The Microchip in the Vaccine

[Mountain Man]

The US is seeing nothing like those stats.

Or is the US simply not reporting it? How do we account for the discrepancy between the US and the UK? Is the UK better or worse at tracking healthcare statistics?

[TheLurch]

Or is the US simply not reporting it? How do we account for the discrepancy between the US and the UK? Is the UK better or worse at tracking healthcare statistics?

The UK has a higher percentage of its population vaccinated. 90% of the population over 18 years old has had at least one dose. Second dose obviously lags that, but it's already above the US', and rising much faster.

Remember, the US reporting system has been good enough to find one-in-a-million side effects from the J&J.

[Cow Poke]

Personally, i'd get whatever was available tomorrow. Delta is causing all sorts of problems, and there's now a lot of it around, and anything available in Texas would be far, far better than nothing. Given all the options, the ones that have shown the most consistent, high performance have been Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna. So, if i were getting vaccinated tomorrow, it would be one of those.

Thanks

[rogue06]

Thanks

There was an addendum:

Incidentally, i forget to answer CowPoke's question - i got J&J because it was the first vaccine i could get. In other words, i followed the advice i gave here. I also realized i phrased things badly - i meant if you could get any of them tomorrow, get one of the RNA ones.

[Cow Poke]

There was an addendum:

Yup - saw that after I thanks'd --- thanks again, Lurch!

[Teallaura]

It doesn't even go into the nucleus! It's like giving someone a recipe for cookies on a scrap piece of paper. The cookies get baked and the paper is thrown out. The cookbook never changed.

AHA! Now we know what the nanochips do!

[Gondwanaland]

It doesn't even go into the nucleus! It's like giving someone a recipe for cookies on a scrap piece of paper. The cookies get baked and the paper is thrown out. The cookbook never changed.

I'll preface this by saying I don't think the vaccine is a nefarious plot to change our DNA.

But here's the thing. There's a LOT we don't understand about RNA/DNA. A lot. Just recently (by recently I mean this year. After these vaccines were created) we only just discovered that human cells are capable of taking RNA sequnces and writing them INTO DNA.
https://scitechdaily.com/new-discove...le-in-biology/

So I don't think that's a particularly invalid concern. This is a region of science that we have some but not remotely all knowledge.

[rogue06]

AHA! Now we know what the nanochips do!

tumblr_fb749ec9f63020dad251c4449324a16a_28a552f3_400.gif

[Mountain Man]

I'll preface this by saying I don't think the vaccine is a nefarious plot to change our DNA.

But here's the thing. There's a LOT we don't understand about RNA/DNA. A lot. Just recently (by recently I mean this year. After these vaccines were created) we only just discovered that human cells are capable of taking RNA sequnces and writing them INTO DNA.
https://scitechdaily.com/new-discove...le-in-biology/

So I don't think that's a particularly invalid concern. This is a region of science that we have some but not remotely all knowledge.

Also worth noting that we still know very little mRNA tech which has been studied for years but has never successfully passed human trials, and it has certainly never been deployed on such a wide scale before. It's almost as if the vaccine manufacturers were using the China flu pandemic as cover to push an experimental product out the door. Here's a curious article from 2017 that I stumbled across:

Founded in 2012, Moderna reached unicorn status — a $1 billion valuation — in just two years, faster than Uber, Dropbox, and Lyft, according to CB Insights. The company’s premise: Using custom-built strands of messenger RNA, known as mRNA, it aims to turn the body’s cells into ad hoc drug factories, compelling them to produce the proteins needed to treat a wide variety of diseases.

But mRNA is a tricky technology. Several major pharmaceutical companies have tried and abandoned the idea, struggling to get mRNA into cells without triggering nasty side effects.

Bancel has repeatedly promised that Moderna’s new therapies will change the world, but the company has refused to publish any data on its mRNA vehicles, sparking skepticism from some scientists and a chiding from the editors of Nature.

