The COVID Vaccination Thread (1 Viewer)

[Dave Upton]

What’s also exciting is the same computational biology methods used to develop these vaccines can be used for producing antibodies to other viruses.

While it may not be immediately apparent, many disciplines of virology and immunology have taken a quantum leap forward in the last year in terms of both funding and acceptance.

If nothing else, we should all be very grateful for what this will pave the way for downstream treating other diseases like cancer.

 

[Max Taxable]

What’s also exciting is the same computational biology methods used to develop these vaccines can be used for producing antibodies to other viruses.

While it may not be immediately apparent, many disciplines of virology and immunology have taken a quantum leap forward in the last year in terms of both funding and acceptance.

If nothing else, we should all be very grateful for what this will pave the way for downstream treating other diseases like cancer.

And actually, they sort of used the same approach some modern cancer treatments have perfected. My significant other developed breast cancer and by the time she got it looked at it was barely stage four. 5 years before that would have been a death sentence. Their new treatments target the DNA of the tumor itself - instead of the whole body. She got through it with very little side effects, 14 rounds of "chemo" which, they shouldn't even call it that anymore, 32 rounds of radiation then surgery. She rang the bell 8 months after her diagnosis and is still cancer free. Two years now.

Modern medicine is advancing in leaps and bounds, and yeah they should try this type of approach on flu. Find its Achilles heel and attack that, instead of trying it the Salk way. That's what we do with that addon you bought from us - I found the Achilles heel of the automated spam programs and that is what we attack.

 

[JohnRice]

What’s also exciting is the same computational biology methods used to develop these vaccines can be used for producing antibodies to other viruses.

While it may not be immediately apparent, many disciplines of virology and immunology have taken a quantum leap forward in the last year in terms of both funding and acceptance.

If nothing else, we should all be very grateful for what this will pave the way for downstream treating other diseases like cancer.

One of my early thoughts was that this would create a leap in illness prevention on the scale of what we are seeing. I didn't know about mRNA vaccines, which were already in development, but it probably exceeds even what I hoped would be created.

 

[Dave Upton]

One of my early thoughts was that this would create a leap in illness prevention on the scale of what we are seeing. I didn't know about mRNA vaccines, which were already in development, but it probably exceeds even what I hoped would be created.

It's really amazing what this technology could unlock. Here are a few examples:

- On demand vaccines for seasonal flu variants. Instead of a "best guess" approach to this year's strains, as the strains emerge on the winter side of the planet, the summer side could be building a designer vaccine with broad efficacy.
- Vaccination against previously challenging targets like HIV may be achievable using this technique because we can engineer it in the lab to cover a multitude of viral targets.
- Targeted immune responses could be elicited against cancers, specific organ dysfunction (liver fibrosis or NASH)
- Potentially these same computational algorithms could be used to enhance DNA therapies for genetic diseases that are incurable today.

The future is here!

 

[John Dirk]

The Salk model was to make the vaccine out of samples of the dead virus. This was a breakthrough, previously all we had was giving you the live virus in a small dose, so you would then build up immunity to it without actually catching the disease. (Hopefully) Salk's method ensured you could not get the disease period, once you built up immunity. But his method was tricky, and took months to make and years to test.

This stuff today - we found a protien the virus uses to infiltrate our cells and incubate and multiply. Once this happens the virus makes us sick and can kill. We introduce an antagonist to that protein and make your body produce it, so that if you catch this virus it can't do much except eventually die. But while the virus is in us we have time to develop antibodies to the virus naturally and without getting sick, and become immune. So that if it gets in our bloodstream again it just gets killed outright by our immune system. Accomplishing the same thing Salk did, but without giving us any part of the virus alive or dead.

Thanks so much for taking the time to break this down into layman's terms. Great information here!

 

[Max Taxable]

Thanks so much for taking the time to break this down into layman's terms. Great information here!

You bet but, I'm as big of a layman as anyone else, no professional training or formal medical schooling. But I took it to heart in the 90s when during the Beatles Anthology George talked about how he looked at LSD in a microscope and said "I'm not putting that in my body anymore" and since then I study vaccines and meds that I might have to take to then decide if I want that in my body. Don't get me going about my cardiac meds!

 

[John Dirk]

...And today my arm is finally back to normal. So, 3 days of mild irritation appears to be the sum total of my side effects for shot #1. Shot #2 scheduled for Feb 1st.

 

[Chip_HT]

Thanks so much for taking the time to break this down into layman's terms. Great information here!

