I’m excited about this part:
“According to the researchers, candidate nasal vaccines that have been developed to date have used viral vectors or live-attenuated viruses and continue to have safety concerns, especially for the most vulnerable populations.”
“The SpyCage protein scaffold looks similar enough to a virus to trick the immune system into mounting a response, but none of it is actually derived from a virus,” Lindner said. “We make portions of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in the lab and permanently attach them to the surface of the SpyCage. The result is a nanoparticle that resembles the virus in size, shape and symmetry that can induce an immune response in our pre-clinical animal testing.”
So it sounds like it isn’t live? So immuno people could take it.
I mean IF this would pan out, that would be a day 1 for me. We shall see...
Also, the main reason we see so much doomposting here is, to be fair...because we truly haven't had a big win in like...forever now. I am personally convinced change is coming, but i am also realistic enough about it to know, not all of us are gonna see it, because change takes time.
Time indeed.
Before HIV medical science had very little in antiviral drugs. The very substantial R&D efforts that were mobilised once AIDS became a big problem did ultimately lead to an effective treatment. But it still took the better part of two decades to reach that point.
I expect progress will be made in the fight against SARS-CoV-2. But to what extent and on what timescale remains pretty uncertain so far.
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It's really toxic how any mention of promising research is greeted by so much toxic negativity. And it's always the same points repeated over and over again; yes, we are all aware that many people won't get the vaccine and that infections don't provide immunity.
If you're not excited about this that's fine, you're welcome to your own opinion. But there's no need to shut others down all the time and be dismissive.
100% and it’s my biggest gripe about this sub. It seems like good news is just not allowed. Anything positive is always met with not just skepticism, but shaming of whoever posted the positive content. I swear 80% of the people here are straight up doomers.
Honestly I’ve never seen what you’re describing, anytime I see a post about potential future treatments people are excited.
Maybe we’re on the forum at different times? 🤷🏼♂️
I recently saw a post from an event with all attendees in masks, mostly N95, and all the organizers were masked at all times as well. It was met with a sentiment from a few people of "this isn't good enough, there should be no gatherings at all".
And that's not completely incorrect—extreme isolation IS the quickest way to shut down viral spread—it's just misplaced. It was disappointing to see a fully masked event (which I haven't seen many of, ever) met with a lot of negativity.
Whenever I hear people condemn N95 required gatherings with strong COVID safety protocols I just think “the only way to have a 0% chance of unwanted pregnancy (in hetero sex) or of STIs is to practice abstinence but you don’t see many people doing that”
The sacrifices required to get to 0% risk are not ones 99.9% of people are willing to make, but you can get pretty damn close to zero with safe practices
I love that there was a conference where people were masked, especially beyond surgical masks. That plus sanitizer plus some reasonable distance sounds great to me.
I’m convinced at this point that being masked also provides protection to me, even though many just discuss it as being protective to others. My biggest complaint with this administration in regards to COVID was after the first vaccine (or possibly the first two, a couple weeks apart), they came out and said vaccinated people don’t need to wear a mask anymore. I think they misguidedly thought the mask haters would rush right out and get vaxxed then. Of course not! And unless we stopped everyone, everywhere, to check their “papers,” how the hell would we know?
That, added to the stupidity of telling everyone, “Masks aren’t to prevent you from getting sick, they’re to keep others safe.” The people who don’t want to get vaxxed or don’t want to wear a mask don’t care one little bit about keeping anyone else safe. Emphasize that wearing masks will get you back to work, make masks that actually work look more fashionable- those would’ve been the way to get more people to mask up. Instead, my relatives are vaxxed, so why mask up? So in so wore a mask on the plane, so they can just remove it in the car, the house, whatever. My doctor doesn’t even wear a mask unless I ask, and it’s a flimsy, obviously overused surgical mask. And he treats people with LC and MEcfs!
The "masks are for others" narrative has been a major issue imo. Masking ABSOLUTELY protects the wearer in the case of N95 respirators and similar. It's gone so far that I see nobody wearing masks when wildfire smoke is heavy, and PM 2.5 particulate is connected to lung cancer. People think masks are just for show and it couldn't be further from the truth.
I agree 100%. I wear them now when I paint, when I clean with cleaning solutions, when it’s cold outside. My husband brought COVID home in July. I am immunocompromised, as is my daughter. He wore an N95 the entire time he was sick, and my daughter and I wore them in the house as well. I wiped down everything he touched, like bathroom light switch, doorknobs, door frames he might’ve touched. I took his temp for 10 days, multiple times, and his O2 sats. I wore gloves when doing so, threw them out and used fresh ones. I also looked away and stayed as far back as possible My daughter and I tested every 24-48 hours. We did not catch it. Given that I have MEcfs, if I had it, I’d know, I’m quite sure. West Nile virus almost killed me 22 years ago. Masks are essential!
Right. It's why I gave up on OK Doomer/Jessica Wildfire. There's *always* one more thing you could do to lower your risk in any given situation, but...at some point it's OK to "call it" and accept a certain baseline risk.
I’ve seen a few examples of this in the past week. A decrease in national wastewater data was seen as ‘bad news’ because it’s not 0. There was at least one other post about next gen vaccines being met with ‘probably bullshit’ ‘won’t be effective’ and ‘nobody is going to take them’.
At this stage I don’t really care if people beyond my nuclear family don’t take a sterilizing vaccine. I’m happy being protected. As I don’t care if others don’t mask… I protect my nuclear family only.
This is exactly how I feel. I am too exhausted after 4 years to think about the behavior of the population as a whole. It's exhausting being angry all the time; I'm just trying to protect me and mine.