The indefinite delay on the Crigler-Najjar project signals persistent and troubling safety concerns for any mRNA treatment that needs to be delivered in multiple doses, covering almost everything that isn’t a vaccine, former employees and collaborators said.

[...]

Bancel, a first-time biotech CEO, has dismissed questions about Moderna’s potential. He describes mRNA as a simple way to develop treatments for scores of ailments. As he told STAT over the summer, “mRNA is like software: You can just turn the crank and get a lot of products going into development.”

It seems clear, however, that the software has run into bugs.

Patients with Crigler-Najjar are missing a key liver enzyme needed to break down bilirubin, a yellowish substance that crops up in the body as old red blood cells break down. Without that enzyme, bilirubin proliferates in the blood, leading to jaundice, muscle degeneration, and even brain damage.

In Moderna’s eyes, the one-in-million disease looked like an ideal candidate for mRNA therapy. The company crafted a string of mRNA that would encode for the missing enzyme, believing it had hit upon an excellent starting point to prove technology could be used to treat rare diseases.

But things gradually came apart last year.

Every drug has what’s called a therapeutic window, the scientific sweet spot where a treatment is powerful enough to have an effect on a disease but not so strong as to put patients at too much risk. For mRNA, that has proved elusive.

In order to protect mRNA molecules from the body’s natural defenses, drug developers must wrap them in a protective casing. For Moderna, that meant putting its Crigler-Najjar therapy in nanoparticles made of lipids. And for its chemists, those nanoparticles created a daunting challenge: Dose too little, and you don’t get enough enzyme to affect the disease; dose too much, and the drug is too toxic for patients.

https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/...-trouble-mrna/

That last sentence is rather chilling in light of the disproportionately high number of negative outcomes for the China flu vaccines being reported by medical professionals.

Also, Reuters reported in April 2021 that "these vaccines have been authorized for emergency use by the FDA. Vaccine makers will need to apply to the FDA for full approval to continue use after the pandemic," so if it's for emergency use only, and none of the vaccines have been fully approved for wide scale deployment, then why this creepily insistent push by our government to force people to get the vaccine?

As I've said before, there must be something else going on here, but I'm not entirely sure what. What I do know is that if the government can coerce the population into receiving a risky, experimental vaccine, then there's pretty much nothing they can't force us to do. What's next, mind altering drugs to make us more compliant? "Don't worry, we just want to suppress negative thoughts that cause you distress. It's for your own good. Trust us."

[rogue06]

I'll preface this by saying I don't think the vaccine is a nefarious plot to change our DNA.

But here's the thing. There's a LOT we don't understand about RNA/DNA. A lot. Just recently (by recently I mean this year. After these vaccines were created) we only just discovered that human cells are capable of taking RNA sequnces and writing them INTO DNA.
https://scitechdaily.com/new-discove...le-in-biology/

So I don't think that's a particularly invalid concern. This is a region of science that we have some but not remotely all knowledge.

I thought that they have been using RNA to to alter DNA ever since the advent of CRISPR technology developed a decade ago.

[TheLurch]

https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/10/...-trouble-mrna/[/box]
That last sentence is rather chilling in light of the disproportionately high number of negative outcomes for the China flu vaccines being reported by medical professionals.

That's because the sentence is poorly written. The issue is getting the levels of an enzyme, encoded by an RNA, correct. If the enzyme is present at high levels, then too much of its target is broken down, which causes problems.

This is not an issue with the spike protein, which is not an enzyme. It can't break down too much of its target because it doesn't break down any targets. So, while these concerns are genuine for this particular target, they're irrelevant to the use of RNA technology as vaccine.

In any case, if RNA vaccines continue to freak you out despite all the evidence they're safe, get J&J. It's based on very well established technology.

