consent in today's world.
| The patient cannot be informed because the side effects are
| hidden from him. And he definitely hasn't consented if
| coercion was involved in his decision to receive the
| treatment.
| bluGill wrote:
| > We don't put everyone on a statin simply because
|
| Because there are known side effects that make them not
| suitable to some people. Pregnant women should not take
| them (nor those thinking about getting pregnant). Those of
| Asian decent need a smaller dose. Those who drink alcohol
| shouldn't take them. Those who take part in extreme
| exercise shouldn't take them. They cannot be mixed with
| some other drugs.
|
| The above is off the top of my head. It probably doesn't
| apply to them all, there are several different statins to
| choose from, and many different dosages. A doctor really
| needs to work through the above (and probably more factors
| I'm not aware of) to figure out what is best for you.
| Foobar8568 wrote:
| Because the HepB could disappear within a generation with
| mass vaccination, the vaccine is rather cheap, almost
| lifelong and offers a full protection. And I bet it wasn't
| because of a bunch of antivax. Fuck them for ruining
| everything.
|
| As a French who was teenager in the 90s, I got vaccinated
| as almost everyone in my class age, and I am glad that
| French had it as otherwise I could have catch this fucking
| virus.
| [deleted]
| hanniabu wrote:
| Would this be recommended for anybody sexually active? Or just
| for people in higher risk like someone with a partner that has
| HIV or if you're homosexual?
| _trampeltier wrote:
| At moment there is PrEP for that case.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/prep.html
|
| I think the idea in long term would, should be to replace PrEP.
| notorious-dto wrote:
| They will want you to take both the vaccine and PrEP, because
| (surprise!) the vaccine will not be 100% effective.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| No vaccine is 100% effective. No medicine seems to be 100%
| effective either. This is a known issue, and it always has
| been. Good thing we don't need it to be to eradicate an
| illness.
|
| It won't be necessary for most folks to take both, though,
| that's just not how things work.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| I think marketingwise the vaccine will have a very, very hard
| time against PrEP, unless it can be proven that it's just as
| effective. And what about booster shots? It would be highly
| unethical to give someone an experimental vaccine INSTEAD of
| just PrEP. But if we don't do that, we can never find out how
| good the vaccine works. A dilemma.
| bluGill wrote:
| > I think marketingwise the vaccine will have a very, very
| hard time against PrEP
|
| Probably not. PrEP has some nasty side effects. Those who
| take it need to get their organ function checked every few
| months (I think just kidneys?).
|
| Of course this vaccine is just entering trials. We have no
| idea how effective it is, or what the side effects might
| be. As such we can only guess and hope that it is better
| than PrEP - though that is a somewhat low bar.
| vsef wrote:
| To be clear, Truvada (or Descovy) for vast majority of
| people will have essentially no side effects. There is a
| small increase in chance of kidney disease, mainly for
| those with other risk factors, the risk profile is
| similar to over the counter ibuprofen.
|
| "HIV-positive individuals who use Truvada to control
| their infection are more likely to experience kidney
| damage and bone density loss than those who take it to
| prevent HIV infection, as so-called pre-exposure
| prophylaxis (PrEP)[2]. But "no significant health effects
| have been seen in people who are HIV-negative and have
| taken PrEP for up to 5 years," according to the U.S.
| Department of Health and Human Services. Numerous studies
| have shown that the risk of HIV-negative Truvada users
| developing kidney disease is not statistically
| significantly different from those taking placebo[3]."
|
| https://healthfeedback.org/claimreview/hiv-drug-truvada-
| link...
| websites2023 wrote:
| > PrEP has some nasty side effects. Those who take it
| need to get their organ function checked every few months
| (I think just kidneys?).
|
| Please don't spread this FUD. The side effects are rare
| and reversible by stopping the medicine. The checks are
| also required to check for other STIs.
| bluGill wrote:
| That doesn't mean they are not nasty or don't need be
| checked for. Better than HIV/AIDS for sure, but common
| enough that a vaccine could be better.
| hannob wrote:
| Take a pill every day vs. get a vaccine every few years? I
| don't think the vaccine will have a marketing problem.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| I think the first guys who tryed PrEP had to have also big
| balls to play with the fire.
|
| The price for PrEP is also very different from country to
| country. In some countrys it's almost for free, in some
| others is very, very expensive.
| sschueller wrote:
| I guess people who have a lot of partners and unprotected sex
| such as people who do porn or sex workers as well as people
| with partners that are positive.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Not to mention members of the gay community.
| vidarh wrote:
| It's tricky, because between condoms, PREP and PEP (pre- and
| post-exposure drugs) and treatments now being good enough that
| life expectancy with HIV is nearly the same as without, it'd
| take very low risks of side effects before giving it to
| everyone would cause more harm than not giving it.
|
| So the safety profile will be hugely important in determining
| how widely to use it.
| jeofken wrote:
| What is the market price for such treatments?
| nomagicbullet wrote:
| > or if you're homosexual?
|
| HIV transmission is related to sexual activity not sexual
| orientation. Being in an open relationship, cheating on your
| partner, performing unprotected sex, are all examples of
| behaviors that put people at "higher risk". Being attracted to
| your own gender does not.
| switch007 wrote:
| They knew that.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| There is a correlation between unprotected anal intercourse
| and HIV, which is why male homosexuals are especially at
| danger.
| pavelrub wrote:
| HIV transmission is partially related to attributes that are
| correlated with sexual orientation, the most prominent of
| which is the fact that the chance of transmission is much
| higher for anal sex than it is for vaginal sex.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| From personal experience, anal sex is definitely not
| limited to sex between men. I'm going to guess that there
| are entire websites dedicated to that, and there are
| definitely sections of porn websites dedicated to it.
| Additionally, sex between men encompasses much more than
| anal sex.
|
| Which all goes back to teh point: HIV transmission isn't
| related to sexual orientation, _even if_ some sex acts are
| traditionally attributed to one specific sort of
| orientation.
| captainredbeard wrote:
| That's a bit misleading. Attraction doesn't change the risk
| but certain types of activities (anal sex) are significantly
| more prone to bleeding which drastically increases spread
| rate.