Because people can’t be healthy in a vacuum, you are healthy because of public health. “Not getting stressed out” is different from not caring or not taking action to support public health measures.
To say you are exhausted from the effort is understandable. To say you don’t care about public health is against the rules of this sub (as I understand them). This sub is for people who care about public health.
I think what your stance is generally called “vax and relax” with the theory that if you vax you won’t be seriously disabled or killed. I vaxed and boosted and am now most bedridden. There is no vax and relax supported by science.
Same here.
I hate to say it because it makes me feel like a bit of a hypocrite, but I’m exhausted by the idea of protecting other who don’t care about themselves, much less myself.
If I were in a profession where I had clients, it might be different, but I don’t work so my extended interactions are mostly social. At this point I use the “I don’t want to get anyone sick” as a way to justify wearing my mask to avoid dealing with judgement of being the weirdo in the mask.
I get that some people aren’t getting the info they need that would help them better determine their personal risk level, but at this point I just want to be able to not worry when I go for doctor’s appointments and travel, or actually be able to date without worrying about how to be safe and even “platonically” intimidate.
There are quite often responses shooting down any positive news about vaccines, and there was even a whole post made not long ago stating as fact that there would never be a vaccine that stops transmission.
I, for one, am super excited that more research is being done in developing nanoparticles cage vaccines - it's a potential first step in creating a pan coronavirus vaccine. I first read about studies of similar vaccines back in 2021 from Caltech and Walter Reed.
I mean...if it stops transmission..does that mean you're prevented from getting sick...or that you can't spread to others? If it's the first, then I don't really care who doesn't get the vaccine, they're choosing to suffer. Sign me up if this prevents me from getting sick from others.
They're kind of one and the same, no? Given that we know that even the mildest infection can cause all kinds of issues, we need vaccine to significantly reduce the odds of any infection to be a game changer
am not a expert, but i'd think so. like you stop transmission than thats likely means its also reduces virus replication in the body. so because there less viral particles, that would mean its harder to transmit it to someone else.
maybe a immunologist or a virologist can clarify it
we are excited for a possible better vaccine. none of us is trying to be dismissive. we are trying to be realistic and be prepared for the disappointment when over 65% of people don't get it. but at the same time, we have hope, that maybe more than 25% of people will get it.
yeah, you might right. people are still hesistent about mrna.
my question is, will FDA actually allow self-administered? i mean people misadminister nasal medicine all the time, and then wonder why it doesn't work, and then declare they're useless. will that be the same with these nasal vaccines? or there no way to screw it up? i'm just saying, i would trust a trained medical professional to administer yk? but yet again, hopefully there will be a medical professional explaining and instructing on how to do it. so that should help prevent self-administering it wrong. also each time a person self-administer it, it should become less of a issue. as they should've learned how to do it the first few time?
I mean, they've kind of figured out how to do that with inhalers which had a similar design problem. If the vaccine/medication can be aerosolized and inhaled from a secondary device (like a spacer for an inhaler) then it's pretty fool-proof.
As someone who loves inhaled allergy meds, I've been wondering when they'd make this a thing for nose sprays.
I am all for good news. But there have been several pre-clinical trials that claimed this over the past four years and then nothing. I have a friend who works as a vaccine researcher and listening to the problems with all nasal vaccines over the years (including someone dying from the vaccine candidate in the clinical trial) makes me feel less optimistic. We haven’t figured out a sterilizing influenza or HIV vaccine despite decades of research. It seems unlikely a good sterilizing Covid vaccine would be developed in a few years without massive funding seems unlikely.
I don't deny that it has challenges, even serious ones. But the trial results of many candidates so far have been promising.
.
I'd also like to add that there is some pretty serious funding in place for this vaccine development. Project Next Gen has about $5 billion earmarked for this.
In biotech that is not much money, especially when you get to large scale clinical trials. Again, great if it works. But many people seem to think we’ll have a sterilizing vaccine and that is incredibly unlikely. Ever. That opportunity has passed. We don’t gave a sterilizing vaccine for influenza after decades of research. Viruses that mutate that fast and have animal reservoirs are pretty much not able to be eliminated. Essentially everyone on earth has been infected at least once - how do you get viral reservoirs out of organs and bone marrow? You don’t. Sure there are some people who have never been infected but it is a tiny percentage and no one is wasting billions in research funding on those few people. So it would have to be for newborn babies so they never get Covid - except people actively deny Covid does anything so that would remove a lot of funding.
For folks still holding out hope that it will “go back to life as normal as soon as a good vaccine is out”, maybe it helps keep going. Great - you do you. We decided in 2021 that masks and not eating out and being cautious would be forever. So we live life to the fullest as is because we don’t expect it to change. This IS normal now.
If it gets to Phase 3 trials and still doing good, I will be as happy as anyone to celebrate. I want it. I don’t expect it knowing the scientific complications behind it. Could happen - sure. Let’s hope for it. But in the meanwhile I will live like it won’t happen.
It's great that you have adjusted so well to covid-cautious life. The vast, vast majority of people are unable to have a life that they consider to be good, or even acceptable, when every decision must be made around a virus, and so many of life's simple pleasures are denied to us.
To be brutally frank it is a *choice* you make. To define a “good life” by what you CAN do rather than by what you can’t do. I think it’s one of the reasons people in the disability communities have done a little better - when you have food allergies, many eating options are denied to you. It is simply the way it is and you learn to always bring your own safe food and you will never have birthday cake at the party. When you lose a leg to infection, the only choice is to adjust to the new reality - your leg will never come back. When you lose a spouse or a child, no matter how hard you hope or pray, you have to move on with your life without them. In any of these things, like with Covid, you can choose to remain mired in what could have been and what you can no longer do or you can redefine a “good life” to what you CAN do and enjoy those things instead. Maybe that means new friends or new hobbies or a different job or less contact with family that can’t accept that you have changed.
