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Comment by vmception | Hacker News Reader

If you already have an appointment the only debate should be whether you will need an additional third booster shot in the future if the strain in India breaks out and is different enough.

The key thing you should notice about the COVID vaccine detractors is their inability to distinguish between vaccines and the wildly different technology between the different vaccines, alongside their inability acknowledge the geopolitical hurdles for any of their conspiracies. If a German-company made vaccine is part of an insidious plot, then should you get the Oxford one developed in the UK? If Bill Gates is influencing vaccines in some strange scheme, does the conclusion mean you should trust the Russian Sputnik vaccine more instead due to the geopolitical impossibility of a Bill Gates plot being involved? The absurdity basically cancels itself out, just get the shot you are offered.

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So why is there no traditional vaccine? I trust Sinovac. It's inactive virus vaccine, and they ship raw materials[1] to other countries and say "build it yourself" at manufacturers that have no connection to the Chinese government.

Bill Gates on the other hand says these vaccines are too complex and that safety and security issues[2] make it impossible for anyone else to produce these vaccines.

The media keep saying "even mRNA vaccines that are new don't enter the nucleus or alter DNA." Guess which could do that? The viral vector vaccines that have custom DNA run in the nucleus, which then produces the mRNA. This MedCram video[3] explains it better than me. Everything around the messaging for vaccines in mainstream media is so misleading if you look at the science. I don't know how someone couldn't be at least a little suspicious.

I have longcovid btw, I'm not getting the shot. People repeat BS to me like the vaccines will cure longcovid. They offer no proof whatsoever, no plausible method of action, and go off the media narrative how it "could help some people." I'm on longcovid forums, I trust the anecdotal experiences there than anything in the media.

[1] https://en.tempo.co/read/1445856/16-million-sinovac-vaccines... [2] https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/bill-gates-b... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13qT7wLxkvU#t=1m30s

Except that the experience of Chile, and Seychelles in particular is bringing Sinopharm's efficacy into question. I'm very interested in Novavax also but it keeps facing regulatory and production issues.

Both I and my wife had the J&J vaccine a couple months ago. We had a period of about 12, maybe 18 hours of feeling like we had a light case of the flu, and fine since. The J&J and AZ vaccines also use your cells produce spike proteins but do it with a different way (adenovirus vector) than the mRNA vaccines.

I live in Canada so it is age based. I'm guessing it will be either Pfizer or Moderna both of which are mRNA which from my understanding is a form of gene therapy.

My main concern at the moment is: Just as the virus can mutate during it's replicatative phase and produce variants why can't the spiked protien during it's production or the cells producing it mutate also?

If these production cells can mutate or the spiked protiens themselves mutate is it reasonable to assume an autoimmune diseases may result as the cells or protiens accumulate in my organs, limphnodes, fat cells or other areas?

This is an honest concern that I am hoping can be resolved, rather than be dismissed or attacked.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different...

The very TLDR response to this is that MRNA is temporary and not self-replicating. Within a few hours of being administered, all the MRNA in the vaccine has been broken down by the body into amino acids. MRNA can't mutate because it doesn't replicate. It just produces proteins.

Thank You, that is what I needed to hear and it sounds reasonable, what sort of proteins does it produce? Just the spiked ones or longer strands like DNA? Could You also offer up another TL;DR answer as to why the booster seems to present significantly more side effects? Thanks

DNA is not a protein, DNA is not a type of protein, DNA is not formed from protein. DNA is not formed using instructions from mRNA, nor is it modified by mRNA. DNA is made up of nucleotides, proteins are made up of amino acids. They are chemically different things.

As every medical expert has been saying for months now, the vaccine doesn't effect your DNA.

The immune response is what causes the side effects, and the immune response is stronger with the second dose (this follows intuitively from immunity being more robust after 2 doses).

> Could You also offer up another TL;DR answer as to why the booster seems to present significantly more side effects?

The first one, some of your cells get told by the mRNA/adenovirus vector (depending on if you had Moderna/Pfizer or J&J/Oxford) to make some 'rona spikes. Your immune system amped up a little bit and your cells feel bad for a bit because of having to spew out spike. Your immune system, which is a little amped up, sees all this and starts to formulate things to kill the spikes (antibodies) and starts to send out other immune cells that clamp down on the cells that are making the spikes.

The second shot? Your cells get the call from the mRNA/adenovirus vector and start spewing out spikes. Your immune system recently saw this so it _really_ starts spewing out more antibodies to get rid of the spikes and more of the other cells to get rid of the spike producers. It it is really ready for the fight and wants to make sure you're ready for the fight in the future too.

The negative side effects are your immune system causing parts of your body to do things it doesn't usually do (like raising your body temperature to help kill off cells that are making these "rogue" spikes).

FYI DNA, is not a protein.

The mRNA molecules in the vaccine just contain the instructions for the spike protein. https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/reverse-engineering-source... has a good breakdown of what specificly it makes.

