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Comment by GenerocUsername | Hacker News Reader

Vaccines as we knew them for 60+ years were weakened versions of a disease causing agent injected via a needle.

These "vaccines" are MRNA snippets which hijack your body chemistry to produce proteins similar to the proteins of the disease agent. It is an entirely different mechanism, the only similarity is the needle.

Popular dictionaries actually updated their definition of a "vaccine" in 2021 to accommodate this change, but at the end of the day, just because it is administered via a needle, it is not the same and should not get the same mental associations of a hundred years of prior tech.

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The January 2019 definition (almost a year before COVID started booming) from Wiktionary:

https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=vaccine&oldid=51...

"(immunology) A substance given to stimulate the body's production of antibodies and provide immunity against a disease without causing the disease itself in the treatment, prepared from the agent that causes the disease, or a synthetic substitute."

In this context, I think the mRNA would satisfy the definition of "synthetic substitute".

In either case, this is merely semantics and it's the "GOTCHA!" you think it is.

A senior editor from the British Medical Journal recently discussed this changed definition. [1]

His entire commentary is quite interesting. [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepqvdXoA2E&t=4941s

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepqvdXoA2E&t=4725s

> Popular dictionaries actually updated their definition of a "vaccine" in 2021 to accommodate this change

Some popular dictionaries noticed their definitions were wrong. Merriam Webster's old definition excluded toxoid vaccines like diphtheria and tetanus. And anything produced from a virus.[1] Other popular dictionaries didn't say a vaccine had to be made from certain things.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28486499

Well the similarity is what they do, not how they do it. Is an electric car not a car because it doesn't have a gas engine?

The result is the same, though: train the immunity system by having it attacking a dummy version of pathogen. The only difference is that newer vaccines are more sophisticated and can cause less side effects while still training the immunity system to the same or even higher degree.

If we take your reasoning and apply it to other situations one could make the argument that electric vehicles are not vehicles because they don't use gasoline and jet aircraft are not aircraft because they don't use piston engines.

Do you see the problem with your line of thinking?

Or motorcyles. They have wheels and get you from point A to pint B, but maybe have a different risk profile compared to cars. Not necessarily in favor of the alternative tech.

In this case what is the risk profile of mRNA vaccines that makes them comparable to motorcycles if non-mRNA vaccines are cars in this analogy?

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