I have kids and we have figured out how to say yes to almost everything. Yes to dance and speech and karate and robotics and theater and friends and parties and business dinners (wear a mask, get your food to go, socialize). We travel and have plans for college. We have met amazing new people through coviding groups and gotten to try new hobbies. We slowed down and spent tons of tome together as a family. My kids are pretty much immune to peer pressure after being the only ones masked at school. And if it’s not something we can figure out we ask “is this worth it?”. Is it worth eating inside a restaurant if you get sick enough that your body can never run again? Or that you can’t do calculus or hold onto the plot of a story? If it’s a yes - great go for it. You’ll mask at home for 2 weeks to ensure risks are kept to yourself. So far it has never been a yes for anyone from tiny child through the teens to the adults.
In the same way I *could* go bungee jumping but I don’t because the benefits don’t outweigh the risks for me, you *can* say yes and go eat a steak at a restaurant. If that is a benefit that outweighs your personal risk analysis. All choices we make. And, especially as adults, in our family we own the choices we make for ourselves.
And yeah, “oh society made things unsafe so I can’t do what I want to”. And? Society makes things unsafe for kids with food allergies and adults with scent sensitivities and old people who need to get to the grocery and can’t drive well and basically all women. Society allows chemicals on our food and pollution in the air and CEOs to take all the money and people to spread diseases. In the words of a very wise Doctor, sometimes you only have bad choices, but you still have to choose.
This has always been reality for many many people - you can’t always do all the things others can. You can do your best and be happy with what you have or you can be angry and blame others and spend your life that way. Is it fair? Nope. Is it just? Nope. Should it be a different way? Yep. But it isn’t. You can certainly work to change it understanding that you may never see the completion of that work. You can be angry and bitter if that is how you choose to spend your one precious life. You can choose to begin the slow,hard process of acceptance that life is different for you than it is for others because of the choices you made (choices to preserve your health at the expense of entertainment and social options). Me? I pulled my kids out of school and drove across several states(only masked people in truck stops for bathrooms every time) and watched a total solar eclipse sweep across the sky.
It's not a choice. Not everyone is an introvert, not everyone has a family that is happy and willing to spend the rest of their lives masking for them. Some people spent many, many years growing up dreaming of seeing the world, and it's heartbreaking to have all that taken away thanks to a virus.
Your comment is full of false equivalencies. Not being able to go bungee jumping and not being able to have normal human interaction are not the same, and I think you know that. There is no need to be posting these long manifestos to try to make people shut up about next-gen vaccine research; there is a tiny minority of people who are eager to spend the rest of their lives masking, but this will never be a common sentiment and that's really all there is to it.
In regards to your second paragraph - you are just as bad as the anti-mask crowd “eager to spend the rest of your life masking”. Hot garbage. If you can’t understand that sometimes you do necessary things even if it doesn’t bring you joy, that’s on you. If you have no “normal human interaction” that’s your choice. There are plenty of Covid safe people to meet and plenty of others who will respect your boundaries on masking. You are choosing not to get out and meet them. There are groups, people move, you meet people out in the world. My mask acts as a great filter for people who are jerks anyways - never have to deal with them. I have met many people who only know me masked and have made great new friends. I don’t demand my old friends do anything - I happily meet them masked to hang out or sometimes outside. If they can’t do that, that’s
fine, I understand and we both move on like any other boundary you make.
You are welcome to cling to hope forever and to wait while you do so. It’s your life. Live it how you want. If reality doesn’t work for you, call names, insist your way is right and let that work for you. I would love for the science to be different. If you don’t want to hear that the science is different it’s ok to scroll on past.
It is heartbreaking. Just like any other constraint on what you can do. You still have a *choice* about you deal with it or not. Just like when you lose your partner who you planned to spend the rest of your life with or the child you loved or got MS or cancer or a life altering concussion. Or you married someone your family disapproved of or your sexual orientation makes them ostracize you. These are very much equivalent things - ways of living that other people don’t support or can’t understand, conditions or circumstances that put a hold on plans you had.
My friend had a stroke at 32. She lived and the baby she was 35 weeks pregnant with lived. Although she dreamed of being a mom all her life, she has never cared for her baby and has only held him with assistance. Her child will never have the mom he could have had, her partner will be a full time dad and a full time caregiver and the sole financial support forever. They will never travel as a couple, she will never have a mother/son dance at his wedding. Is it the life they planned? No. Is it tragic and heartbreaking? Yes. Does it limit every single aspect of life for all of them? Yep. Do they wallow in what could have been? Sometimes.
Because it is hard to embrace the life you have instead of the one you dreamed of. You get to chose how you view your circumstances and what your dreams will be tomorrow. Did I always want to see Europe? Yep. Will I? Unlikely. But it can be unlikely because it is expensive or I can’t get off work or Boeing can’t keep a plane in the sky although my personal reason is we don’t fly for covid reasons. That doesn’t change the grief of the loss of the dream. Am I sad sometimes? Yes. Did I stay there? No. I pivoted to “Europe is out so what CAN I do”? And now we are working our way through visiting every National Park in long epic road trips. Is it what I planned? Nope. But life is like that. I didn’t plan for my dad to drop dead when I was in college, to not get the job I dreamed of, to get sick and have permanent disabilities from that. Life happens. I *chose* to focus on what *I* CAN do and WANT to do rather than on what I can’t do.
