DNA fragments detected in Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna modRNA Covid-19 vaccines
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Ok, say that happened. What would the consequences be?
AIUI, both vaccines use a special lipid "bubble" around the RNA (and I suppose this accidental DNA) to get it through cell walls. Once in the cell, the RNA then gets to work, instructing the cell to start manufacturing various proteins from the COVID-19 virus -- most notably the spike protein. But suppose that some DNA also makes it inside. What happens to it? Hypothetically, can it encounter DNA polymerase there and start replicating? Would it be transcribed to RNA and would it start making proteins? I understand that extrachromosomal DNA (mostly mitochondrial DNA) does exist and is heritable, almost only from the mother. Would this get into oocytes?
But presumably DNA from viruses is not hugely different, and we constantly encounter viruses. And yes there's some gene transfer that happens occasionally but somehow this isn't generally a big deal? (I guess sometimes it results in cancer? I'm assuming that's the mechanism behind, say, HPV?)
So maybe some kind of long term consequences are conceivable, but, probably not, thanks to our immune systems? So maybe this would cause some inflammation until the immune system mopped it up, and that'd be all?
I'm just trying to think this through. I'd like to hear spelled out exactly what the implications supposedly are. I don't just want to hear "Booo! Scary DNA!", I want to hear a plausible explanation for why it might matter.
We do not know, and that's precisely the problem
It may also explain many of the nasty side effects and injuries.
> presumably DNA from viruses is not hugely different
It's pretty different yeah. The RNA/DNA in the vaccines is hyper-optimized to produce spike relative to anything nature would produce, and the pseudouridine stops the immune system detecting and destroying it as it normally would with viral RNA. So the immune system isn't going to find it easy to mop this up, the vaccine is specifically engineered to avoid that (otherwise the mRNA wouldn't reach your cells at all).
The immune system is extremely good at cleaning up unencapsulated DNA and the pseudouridine is not intended to prevent that.
My guess- based on a few decades of working with DNA and RNA and proteins, is that it's unlikely a small amount of unintentional DNA in a vaccine would cause any detectable harm.
The argument is basically that the DNA would have to have very specific sequence to be transcribed by DNA Polymerase to RNA, the resulting RNA would need to have a very specific sequence to be translated, and to avoid being detected as foreign RNA (cells have a robust collection of tools to dice up invading DNA).
And I agree that the resulting proteins- even if through some extremely improbable event led to a small number of peptides or protein fragments were expressed, they would be "mopped up by the immune system", with some inflammation, as you say.
Witha ll that said I'm sure you can find examples of people who set up cellular experiments that demonstrated some injected DNA could be expressed, as biology is ultimately a probabilistic and stochastic system and there's always some level of nonspecific behavior that can't be ruled out.
Your body deals with free floating DNA in intercellular fluids every time a cell ruptures. To first approximation, the right assumption to make is that free floating vaccine DNA would trigger more immune response as the body reacts to unencapsulated DNA fragments by cleaning them up and their presence triggers the immune system as if cells were damaged.
The wrong assumption to make is " that DNA gets consumed by cells and processed." There are multiple layers of protection against that. If it were that easy to introduce novel DNA into a cell's machinery, the biosphere in which we live would be taking us apart continuously.
PS I am double jabbed Pfizer :)
I agree with OP's comment. I don't see how anyone sane would agree with what you believe it implies. Ironically, if we can't talk about how an article like this one will be used by anti-vaxers, we can't meaningfully address how to minimize that harm either.
In either case, what I'd most like to see is a TL;DR / ELI5-level explanation of the article.
Is that based on empirical research, or is it a statement of faith?
Transparency is required so information can be processed completely. You ask for transparency of sourcing, because the statement 'truth counters anti-truth' is foundational.
My personal experience is that it's also the most effective. I see a lot of countering anti-truth with anti-truth, and people can smell the BS there. At that point, they become distrustful and defensive.
For example, before someone lies to an anti-vaxer, it's easy to counter and convince with science and fact. Once someone lies to an anti-vaxer it becomes basically impossible to cross that hump.
Put another way, anti-vax is wrong but anti-you-and-rest-of-us is ok?
One word for you: FollowTheMoney
After the last 3 years, you'll have to pardon most people not making that identification. Loud, partisan, probably bad faith, anti-vax advocacy has ruined it for the simple, honest, good faith truth seekers. Very unfortunate.
Flu shot vaccines are also highly effective and you’re also recommended to take them every year. This hasn’t been a problem ever — if now it suddenly is, then it’s difficult to think that this is the group that “seeks truth and transparency”, rather than the group that seeks to stir conflict and spread bullshit for their own benefit.
Cardiovascular disease *continues* to kill and maim (i.e., stroke) more than Covid did and does but *no one* from NIH, CDC, WHO, etc. is in the media every other day saying,"Put down the Coke and fries and go for a long walk...". But now that there's a jab for weight reduction maybe that'll happen. Funny how that is.
Coincidentally, those with excess weight (and associated medical conditions) fared worse against Covid. At yet the weight/cardiovascular pandemic doesn't get a spotlight? Why?
https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/infographics/diet-and-exercis...
https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/index.html
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/healthy-die...
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/physical-ac...
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/13/well/move/exercise-diet-d...
I have to repeat this so it sinks in...cardiovascular disease killed more and kills more than Covid.
In fact, those suffering from cardiovascular disease were more susceptible to this virus, and will likely fare not-so-well with the next, and the next and the next.
Given the numbers and the risks, the links you listed are token at best when compared to media "blitz" we received *and* continue to receive about Covid. It's not even close.
