Vaccine is not a real vaccine

[CheeseWall]

Is what my colleague says. Dh and I have had both vaccines and will have our dc vaccinated as soon as this is possible.

My colleague says that the vaccine is not a vaccine per se but that it's 'gene therapy'. He claims to have researched the matter extensively and that people who have had Covid, even asymptomatically, have antibodies, which will protect them from getting very ill.

What spooked me was his claim that the vaccine kills off people's natural antibodies, which they have from having been exposed to the disease and that therefore people who have been vaccinated are only protected against that particular variant whereas those who have antibodies but aren't vaccinated have protection against a range of variants.

Please tell me this is nonsense.

I was on a clinical trial for inhaled Budesonide. I thought it was about £15 for a course - is that expensive?

Not expensive.

Regeneron is about £1,000 to £2,000.

Budesonide has been approved for milder infections. Regeneron helps save lives of the more seriously ill - those who have been hospitalised.

Regeneron would be very useful as a treatment for people who can't mount a natural immune response.

I'm calling Regeneron outrageously expensive because the company is charging what it thinks market will bear, I guess about US $2100/treatment in USA. NHS routinely negotiates lower cost for UK use. But bottom line is -- company is charging what it thinks it can to make greatest profits. The price has been going down, I think when Trump was treated they were trying to charge at least $5000 for full treatment period.

I probably stand corrected on the budenoside, I think numbers I looked up before can't be right. Glad to be corrected. BMJ says 800 mcg/2x a day for 14 days -- I gather that's 4 puffs twice a day. Each puff is supposed to deliver 200 mcg dose. Would one inhaler for £14 be enough to provide 14 x 8 = 112 doses? I imagine so. Or maybe 2 inhalers, but £30 is not what I should call very expensive (at least not in England, but yes very expensive in poor countries).

I was on the Principle trial and I think it was 2 puffs twice a day for 14 days - although they only sent me one inhaler which contained 50 doses, so not enough for what they told me to take.

Because I caught it around New Year, the weekend meant I didn’t receive my inhaler until day 8 of symptoms. I’ve often wondered if it made any difference to me - I didn’t have any shortness of breath at any point, the only respiratory symptom I had was the cough.

I'm calling Regeneron outrageously expensive because the company is charging what it thinks market will bear

£5K isn't outrageously expensive for a potentially life saving drug and prices in America are not a good indication of what the NHS pays, e.g. a sabutenol inhaler can cost $75 in the US but the NHS pays about £2.50. A caesarean costs the NHS about £2K, in the US it's about 10x that.

This is an outrageously expensive drug, although presumably the UK pays much less, in the US many insurance companies won't pay for it.

:D

Doesn’t his plan involve deliberately getting COVID-19? That’s madness!

I wouldn't get hung up on definitions.

Instead, maybe research the vaccine technology and go from there

@ollyollyoxenfree are you an expert in this field? Yes it’s very complex. And that’s why I’m trying to understand it. I watched a video on it and it’s so similar to how the AstraZeneca vaccine works except it’s carrying a spike protein. I have every right to want to learn and know about what I put in my body

[quote Sylvia18]@ollyollyoxenfree are you an expert in this field? Yes it’s very complex. And that’s why I’m trying to understand it. I watched a video on it and it’s so similar to how the AstraZeneca vaccine works except it’s carrying a spike protein. I have every right to want to learn and know about what I put in my body[/quote]
I'm a research scientist, not in gene tech or vaccine development, but I know enough to understand why the vaccine cannot alter your DNA and why it is extremely unlikely to cause long term emerging side effects.

Of course you have every right to learn and to know what it's the vaccines. Loads of scientists including some of my colleagues have put out blogs/videos explaining how the vaccines were development and how the work the the body, I'll see if I can find some to link.

The issue is that you seem to have come across a couple of things and made some incorrect assumptions. If the vaccines could lead to cancer that would be horrifying - we wouldn't be rolling them out and it would be a complete disaster. That's why it's important to read around before making strong statements!

on my phone so many typos- hope that made some kind of sense!