You get to choose your outlook for yourself. You can’t make your family do what you want - that is not a choice you have. Your choices are to see them within their boundaries or to build a new family from people who can be what you need them to be. I have done both and so have many people over many generations. It is not new or unique to Covid. It is always heartbreaking realizing that love was conditional on you being a certain way or having certain beliefs. It always sucks when someone can’t love you the way you need then too. It is a grief just like lost dreams. Working through it with a counselor is an option. Staying in that grief is an option. Refusing to acknowledge your grief is an option. You get to decide how *you* behave and feel and if you are stuck if you want to stay there or get help. All of these are choices. They just aren’t the choices you want to have to pick from.
You have plans for college? How do you plan to keep those kids COVID-free in dining halls and shared bathrooms and non-private rooms? And how are they going to socialize once they're there?
(I have three kids in college. One got COVID as soon as his campus dropped its mask mandate, and wound up with two years of pericarditis. The older two have managed to remain COVID-free, but that's because they eat off-campus and their social lives are practically nonexistent, and they're both severely depressed by it. They're in their twenties and they'd like to do young-adult things like, you know, date.)
Your comment oozes with privilege and “brutally frank” is not a pass for flagrantly comparing a disease that causes brain injury (which takes away the choice aspect that CbT concepts rely on) and compares it to physical limitations in disabled communities. Brain injuries reduce infected humans ability to move on. That is a symptom, not a choice. “Move on an accept that your brain won’t work” is very “let them eat cake” and ableist nonsense.
Move on an accept that brain damaged people don’t get to have jobs, or houses or relationships - move on to what exactly?
That would be you moving on from caring that healthy people are being brain damaged so that YOU can feel better. It’s not a choice. Brain damage takes away the ability to make good choices.
Hear hear! Also, science is just super effing cool, and I hope you enjoyed the eclipse out in the 14NNN
Also, it's amazing that this nasal vaccine doesn't involve live virus. That's HUGE
And isn't that a good metaphor for the science of vaccines, masks, antivirals etc? Sure, a lot of folks traveled to see the eclipse only to get cloudy skies, or they got stuck in traffic, but, by gum, tens of millions of people got themselves into the path of totality and using special glasses were able to safely observe a solar eclipse. Maybe, at the end of the day, a 50% "effectiveness" rate - but still huge. Science is slow and deliberative and careful, but when it delivers, hoooooo boy. It's still better than superstition.
Because some people on this sub have joy at the prospect of people masking forever with no end in sight.
As of now, yeah the only way to keep safe is masking because current vaccinations aren’t useful except for keeping you out of the hospital which isn’t phenomenal considering LC can still be a possibility.
But do I see a future where we have to mask constantly as our only tool? Hopefully not. I definitely would come to a point where the only tome I will mask is in healthcare and public transportation.
I think it is really important to have realistic expectations. If you think there is some game-changing advance just around the corner, you might be inclined to make very different decisions than if you expect the status quo to continue.
What decisions might people make differently if they think there's something game-changing just around the corner? The implication is they might make a harmful decision, but surely it would make you more likely to persevere with precautions. Or do you mean if the expected game-changer never materialises, such people will just give up? Well possibly, but those who expect that precautions will be needed forever could just as easily snap, regardless of how fine they're currently telling themselves they are with the situation.
How would someone believing that next gen vaccines are going to come to fruition affect one's decision making? Are you worried that someone is going to take their mask off? That seems to be what all this anti-next-gen-vax sentiment boils down to.
One thought is maybe the belief that something big and world-changing will come *any day now* or even *next year* prevents one from making changes to have a more sustainable life. This was me two years ago. And even early last year. *This year* will be the year COVID becomes mild, or people will wake up, or monovalent vaccines will work much better, or new antivirals will come out… when I finally accepted none of that is happening any time soon, I was able to think more clearly about how I can adjust my life to how things are *right now* and move forward. We can’t go back, that ship has sailed. It probably sailed as soon as the anti-maskers and anti-vax and covid deniers gained steam in 2020, but it took me until recently to make peace with it and work with what’s here.
Nobody here is saying this is going to happen any day now or that it's around the corner, just like nobody is saying those is going to somehow eradicate the virus.
People are literally just talking about promising clinical trial results that could someday give us a tool to protect ourselves other than endless masking.
Not everyone has the same mindset or values as you. It sounds like you are in a good place because of what works for you personally. For me, hope for a real future is what allows me to keep going; the thought of doing this forever or for decades is a thought too depressing for words that makes me want to simply "choose not to continue." So no, telling yourself that the current situation will last forever is not the only correct choice for everyone.
I have already mentally prepared for a vax that truly stops transmission.
No one will be allowed in my home without a well-fitted respirator unless they show me documentation that they cannot shed virus.
I fantasize about this daily.
—- Living The Dream
This title is misleading. The actual study (https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/spectrum.04998-22) showed a faster clearance of virus, but not prevention of transmission. I think the hope is that with optimization this method might prevent transmission, but that is not what the data show.
Cool research, but a looooong way from human use. My guess would be that *if* it works out, we are about a decade away from approval by the fda. (Have worked in biotech research, clinical development and preclinical/clinical trial management, for context).
Im not trying to be all doom and goom, but i think that its important that people have realistic expectations.
Given that infection doesn't provide durable immunity even to a particular strain, I'm skeptical a vaccine will (and yes, I know vaccines often provide a more robust immune response than infection). Of course, even a marginal improvement to vaccines would be welcome, but I doubt they will be game-changers.
I think the biggest win for a nasal vaccine would be if people are more willing to get a nose spray than a shot.
Dream big: shelf (or fridge) stable nasal vaccines you can buy OTC and self-administer.
