Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

> it would lead eventually to the mRNA vaccines now protecting hundreds of millions of people from Covid-19.

I've seen a lot of stuff about the great advance that is mRNA. From a scientific perspective, it's cool that there is a new technology for triggering an immune response.

But it find it a bit premature the way the vaccines (and by extension the technology) have been celebrated. I mean mRNA vaccines didn't save us from covid did they? I think its realitlstic to say they worked well on initial strains and now do little for the latest variant. And its bordering on delusional to say they are now "protecting hundreds of millions of people".

Maybe there are proposals about how we could avoid what happened again, with a flu-shot like program, but at this point, when we still have all these restrictions and all these cases, I'm really not sure what's being celebrated.

I think being realistic about what we have and haven't achieved would go a long way to countering anti-vaccine stuff, versus continuing to pretend we have a silver bullet while ignoring reality around us

> and now do little for the latest variant.

Actually, the current vaccines still seem to be doing a pretty good job, even with the latest variant (and there are always more variants). While none of the vaccines have ever claimed to prevent you catching covid 100%, they have prevented 90%+ against catching the disease and have reduced the severity of the disease in those who have caught it. It’s why emergency rooms around the world are largely filled with unvaccinated people, and most of the ones in hospital who go on to die are the unvaccinated.

Think of it as giving your body a natural head start to fighting off the infection. In the end, it’s your immune system that saves you, not the vaccine — but the vaccine stacks the deck significantly in your favour for a full recovery.

Of course the virus is mutating, and it’s possible that the next one will escape the mRNA vaccines that currently exist due to the different shape of the protein; but we have essentially developed a whole new science of how to create vaccines quickly from a known protein spike, so it will be a matter of months from discovery of an escaping strain to a protective vaccine for it.

In any case, the approaches used here are valid for more than just covid; an exciting HIV vaccine is undergoing trials at the moment And there’s potential to treat other kinds of viral diseases in this way.

When the vaccines were first tested and approved they reduced the risk of infection by 20 times!

Of course that no longer is true because the virus has mutated under selective pressure.

I hope we'll be better prepared next time. Something like a worldwide simultaneous vaccine campaign, instead of disorganized every country for themselves approach we've seen so far.

I agree with everything in your comment, I guess what I'm saying is that despite what i would call the "academic" success of mRNA it has not actually got us out of anything yet, we still have a pandemic, we still have restrictions, etc. And so even if there are hypothetical pathways that these vaccines can be a part of to get us back to normal, until they happen in practice, I think it's premature (and a bit cultish honestly) to talk about how great they are. Let's withhold applause until we finish solving the problem

Vaccines are still highly effective, just not as effective as initially expected. They reduce cases by 5-10x and death by 14-20x: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#rates-by-vaccine-s....

What do you think the world would have looked like over the last ~6 months without the vaccines?

I'd look at it the other way and say what would the world be like now of we'd make a vaccine we could celebrate as successful. I want to be clear, it seems like a promising technology, I'm just suggesting we reign in the praise we heap on it until we've actually finished what we started and finished solving a problem with it. Prematurely declaring victory makes an easy target for detractors.

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