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Comment by ralmeida | Hacker News Reader

Why is this drug less experimental than the vaccines?

That is a valid question but another thing to note is that you wouldn’t be giving this drug to the vast majority of people who do not get any symptoms from a Covid-19 infection. Nor would you be forcing people to take this drug.

Which is a fair viewpoint from the societal level, but not as much for the individual level, which was implied in the parent message - i.e. how can "I'll take experimental treatment B instead of experimental treatment A" be an argument for not taking experimental treatments in general?

Imagine both the vaccine and the drug offer the same protection, and both come with a risk of 0.00001 that you will die from taking it.

Considering not everyone who gets infected gets symptoms, would it be illogical to not take the vaccine, just in case you get infected and get symptoms, but to take the drug once you do get infected and get symptoms?

It wouldn't be necessarily illogical but would still qualify as "taking part in an experiment trial", as put by the parent post.

To determine if this is a rational strategy or not, we'd have to get real numbers (is it really likely that 1 in 100k people die from taking the vaccine?), and compare that against the reduction in probability of dying from COVID by even combining both treatments.

It is still possible to take rational decisions in the face of unknowns. Just like you probably decided, in your opinion rationally, to take the vaccine even though there really isn’t a whole lot of data available as they are pretty new.

And please, I just made up these numbers to answer the posed question:

> how can "I'll take experimental treatment B instead of experimental treatment A" be an argument

For an individual, the antiviral is better because it means they don't need to take the vaccine with any possible risks, however small, up front. Yes once an individual become symptomatic with covid-19, they're forced to be exposed to one of the risks, but at that point the antiviral is the only choice. In short, it allows an individual to delay taking the unknown risk until there's an actual known downside to not taking it; i.e. unmitigated covid symptoms. Most people will never be exposed to that downside anyways.

From a "reducing my risk of dying" perspective, you'd have to balance the risk of dying from taking the vaccine vs the risk of dying from COVID with zero treatments, one treatment, or both treatments.

The numbers could lean either way and would be very sensitive to variations in the probabilities involved - I'm sure it would be very hard to reach any form of consensus on "probability of dying from taking the vaccine". It's also worth addressing wasn't even making the point of which (so-called) experimental treatment has a better likely outcome but rather addressing criticism at (so-called) experimental treatments in general.

From an "unknown risk" perspective, you'd also have to consider that COVID itself could have yet-unknown long-term risks.

> From an "unknown risk" perspective, you'd also have to consider that COVID itself could have yet-unknown long-term risks.

That would not factor into a correct analysis: the unknown risks of covid are the same whether or not you get vaccinated (or any other treatment) because by definition the vaccine has not been shown to mitigate the unknown risks.

mRNA treatment is now also called a vaccine. That type of treatment has never been used on the general population until c19 came along and testing standards were reduced. It is a very interesting type of new treatment, but we lack long term data to say it's truly safe.

Same can be said for any patented-molecule treatment. But that's just a new type of molecule, not a whole other type of treatment. Hence I'd say that molecule-drugs are less experimental than mRNA-vaccine jabs.

This isn't meant to be a jab or insinuation about you in particular, but: what about an Adenovirus vaccine? You can still (AFAIK) get the J&J vaccine in the US, and the AZ vaccine in most of the rest of the world.

I'd argue that mRNA vaccine development represents the most rigorous that the field of vaccinology has ever been, but those (Adenovirus) vaccines use a well tested, not-previously-experimental delivery technology. Do you have an objection to them?

Wikipedia defines "vaccine" as "a biological preparation that provides active acquired immunity to a particular infectious disease", which in my view would fit the Pfizer/Moderna shots. Which definition of "vaccine" do you subscribe to that these "treatments" don't fit into?

Also, mRNA is not the only type of vaccine for COVID.

Finally, two more questions: would you clarify which definition of "experimental" you subscribe to? And do you have a source for "testing standards were reduced"?

Maybe wikipedia also changed it (did you check?), Webster did change it:

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=50886

> Also, mRNA is not the only type of vaccine for COVID.

I know.

> Which definition of "vaccine" do you subscribe to that these "treatments" don't fit into?

It's all marketing at this point. mRNA-treatment does not sell. Vaccine elicits people's trust, and obedience.

> would you clarify which definition of "experimental" you subscribe to?

Not FDA approved in the US. "approval pending"

> And do you have a source for "testing standards were reduced"?

These kind of drugs take years to develop. This stuff was done in a few months. They skipped some steps in the process. Understandable, but still...

> Maybe wikipedia also changed it (did you check?)

Here's a link to the Wikipedia entry from 2017, same text: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vaccine&oldid=798...

Here's a link to the CDC definition from 2017: https://web.archive.org/web/20171203162427/https://www.cdc.g... ("Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.")

> It's all marketing at this point.

Definitions made prior to the pandemic would already fit the mRNA vaccines, therefore the claim that the definition was stretched for marketing/persuasion reasons don't really hold water.

> Not FDA approved in the US. "approval pending"

This FDA link claims Cominarty was approved in August 23 2021. The word "pending" is not found in this page.

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...

> These kind of drugs take years to develop. This stuff was done in a few months.

"The first human clinical trials using an mRNA vaccine against an infectious agent (rabies) began in 2013." (from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRNA_vaccine)

Of course the actual individual version for COVID-19 is newer, but then again, so is any flu vaccine that is updated basically yearly. What matters is the age of the "vaccine platform".

> They skipped some steps in the process.

Citation needed?

The definition: mRNA does not stimulate the immune system directly. That's what's new about it. Did you know that? It tricks the cells of the body to create protein that then get hopefully a reaction from the immune sys. They typically also add some other stuff that helps to elicit this reaction (usually stuff that in large quantities is harmful to humans).

> Definitions made prior to the pandemic would already fit the mRNA vaccines, therefore the claim that the definition was stretched for marketing/persuasion reasons don't really hold water.

You you say mRNA treatment is not new? I think this is the first rollout of such medicine on humans.

> "Approval pending" / "Citation needed? "

Ok, I misquoted this. Here what I did mean:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_COVID-19_vaccine_de...

See the PhaseIII trails were allowed to be skipped with the EUA.

The process by which the treatment is now pushed to kids is even more botched.

I believe we are exposing the younger (say <60) to risks bigger than the c19 poses itself. Yes we're dealing with an overly stressed healthcare system, but that's a different matter. The jab should be worth it for the person him/her self, and that should be made clear to that person, if they dont believe it they will not take it and that's their choice.

Im okay with tax being used to give people that want the free jabs. Im not okay with persuding people to to take it with anythign other than data.

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