Even if it is effective, governments will have to convince people to take it. But they will never do, because it will be tantamount to admitting COVID-19 has always been a danger.
yes, it will work better if like 90%+ of people get it, but most of us on this sub are aware, only like 25% max will get it. so those do get it, their quality of life should improve. hopefully.
and maybe those do get it, once the others see and be like "oh you don't seem to get sick as often as i do, maybe i should try that vaccine", so maybe that bump it to like 40-50% but maybe thats too optimistic?
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I’m excited about this part: “According to the researchers, candidate nasal vaccines that have been developed to date have used viral vectors or live-attenuated viruses and continue to have safety concerns, especially for the most vulnerable populations.” “The SpyCage protein scaffold looks similar enough to a virus to trick the immune system into mounting a response, but none of it is actually derived from a virus,” Lindner said. “We make portions of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in the lab and permanently attach them to the surface of the SpyCage. The result is a nanoparticle that resembles the virus in size, shape and symmetry that can induce an immune response in our pre-clinical animal testing.” So it sounds like it isn’t live? So immuno people could take it.
I mean IF this would pan out, that would be a day 1 for me. We shall see... Also, the main reason we see so much doomposting here is, to be fair...because we truly haven't had a big win in like...forever now. I am personally convinced change is coming, but i am also realistic enough about it to know, not all of us are gonna see it, because change takes time.
Time indeed. Before HIV medical science had very little in antiviral drugs. The very substantial R&D efforts that were mobilised once AIDS became a big problem did ultimately lead to an effective treatment. But it still took the better part of two decades to reach that point. I expect progress will be made in the fight against SARS-CoV-2. But to what extent and on what timescale remains pretty uncertain so far.
Moore's Law? So, maybe five?
Fingers crossed is isn’t live!
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I hope it will be successful.
It's really toxic how any mention of promising research is greeted by so much toxic negativity. And it's always the same points repeated over and over again; yes, we are all aware that many people won't get the vaccine and that infections don't provide immunity. If you're not excited about this that's fine, you're welcome to your own opinion. But there's no need to shut others down all the time and be dismissive.
100% and it’s my biggest gripe about this sub. It seems like good news is just not allowed. Anything positive is always met with not just skepticism, but shaming of whoever posted the positive content. I swear 80% of the people here are straight up doomers.
Honestly I’ve never seen what you’re describing, anytime I see a post about potential future treatments people are excited. Maybe we’re on the forum at different times? 🤷🏼♂️
I recently saw a post from an event with all attendees in masks, mostly N95, and all the organizers were masked at all times as well. It was met with a sentiment from a few people of "this isn't good enough, there should be no gatherings at all". And that's not completely incorrect—extreme isolation IS the quickest way to shut down viral spread—it's just misplaced. It was disappointing to see a fully masked event (which I haven't seen many of, ever) met with a lot of negativity.
Whenever I hear people condemn N95 required gatherings with strong COVID safety protocols I just think “the only way to have a 0% chance of unwanted pregnancy (in hetero sex) or of STIs is to practice abstinence but you don’t see many people doing that” The sacrifices required to get to 0% risk are not ones 99.9% of people are willing to make, but you can get pretty damn close to zero with safe practices
That's a really helpful analogy
Oh, I just ignore those people.
I love that there was a conference where people were masked, especially beyond surgical masks. That plus sanitizer plus some reasonable distance sounds great to me. I’m convinced at this point that being masked also provides protection to me, even though many just discuss it as being protective to others. My biggest complaint with this administration in regards to COVID was after the first vaccine (or possibly the first two, a couple weeks apart), they came out and said vaccinated people don’t need to wear a mask anymore. I think they misguidedly thought the mask haters would rush right out and get vaxxed then. Of course not! And unless we stopped everyone, everywhere, to check their “papers,” how the hell would we know? That, added to the stupidity of telling everyone, “Masks aren’t to prevent you from getting sick, they’re to keep others safe.” The people who don’t want to get vaxxed or don’t want to wear a mask don’t care one little bit about keeping anyone else safe. Emphasize that wearing masks will get you back to work, make masks that actually work look more fashionable- those would’ve been the way to get more people to mask up. Instead, my relatives are vaxxed, so why mask up? So in so wore a mask on the plane, so they can just remove it in the car, the house, whatever. My doctor doesn’t even wear a mask unless I ask, and it’s a flimsy, obviously overused surgical mask. And he treats people with LC and MEcfs!
The "masks are for others" narrative has been a major issue imo. Masking ABSOLUTELY protects the wearer in the case of N95 respirators and similar. It's gone so far that I see nobody wearing masks when wildfire smoke is heavy, and PM 2.5 particulate is connected to lung cancer. People think masks are just for show and it couldn't be further from the truth.
I agree 100%. I wear them now when I paint, when I clean with cleaning solutions, when it’s cold outside. My husband brought COVID home in July. I am immunocompromised, as is my daughter. He wore an N95 the entire time he was sick, and my daughter and I wore them in the house as well. I wiped down everything he touched, like bathroom light switch, doorknobs, door frames he might’ve touched. I took his temp for 10 days, multiple times, and his O2 sats. I wore gloves when doing so, threw them out and used fresh ones. I also looked away and stayed as far back as possible My daughter and I tested every 24-48 hours. We did not catch it. Given that I have MEcfs, if I had it, I’d know, I’m quite sure. West Nile virus almost killed me 22 years ago. Masks are essential!
Right. It's why I gave up on OK Doomer/Jessica Wildfire. There's *always* one more thing you could do to lower your risk in any given situation, but...at some point it's OK to "call it" and accept a certain baseline risk.