And regardless, "frequently" !== urgent.
Follow the money friend, follow the money.
Here's an example:
"...But so far private companies Pfizer and Moderna are the only ones that have succeeded in making them. And both companies have refused to share their patents and their manufacturing know-how..."
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/07/13/1111137...
Now let that sink in...we were told time and again. It's a pandemic (i.e., worldwide) and that a variation in Country X has the potential to kill *everywhere*. But share the technology? To save lives?? Technology the US taxpayer paid for?? No way!
Yeah, no big deal. There weren't that many people living in Brazil anyway.
Or what about the fact long term safety was promised...based on what? A time machine?
Or what about the fact that it was revealed mid-pandemic that those disposable blue masks weren't capable of filtering out things the size of a virus? (Read: They were effectively *useless*) When out of left field Faucci tried to push wearing two masks? Simple question: How could the CDC and a world renown "expert" *not* know that??
I get it. They've manipulated your scarcity brain and its biases and you can't help but to keep blowing the horn for them. But that doesn't make anything outside the dictacted narrative a conspiracy theory. It never has. It never will.
Again: follow the money.
p.s. Cardiovascular disease *continues* to kill and maim (i.e., stroke) more than Covid did and does but *no one* from NIH, CDC, WHO, etc. is in the media every other day saying,"Put down the Coke and fries and go for a long walk...". But now that there's a jab for weight reduction maybe that'll happen. Funny how that is.
Coincidentally, those with excess weight (and associated medical conditions) fared worse against Covid. At yet the weight/cardiovascular pandemic doesn't get a spotlight? Why?
Only, whoops, mRNA isn't the only thing in the vials, and what is there is the sort of thing that can change your DNA. And the pharma companies must have known that, the regulators turned a blind eye, and testing the vials externally to find out what was in them was forbidden by law (hence why the doctors who blew this open had to test residues from preserved empty vials).
So, yet another win for the so-called conspiracy theorists.
BTW basically everyone has realized this by now. Boosters are still being advertised and promoted but uptake is near zero and Pfizer/Moderna stock prices have disconnected from the rest of the pharma industry, going much lower. Investors are getting worried.
How? Describe the mechanism.
Now that the dust has settled, people are more willing to come out and say they didn’t take the vaccine or are more honest in their opinions about what happened then, and you would be surprised at the amount of well educated, well respected individuals who decided to wait, or decided to avoid the vaccine but follow all other protocols but were afraid to speak up because of the absolute outrage coming from people who were generalizing everyone as crazy anti-vaxxers.
A functioning democracy needs people who question the official line, even just to stir the conversation. A healthy functioning democracy needs the freedom for people to speak up against, or at least question the official line and during COVID times, we didn’t have that.
Just remember, this us vs them mentality you have in your mind is all fabricated and depending on which “channel” you were tuned in to, all the news was pointed towards hating the other side more. We could all use a reminder to appreciate our many commonalities and not our few differences of our fellow humans.
Citation?
But that's not what's going on. What's going on is people questioning logic itself. At the time, we just had no better options, based on the knowledge so far. This being uncomfortable is a far cry from questioning the 'official line', it's just choosing to respond to feeling rather than logic, which is problematic.
Nobodg felt good about Covid and any of it's solutions. They were merely the least worst. Antivaxxers would do well to understand how logical reasoning works, and stop attributing choice, emotion, officialdom, whatnot, where there is none. It's a classic case of projection: because they think so, doesn't mean it's how everyone thinks.
Not doing the logical thing is always inferior thinking and should be recognised as such.
Sort these things out ahead of time. If you have a problem, that’s when to complain. But people couldn’t be arsed, to the point that a certain future felon cancelled the program meant to deal with things like this.
Please stop picking out the factoids from their contexts; you seem to be missing large parts of the picture.
No people and no methods are relevant, the only enemy to be concerned with is a virus.
The elderly, the sickly, and the obese were the most at risk.
Being young and healthy, the risk to me was negligible.
The covid vaccines did not prevent transmission, so getting jabbed would not help eradicate the virus.
Because of the limited benefits the vaccine would provide to me and its non-sterilizing nature, I decided not to get vaccinated against covid.
In the end I got covid, was sick as a dog for a few days, then I was fine. I'm happy with my decision. But I would never suggest to anyone who got the covid vaccine that they made the wrong decision, it's an individual choice to make.
And yes, it turns out that some people have some innate immunity that we were unable to identify early in the pandemic. But nobody knew if they had that or not.
Your rolled some dice and came up lucky.
COVID isn't over. And it's because people wouldn't do what was needed to make spaces safe again from such a contagious thing. That is still spreading, disabling, and killing.
People need to continue their lives. You can’t honestly expect people to “stay home” for 3 years. They need to work, and live. It’s not going away, and nearly everyone has had it by now.
The data certainly leans more towards your experience, but I find that shocking from my own experience. Of the people that I know whether or not they have had it (and obviously knowing positive is easier than negative), only about 50% have had it (and so far I am on the 50% that has not yet tested positive).
> the vaccine doesn’t do much to stop the spread
In fact, studies have shown that vaccines (as well as prior infection) does reduce, but not eliminate, the likelihood of infecting others.
One example: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2022/12/424546/covid-19-vaccines-p...
Excuse me if I'm not wowed. As annoying as anti-vaxers as a whole are, the other side where the vaccines are viewed as an absolute panacea might've actually made us even worse off. I feel like there wasn't much of a political push to get better vaccines made because that would be admitting what we have isn't that great.