Covid-19 News/Discussion

[BobbyPhil1781]

3 hours ago, Blackstar12 said:

I learned a long time ago you have a better chance winning the lottery. Than changing someone’s stance on the internet.

This is a shame also. People can't put their damn pride aside and ever admit to being wrong and actually growing as a human being. Self reflection is too hard and people would rather not do difficult things if they don't have to. 

[incognito_man]

7 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

You haven't seen how bad I am at paint. It's paintful.

punny

[ramssuperbowl99]

1 minute ago, incognito_man said:

8 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

You haven't seen how bad I am at paint. It's paintful.

punny

I had to go back and check my post to make sure I didn't do that.

[LETSGOBROWNIES]

18 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

I tried to use everyday language and concepts as best I can. If something doesn't make sense, ask me to explain it a different way and I will. 

I'll even start pulling out ****ty Paint diagrams. I've done it for clients.

But can you make a tiktok?

[Deadpulse]

20 minutes ago, beekay414 said:

54 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

We should probably note that the length of time we've been working isn't why they are successful in this case. mRNA vaccines are superior as general candidates for an viral vaccine for a few reasons. Off the top of my head:

• Effectively zero direct safety concerns. 
  • Before everyone loses their mind, the word direct is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
  • The active part of the vaccine is a big strand of mRNA, which is just a big salt helix-y brick folded in on itself a bunch. Occasionally, it will be broken up by a stray water molecule and then disintegrate into bases used for other RNA, but otherwise, it doesn't interact with much of anything in the body. This is a huge deal. Most drugs can interact with all sorts of receptors that have a variety of effects, not here.
  • It's a single dose that is cleared from the body within about 24 hours. In other words, there are no long term effects from the drug. It's gone faster than the Advil you took after to calm your headache. So many drugs work well in small, single doses, but accumulate over time when taken repeatedly or develop enzymatic changes in the body over time. Worse yet, sometimes the body can develop immune reactions to biologic drug treatments after multiple doses. None of those concerns here. Also no concerns about drug-drug interactions. Those "medical errors" people talk about: yeah DDIs are a huge one. Non-factor.
  • It doesn't contain any live viral material, and the only "activity" or "purity" is the gene sequence of the vaccine, which we've been perfecting manufacturing for since the 1950's. You can get machines to custom make you whatever sequence you want (up to a pretty long number of base pairs) at the touch of a button these days. This is huge. If we had to use dead virus, or partial virus and there's a mistake in manufacturing, we may be at risk of infecting people. If there's a manufacturing mistake here, you got a nonsense gene sequence or a broken salt brick that gets disintegrated. No big deal.
  • We produce a vaccine with a sequence of mRNA that only codes one fragment of protein, and we know that the body will encode that protein in an environment where the protein will be immediately destroyed..
  • This is minor, but the injection is the safest dose route as well. There is less room for inter-population variability because we are bypassing the absorption through the intestine (because we have to). But everyone is getting the same dose here, whereas with things like eyedrops that may be more convenient, the amount you get person to person can vary wildly.
• Treatable indirect safety concerns
  • So the safety concerns that do exist are immune system related, because this works by stimulating the immune system to produce antibodies based on the protein encoded from the sequence of the vaccine. All we need to do is manage the immune spike, and those are the side effects that we all feel. Good news is that we know how to do this, and the side effects are going to be temporary/reversible since the vaccine itself is cleared and the immune spike is temporary. 
• Infinite efficacy
  • Most anti-virals suck. They require huge doses (which comes with toxicity) and don't tend to work all that well (hence the huge dose).
  • One of the many reasons for this is that the shape of the molecule has to be really weird because they operate like a big wrench in the gears that drive viral replication. The downside of having a drug that operates like a big wrench is that getting it to the virus (into the bloodstream, then into distant cells, then into the virus from there) is a huge problem.
  • None of those concerns here - this has to be injected but we get the immune system trained to hunt and destroy. That's going to be a complete knockout of the virus, even after the drug is gone. And everywhere too. No concerns about having to dose in the lungs, or if we can cross the blood brain barrier. We get efficacy everywhere, even though the drug itself can't cross into those vulnerable tissues. The best of both worlds.
  • EDIT: I should note many of the same advantages in safety for central nervous system tissues also apply to expecting mothers. The placental barrier will keep the drug out, but we know the antibody protection can be passed on, so we're getting efficacy inheritance with an extra structural safety barrier in the design. I had a few co-workers/friends who specifically elected to get the vaccine while pregnant for this reason.