| the_monocle wrote:
| Im pretty sure that HIV is much more prevalent in homosexual
| communities [1]. [1]
| https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/group/msm/index.html
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| HIV transmission is 18 times more likely with receptive anal
| sex than with receptive vaginal sex and 69% of the HIV
| positive people in the USA are active gay men.
|
| So yes, being a homosexual man is a huge risk factor and
| probably more significant than being in an open relationship,
| cheating on your partner or performing unprotected sex unless
| you live in Sub-Saharan Africa.
| rovolo wrote:
| The risk factor in the US is "man who has sex with men",
| not "gay man". Factors can combine: e.g. "gay virgin" is a
| lower risk factor than "straight + multiple partners".
| azth wrote:
| It doesn't change the fact that homosexuals have much much
| higher incidents of HIV/AIDs.
| jcims wrote:
| As with any preventative medicine it boils down to risk/benefit
| and (unfortunately) economics. FDA approval process should
| expose most of the risk/benefit equation and the manufacturer
| will set the price. When all of that is said and done you will
| have a lot more information with which to consider your
| question.
| gadders wrote:
| I hope it's cheap enough to deploy large volumes to Africa.
| Desperately needed there.
| umvi wrote:
| Unpopular opinion but Africa also desperately needs to fix
| the root cause of its HIV spread. Maybe this vaccine would
| give some relief and give them a chance to start over, but if
| there is a rampant culture of rape/unprotected sex with many
| partners the same region will just get ravaged by the next
| STD and stick them back in the same rut.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Additionally, unless you can convince the majority in
| Africa to take the vaccine, partial vaccine deployment
| would put a evolutionary pressure on the virus to evade the
| vaccine and re-infect the world with a resistant strain.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| I think a bigger issue that would need to be addressed is
| the distrust of Western medicine, the beliefs that they
| know how to prevent HIV, that HIV was caused by the West in
| order to kill them, and the belief that they already know
| the cure of HIV.
|
| There are parallels between the disinformation in the anti-
| vax Covid community, and the disinformation in regards HIV
| in Africa.
| lthornberry wrote:
| Yikes. This is actually a field that I do research in, and
| this analysis just really, really doesn't hold water. Of
| course there are sociological contributors to the spread of
| HIV on the African continent. But the idea that there's a
| "culture of rape" is pretty far off base, if only because
| Africa is an incredibly diverse continent so there's not a
| shared culture of pretty much anything. For a much more
| accurate look at the development of the AIDS pandemic in
| Africa, I recommend Jacques Pepin, The Origin of AIDS.
| umvi wrote:
| Yeah, I probably could have phrased my original comment
| better. I didn't mean to imply the areas in Africa with
| HIV issues have a culture of rape. I said " _if_ there is
| a rampant culture of rape /unprotected sex with many
| partners the same region will just get ravaged by the
| next STD and stick them back in the same rut." (emphasis
| added).
|
| My point being, if we have a magic pill that cures them
| of a given STD, but there are underlying cultural
| problems that contribute to elevated STD transmission
| (such as unprotected sex or rape), etc., then the magic
| pill is only a bandaid that doesn't address the
| underlying elevated STD transmission problem.
|
| As a sibling comment stated, maybe the problem is that
| these Africans believe homeopathic cures like special tea
| leaves will protect them from HIV when in reality they
| are just all having unprotected sex, so it's both a
| cultural and educational issue.
| lthornberry wrote:
| Double yikes to "these Africans." Pretty sure misplaced
| belief in homeopathy is not a distinctively African
| phenomenon.
|
| But to the point: the major driver of the early explosion
| of HIV on the continent was almost certainly large-scale
| vaccination and medical treatment campaigns by colonial
| governments, which injected staggering numbers of people
| in rural areas without adequate disinfection of needles.
|
| In the present, the sociological drivers of HIV spread do
| include rates of nonconsensual sex (particularly between
| teen girls and older men). More important factors,
| however, are historical and contemporary patterns of
| urban/rural migration and long-distance transit networks.
| The distinctive forms of cyclical migration created by
| the shape of the mining industry in apartheid South
| Africa are the largest reason that the pandemic is so
| much worse in that region than anywhere else on the
| continent.
|
| Research is pretty clear that Africans understand that
| condoms work to prevent HIV transmission - there have now
| been decades of public education campaigns on the
| subject. That doesn't mean they are always used, of
| course, but it's not a knowledge problem.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Is there not an issue of "dry sex", where men prefer
| unlubricated partners which without protection can
| contribute to a greater likelihood of transmission?
| umvi wrote:
| I don't think it's particularly helpful to "yikes"
| everything, because I'm not intending to offend, be
| racist, etc.
|
| I admit I am not an expert. I formed an opinion after
| scanning the official wiki on the topic
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_Africa) which
| says things like: "High-risk behavioral patterns are
| largely responsible for the significantly greater spread
| of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa than in other parts of
| the world. Chief among these are the traditionally
| liberal attitudes espoused by many communities inhabiting
| the subcontinent toward multiple sexual partners and pre-
| marital and outside marriage sexual activity." and don't
| mention anything about migration patterns being the more
| important factors.
|
| So if this is actually your field of study, it would be
| helpful if the wikipedia article were updated with the
| latest research.
| rovolo wrote:
| It's okay, everyone expresses an ignorant opinion at some
| point. We aren't born knowing everything and we have to
| keep learning as the world changes. What's important is
| that we recognize that we can put a foot in our mouth and
| offend people without knowing it. But, it's important to
| accept and digest feedback. The feedback can be bad or
| good but it should at least be considered, and hearing
| "yikes" is pretty mild all things considered.
|
| That said, I really think you should reflect on how much
| research you did (read a wikipedia page) before stating
| that Africa's high HIV rates compared to the rest of the
| world are due to "a culture of rape/unprotected sex" or
| quack-medicine. (Also, I don't see "rape" anywhere on the
| wiki article you linked.)
| umvi wrote:
| > That said, I really think you should reflect on how
| much research you did (read a wikipedia page) before
| stating that Africa's high HIV rates compared to the rest
| of the world are due to "a culture of rape/unprotected
| sex" or quack-medicine.
|
| I never stated those things authoritatively. I threw them
| out as potential example factors because those were
| things I saw during my brief wikipedia foray.
|
| > (Also, I don't see "rape" anywhere on the wiki article
| you linked.)
