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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

... is a pretty decent indicator in this case.

Vaccines are not the stock market. No one doubts gravity because "past performance is not indicative of future results".

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> Vaccines are not the stock market

How many genetically engineered adenovirus vaccines have there been before?

The vaccines that are your prior are typically attenuated or inactivated virus.

Majorly different category, we are in untreaded space (I'm still planning on getting one)

You realize attenuated virusues are also genetically modified? Just via artificial selection.

At least one for Ebola, IIRC.

so, no long-term studies.

The Ebola vaccine in question has been tested in humans since 2015. How long-term are you looking for?

more than 5 years? Cancer risk, etc. is probably something decadal in scope.

Biology doesn't work like that. Certainly not for replication-deficient adenoviruses used by AZ, Gamaleya and J&J.

Plenty of replication deficient things cause cancer, for example asbestos or igf-1. I highly doubt you can rule out accidental crosstalk between elicited immune antibodies and every oncogenic human receptor.

Apparently there were studies on adenovirus 5 vector vaccines against HIV in 2007. The vaccine was not successful, but I cannot find any data on long-term adverse effects.

Past success is an invalid indicator on the stock market as well

mRNA vaccines are a new way to cause the body to develop an immune response - it's not using dead/deactivated tissue of the virus that the body detects and then its holistic system develops a response to. From my current understanding with this new type of vaccine it's skipping step(s), bypassing mechanisms, that leads to the body producing something that targets the "spike" of the virus - basically making it inoperable.

I don't think we know long-term how this may impact the immune system: does bypassing certain systems/mechanisms cause other problems with future immune response?

It took how long for us to realize as common sense that use of antibiotics allows superbugs to more likely evolve?

I don’t think gravity and medical intervention risk and uncertainty are in the same domain. I could be wrong.

I'm suggesting you apply the same cross-domain skepticism to your adage that comes from the financial domain.

The situation here is closer to financial domain than the law of gravity failing.

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