There's an explanation making its way around the internet for its simplicity and directness: https://thestarphoenix.com/news/sas...colourful-explainer-about-vaccines-goes-viral

This is great for those conversations where people are concerned about the speed of development. Someone at work told me they were skeptical of the vaccines because a good vaccine takes 4 years to create. I replied that before we were at that point, it took 200 years to develop the concept of vaccines.

 

[Tony Bensley]

There's an explanation making its way around the internet for its simplicity and directness: https://thestarphoenix.com/news/sas...colourful-explainer-about-vaccines-goes-viral

This is great for those conversations where people are concerned about the speed of development. Someone at work told me they were skeptical of the vaccines because a good vaccine takes 4 years to create. I replied that before we were at that point, it took 200 years to develop the concept of vaccines.

I love Dr. Sarda's description of the "a**hole protein!"

CHEERS!

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Sometimes medical technology advances rapidly.

Shortly after WWII a guy named Earl Bakken started a hospital electrical repair business in a garage. One day when working on a call a cardiologist took him aside and told him a sad story. External pacemakers then were a cart full of vacuum tubes that you had to plug into a wall socket. One night the hospital lost power and the patients connected to the pacemakers died. Could Bakken come up with a pacemaker powered by batteries? Bakken went home, took out an old copy of Popular Electronics which detailed a transistor metronome, and adapted the circuits to perform the functions of a pacemaker. He brought his prototype unit to the hospital and gave it to the cardiologist for evaluation. A week later he came and asked the cardiologist what he thought of the prototype, and was shocked when told "the patient we hooked it up to is doing extremely well".

Production units the size of a pack of cigarettes soon followed that a patient could keep in a shirt pocket. A few years later Bakken introduced the first implantable pacemakers. His garage shop company, Medtronic, is now a multi-billion dollar medical tech company.

The FDA only got jurisdiction over medical devices in 1974. Before that time guys like Bakken could invent things off the cuff as it were.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

As I have come to understand it, we're introducing an antagonist to the protein this virus and really all SARS viruses, use to attach themselves to our cells. Once you have both doses your cells are protected from it latching on.

I'm taking an angiotensin II receptor blocker ARB. Although still somewhat controversial, it's becoming the majority view that this drug blocks the ACE2 receptor sites that the coronavirus uses to attach to the victim cells. With the ARB, an aspirin, and a large Vitamin D pill, I appear to be on a drug cocktail that may prove beneficial against SARS Cov 2.

In my situation my state's schedule is to get the vaccine in April.

 

[Atari]

Received dose 1 of Moderna yesterday morning. No pain all morning, some mild irritation in the afternoon. Today it feels like someone walloped me in the arm. A little worse than other shots I've had, but not unbearable. Dose 2 scheduled for Feb 5.

 

[Mark Booth]

Sometimes medical technology advances rapidly.

Shortly after WWII a guy named Earl Bakken started a hospital electrical repair business in a garage. One day when working on a call a cardiologist took him aside and told him a sad story. External pacemakers then were a cart full of vacuum tubes that you had to plug into a wall socket. One night the hospital lost power and the patients connected to the pacemakers died. Could Bakken come up with a pacemaker powered by batteries? Bakken went home, took out an old copy of Popular Electronics which detailed a transistor metronome, and adapted the circuits to perform the functions of a pacemaker. He brought his prototype unit to the hospital and gave it to the cardiologist for evaluation. A week later he came and asked the cardiologist what he thought of the prototype, and was shocked when told "the patient we hooked it up to is doing extremely well".

Production units the size of a pack of cigarettes soon followed that a patient could keep in a shirt pocket. A few years later Bakken introduced the first implantable pacemakers. His garage shop company, Medtronic, is now a multi-billion dollar medical tech company.

The FDA only got jurisdiction over medical devices in 1974. Before that time guys like Bakken could invent things off the cuff as it were.

I've got my third pacemaker in my chest right now. The first one was implanted 20 years ago, when I was 44. I have idiopathic cardiomyopathy. I've never had a "heart attack" in the traditional sense (blocked arteries). Rather, a virus or bacteria attacked my heart, causing enlargement of the left ventricle and damaging the electrical system. My pipes are in good shape, it's the "wiring" that is screwed up.

The battery on my first pacemaker lasted about 8 years. Then, 4 years into the second one, the atrial lead from my pacer to my heart became unreliable due to wear. While I was opened up for a new atrial lead (which simply runs parallel with the old lead, they normally don't remove the old lead), they also installed a new pacer. This third pacemaker is much more sophisticated than the first two. I have a bedside device that has a cellular network connection. Every 3 months, about 2am in the morning (while I'm asleep), my pacemaker "phones home" through the bedside device.

