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Comment by h_anna_h | Hacker News Reader

Is there an open source covid vaccine? One that publishes the commented mRNA code for example. I don't use proprietary software on my computer so the notion that I would inject some in my body seems weird to me.

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I want to ask. You don't eat by proprietary recipes made food and drinks too?

Eating something is different to putting it directly in your blood. Kinda like the difference between running a program as an unprivileged user and as root. Regarding your question I avoid them, and it is surprisingly easy to do so, most chefs seemed happy to share their recipes with me. As for drinks the ones that I drink tend to be simple (water, carbonated water, alcohol, etc).

Vaccines don't go into your blood. Just into the muscle tissue.

From elsethread: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source...

Sadly there is no gcc for vaccines. Yet.

While I appreciate having healthy doubt, I'm concerned with the amount of people who would say "no" if they were offered a vaccine.

Everyone has been eagerly waiting for a vaccine, but now that it's here, most people don't want it?

Most that were eager will probably go on to use it. I suspect that some were eager so that others would vaccinate and that they themselves would be protected due to "herd immunity" but I doubt that there are many of them. I personally was eager for an open source vaccine, not any vaccine at all. Saying that everyone has been eagerly waiting for a vaccine is not very accurate, after all there are also the antivax people and these that simply do not care.

Serious question: What do you consider an "open source" vaccine? To what degree do the current vaccines not fulfill this? What specific concerns are the result of this difference, beyond principles?

I would say that for a vaccine to be open source there should be exact instructions on how to create it along with a justification for each step, it should list the exact contents of the vaccine (preservatives, etc), as well as any genetic code included (along with a justification for each part of it). In addition it should be legal for someone to create their own vaccines by following said instructions.

The part regarding legality of making your own copies would help with the vaccination of poor regions such as africa, while transparency could be used by researchers in order to find ways to improve it, or to create new vaccines for other viruses, or for students to learn more about it. In addition it would increase the trust of the general public for the vaccine.

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