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Comment by pibechorro | Hacker News Reader

We should not call them vaccines, they work totally different. These are gene treatments.

That's incorrect. They are vaccines even while working differently.

The body develops immunity in reaction to the spike proteins that it produced itself after turning the mRNA instructions contained in the vaccine into proteins (namely the spike proteins that the SARS-Cov2 virus uses to enter cells).

Ribosomes, tiny and amazing molecular machines, read this mRNA and produce the encoded sequence of aminoacids. With every reading, a bit of the tail of the mRNA sequence gets used up and once it's too short, the whole sequence is broken down. That means the mRNA in the vaccine gets used up with time.

The mRNA never makes it into the nucleus where your DNA resides.

Ribosomes are interesting btw, you can read about them here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ribosome

Amazing technology. What I cannot understand is how can a foreign mRNA be injected so efficiently into host's cells without all the virus-like methods to be applied? Why should host cells be ready to accept any mRNA from their environment so blindly? Wouldn't it be used by natural selection to create subviral agents which will destroy such naive host cells rather quickly?

The mRNA is hidden inside lipid nano-droplets. These droplets merge with cells and the mRNA gets released into them. From what I understand, pure mRNA would be broken down if it ended up in the interstitium (fluid filled space between cells) without being hidden inside this lipid shell. The sequence is also slightly altered compared to original one to make it more stable and less likely to produce an immune response (one of the bases ('U') is swapped out for one that is functionally the same but does not trigger the immune system).

You can read more about the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine and the lipid particles here:

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

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/11/rn...

mRNA is just instructions, it does not have to "authenticate" itself with the cell. If it is in there, it will be "executed". The filtering is done before stuff should get into cells (i.e. caught be the immune system).

Lipid nanoparticles, and the research done around their ability to serve as transport and safety, are the real technological breakthrough here.

Not to say the mRNA technology isn't amazing, but if we had it but no LNPs, we'd have a whole lot of nothing.

You might be interested in this article. It is about a biochemist who invented the way to prepare these nanoparticles but was cheated out of his share of the fame and money.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2021/08/17/covids-f...

The short answer is that it is virus-like initially, in that it bypasses the cells passive defenses to enter the cell intact, but the payload can’t reproduce itself, so it dies out almost immediately afterwards, unlike a virus.

Technically, anything but doctor Jenner's original vaccine against smallpox, which was derived from cowpox, isn't a vaccine. Vacca is literally cow in Latin and vaccine means from cows, which the other vaccines aren't.

But that would be silly, right?

I am curious about this line of thinking. If you believe that mRNA vaccines should be considered "gene treatments" then why don't you also believe that traditional vaccines are "gene treatments"? What exactly makes one fall under that description but not the other?

What makes them not vaccines?

A desire to avoid being called anti-vax.

Out of curiosity, if you're onboard with previous typical vaccination, but hesitant to jump on board with mRNA treatments, what are you? Does that now fall under "anti-vax" in internet lingo? Is wise to group everyone under one umbrella term?

That depends on why they're hesitant about mRNA vaccines. The "anti-vax" label isn't just about not taking some subset of the standard vaccinations. There's a tribal element and a conspiracy/disinformation element.

What's the point in differentiating? They at best deluded themselves with a slightly different brand of anti-vax propaganda. Do we need a separate term?

So there's no possible valid logic for not wanting an mRNA vaccine. It's all completely "delusion" stemming from propaganda? Anyone who does not have complete faith at this point is in the wrong?

Am I understanding you correctly?

There are no general reasons to avoid well tested mRNA vaccines, no.

Specific medical conditions (eg allergies to components of the shot), being under the recommeded/tested ages, etc., sure.

I unfortunately know several anti-vaxxers, I've seen what they pass around as "reasons". It's nonsense. And it just so happens that they all get their news from similar places. It's a total coincidence I'm sure.

And I assume that you consider all the available variations as "well tested". Nice to hear that any personal concerns I have are not valid, and that you don't even need to read them to know that. Sad to see so many websites where discussions were once welcomed turned into echo chambers. Or perhaps I'm just one of those uneducated people who shouldn't even be on HN

They went through the full multi-round set of testing that all vaccines go through in the US (even ignoring the overlap elsewhere), and have since been administered to hundreds of millions of people. I'd call that well tested, yes.

What would be the point of me pretending it's up for debate? I'm not stopping you from sharing whatever concerns you have, not sure how you think I even would. I'm not likely to be interested in them if I'm being honest, I've seen far too many sites and stories already. But you do you.

Absolutely not correct. They do work exactly like conventional vector vaccines, the only difference is how the genetic material of the foreign virus is delivered to the cells of the patient. The genetic material of the patient (the genes) is not modified.

Technically speaking ... the genetic code of the B cell receptor gene of B cells is altered by vaccines. The same goes for pretty much all antigens the body comes across. But that's the point of the adaptive immune system and is obviously not what OP meant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V(D)J_recombination

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