'I watched a video on it' I might have guessed!

@Jenala

It's not gene therapy, as it doesn't alter DNA. The use of mRNA is a sort of gene therapy technique, repurposed for vaccination. So he's half right-ish, I guess. It is extremely different to any other type of vaccine we have ever had, and not extensively tested in humans. The emergency use is essentially a huge stage 3 trial. So I always feel a bit weird when people talk about it like it's any other vaccine, it's really not. Hopefully that's not a problem but the truth is just like with covid we have no long term data.

The vaccine works by delivering mRNA which essentially contains instructions to make a spike protein very similar to the one coronavirus has. Your body makes this spike protein, and then recognises it as a problem and attacks it. Then if you encounter coronavirus, your body sees the spike protein and knows what to do.

There is some suggestion that this could be iffy for a couple of reasons. It's very singularly focused on the spike protein, so if the virus evolves such that the spike protein becomes less important, all the vaccines so far will then become useless to that variant. Vaccinating during an active pandemic puts evolutionary pressure on coronavirus which makes this more likely to happen. Vaccinating some of the world population while huge amounts of coronavirus is still circulating is therefore risky. Its not the same as vaccinating against a less common disease. There is also therefore some argument to be made that natural immunity from the actual virus is better as the immune response tends to be stronger with greater breadth, which may be helpful if the above variant evolves. Children have less ACE2 receptors, which is what the coronavirus spike protein binds to in order to infect. There is some evidence this may be why children are more mildly affected or can carry it with no illness at all. Therefore there could be an argument to be made that, a bit like chicken pox, it's better for children to be exposed to covid when they're young and won't be seriously affected, but should then have antibodies for future protection. Vaccinating them only gives them the opportunity to make antibodies in repsonse to the specific spike protein - which is then a problem if a different variant evolves as above.

The mRNA is delivered on the vaccine 'wrapped' in a nanolipid particle, also a new thing for vaccines and humans. It was thought this nanolipid particle would stay in the injection site area, but there is some data to suggest it may not stay there and may in fact travel round the body. We don't have the data to know if that's a problem or not, yet.

Your friend sounds like he has read and half understood some bits and pieces. I only half understand things but have read enough to know my young kids won't be given the vaccine anytime soon if it is offered. The risk vs the benefit just isn't there - it's very low risk if they get covid vs unknown longer term risks of a new style vaccine that hadn't been substantially tested in clinical trials compared to normal paediatric vaccines. That's not to say I think the vaccine is dangerous, just that there's too many unknowns for me personally. If covid had a high mortality rate for children than the risk benefit analysis would be very different.

An interesting and fairly balanced comment except the sweeping statement about low risk contracting covid v unknown long term risk against taking the vaccine.

We actually do not know the long term impact on children of either. At this juncture there appears to be less risk for vaccination v wild infection short term (and on a large scale) but both (virus and vaccine) are…new.

@Sylvia18

But a superbrief explanation:

Your cells contain DNA, which is kept in the nucleus to keep it safe. When your cells need to make a protein, a copy of the gene coding for this protein is made, called mRNA, which leaves the nucleus. This goes into the cell body and is used to code for a protein on part of the cell called the ribosome. The mRNA will then be broken down and your protein goes on to do whatever job it's supposed to.

The goal of the vaccines is to get your cells to make copies of the spike protein which your immune system can respond to.

The Pfizer/Moderna vaccines work by providing your cells with mRNA, which goes directly to the ribosome, provides the code for the spike protein, and is degraded shortly afterwards.

The AZ work by providing your cells with cDNA. This goes into the nucleus, is converted into mRNA and degraded. The mRNA then does the same job as described above. It's not possible for cDNA to integrate into your own DNA as human cells don't have the machinery to allow this to happen.

I take it your colleague has been on either Facebook or Youtube. Really scunnering that people are spreading this nonsense when you see Denmark is practically back to normal, because they had such a high take up of vaccination. What is it about here and the US, that they all seem to believe this rubbish, not to mention the other crazy conspiracies? Totally fed up with this now.