Pharma isn't going to stop making these because they're controversial in the day-to-day political environment. They're trying to win patents; they're going to use the best product. This is better by design, and when you start factoring in the degree of quality of life improvements that we see from first generation style therapies to second to third, the gap is only going to widen. 

Expand  

[beekay414]

1 minute ago, Deadpulse said:

I actually copied and saved that post in a document so I can email it to my dad. He's not anti-vax at all but that side of my family are a bunch of bumpkins so...yeah.

[Bonanza23]

59 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

We should probably note that the length of time we've been working isn't why they are successful in this case. mRNA vaccines are superior as general candidates for an viral vaccine for a few reasons. Off the top of my head:

• Effectively zero direct safety concerns. 
  • Before everyone loses their mind, the word direct is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
  • The active part of the vaccine is a big strand of mRNA, which is just a big salt helix-y brick folded in on itself a bunch. Occasionally, it will be broken up by a stray water molecule and then disintegrate into bases used for other RNA, but otherwise, it doesn't interact with much of anything in the body. This is a huge deal. Most drugs can interact with all sorts of receptors that have a variety of effects, not here.
  • It's a single dose that is cleared from the body within about 24 hours. In other words, there are no long term effects from the drug. It's gone faster than the Advil you took after to calm your headache. So many drugs work well in small, single doses, but accumulate over time when taken repeatedly or develop enzymatic changes in the body over time. Worse yet, sometimes the body can develop immune reactions to biologic drug treatments after multiple doses. None of those concerns here. Also no concerns about drug-drug interactions. Those "medical errors" people talk about: yeah DDIs are a huge one. Non-factor.
  • It doesn't contain any live viral material, and the only "activity" or "purity" is the gene sequence of the vaccine, which we've been perfecting manufacturing for since the 1950's. You can get machines to custom make you whatever sequence you want (up to a pretty long number of base pairs) at the touch of a button these days. This is huge. If we had to use dead virus, or partial virus and there's a mistake in manufacturing, we may be at risk of infecting people. If there's a manufacturing mistake here, you got a nonsense gene sequence or a broken salt brick that gets disintegrated. No big deal.
  • We produce a vaccine with a sequence of mRNA that only codes one fragment of protein, and we know that the body will encode that protein in an environment where the protein will be immediately destroyed..
  • This is minor, but the injection is the safest dose route as well. There is less room for inter-population variability because we are bypassing the absorption through the intestine (because we have to). But everyone is getting the same dose here, whereas with things like eyedrops that may be more convenient, the amount you get person to person can vary wildly.
• Treatable indirect safety concerns
  • So the safety concerns that do exist are immune system related, because this works by stimulating the immune system to produce antibodies based on the protein encoded from the sequence of the vaccine. All we need to do is manage the immune spike, and those are the side effects that we all feel. Good news is that we know how to do this, and the side effects are going to be temporary/reversible since the vaccine itself is cleared and the immune spike is temporary. 
• Infinite efficacy
  • Most anti-virals suck. They require huge doses (which comes with toxicity) and don't tend to work all that well (hence the huge dose).
  • One of the many reasons for this is that the shape of the molecule has to be really weird because they operate like a big wrench in the gears that drive viral replication. The downside of having a drug that operates like a big wrench is that getting it to the virus (into the bloodstream, then into distant cells, then into the virus from there) is a huge problem.
  • None of those concerns here - this has to be injected but we get the immune system trained to hunt and destroy. That's going to be a complete knockout of the virus, even after the drug is gone. And everywhere too. No concerns about having to dose in the lungs, or if we can cross the blood brain barrier. We get efficacy everywhere, even though the drug itself can't cross into those vulnerable tissues. The best of both worlds.
  • EDIT: I should note many of the same advantages in safety for central nervous system tissues also apply to expecting mothers. The placental barrier will keep the drug out, but we know the antibody protection can be passed on, so we're getting efficacy inheritance with an extra structural safety barrier in the design. I had a few co-workers/friends who specifically elected to get the vaccine while pregnant for this reason.

