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Comment by mikeytown2 | Hacker News Reader

In general a whole cell vaccine is better as the entire virus gets targeted. I believe the mRNA was done the way it was for calendar speed. Hopefully whole cell vaccines will be approved in the near future as odds are they'll be much better at handling variants.

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How can we talk in generalities about dead virus vaccines vs mRNA when these are the first ever mRNA vaccines approved? And the current attenuated vaccines are certainly not more effective than the mRNA vaccines.

Better stated would be that for other diseases, live attenuated and dead virus vaccines seem to target most of the virus vs just a small part of the virus (spike in this case). I think the target of just the spike was done for calendar speed. If a larger target can be used in the future, I think it'll have more success. Delivery can be mRNA or traditional.

Why would you expect a vaccine to confer significantly longer lasting immunity than an ordinary infection? What evidence do we have that natural immunity lasts any longer than a year?

In general natural immunity is as good or sometimes better than a vaccine.

N=1 that natural immunity lasts long has to do with my 70+ year old dad who got covid Summer 2020 and has been doing blood donations ever since as he has type O blood. Every time he goes in they report back that his antibody count is still high. I can't offer you any studies on that, just a personal antidote.

Edit guess I'll get more minus points for my N=1 antidotes

> In general natural immunity is as good or sometimes better than a vaccine.

There are some notable exceptions though, e.g. HPV, Tetanus, and some others.

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