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Comment by caeril | Hacker News Reader

Can someone versed in immunology explain to me why both this and the Pfizer vaccines are both borderline-experimental mRNA vaccines (versus attenuated or recombinant)?

I understand that bog-standard protein vaccines don't protect much beyond 3-6 months, but why didn't we pump out tons of S1/S2, N, and E protein vaccines the second this virus was sequenced? At least it would have been better than nothing, and the safety issues are very well known.

I'm not anti-vax, by any means. Just trying to understand why we chose this path rather than tried-and-true. I'm sure plenty of people would be a lot less conspiracy-minded if the vaccine was just a run of the mill recombinant protein particle one, even if we needed boosters 2-3x a year.

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"I'm sure plenty of people would be a lot less conspiracy-minded"

I think that is a ridiculous statement. The conspiracy-minded folks will be that way regardless of objective reality.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but I feel like you’re slightly wilfully misunderstanding what he’s saying there.

He’s not saying that it will make people less inclined towards believing conspiracies, he’s saying that people will be less likely to believe that this thing specifically is a conspiracy

>why didn't we pump out tons of S1/S2, N, and E protein vaccines the second this virus was sequenced?

My understanding was that "traditional" types of vaccines are slower to make and get approval for, for various biological reasons.

mRNA vaccines are faster to develop, despite being newer technology.

This video explains the basics and has a list of citations in the description: https://youtu.be/S1l6BchEoZM

It is sad that you have to defend yourself by saying “I’m not anti-vax”. Anti-vaxxers are rightly criticized for denying the overwhelming decades of evidence that the standard repertoire of vaccines is safe.

That’s totally different than questioning new, unproven vaccines, especially when no vaccine of the same type has ever been widely deployed. There are very legitimate concerns about genetic vaccines. And for vast swaths of the population, getting covid might be less risky than getting this vaccine.

I keep hearing similar arguments. What are the concerns specifically?

I think a big one is that there is simply no long-term data available pertaining to injecting an agent that directly modifies your DNA, as opposed to triggering your body's established process to make such a change itself.

> I'm sure plenty of people would be a lot less conspiracy-minded if the vaccine was just a run of the mill recombinant protein particle one, even if we needed boosters 2-3x a year.

I’d be surprised if it made a difference. Most people, myself included, have literally no idea what the relevant differences are between a protein vaccine and an mRNA vaccine (I’ll look them up after writing this, of course), let alone what S1/S2/N/E protein vaccines are.

I trust the medical establishment for much the same reason I trust our civilization in general, but people like my mum who thought they knew better are unlikely to start trusting them regardless of the names of the technical methods involved.

This path is faster and cheaper.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamhaseltine/2020/09/23/cov...

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