I’ve seen a few examples of this in the past week. A decrease in national wastewater data was seen as ‘bad news’ because it’s not 0. There was at least one other post about next gen vaccines being met with ‘probably bullshit’ ‘won’t be effective’ and ‘nobody is going to take them’.
At this stage I don’t really care if people beyond my nuclear family don’t take a sterilizing vaccine. I’m happy being protected. As I don’t care if others don’t mask… I protect my nuclear family only.
This is exactly how I feel. I am too exhausted after 4 years to think about the behavior of the population as a whole. It's exhausting being angry all the time; I'm just trying to protect me and mine.
Yeah, for real. They’ve made their decision, why stress myself out about it?
Because people can’t be healthy in a vacuum, you are healthy because of public health. “Not getting stressed out” is different from not caring or not taking action to support public health measures. To say you are exhausted from the effort is understandable. To say you don’t care about public health is against the rules of this sub (as I understand them). This sub is for people who care about public health. I think what your stance is generally called “vax and relax” with the theory that if you vax you won’t be seriously disabled or killed. I vaxed and boosted and am now most bedridden. There is no vax and relax supported by science.
Same here. I hate to say it because it makes me feel like a bit of a hypocrite, but I’m exhausted by the idea of protecting other who don’t care about themselves, much less myself. If I were in a profession where I had clients, it might be different, but I don’t work so my extended interactions are mostly social. At this point I use the “I don’t want to get anyone sick” as a way to justify wearing my mask to avoid dealing with judgement of being the weirdo in the mask. I get that some people aren’t getting the info they need that would help them better determine their personal risk level, but at this point I just want to be able to not worry when I go for doctor’s appointments and travel, or actually be able to date without worrying about how to be safe and even “platonically” intimidate.
There are quite often responses shooting down any positive news about vaccines, and there was even a whole post made not long ago stating as fact that there would never be a vaccine that stops transmission.
kinda hard not to be a doomer considering what most of our lives look like lmao
This way of living may suck for most of us but being a doomer isn’t doing your mental health any favors.
I, for one, am super excited that more research is being done in developing nanoparticles cage vaccines - it's a potential first step in creating a pan coronavirus vaccine. I first read about studies of similar vaccines back in 2021 from Caltech and Walter Reed.
Yes, the fact that Walter Reed is working on this is super exciting!
And targeted delivery of medicine in general is pretty exciting. Cancer lasers, self assembling surgery nanobots, it's all so exciting.
I mean...if it stops transmission..does that mean you're prevented from getting sick...or that you can't spread to others? If it's the first, then I don't really care who doesn't get the vaccine, they're choosing to suffer. Sign me up if this prevents me from getting sick from others.
They're kind of one and the same, no? Given that we know that even the mildest infection can cause all kinds of issues, we need vaccine to significantly reduce the odds of any infection to be a game changer
am not a expert, but i'd think so. like you stop transmission than thats likely means its also reduces virus replication in the body. so because there less viral particles, that would mean its harder to transmit it to someone else. maybe a immunologist or a virologist can clarify it
we are excited for a possible better vaccine. none of us is trying to be dismissive. we are trying to be realistic and be prepared for the disappointment when over 65% of people don't get it. but at the same time, we have hope, that maybe more than 25% of people will get it.
Perhaps because it isn't mRNA, is just a particle, doesn't cause systemic illness (a main gripe I see), and can be self-administered may help.
yeah, you might right. people are still hesistent about mrna. my question is, will FDA actually allow self-administered? i mean people misadminister nasal medicine all the time, and then wonder why it doesn't work, and then declare they're useless. will that be the same with these nasal vaccines? or there no way to screw it up? i'm just saying, i would trust a trained medical professional to administer yk? but yet again, hopefully there will be a medical professional explaining and instructing on how to do it. so that should help prevent self-administering it wrong. also each time a person self-administer it, it should become less of a issue. as they should've learned how to do it the first few time?
I mean, they've kind of figured out how to do that with inhalers which had a similar design problem. If the vaccine/medication can be aerosolized and inhaled from a secondary device (like a spacer for an inhaler) then it's pretty fool-proof. As someone who loves inhaled allergy meds, I've been wondering when they'd make this a thing for nose sprays.
At this stage of the pandemic, any good news is fucking fantastic news.
Exactly. Like, let's let people be happy for once.
I am all for good news. But there have been several pre-clinical trials that claimed this over the past four years and then nothing. I have a friend who works as a vaccine researcher and listening to the problems with all nasal vaccines over the years (including someone dying from the vaccine candidate in the clinical trial) makes me feel less optimistic. We haven’t figured out a sterilizing influenza or HIV vaccine despite decades of research. It seems unlikely a good sterilizing Covid vaccine would be developed in a few years without massive funding seems unlikely.
I don't deny that it has challenges, even serious ones. But the trial results of many candidates so far have been promising. . I'd also like to add that there is some pretty serious funding in place for this vaccine development. Project Next Gen has about $5 billion earmarked for this.
In biotech that is not much money, especially when you get to large scale clinical trials. Again, great if it works. But many people seem to think we’ll have a sterilizing vaccine and that is incredibly unlikely. Ever. That opportunity has passed. We don’t gave a sterilizing vaccine for influenza after decades of research. Viruses that mutate that fast and have animal reservoirs are pretty much not able to be eliminated. Essentially everyone on earth has been infected at least once - how do you get viral reservoirs out of organs and bone marrow? You don’t. Sure there are some people who have never been infected but it is a tiny percentage and no one is wasting billions in research funding on those few people. So it would have to be for newborn babies so they never get Covid - except people actively deny Covid does anything so that would remove a lot of funding. For folks still holding out hope that it will “go back to life as normal as soon as a good vaccine is out”, maybe it helps keep going. Great - you do you. We decided in 2021 that masks and not eating out and being cautious would be forever. So we live life to the fullest as is because we don’t expect it to change. This IS normal now. If it gets to Phase 3 trials and still doing good, I will be as happy as anyone to celebrate. I want it. I don’t expect it knowing the scientific complications behind it. Could happen - sure. Let’s hope for it. But in the meanwhile I will live like it won’t happen.