To use an analogy to a computer - DNA is like the hard drive (long term storage but slow), RNA is like RAM (short term, degrades easily, but easy to transport and gets info where it needs to go), ribosomes are like the CPU (executes the code in the RNA, outputs a protein). Normally, DNA gets copied into RNA, which instructs the ribosome what protein to make. The vaccine is like inserting a fake message. The ribosomes see RNA and follow the instructions, but the RNA came from the vaccine instead of the cell's DNA. This is one of the reasons why the vaccine is so safe, because RNA just naturally breaks down very quickly in the body.

Booster generally causes more side effects, because the body has seen the spike protein before (from the first vaccine) so it recognizes it faster and mobilizes a more robust response. In a certain sense, its already done a practise run, so the body kicks things into high gear right away.

[IANAD]

This link is indeed a very good explanation of mRNA vaccines, probably the best that I've seen.

After I read it, I noticed that it was the first time anyone had ever tried to explain _exactly_ how these new vaccines worked, like down to the molecular level.

Most explanations I had seen were usually extremely high level (literally just "the RNA gets read by your cells, which then produce the spike protein, then the RNA is destroyed") or used analogies (as you have done here).

I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist, but I admit I had been harbouring some concerns/fears over these new vaccines. This link is the only thing I have read that actually allayed those fears.

I think there is a lesson here.

I have a feeling that everyone fears stuff they don't understand, at least a little bit.

I know that the high level explanation is technically correct, but here's the problem: Many conspiracy theories are actually _extremely_ detailed. I have personally seen covid conspiracies that appear to be backed up by scientific papers.

This is what the truth is competing against. A basic, high level "ELI5" explanation is never going to convince a conspiracy theorist who is looking at a stack of science papers.

So I think this link is very important, more people need to read and share it.

The side effects you get is your body immune system fighting an intruder. The reason why second shot is typically worse is because your body already produced antibodies so when you get 2nd shot it immediately goes into attack mode.

BTW: different people have different immune systems, and their body reacts differently. I got my first dose in the morning. By afternoon I just felt tired and wanted sleep (I felt like I didn't sleep the previous night). I went to sleep and next day felt normal. For 2nd dose the same thing happened, except I felt like that one extra day. My vaccine was Pfizer.

I had exactly the same reaction to the first dose, except I had muscle pain in the vaccinated arm for 3 days.

Everyone says the second dose is worse although.

Mine wasn't. I had some very mild soreness at the shot site. I felt well enough to go to the gym 5 hours after my shot.

Not to detract from people who did have side-effects, merely pointing out that it's possible to have none.

The only definite side effect I had was a sore arm after each Moderna dose. I was actually happy that I had at least some side effect after the second dose because until then I wasn't actually sure that I had really been given the shot.

The nurse was a talker, and distracted me from watching what she was doing. I didn't see the shot go in, and I felt absolutely nothing. I only realized it was done when she said I did not bleed at all and didn't need a bandage.

Every other shot I've ever received I felt, but every other one I was also watching when it happened. Now I'm wondering if feeling them was imaginary, something my brain made up because I saw the jab and expected to feel it.

Slight caveats:

The mRNA in the vaccines have been engineered to resist degradation in the body, and stick around for as much as 2 weeks. Also, they degrade to nucleotides.

> both of which are mRNA which from my understanding is a form of gene therapy.

That's incorrect, in the sense mRNA does not alter your genetic material.

> why can't the spiked protien during it's production or the cells producing it mutate also?

They could, but they only exist for a short while and don't create new things. When the virus mutates, it can pass the mutation on to the new "child" viruses. Mutations that make things worse (for us) are super rare, so it only matters if there is also some method to preserve the mutation, select the ones useful to the virus, and make more of them. With the vaccine, it only acts for a short time and cannot "spread", so any mutation is immediately lost.

> If these production cells can mutate or the spiked protiens themselves mutate is it reasonable to assume an autoimmune diseases may result as the cells or protiens accumulate in my organs, limphnodes, fat cells or other areas?

Probably not. There is no method for the mutation to become dominant and take over, so you would have a single mutated cell which isnt enough to affect anything. Ignoring that, the vaccine acts for a short time, so stuff wouldn't generally accumulate because of the short time frame where the vaccine is causing spiked proteins to be created. After the vaccine is used up in your body, no more spiked proteins are created.

Note: I am not a doctor, my understanding may be flawed.

There are some pretty significant leaps here, where are these questions coming from? If someone were to say "no, that's not how it works" what would you do? What evidence (and please be specific, none of this "they went to fast" non-answer) would convince you?

Evidence? Specifically? OK I will try.

A list of the variants and their DNA code? Or whatever makes them vary.

A solid explanation of how these variants are more infectious, not just saying that "The numbers show it" but instead what is the real world physical change in the shape or attack vector that makes them more dangerous, or admiting it is unknown but being studied.

True numbers of deaths caused by covid and vaccines, you can't have it both ways and say "They tested positive for the virus and died so it was covid" then at the same time say "yes they got the vaccine but people die all the time, it wasn't nessisarly the vaccine."

A genuine record of which vaccines the well to do have recieved. Eg: Celebrities, Politicians, Billionaires. I suspect there are a lot more Pfizer going in their arms but they are telling the rest of us to take what we can get.