|
| Yeah because it wasn't on that page but a related page:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_cleansing_myth
| TMWNN wrote:
| >But to the point: the major driver of the early
| explosion of HIV on the continent was almost certainly
| large-scale vaccination and medical treatment campaigns
| by colonial governments, which injected staggering
| numbers of people in rural areas without adequate
| disinfection of needles.
|
| Colonial governments were mostly out of Africa after the
| 1960s.
|
| >In the present, the sociological drivers of HIV spread
| do include rates of nonconsensual sex (particularly
| between teen girls and older men). More important
| factors, however, are historical and contemporary
| patterns of urban/rural migration and long-distance
| transit networks. The distinctive forms of cyclical
| migration created by the shape of the mining industry in
| apartheid South Africa are the largest reason that the
| pandemic is so much worse in that region than anywhere
| else on the continent.
|
| That's being very disingenuous. What makes periodic
| migration by miners in South Africa different from large-
| scale worker migrations elsewhere in the world? Mexican
| farm workers to the US, half of China, or for that matter
| Canadian, Russian, and Australian miners, or oil-rig
| workers everywhere. It's not so much the migration
| patterns, but what the migrants do (or don't do) when
| "back home".
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| I will tell you at right now even if it has a recommendation
| for all people many will not in first world. HIV still is "gay
| disease" to most thinking and many will not want to admit risk
| of getting it. This is largest problem to solve if you are
| wanting to remove HIV from population. I think maybe best focus
| are bi sexuals, they are representing "cross over point" from
| gay population into straights where it maybe can spread more in
| future.
| ddingus wrote:
| Indeed. There are people wanting there to be a gay disease,
| and may actually oppose research to preserve what they see as
| a natural form of personal judgment.
| throw3849 wrote:
| It goes both ways. Some people also see HIV as part of "gay
| culture" and want to protect it as such. For example
| bugchasing or reduction of penalties for HIV spreading.
| ddingus wrote:
| There are multiple ways actually. This is not a tit for
| tat kind of thing.
|
| No one I know, who are gay or otherwise just not a normie
| in these things, would want, or have expressed HIV
| something needing to be preserved, continuing to exist
| and do the great harm in this world that it does.
|
| Maybe you do. That just has not been my experience.
| ddingus wrote:
| One would also think of confusion in people as a shared risk
| regardless of where any of us may be. Despite best efforts,
| everyone has a risk unless they are inactive.
| grumblenum wrote:
| That depends. Do senior CDC or NIH staff stand to collect
| patent royalties on its administration? The former (and
| probably informally mandatory). If not, then the latter. Given
| Stephane Bancel's and others' recent trading, then I wouldn't
| bank on this one being a winner.
| hannob wrote:
| These aren't really the questions to be asked when they just
| started with a first trial.
|
| If it's 99% effective and has close to zero sideeffects that's
| very different from 60% effective and significant sideeffects.
| In both cases there are probably some people you'd recommend it
| to, but in the first case you may just recommend it to
| everyone, in the second case probably not.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Given that it requires sexual contact to contract, I bet we
| could vaccinate a small portion of high risk people and
| effectively eradicate the disease entirely, without ever
| needing to vaccinate everyone.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| Too bad it doesn't require sexual contact to contract.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| > vaccinate a small portion of high risk people and
| effectively eradicate the disease
|
| You could remove it as an endemic disease in the US and
| Europe. In places like South Africa where a third of the
| population is infected, nothing less that a blanket
| vaccination campaign would work.
|
| (And of course it is not easy to find out who the high risk
| people are when both HIV and sexual promiscuity are
| stigmatised, so you might need to vaccinate everyone anyway
| to avoid costly errors...)
| eplanit wrote:
| Given the new mindset that's forming, maybe this vaccine should
| be required. /s
|
| Sarcasm aside, I'd be curious to know if there's anyone who
| wants to require Covid vaccinations, but to let ones like this
| remain voluntary.
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| I think it will be rolled out to those most at risk at first,
| including those who are already infected.
|
| This may actually reduce the HIV infection rate to a large
| degree. Or people don't take the effing vaccine despite the
| benefits. Then yes, probably anybody sexually active should get
| it.
| admiral33 wrote:
| > probably anybody sexually active should get it.
|
| Agree - if we can get rid of HIV we should. I looked at the
| exclusion criteria in the trial and it didn't mention use of
| a prophylactic. Widely available prophylactics have been a
| huge success with preventing HIV, I wonder how that will
| impact the trial.
|
| https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT05001373
| bayesian_horse wrote:
| No, the point is that you could probably extinguish HIV
| with a very low vaccination rate - if the vaccination rate
| in the at-risk population is high enough.
|
| "Anybody taking the vaccine" (not "everybody") will
| actually not eradicate the virus, but rather protect those
| who take the vaccine. Much like now with Covid.
| steve76 wrote:
| Give it only to us, then mutate it to make it go airborne.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Did they make this one in a weekend like they did the Covid
| vaccine?
|
| Luckily I'm monogamous and committed so I don't have to worry
| about catching degenerate diseases.
| Zamicol wrote:
| This would be huge news for Africa.
|
| (I'm always surprised at how many people are generally unaware of
| the rates of HIV in Africa.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_South_Africa)
| [deleted]
| 34679 wrote:
| Go to any website of a mRNA COVID vaccine manufacturer and it
| will plainly state it is not meant to prevent infection. It is
| highly effective, for a period unknown, at preventing the disease
| caused by the infection.
|
| AIDs is the disease caused by an HIV infection. COVID-19 is the
| disease caused by a SARS-COV-2 infection.
| t0rt01se wrote:
| So long Moderna, short condom manufacturers isn't a good idea?
| 34679 wrote:
| HIV/AIDs is a perfect example of why it's dangerous to not
| distinguish between the two. If you are vaccinated and
| exposed to SARS-COV-2, you still have a high risk of
| infection, but because of the vaccine, you have a low risk of
| that infection developing into the disease known as COVID-19.
|
| If a successful mRNA vaccine is developed to prevent AIDs, it
| would be extremely important for the vaccinated to know they
| can still be infected with and spread HIV. It's not any
| different for SARS-COV-2/COVID-19. The talk in this thread
| about an mRNA vaccine eradicating HIV is nonsense.