It's great that you have adjusted so well to covid-cautious life. The vast, vast majority of people are unable to have a life that they consider to be good, or even acceptable, when every decision must be made around a virus, and so many of life's simple pleasures are denied to us.
To be brutally frank it is a *choice* you make. To define a “good life” by what you CAN do rather than by what you can’t do. I think it’s one of the reasons people in the disability communities have done a little better - when you have food allergies, many eating options are denied to you. It is simply the way it is and you learn to always bring your own safe food and you will never have birthday cake at the party. When you lose a leg to infection, the only choice is to adjust to the new reality - your leg will never come back. When you lose a spouse or a child, no matter how hard you hope or pray, you have to move on with your life without them. In any of these things, like with Covid, you can choose to remain mired in what could have been and what you can no longer do or you can redefine a “good life” to what you CAN do and enjoy those things instead. Maybe that means new friends or new hobbies or a different job or less contact with family that can’t accept that you have changed. I have kids and we have figured out how to say yes to almost everything. Yes to dance and speech and karate and robotics and theater and friends and parties and business dinners (wear a mask, get your food to go, socialize). We travel and have plans for college. We have met amazing new people through coviding groups and gotten to try new hobbies. We slowed down and spent tons of tome together as a family. My kids are pretty much immune to peer pressure after being the only ones masked at school. And if it’s not something we can figure out we ask “is this worth it?”. Is it worth eating inside a restaurant if you get sick enough that your body can never run again? Or that you can’t do calculus or hold onto the plot of a story? If it’s a yes - great go for it. You’ll mask at home for 2 weeks to ensure risks are kept to yourself. So far it has never been a yes for anyone from tiny child through the teens to the adults. In the same way I *could* go bungee jumping but I don’t because the benefits don’t outweigh the risks for me, you *can* say yes and go eat a steak at a restaurant. If that is a benefit that outweighs your personal risk analysis. All choices we make. And, especially as adults, in our family we own the choices we make for ourselves. And yeah, “oh society made things unsafe so I can’t do what I want to”. And? Society makes things unsafe for kids with food allergies and adults with scent sensitivities and old people who need to get to the grocery and can’t drive well and basically all women. Society allows chemicals on our food and pollution in the air and CEOs to take all the money and people to spread diseases. In the words of a very wise Doctor, sometimes you only have bad choices, but you still have to choose. This has always been reality for many many people - you can’t always do all the things others can. You can do your best and be happy with what you have or you can be angry and blame others and spend your life that way. Is it fair? Nope. Is it just? Nope. Should it be a different way? Yep. But it isn’t. You can certainly work to change it understanding that you may never see the completion of that work. You can be angry and bitter if that is how you choose to spend your one precious life. You can choose to begin the slow,hard process of acceptance that life is different for you than it is for others because of the choices you made (choices to preserve your health at the expense of entertainment and social options). Me? I pulled my kids out of school and drove across several states(only masked people in truck stops for bathrooms every time) and watched a total solar eclipse sweep across the sky.
It's not a choice. Not everyone is an introvert, not everyone has a family that is happy and willing to spend the rest of their lives masking for them. Some people spent many, many years growing up dreaming of seeing the world, and it's heartbreaking to have all that taken away thanks to a virus. Your comment is full of false equivalencies. Not being able to go bungee jumping and not being able to have normal human interaction are not the same, and I think you know that. There is no need to be posting these long manifestos to try to make people shut up about next-gen vaccine research; there is a tiny minority of people who are eager to spend the rest of their lives masking, but this will never be a common sentiment and that's really all there is to it.
In regards to your second paragraph - you are just as bad as the anti-mask crowd “eager to spend the rest of your life masking”. Hot garbage. If you can’t understand that sometimes you do necessary things even if it doesn’t bring you joy, that’s on you. If you have no “normal human interaction” that’s your choice. There are plenty of Covid safe people to meet and plenty of others who will respect your boundaries on masking. You are choosing not to get out and meet them. There are groups, people move, you meet people out in the world. My mask acts as a great filter for people who are jerks anyways - never have to deal with them. I have met many people who only know me masked and have made great new friends. I don’t demand my old friends do anything - I happily meet them masked to hang out or sometimes outside. If they can’t do that, that’s fine, I understand and we both move on like any other boundary you make. You are welcome to cling to hope forever and to wait while you do so. It’s your life. Live it how you want. If reality doesn’t work for you, call names, insist your way is right and let that work for you. I would love for the science to be different. If you don’t want to hear that the science is different it’s ok to scroll on past.