Pharma isn't going to stop making these because they're controversial in the day-to-day political environment. They're trying to win patents; they're going to use the best product. This is better by design, and when you start factoring in the degree of quality of life improvements that we see from first generation style therapies to second to third, the gap is only going to widen. 

I’m off to consult TikTok to see if any of this is accurate. 
 

No offense, just trying to research for my own edification. 

[beekay414]

@ramssuperbowl99 My guy, what is your job title (feel free to PM me if ya want) so when my dad inevitably tries to discredit that because of what he's read on his "websites," I don't want to just generally say you're a scientist of some sort. Of course, if you don't want to, that's fine as well. Appreciate the information regardless!

[ramssuperbowl99]

8 minutes ago, beekay414 said:

@ramssuperbowl99 My guy, what is your job title (feel free to PM me if ya want) so when my dad inevitably tries to discredit that because of what he's read on his "websites," I don't want to just generally say you're a scientist of some sort. Of course, if you don't want to, that's fine as well. Appreciate the information regardless!

No worries man -what I do is figure out how much drug is in different parts of the body over time, and then use that information to predict how different dose frequencies, levels, routes, species, etc. changing would change how the drug would move through the body, and how that would then change how well the drug would work. The field is called Pharmacokinetics, but it's science and corporate America combined so there's 800,000 job titles and names for it.

EDIT: If I remember right this came up with that Jon Jones 'pulsing' stuff I'm pretty sure he just made up and tried to get Joe Rogan on board with.

Edited August 19, 2021 by ramssuperbowl99

[beekay414]

1 minute ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

No worries man -what I do is figure out how much drug is in different parts of the body over time, and then use that information to predict how different dose frequencies, levels, routes, species, etc. changing would change how the drug would move through the body, and how that would then change how well the drug would work. The field is called Pharmacokinetics, but it's science and corporate America combined so there's 800,000 job titles and names for it.

Awesome. Thanks hombre!

[mission27]

1 hour ago, BobbyPhil1781 said:

This is a shame also. People can't put their damn pride aside and ever admit to being wrong and actually growing as a human being. Self reflection is too hard and people would rather not do difficult things if they don't have to. 

The smugness revolution @TLO and I (also known as the MoL) unleased around 2014-15 has really had a catastrophic impact on the country and the world, but frankly I'm just smug about the size of the impact tbh.

[Xenos]

1 hour ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

I had to go back and check my post to make sure I didn't do that.

Rams, how do you feel about the booster news?

[incognito_man]

34 minutes ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

No worries man -what I do is figure out how much drug is in different parts of the body over time, and then use that information to predict how different dose frequencies, levels, routes, species, etc. changing would change how the drug would move through the body, and how that would then change how well the drug would work. The field is called Pharmacokinetics, but it's science and corporate America combined so there's 800,000 job titles and names for it.

EDIT: If I remember right this came up with that Jon Jones 'pulsing' stuff I'm pretty sure he just made up and tried to get Joe Rogan on board with.

Is "pharmacokineticist" one of them? 

Bet that gets the ladies

[ramssuperbowl99]

2 minutes ago, Xenos said:

Rams, how do you feel about the booster news?

For J&J, it makes sense. For general population when we need billions more global doses, I get the benefits but am torn.

3 minutes ago, incognito_man said:

Is "pharmacokineticist" one of them? 

Bet that gets the ladies

"Is that like a pharmacist?"

[incognito_man]

1 minute ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

"Is that like a pharmacist?"

"It's a mouthful, I know." [actor winks - cut scene]