Based on battery use, I'll be due for my fourth pacer within the next 3-4 years. Who knows what fancy features that one will have.

Mark

 

[Max Taxable]

I'm taking an angiotensin II receptor blocker ARB

Frikkin awesome - I have been on this since my heart attack in 2016! I bet that's why this sucker hasn't got me yet!

I've never had a "heart attack" in the traditional sense (blocked arteries). Rather, a virus or bacteria attacked my heart, causing enlargement of the left ventricle and damaging the electrical system. My pipes are in good shape, it's the "wiring" that is screwed up.

I have the plumbing problem. Oddly, I developed hypothyroidism (Less active thyroid) my cardiologist estimates about 10 years ago. Causing plaque to form in my cardiac arteries due to my inability to deal with the LDL cholesterol not just intake, but also what the body produces naturally. Took around 4 years for it to become critical. The two main arteries each were clogged over 95 percent.

I have two stents (thankfully I didn't have to be opened up) and the tech they use to install these is like it's outta Star Trek. But moreso, one of my stents was a trial study stent, absorbable! It goes away after a couple of years, leaving only tiny "pips" of platinum embedded in the vessel wall, to mark where it once existed.

Anyhow I have had zero complications but my heart did have to sort of "rewire" itself a little bit, a process that took a lot of time. Scar tissue doesn't respond to the electrical impulses and when you starve the heart muscle of blood which is what a HT does, you gonna get some scarring. But the Dr. says mine is minimal.

Medical technology marches on. Two years after I got that experimental stent it won approval, and is in common use today.

 

[John Dirk]

Received dose 1 of Moderna yesterday morning. No pain all morning, some mild irritation in the afternoon. Today it feels like someone walloped me in the arm. A little worse than other shots I've had, but not unbearable. Dose 2 scheduled for Feb 5.

Sounds like you're experiencing the same effect as I did. The site pain will lessen and disappear over the next couple of days.

 

[JaxWW]

I'm under 65, no underlying conditions, in a job that doesn't require regular contact with the general public, so it's going to be a while for me -- hopefully by late summer.

I'm hoping my parents can get it sooner; my mother is a lung cancer survivor with half of one lung removed and half of the other lung ruined by radiation, while my father just turned 70 and has COPD and is borderline for diabetes.

New York State hasn't done a great job so far with the distribution, but all of my friends who work in the medical field have gotten their first dose so it is moving forward.

I wish there was a better/more prioritizing metric to determine which people should be vaccinated, particularly here in Florida. Your mother should be at the top of the list. I say this because I'm eligible (65 + 1 other risk condition but have very little exposure to others. Do I try to get the vaccine now or wait? Getting an appointment online is a crap shoot? I guess this is a hypothetical question as I'll gladly wait if someone more at risk went before me but there is no way to do it.

 

[DaveF]

I wish there was a better/more prioritizing metric to determine which people should be vaccinated, particularly here in Florida. Your mother should be at the top of the list. I say this because I'm eligible (65 + 1 other risk condition but have very little exposure to others. Do I try to get the vaccine now or wait? Getting an appointment online is a crap shoot? I guess this is a hypothetical question as I'll gladly wait if someone more at risk went before me but there is no way to do it.

If you can, get it now. If you wait, then maybe you're waiting for months longer. We want needles in arms, so if you can go get it, get it. IMHO

 

[DaveF]

A recurring conversation with a colleague is if we'll be prioritized and get the vaccine sooner than otherwise (say, March versus June). I am very doubtful this will happen. But it could, as we are "essential" workers by some definitions of "essential".

If this happens, regardless of whether I "deserve" any prioritization, I'll take the vaccine ASAP.

 

[Mysto]

Pfizer went in arm at 11:30 today. So far a piece of cake.
The group doing it was well organized - the people giving the shots were excellent. Hang your arm out the window and bam - you're done. Already scheduled for second shot in three weeks and then a two week more waiting period. We will still be wearing masks and being careful but will breathe a lot easier. Plus I am supposed to be going in for some surgery very soon (just gallbladder) and the vaccine will make it a lot gentler on my mind - one less thing to worry about.

 

[ScottHM]

I had Covid-19 in November, so I don't know that a vaccine will benefit me all that much right now. I'm willing to wait a few months.

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