| t0rt01se wrote:
| I know and I appreciate your effort to educate / warn. But
| you do realize that most of these posts are made by shills
| ?
| jcims wrote:
| Video of the lifecycle of HIV. To me it's absolutely mind-blowing
| to think that this entire process developed on its own, in dark,
| and is mindlessly progressing along so effectively that despite
| all of our technological capability we can barely contain it.
|
| https://vimeo.com/260291607
|
| (also how awesome is the music?)
| jeremycw wrote:
| Sometimes I find it a little depressing that (at least through
| my laymen eyes) we are nearing a technological plateau and that
| more research into physics is unlikely to get us to a world
| describe in traditional science fiction with FTL drives and
| large metal spaceships that can take you from planet to planet.
|
| Then something like this reminds me that if we as a species
| were able to unlock the secrets of bio-chemistry (not sure if
| that's the right term) it would be a game changer unlike any
| seen so far. And the fact that there is a huge corpus of
| evidence out there in the world called "life" proving some of
| the possibilities already gives me hope that while we may never
| have FTL, the future could still be pretty wild.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| >we are nearing a technological plateau and that more
| research into physics is unlikely to get us to a world
| describe in traditional science fiction with FTL drives and
| large metal spaceships that can take you from planet to
| planet.
|
| strange to me how nobody questions why beavers only make
| damns a certain size, birds only make nests and don't go
| beyond that in complexity.
|
| So many people seem blind to the idea that humans might be
| near their intellectual limit as a species and assume we will
| just keep progressing technologically. For all we know it's
| possible we hit a brick wall in terms of progress. Average
| human struggles with calculus, what if there was a species
| that could do advanced math as easily as we do 2 + 2?
|
| Seems the limit for human advancement is tied to rate of
| learning, life span, and general cognitive ability. If you
| want more advanced tech you need to focus on those problems
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Average humans struggle with calculus because we have
| instructed average humans that calculus is hard. If we
| taught it to 12 year olds as a routine matter, average 12
| year olds would know calculus.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| You can teach smart (not average) 12 year olds the basic
| rules how to compute derivation or primitive function,
| but I doubt they are capable of distinguishing between,
| say, continuous and uniformly continuous function. Which
| is actually pretty important when trying to reason your
| way around calculus.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Life span is hardly a limiting factor. It is known that
| most scientific breakthroughs were made by people in their
| twenties-early thirties.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| what if you could extend that academic "prime" by 30
| years or longer?
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| It would do little, I think. Not because people get less
| smart with age, but because with years they establish
| themselves in their field, and become more conservative
| and less willing to shake the status quo.
| mr-wendel wrote:
| I love the analogy, but I think it flawed: the limits are
| practical and excess just adds risk.
|
| On the flip side, nothing seems more exemplified by
| humanity than a zeal for doing a thing as big and grandiose
| as possible: for curiosity, for business, for art, or just
| for sheer vanity.
|
| I don't think we've seen how far those will take us yet,
| even w/o improvements to the bottlenecks you suggest. I do
| agree that those "meta" fields matter and will make a huge
| difference.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > strange to me how nobody questions why beavers only make
| damns a certain size, birds only make nests and don't go
| beyond that in complexity.
|
| Unlike humans, beavers and most species of birds don't work
| cooperatively, which means they can't separate the workload
| needed for survival (e.g. one group hunts, one group builds
| dams, one group does childcare).
| colordrops wrote:
| I normally buy into this sort of logic, but there's a
| fundamental difference. We experience the world in a way
| that recognizes beavers' and birds' limits, whereas they do
| not. We can modify ourselves and our environment in a way
| and changes our limits. Perhaps if the world is a
| simulation, then there are hard limits, as we are but bits
| in a computer so to speak, but even then it's not certain -
| we could become aware of the world outside the simulation
| and learn to manipulate it thought I/O mechanisms.
| gugagore wrote:
| > strange to me how nobody questions why beavers only make
| damns a certain size, birds only make nests and don't go
| beyond that in complexity.
|
| Probably because beavers and birds have made dams and nests
| the same way for the past 100 years, whereas humans in the
| same time have developed a bunch of tools and can
| specialize and distribute the fruits of their expertise
| without requiring others to be experts themselves.
|
| Perhaps it's not true that on average we know more e.g.
| math now than we did 100 years ago, because there are so
| many more people. I believe we are nonetheless much better
| at teaching and learning now.
|
| It's more than possible that all of this growth will be our
| downfall, and that that will regulate our growth, however.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| > ...strange to me how nobody questions why beavers only
| make damns a certain size, birds only make nests and don't
| go beyond that in complexity.
|
| Isn't most of this kind of just a matter of fitness, same
| as why birds become flightless on islands where there are
| no predators which demand flight to escape from? Basically,
| building anything more than a minimally-viable nest or a
| dam requires using energy that could be invested elsewhere
| to greater evolutionary advantage.
|
| Humans have gone beyond because for as long as we can
| remember, we've always had vast, vast surpluses of energy,
| initially through the cooking of meat and agriculture, then
| via animal labour, and then finally via fossil fuels.
| joshmarlow wrote:
| I've often wondered about this. My suspicion is that there
| is a limit to the complexity of mental models that humans
| can fluently manipulate and I think we're starting to bump
| into it in some cases.
|
| I think we will eventually need a paradigm shift from
| science being built around human grokable models (e=mc^2)
| to external human manipulatable models (ie, large scale
| machine derived models that we can't actually grok but can
| use for analysis and engineering). I think we're already
| starting to see this - there are already mathematical
| proofs that are so large and complex (in the GB range) that
| they had to be found by automation and only other
| automation can verify them.
| majewsky wrote:
| > we are nearing a technological plateau
|
| Max Planck was famously discouraged from studying physics by
| one of his professors because "in this field, almost
| everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to
| fill a few holes." [1]
|
| Having studied physics myself, my opinion is that we may very
| well be at a similar point right now. The big advancements of
| the last century in physics (quantum theory, relativity,
| chaos theory, etc.) brought us an era of swift and sweeping
| technological progress, and now the easy fruit seems to have
| been plucked. But there are still plenty of known unknowns,
| dark matter and dark energy being perhaps the most prominent
| one. Who knows what unknown unknowns are hiding behind those
| known unknowns?