[Also, Reuters reported in April 2021 that "these vaccines have been authorized for emergency use by the FDA. Vaccine makers will need to apply to the FDA for full approval to continue use after the pandemic," so if it's for emergency use only, and none of the vaccines have been fully approved for wide scale deployment, then why this creepily insistent push by our government to force people to get the vaccine?

Because well over half a million people are dead in the US alone, and hospital systems throughout the country have regularly been pushed past their capacity? It's not creepy - it's an appropriate response to a pandemic, and one that's been chosen by countries throughout the world, regardless of the ideology of the government.

We fought two major wars over 9-11. The pandemic was causing more deaths than 9-11 every day for weeks. And you find it odd that the government is responding to it with effective health measures?

In any case, a number of drugs have now gone through the Emergency Use Authorization and ended up fully approved. I'm pretty sure the EUA program was originally put in place to give HIV patients access to experimental treatments back when we didn't have anything that was effective. It's been around for a while, and its use is perfectly normal.

[TheLurch]

I thought that they have been using RNA to to alter DNA ever since the advent of CRISPR technology developed a decade ago.

This is different from CRISPR. Human cells have a few DNA copying enzymes that are involved in duplicating the genome. But it has a whole lot more DNA copying enzymes that repair damaged DNA, often by accepting a higher rate of errors in order to make a copy that the regular enzymes can't. This is part of a normal human cell's activity, unlike CRISPR, which is normally only found in bacteria.

The result he's pointing to is suggestive that one of these enzymes could potentially use RNA as a template to repair DNA. That's possible! But these experiments were done in test tubes, and it's hard to know whether the activity seen here reflects what goes on inside cells. And there's no indication from the genome that RNA based repair is happening, and lots of evidence that it can't happen except in extremely limited circumstances, or we'd see genomes littered with the cell's own RNAs.

None of this means it can't happen. But the evidence at this point is, at best, suggestive.

[rogue06]

This is different from CRISPR. Human cells have a few DNA copying enzymes that are involved in duplicating the genome. But it has a whole lot more DNA copying enzymes that repair damaged DNA, often by accepting a higher rate of errors in order to make a copy that the regular enzymes can't. This is part of a normal human cell's activity, unlike CRISPR, which is normally only found in bacteria.

The result he's pointing to is suggestive that one of these enzymes could potentially use RNA as a template to repair DNA. That's possible! But these experiments were done in test tubes, and it's hard to know whether the activity seen here reflects what goes on inside cells. And there's no indication from the genome that RNA based repair is happening, and lots of evidence that it can't happen except in extremely limited circumstances, or we'd see genomes littered with the cell's own RNAs.

None of this means it can't happen. But the evidence at this point is, at best, suggestive.

Thanks.

My overall point was that we didn't just discover that RNA can change DNA.

[Mountain Man]

In any case, if RNA vaccines continue to freak you out despite all the evidence they're safe, get J&J. It's based on very well established technology.

Rather, experimental mRNA vaccines continue to "freak me out" because of the evidence that they're risky.

That said, I will make my decision whether or not to receive a China flu vaccine after long-term testing is complete, which should be concluded in a few years.

As for the emergency use authorization, sure, give it to the people who are at greatest risk, the old and the sick, for but those of us who are (relatively) young and healthy with strong immune systems, the experimental vaccines represent too great of a risk, and since there are currently a number of proven therapeutics for the treatment of the China flu, the need for an emergency use authorization for experimental vaccine technology is rendered moot.

[TheLurch]

As for the emergency use authorization, sure, give it to the people who are at greatest risk, the old and the sick, for but those of us who are (relatively) young and healthy with strong immune systems, the experimental vaccines represent too great of a risk, and since there are currently a number of proven therapeutics for the treatment of the China flu, the need for an emergency use authorization for experimental vaccine technology is rendered moot.

What risk do you think the vaccines pose? I'm curious, because all the documented ones are extremely rare - far lower percentage than the COVID case fatality rate.

There are also no effective therapeutics. If there were, do you think this many people would still be dying?