Maybe drop the racist, sexist, political anti white, anti male, anti Trump bullshit for a while in the media, because fighting the pandemic is just so much more critical right now. Instead of being opportunistic assholes and pushing those adgendas while everyone is scared, locked down and having their loved ones die alone?

IDK there is more, like the stuff comming out about Faucci signing off on funding banned research in Wuhan or the 2015 chinese report on weaponizing coronavirii but I think the first couple items on my list would go a long way. And before I catch a bunch more hate Ill leave it there.

For the list of mutations, there is a convenient Wikipedia article [1]. For example, the South Africa variant has mutation E484K which means mutate amino acid 484 from Glutamic Acid to Lysine. It’s just that simple; you could even download a spike protein crystal structure from RCSB and try rolling your own mutations!

Why a mutation improves transmission takes a lot of investigating to understand. I am not sure why you were under the impression that we know the mechanisms. If you type something like “E484K molecular dynamics” you can find a lot of computer simulations trying to investigate the mechanism, this is standard biological research. Of course we E484K you have a mutation from a negative to a positive residue, so that might give you a hint why it’s harder for the antibody to stick.

I can assure you that here in Japan we do not care about Trump. Perhaps we should be more grateful to his good support for the Pfizer vaccine, which is the one we are now deploying at scale (after the government here did their own review of the evidence).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variants_of_SARS-CoV-2

"which from my understanding is a form of gene therapy"

You're the one who is asking SOCIAL MEDIA companies (i.e. Facebook and twitter) to educate you more. "I wish the social media giants would just stop all the censorship and allow the discussions to take place."

Maybe that's the issue all along. Shouldn't have random people and nefarious state actors provide your education, but maybe go out there and read reputable sources, read peer reviewed trial data (The Lancet), read about the success of vaccinations in countries such as Israel.

Not Facebook and Twitter.

Nice try, don't try to argue that silencing information is helping because I should educate myself through approved sources rather than conversations with community. Whats next re education camps? Dont be a bully dude!

It's not bullying to point out that some information sources are of poorer quality than others, and that social media selects not for information quality, but for flashiness and ability to enrage.

Medical experts tend to be more capable of providing correct medical information than "community". Given the misunderstandings you held about incredibly basic properties of mRNA vaccines, you should determine that the people who taught you those misunderstandings aren't good sources of information.

"Whats next re education camps?"

okay you're just a troll. Got it. Fun...

Anyways, just an update to close out this thread. I made the decision to get my first dose of vaccine and today at 2:44PST I joined team Pfizer.

I am still not 100% convinced but a decision needed to be made and based on the information, a large amount recieved here I chose to get the jab.

> why can't the spiked protien during it's production or the cells producing it mutate also?

So now you have a slightly different protein produced by one particular cell for about 20 minutes. Big deal.

The tumor cells in your body right now are already doing a lot worse.

> acknowledge the geopolitical hurdles

Each of those vaccines come from a UN/WHO member country.

Geo politically power is wielded by globalist financial elites. These elites generally believe the world is overpopulated. Bill himself is well known for his this belief. Bill as an example runs a charitable foundation that only ever seems to make money.

These conspiracies are not constituted of a flat earth and aliens. They are of human hierarchies, corruption, and psychopaths.

Charitable foundations are designed to make money in perpetuity, otherwise their mission is not possible to accomplish. In the US they have to donate 5% of net assets a year and that is practically their only requirement, based on the idea that a diversified portfolio in the broad market increases in value slightly more than 5%. That is not a strong argument to bolster your skepticism.

If your idea is based on the existence of psychopathic financiers controlling organizations that every country on the planet is part of, and every vaccine production as well in those countries which use completely different technology, then you have left no oxygen in your mind for disproving anything. You've now exempted China from any scrutiny, in exchange for psychopathic financiers that would have much difficulty in collaborating with the party and maintaining status with them. You've replaced that with an insidious plot that makes zero sense and at the best requires opportunists to simply seize onto the reality. But that makes zero sense because the mRNA vaccines were sequenced within a week of getting samples in January 2020 because the technology is simply impressive and is the lifetime work of the Hungarian researcher. Ah, so many problems with this idea.

I have a hard time buying into the over population argument, especially in the west. Most western nations have declining populations and although consumption is much higher there is still such a need for continued population growth in western nations that immigration is used to ensure there are enough younger workers to support the wealthier aging populations.

Now you want to talk conspiracies to conceal or coverup how the virus came to be, I'm all for that but I don't think billionaires want to kill off all their neighbors just so they can have the earth all to themselves. They enjoy the power and control over people and policy too much for that.

>although consumption is much higher there is still such a need for continued population growth in western nations that immigration is used to ensure there are enough younger workers to support the wealthier aging populations

It's because social-security/pension systems are a pyramid schemes that can't sustain themselves without ever growing population. I consider many Western EU countries overpopulated (UK, Italy, etc), Google Maps satellite images also do a pretty good job at portraying at just how overpopulated the earth is. Pop growth every decade is still insane.

foh

> Each of those vaccines come from a UN/WHO member country.

So you'd be fine with a Taiwanese vaccine then? That's the only country I know of that has significant medical R&D and is one of the few countries not in the UN or WHO.

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