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_von_Jolly
| [deleted]
| lkbm wrote:
| Lord Kelvin famously said there were just two "clouds" in
| left to physics--two mysteries remaining to explain. Those
| two mysteries let to relativity and quantum mechanics.
|
| There's also this famous quote that is frequently mis-
| attributed to Kelvin: "There is nothing new to be
| discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and
| more precise measurement".[0] (I'm not sure who actually
| said it.)
|
| [0] https://www.quora.com/Which-19th-century-physicist-
| famously-...
| nn3 wrote:
| Dark matter seems like a gigantic hole. Either we don't
| know what most of the cosmos is made of, or there is a
| problem with general relativity.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Gravity. Still the biggest unknown.
| billti wrote:
| Do we even have a total understanding of light, or
| electricity? (I may be wrong, but I thought there were
| still some pretty fundamental unknowns)
| z3t4 wrote:
| To summarize: we know how to smash two particles
| together, but not much about what they are made of.
| Replace particles with stones and bones. 10000 years of
| science progress and we are still smashing things. With
| the occasional lab accident like discovering that mold
| kills bacteria.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Maybe at a certain point "what they are made of" ceases
| to be a meaningful question.
| XCSme wrote:
| It depends on what you mean by "understanding". We can
| explain using a specific set of rules how something
| works. It doesn't mean that those rules are the best way
| to explain it or that they are even correct.
|
| For example, we could explain that electricity works
| because of how electrons move, which would be correct
| from our point of view, but if we find out that we were
| living in a simulation, then the explanation would be
| that this is how "electricity" was coded to behave.
|
| Also, usually in physics a formula is thought to be
| correct until some new laws/rules are found, then the
| formula is updated by adding some extra terms and then
| again thought to be correct.
| gmadsen wrote:
| Quantum electrodynamics is the most precise and accurate
| theory ever created. So not sure what you mean exactly by
| understand.
| boringg wrote:
| Time. We still don't think about time properly - there are
| likely some huge technological gains if we can unlock time
| in relation to physics (not in terms of sci fi time
| traveling).
| koheripbal wrote:
| Along the same lines, FTL won't be needed if we merge
| with technology and live indefinitely long.
|
| One human lifespan will be seen as a trivial amount of
| time to the next step of humanity.
| beeboop wrote:
| This isn't entirely accurate. We will not be able to
| visit the vast majority of the universe even given
| infinite time if we are not able to travel faster than
| light. Like 99.9999999% of the universe is unreachable
| without FTL, even without time constraints.
|
| And at some point we also don't have infinite time - we
| will have heat death of the universe at some point too.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/05/12/t
| he-...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Having studied physics myself, my opinion is that we may
| very well be at a similar point right now.
|
| We're not anywhere near a technological plateau, we just
| lost track on funding. Until the fall of the Soviet Union,
| the US invested a _lot_ of money in foundational research,
| often not even caring if it would prove useful or possible,
| and with big enough money behind it that people could plan
| careers.
|
| These days, researchers have to waste half their working
| time to chasing the few grants that are still available,
| and forget about a stable career, job security or enough
| work-life balance to found a family.
| xtracto wrote:
| It's really too sad ... I (PhD on CompSci) could helping
| on the research of something groundbreaking for humanity
| instead of "maximizing shareholder profits". But Academia
| basically sucks in its current state, and in my country
| there is less than 0 capabilities to do real research.
| lkbm wrote:
| I do want us to pour money into foundational research,
| but form an outsider's perspective, it does seem like a
| lot of it does require increasingly large capital costs
| with things like the LHC, and feels all so theoretical.
|
| I think it's worth every penny, but at first glance it
| feels incredibly abstract and disconnected from practical
| application, as well as expensive. (Though, to be honest,
| I just looked up the LHC cost and $9Bn USD doesn't feel
| expensive. I was expected it to come up in the hundreds
| of billions.)
| mpweiher wrote:
| There's also the minor issue that probably our two best
| physical theories, quantum dynamics and general relativity,
| are incompatible.
|
| So they can't both be right.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/04/relativity-
| quan...
| fidesomnes wrote:
| large metal spaceships that can take you from planet to
| planet.
|
| wtf are you talking about? SpaceX is going to Mars in 3 years
| and is designed to go past it with extra fuel transport
| ships.
| kiba wrote:
| _Sometimes I find it a little depressing that (at least
| through my laymen eyes) we are nearing a technological
| plateau and that more research into physics is unlikely to
| get us to a world describe in traditional science fiction
| with FTL drives and large metal spaceships that can take you
| from planet to planet._
|
| FTL drive is not needed; people think too small.
| dsign wrote:
| That's absolutely true, but I wonder what it will take to
| take that point home for everybody.
| ddingus wrote:
| The first big project. After that there will be movies
| explanations stories expectations all that stuff. And to
| some degree it's already out there. We have those things
| now related to travel that's not faster than light.
|
| And tell somebody put something together for real, FPL is
| just a whole lot more sexy.
| Counterpointv wrote:
| As a counter point, here is Chamath talking about the advent
| of room temperature superconductors in 20 to 30 years
|
| https://streamable.com/ku3orn
| whimsicalism wrote:
| We haven't even developed normal pressure room temperature
| superconductivity, let alone mass manufacture.
|
| Also, why should I privilege what Chamath has to say on
| this subject more than any random commentator?
| api wrote:
| If we can get good enough at bioengineering, a 50,000 year
| flight to another star using conventional propulsion might
| not be such a big deal.
|
| The seeming requirement of FTL to explore the universe is
| 100% a function of our short life span. If we can't make
| spacecraft go faster we have to make ourselves last longer.
| [deleted]
| Beldin wrote:
| We'll also have to take food for the whole duration, or
| develop a taste for hydrogen atoms alongside a functioning
| Bussard ramjet.
|
| Oh, the rocket equation really doesn't like option 1.
|
| (Hypothesis: any process we can devise to turn hydrogen
| into sustenance will be orders of magnitude less efficient
| than using it as propellant.)
| api wrote:
| Food can be recycled pretty effectively, and if were that
| good at biotech I assume we could improve on the current
| state of the art.
|
| They already recycle water very effectively on the ISS.
| It's the machine that "turns yesterday's coffee into
| today's coffee."
|
| Of course if we were that good at biotech we could
| probably hibernate a good chunk of the flight time too.