"Yes, sort of. If you have a natural infection, your immune system will make antibodies to various parts of the virus, not just the spike protein. You'd have to test for them obviously, but they do differ. Vaccination just produces antibodies to the spike protein."

See Dr Campbell's youtube channel. He talked about this and described how infection AFTER vaccination could allow our bodies to produce a wider range of antibodies while we're protected by the vaccine against the deadly symptoms. I find it all fascinating.

@Gothichouse40

I take it your colleague has been on either Facebook or Youtube. Really scunnering that people are spreading this nonsense when you see Denmark is practically back to normal, because they had such a high take up of vaccination. What is it about here and the US, that they all seem to believe this rubbish, not to mention the other crazy conspiracies? Totally fed up with this now.

How come the vaccine has worked to Denmark but not Israel? Did they use different ones? Israel is 100pct Pfizer

For one thing fully vax’d % is much higher in Denmark.
There is a perception that Israel is leading the world with % but this is no longer the case

@Jenala

It's not gene therapy, as it doesn't alter DNA. The use of mRNA is a sort of gene therapy technique, repurposed for vaccination. So he's half right-ish, I guess. It is extremely different to any other type of vaccine we have ever had, and not extensively tested in humans. The emergency use is essentially a huge stage 3 trial. So I always feel a bit weird when people talk about it like it's any other vaccine, it's really not. Hopefully that's not a problem but the truth is just like with covid we have no long term data.

The vaccine works by delivering mRNA which essentially contains instructions to make a spike protein very similar to the one coronavirus has. Your body makes this spike protein, and then recognises it as a problem and attacks it. Then if you encounter coronavirus, your body sees the spike protein and knows what to do.

There is some suggestion that this could be iffy for a couple of reasons. It's very singularly focused on the spike protein, so if the virus evolves such that the spike protein becomes less important, all the vaccines so far will then become useless to that variant. Vaccinating during an active pandemic puts evolutionary pressure on coronavirus which makes this more likely to happen. Vaccinating some of the world population while huge amounts of coronavirus is still circulating is therefore risky. Its not the same as vaccinating against a less common disease. There is also therefore some argument to be made that natural immunity from the actual virus is better as the immune response tends to be stronger with greater breadth, which may be helpful if the above variant evolves. Children have less ACE2 receptors, which is what the coronavirus spike protein binds to in order to infect. There is some evidence this may be why children are more mildly affected or can carry it with no illness at all. Therefore there could be an argument to be made that, a bit like chicken pox, it's better for children to be exposed to covid when they're young and won't be seriously affected, but should then have antibodies for future protection. Vaccinating them only gives them the opportunity to make antibodies in repsonse to the specific spike protein - which is then a problem if a different variant evolves as above.

The mRNA is delivered on the vaccine 'wrapped' in a nanolipid particle, also a new thing for vaccines and humans. It was thought this nanolipid particle would stay in the injection site area, but there is some data to suggest it may not stay there and may in fact travel round the body. We don't have the data to know if that's a problem or not, yet.

Your friend sounds like he has read and half understood some bits and pieces. I only half understand things but have read enough to know my young kids won't be given the vaccine anytime soon if it is offered. The risk vs the benefit just isn't there - it's very low risk if they get covid vs unknown longer term risks of a new style vaccine that hadn't been substantially tested in clinical trials compared to normal paediatric vaccines. That's not to say I think the vaccine is dangerous, just that there's too many unknowns for me personally. If covid had a high mortality rate for children than the risk benefit analysis would be very different.

This is a very balanced summary of the situation.

The broad immune response to natural infection is probably why those who survived Sars1 have good immunity to Covid-19, and also probably why 80% of people on the Princess Diamond DIDN'T catch Covid.

The main thing I would add is that immunity is not just "do you still have antibodies". Even one antibody levels have dropped, memory cells remember how to make those antibodies so that if you are exposed to the pathogen again, your immune response is up and running at full tilt almost immediately.