Hacker News Reader

Comment by nickthemagicman | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. Vaccines don't stop people from infection, they stop or reduce people from having symptoms. People will still make tests positive.

But humans can't stop their self flagellation because it gives some groups meaning to their lives and some groups make money from the chaos.

Fatalities have got to be be near zero I bet.

View on HN

It's a bit more nuanced but you're generally right. Intramuscular vaccines do not provide long term protection from infection of the mucosal tissues of the upper respiratory tract. So they can be infected and shed virus but the lungs themselves get IgG antibodies seeping in from blood serum and protection from serious disease.

If you want to have resident B and T cells in the upper respiratory mucosa generating IgA antibodies and generally killing infected cells right away you need to use an intranasal vaccination. In the UK they have already realized this (and it was known in the 1960s).

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti... page 5, #8.

>"Whilst we feel that current vaccines are excellent for reducing the risk of hospital admission and disease, we propose that research be focused on vaccines that also induce high and durable levels of mucosal immunity in order to reduce infection of and transmission from vaccinated individuals. This could also reduce the possibility of variant selection in vaccinated individuals."

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/373/6553/397 - "the ideal vaccination strategy may use an intramuscular vaccine to elicit a long-lived systemic IgG response and a broad repertoire of central memory B and T cells, followed by an intranasal booster that recruits memory B and T cells to the nasal passages and further guides their differentiation toward mucosal protection, including IgA secretion and tissue-resident memory cells in the respiratory tract."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41577-021-00550-x "Prospects for durable immune control of SARS-CoV-2 and prevention of reinfection" - any of it.

If vaccines don't stop transmission, then the only reason to get a vaccine is to protect yourself from severe symptoms. That contradicts what I've often been hearing that you should get the vaccine for the benefit of others. When the only effect the vaccine will have is on yourself, it becomes a personal question rather than a societal one.

> That contradicts what I've often been hearing that you should get the vaccine for the benefit of others

I don't know why everyone keeps harping on this to blame the experts and cast doubt on them. The virus changed. What was said in the past was true about the earlier variants. The Delta variant works differently.

This is not casting doubt on what experts said. It's casting doubt on what others have said about what experts have said. It is media and politicians that say people should get the vaccine for others.

Of course, if experts said that too, well, they were wrong if the vaccinated can spread the virus about as much as the unvaccinated.

I'm not saying anything about experts. I'm saying that the concept that you should get the vaccines for others looks like it's moot. That means the only consideration you should have about getting the vaccine is if you want the extra protection for yourself.

If you get the vaccine and stay out of ICU, you’re doing it for others.

You mean by freeing up hospital beds? That's orders of magnitude less of a benefit than stopping exponential contagious spread, so not nearly as compelling of a reason.

You're not freeing them up if you're never in one ?

Lobotomies won the Nobel prize in the 40's supported by experts.

Thalidomide was highly used by the medical experts.

The view that slaves and Jews were inferior was backed up by 'experts'.

The Vietnam war was sold by 'experts'.

This new found belief that the experts are infallible gods to be worshipped ...is super creepy, ignorant, and authoritarian.

The experts deserve to have doubt cast on them and need to justify their views and be held accountable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com