| Might be necessary to wake up periodically to reset the
| body, but you could probably hibernate most of the
| duration. Maybe you'd do it with some kind of weird
| circadian cycle with extremely elongated sleep periods,
| sleeping like 10X-100X as long as you are awake. During
| each wake period you check to make sure everything is
| working properly.
|
| You would not need a Bussard ramjet for the long duration
| flights I'm thinking of. A nuclear thermal rocket could
| get you a good deal past solar system escape velocity.
| Nuclear pulse propulsion could get you up to at least
| single digit percentages of the speed of light if you
| didn't mind a little boom-boom. Then you just cruse along
| on an interstellar transfer orbit until you do a retro-
| burn to enter the destination star system a few tens of
| thousands of years later. These are all technologies that
| are already feasible at least on paper. No new physics is
| needed.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| We would only small amounts of food, if we could
| efficiently recycle it. Right now, we use plants/animals
| and solar energy to upcycle our waste products into food.
| However, there are no physical reasons that we couldn't
| use electricity and managed bioreactors to do that
| instead.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I don't agree.
|
| There is so much to learn about the world around us without
| even hitting physics limits.
|
| And then so much to do with that knowledge.
|
| I am not worried we will run out of problems to solve.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Disagree that we are reaching a technical plateau at all.
| Maybe in some parts of particle and AMO physics, but
| cosmology continues to advance and we are continuing to learn
| a lot.
| ianai wrote:
| It might help if we had literature fleshing out some ideas of
| how alternatives could work. Ie how we could become a species
| more in harmony with a large biosphere - ala Jim Henson's
| Dark Crystal. Though it'd have to be a human way of life.
| specialist wrote:
| > _a species more in harmony with a large biosphere_
|
| Garden Earth.
|
| The biggest cultural change for attaining "sustainability"
| is metaphoric, from extraction to management. Maybe
| somewhat ironically, proponents should go all Old
| Testament. Stewards of the Earth and so forth.
|
| Many of our prior cultures had at least some form of this.
| I don't know when or why we stopped being so. Maybe due to
| the Enlightenment and then Industrialization.
|
| I vividly remember reading Rene Descartes as a kid and
| being shocked by his violent language and metaphors. Stuff
| like "We must wrest Nature's secrets and make her submit to
| our will" (paraphrasing, from memory).
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "we are nearing a technological plateau"
|
| Well, using that analogy, I would say, it took us indeed
| great efforts to reach it, but now we have vast land to
| colonize - meaning applying all that groundbreaking research
| into everything. There are so many more technologies
| avaiable, than just what you can buy on the market.
|
| Sci-Fi is very possible.
|
| edit: oh and about FTL:
|
| I know I do not really understand quantum physics and co. but
| I think I understand, that no one really understands it yet -
| so I do not expect FTL in my lifetime, but I would not rule
| it out.
| vdqtp3 wrote:
| I've read a couple scifi stories about sophisticated alien
| civilizations with FTL drives who were then shocked when they
| found out humans were just folding space and had
| instantaneous travel. HFY! Obviously it's fiction, and who
| knows if it'll ever happen or if it's possible - but my point
| is that we don't know what we don't know, and it could be way
| cooler than we can even imagine.
| specialist wrote:
| We'll reach the stars thru life sciences. Future humans will
| become space and time adapted. Hardened against radiation.
| Metabolism so slow that years will feel like minutes.
|
| The future _will be_ pretty wild.
| vidarh wrote:
| Instantly made me think of Cordwainer Smith. In particular
| "Scanners live in vain", but many of his stories deal with
| adaptations to space.
| thatcat wrote:
| I'm not so sure that is the case, simply for economic and
| social reasons. Climate change is a much more tractable and
| immediate problem, yet technological developments and their
| implementations still seem to be moving too slowly to
| matter at the moment.
| specialist wrote:
| It seems to older me that punctuated equilibrium is some
| kind of natural law.
|
| Incremental progress may be ideal. Alas, whatever forces
| that may be, trying to preserve the current equilibrium,
| fight off change. Until the compulsion to change
| overwhelms the system.
|
| Lather, rinse, repeat.
|
| So when humanity finally goes carbon negative, it'll be
| despite the opposition, because they couldn't defend the
| status quo any longer. Then all that bottled up change
| will be like a dam bursting.
|
| Hopefully it'll happen sooner than later.
| Stupulous wrote:
| Solar has dropped 50-75% in cost in the last decade, and
| accounts for 10x more wattage. Battery capacity has
| doubled in that time. Wind energy capacity has doubled.
| Geothermal capacity is 1.5x. Electric cars are 4x more
| common than they were 5 years ago. Carbon sequestration
| has advanced at a technological level, although
| production hasn't seen serious advances (probably because
| renewable energy produces a profitable resource, while
| sequestering just exchanges money for fighting climate
| change).
|
| If that's not enough to make a difference, it's because
| we started too late and the problem is too large, not
| because technological development is too slow.
| Admittedly, nuclear could have done the job already, and
| the issue there is social.
|
| If human lifespan technology moved at half the climate
| change technology speed, we'd have 25 extra years per
| decade and be effectively immortal today.
| croes wrote:
| What if this is just not possible?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| We can send persons without sending humans. With a good
| enough brain-computer interface we should be able to
| duplicate our brain contents to a digital medium, which
| we know _can_ travel to interstellar space and beyond
| unionpivo wrote:
| Complex computers break down too. It might well be true
| that any computer capable of approximated human
| intelligence is even more fragile than normal human.
|
| I don't think we are capable building computer system
| (and that includes power system for running it) right now
| that would last few hundred years without any
| maintenance, even here on planet.
|
| Or it would at least be very non trivial to build it
| cblconfederate wrote:
| we currently have at least 2 functioning computers in
| interstellar space that are 44 years old. I think we are
| already at a point that we can make centuries-lasting
| computers
| specialist wrote:
| I definitely want to believe. Then we can explore other
| galaxies.
|
| But I still can't even imagine what consciousness is.
|
| Maybe we'll create new intelligences, punt on the
| consciousness question, and delegate the task to them.
| 3520 wrote:
| I wonder if people will view it as sufficient that a
| digital copy of 'them' (or at least something identical
| to them at the point of copying) exists, despite their
| original biological minds eventually perishing.
|
| It excites me to think about discovering the origin of
| our consciousness and being able to transfer that.
| croes wrote:
| We are far away from such an interface and space travel
| takes still far too long. When the first probe reaches
| another galaxy mankind is probably already gone or we are
| back in post war dark ages.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| > space travel takes still far too long.
|
| Who cares about humans, as a traveling satellite i will
| have all the time in the universe, literally
| croes wrote:
| And then? What the purpose of a conscience at a faraway
| planet? Something like We Are Legion (We Are Bob)?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| whats the purpose of conscience in this planet? purpose
| is not necessary, though one could say discovery is a
| purpose, boldly go where no man has gone before
| specialist wrote:
| Ya, that'd suck. But consider. Tardigrades are pretty
| tough. And elephants have x10 more cancer fighting genes
| than us apes.
|
| Pretty soon, parents will be picking their kid's eye
| color and temperament. For better or worse. Surely future
| humans will become a great deal hardier than ourselves.
| croes wrote:
| Genetics is complex and we don't even can handle
| complexity in computer programs.
|
| Maybe we can choose eye color, but temperament? Far too
| complex, far too many possible side effects.
|
| Just look what happened of the dream that AI could help
| with Corona
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/30/1030329/machi
| ne-...
| gonzo41 wrote:
| That is a fantastic video. Also, omg biochemistry is just
| staggeringly amazing. Whilst that video is short, the
| information it contains is just staggering when you think of
| the years and years of research that's been done on that virus.
|
| Good luck to Moderna.
| cowboysauce wrote:
| >and is mindlessly progressing along so effectively that
| despite all of our technological capability we can barely
| contain it.
|
| In theory we already have the technology to eliminate HIV.
| People taking PrEP have a >99% reduced chance to catch HIV. The
| drugs used to treat HIV can reduce viral levels in HIV+ people
| to the point that it's impossible for them to transmit it.
| jarpschop wrote:
| Natural selection is a very powerful process.
| mbroncano wrote:
| * given enough time
| pintxo wrote:
| when executed over millions of years
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Much shorter time frames than that are still powerful,
| especially for something like a virus.
| ddingus wrote:
| We may receive that education somewhat directly and
| immediately through covid, and failure to vaccinate
| people.
| est31 wrote:
| Yeah the number of generations is more important than the
| number of years.
| jcims wrote:
| In practice this is what we observe, but the combinatorics
| are so ridiculously large that its hard to understand how
| it works. A very small protein of say 200 amino acid
| residues has 21^200 configurations. If every atom in the
| universe was another universe, and every atom in those
| universes was a universe, you'd still need 10^20 grandpappy
| universes to represent each configuration as a distinct
| atom in the grandchild universe. Given that these
| configurations confer meaningful chemical and mechanical
| utility, sometimes with discontinuities in effect, it's
| really odd to me that it all somehow works.
| hart_russell wrote:
| That video is just insane. The way the HIV virus completely
| hacks the T-cell to become a factory seems akin to a very
| complicated computer hack. It would be elegant if it weren't so
| deadly.
| newbamboo wrote:
| If only we had a Project Warpspeed for AIDS.
| est31 wrote:
| Caused by the initial shock of AIDS, and ongoing activism,
| there has been consistent funding from federal and various
| private sources in development. Thanks to these efforts,
| antiretrovirals are widely available, making AIDS a "solved"
| problem in the sense that you can prevent AIDS onset
| indefinitely with the right medication.
|
| Right now, the problem is more about actually accessing the
| people who might have HIV, getting them to test themselves
| regularly, and then giving them access to HIV medication if
| they are positive. Often these people are on the fringes of
| society. A vaccine would be an ideal tool to reach these
| people than asking them to get tested regularly.
|
| HIV is a way harder virus to develop a vaccine for than SARS-
| CoV-2. For starters, once you have it, HIV is way more
| dangerous. Most people with covid don't need medical
| attention at all, they can deal with it themselves.
| Meanwhile, someone infected with HIV is basically sentenced
| to death in a couple of years if they aren't medicated (>90%
| mortality rate). The current covid pandemic is so severe
| because covid spreads so much better than HIV does. Our
| immune system can't really deal with HIV in a way that we
| survive the encounter. With SARS-CoV-2 you only need to
| slightly nudge the immune system into the right direction.
| That's a way easier task.
|
| HIV also has an immensely large mutation rate. The genetic
| diversity in a single individual is larger than the genetic
| diversity of one entire yearly influenza outbreak. So you
| need to come up with defenses that help against a gigantic
| set of HIV viruses. We still need to vaccinate people yearly
| with an influenza shot, because we can't create universal
| influenza vaccines yet. It's an open problem similar to how a
| HIV vaccine is an open problem.
|
| TLDR: There is already something like warp speed for HIV, but
| we were mostly lucky that it was so easy to come up with a
| covid vaccine.
| sterlind wrote:
| apparently HAART sort of ages people's organs, according to
| patients' testimonials. that's better than dying of AIDS
| but still not ideal.
|
| also, doesn't your immune system lose like 30% of its
| T-cells after you seroconvert, but prior to developing
| AIDS? iirc that's why HIV+ people are considered
| immunocompromised regardless of viral load.
| est31 wrote:
| Yeah, HAART is not side effect free, but one has come a
| long way from the initial retrovirals which had way more
| severe side effects.
|
| As for the CD4+ T cells, you are right that their numbers
| decrease before it's called AIDS. In some individuals the
| counts can successfully recover to "normal" levels.
| According to studies, it depends on how early you start
| treatment.
|
| https://www.aidsmap.com/news/dec-2018/cd4-count-recovery-
| fre...
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/mi201558
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Most in congress didn't think they would be impacted by AIDS.
| bluGill wrote:
| Most won't be. HIV spreads by things that most in congress
| are unlikely to take part in. (sharing needles). While
| there are a lot of sex scandals in congress, the form of
| those activities is mostly low risk (low odds that the
| partner has HIV, and sex in a form that makes spread
| unlikely).
|
| Of course the above is about odds. Individual exceptions do
| not prove me wrong.
|
| That doesn't mean HIV isn't horrible. It also doesn't mean
| congress is right for the right reasons.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Congress depends on the blood supply more than average,
| but the risk to the blood supply was largely ignored
| because AIDS was supposed to be a homosexual/drug user
| disease in their minds.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| And until Congress changed parties in 2021, most didn't
| think they'd be impacted by COVID.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That's what they said, but I want to know their
| vaccination records.
| epistasis wrote:
| The history of HIV research has had a lot of valiant work. We
| have had several vaccine attempts in the past, that have all
| been unsuccessful.
|
| And despite President-level dismissal of HIV/AIDS at the
| time, significant resources were devoted to it in the 80s,
| such that even though we didn't make huge progress against
| HIV at the time, the research on HIV progressed the rest of
| the field.
|
| And a lot of our anti-viral drugs have come out of HIV
| research as well.
|
| A modern Project Warpspeed probably wouldn't be quite as
| successful as a Covid19 Warpspeed, because a lot of the first
| ideas have already been attempted. But with the new sorts of
| designs that mRNA vaccines allow, there's a lot more that's
| possible now.
| jonplackett wrote:
| It makes you question the way we call animals / humans
| 'complex' life when you see how insanely intricate what happens
| on such a tiny scale even in something as small as a virus.
| pjc50 wrote:
| We are then "more complex": we contain multitudes, some of
| which (gut bacteria, mitochondria, gametes) look like
| entirely separate life forms of their own.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I guess we're many, many orders of magnitude more complex.
|
| I just think it's wrong to call tiny 'simple' life, just
| because we are so insanely complex.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Good luck finding anything that still seems "simple" when
| you really look towards understanding how it works rather
| than what it results in. Simple and complex always have
| to be relative to other things as nothing is absolutely
| "simple" e.g. even a single atom is an extraordinarily
| complicated environment which spans many textbooks and
| degrees worth of interactions and understandings. To say
| everything is just complex to more super duper extra
| complex is to just replace the sound of "simple" with the
| sound of "complex" yet have it mean the exact same thing
| and use it in the exact same way.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| ? Animals contain millions of similarly complex processes
| within them, that is what makes them 'complex' compared to a
| simple virus.
| SevenSigs wrote:
| For some reason, it reminds me of the passion flower:
| https://i.imgur.com/Efy2Iq4.png
| _trampeltier wrote:
| Great video! If you wonder, how we know things look like this,
| here is a talk about it: 34C3 - Free Electron Lasers
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKqof77pKBc
| secondcoming wrote:
| That was awesome. What a great presenter. Thanks
| callmeal wrote:
| >To me it's absolutely mind-blowing to think that this entire
| process developed on its own, in dark,
|
| Richard Dawkins has a very good explanation for this in The
| Blind Watchmaker.
|
| >and is mindlessly progressing along so effectively that
| despite all of our technological capability we can barely
| contain it.
|
| There's technological capability and America's punishment
| fetish because people who get aids "deserve it". If we really
| wanted to, we would have had one.
| AlexanderTheGr8 wrote:
| I haven't read the book. Can you please summarize Richard
| Dawkins's explanation? I am quite curious how something this
| complex can be generated by nature.
| rlopezcc wrote:
| Trigger warning: Trypophobia
| dynamite-ready wrote:
| Is HIV uniquely sophisticated, or are there other viruses out
| in the wild like this?
| wayoutthere wrote:
| Thank goodness. I'm happy PrEP exists, but it gave me intense
| nausea for weeks before I couldn't do it anymore. I would love to
| be able to date and not have to worry about HIV (I'm a trans
| woman who dates men, most of whom are bisexual). Not having to
| take another horse pill daily would be great too.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| So you're a homosexual male who dates other homosexual and
| bisexual males. Yeah, you're the highest risk group.
| sonicggg wrote:
| You know condoms are a thing, right?
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Condoms take away 50% of the pleasure so I'd understand
| anyone who, in heat of the moment, would judge poorly and do
| it unprotected. Also, while rare, condoms, do break.
|
| I'd say, from sexual perspective, the better protection is to
| have a long term partner (not talking about marriage here).
|
| Also you can get HIV from other sources than sexual
| intercourse too, so having a vaccine that is proved by
| medical science is a huge relief.
|
| Here is personal story of mine: Last year, while vacationing,
| I was walking on the beach and I felt a slight sting and when
| I looked down a hypodermic needle was piercing my finger.
| Took it up and barely a single drop of blood formed, so the
| penetration barely went below the skin but that was enough to
| make me feel afraid. After 3 weeks took the test, found out I
| was HIV negative and talked with the doctor. She said that
| salty water is great at dismantling DNA/RNA and asked me what
| the needle looked like. It was all clean except for the tip
| where my blood was. Told me to not worry, just test again in
| 6 months which I did and for my great relief I was still HIV
| negative. Nevertheless during this entire time, in the back
| of my head black thoughts were daily there, worrying about
| "what if".
| wayoutthere wrote:
| You know that most straight cis people don't use them either,
| right? Most women in my circles just have an IUD.
| elromulous wrote:
| Can someone with a better understanding talk about the specifics
| of how/why a vaccine like this might end up not being effective
| against HIV (i.e. what makes HIV so good at evading our efforts)?
| I suspect we've been in this boat many times in the past 40
| years: a promising cure is just around the corner.
| vibrio wrote:
| Two half-baked comments off the top of my head: -HIV targets,
| infects and cripples the immune system. While CoV2 infects and
| replicated aggressively, causing inflammation and fibrosis, HIV
| goes in, gets a foothold, hides and lingers like an insurgent,
| slowly exhausting the immune system. Very different approaches
| and how they are impacted by vaccines may be very different.
|
| -Convincing people to take the vaccine would be hard. Look how
| hard it is with a respiratory pandemic. It's "easy" to be non-
| high risk for HIV and people probably believe they can't get
| it, but people seem to continue getting it.
| throwaway59553 wrote:
| Beyond mother-to-child transmission, and some negligent medical
| malpractice in let's say a blood transfusion, how do you even get
| HIV, in the developed world?
|
| I can understand high rates of infection in the most illiterate
| places of the world, but is it too much to ask certain
| demographics to not have sex with random strangers in some toilet
| of some gas station or bath house?
| ionwake wrote:
| My friend had a HIV vaccine about 5 years from some London kings
| college trial - has always been fine. On a related coincidence I
| had the moderna vaccine today.
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