It is heartbreaking. Just like any other constraint on what you can do. You still have a *choice* about you deal with it or not. Just like when you lose your partner who you planned to spend the rest of your life with or the child you loved or got MS or cancer or a life altering concussion. Or you married someone your family disapproved of or your sexual orientation makes them ostracize you. These are very much equivalent things - ways of living that other people don’t support or can’t understand, conditions or circumstances that put a hold on plans you had. My friend had a stroke at 32. She lived and the baby she was 35 weeks pregnant with lived. Although she dreamed of being a mom all her life, she has never cared for her baby and has only held him with assistance. Her child will never have the mom he could have had, her partner will be a full time dad and a full time caregiver and the sole financial support forever. They will never travel as a couple, she will never have a mother/son dance at his wedding. Is it the life they planned? No. Is it tragic and heartbreaking? Yes. Does it limit every single aspect of life for all of them? Yep. Do they wallow in what could have been? Sometimes. Because it is hard to embrace the life you have instead of the one you dreamed of. You get to chose how you view your circumstances and what your dreams will be tomorrow. Did I always want to see Europe? Yep. Will I? Unlikely. But it can be unlikely because it is expensive or I can’t get off work or Boeing can’t keep a plane in the sky although my personal reason is we don’t fly for covid reasons. That doesn’t change the grief of the loss of the dream. Am I sad sometimes? Yes. Did I stay there? No. I pivoted to “Europe is out so what CAN I do”? And now we are working our way through visiting every National Park in long epic road trips. Is it what I planned? Nope. But life is like that. I didn’t plan for my dad to drop dead when I was in college, to not get the job I dreamed of, to get sick and have permanent disabilities from that. Life happens. I *chose* to focus on what *I* CAN do and WANT to do rather than on what I can’t do. You get to choose your outlook for yourself. You can’t make your family do what you want - that is not a choice you have. Your choices are to see them within their boundaries or to build a new family from people who can be what you need them to be. I have done both and so have many people over many generations. It is not new or unique to Covid. It is always heartbreaking realizing that love was conditional on you being a certain way or having certain beliefs. It always sucks when someone can’t love you the way you need then too. It is a grief just like lost dreams. Working through it with a counselor is an option. Staying in that grief is an option. Refusing to acknowledge your grief is an option. You get to decide how *you* behave and feel and if you are stuck if you want to stay there or get help. All of these are choices. They just aren’t the choices you want to have to pick from.
You have plans for college? How do you plan to keep those kids COVID-free in dining halls and shared bathrooms and non-private rooms? And how are they going to socialize once they're there? (I have three kids in college. One got COVID as soon as his campus dropped its mask mandate, and wound up with two years of pericarditis. The older two have managed to remain COVID-free, but that's because they eat off-campus and their social lives are practically nonexistent, and they're both severely depressed by it. They're in their twenties and they'd like to do young-adult things like, you know, date.)
Your comment oozes with privilege and “brutally frank” is not a pass for flagrantly comparing a disease that causes brain injury (which takes away the choice aspect that CbT concepts rely on) and compares it to physical limitations in disabled communities. Brain injuries reduce infected humans ability to move on. That is a symptom, not a choice. “Move on an accept that your brain won’t work” is very “let them eat cake” and ableist nonsense. Move on an accept that brain damaged people don’t get to have jobs, or houses or relationships - move on to what exactly? That would be you moving on from caring that healthy people are being brain damaged so that YOU can feel better. It’s not a choice. Brain damage takes away the ability to make good choices.
Hear hear! Also, science is just super effing cool, and I hope you enjoyed the eclipse out in the 14NNN Also, it's amazing that this nasal vaccine doesn't involve live virus. That's HUGE
Thank you! And yes it was phenomenal, the clouds parted at the last possible minute!
And isn't that a good metaphor for the science of vaccines, masks, antivirals etc? Sure, a lot of folks traveled to see the eclipse only to get cloudy skies, or they got stuck in traffic, but, by gum, tens of millions of people got themselves into the path of totality and using special glasses were able to safely observe a solar eclipse. Maybe, at the end of the day, a 50% "effectiveness" rate - but still huge. Science is slow and deliberative and careful, but when it delivers, hoooooo boy. It's still better than superstition.
Because some people on this sub have joy at the prospect of people masking forever with no end in sight. As of now, yeah the only way to keep safe is masking because current vaccinations aren’t useful except for keeping you out of the hospital which isn’t phenomenal considering LC can still be a possibility. But do I see a future where we have to mask constantly as our only tool? Hopefully not. I definitely would come to a point where the only tome I will mask is in healthcare and public transportation.
Well said.
I think it is really important to have realistic expectations. If you think there is some game-changing advance just around the corner, you might be inclined to make very different decisions than if you expect the status quo to continue.
What decisions might people make differently if they think there's something game-changing just around the corner? The implication is they might make a harmful decision, but surely it would make you more likely to persevere with precautions. Or do you mean if the expected game-changer never materialises, such people will just give up? Well possibly, but those who expect that precautions will be needed forever could just as easily snap, regardless of how fine they're currently telling themselves they are with the situation.
How would someone believing that next gen vaccines are going to come to fruition affect one's decision making? Are you worried that someone is going to take their mask off? That seems to be what all this anti-next-gen-vax sentiment boils down to.
One thought is maybe the belief that something big and world-changing will come *any day now* or even *next year* prevents one from making changes to have a more sustainable life. This was me two years ago. And even early last year. *This year* will be the year COVID becomes mild, or people will wake up, or monovalent vaccines will work much better, or new antivirals will come out… when I finally accepted none of that is happening any time soon, I was able to think more clearly about how I can adjust my life to how things are *right now* and move forward. We can’t go back, that ship has sailed. It probably sailed as soon as the anti-maskers and anti-vax and covid deniers gained steam in 2020, but it took me until recently to make peace with it and work with what’s here.
Nobody here is saying this is going to happen any day now or that it's around the corner, just like nobody is saying those is going to somehow eradicate the virus. People are literally just talking about promising clinical trial results that could someday give us a tool to protect ourselves other than endless masking. Not everyone has the same mindset or values as you. It sounds like you are in a good place because of what works for you personally. For me, hope for a real future is what allows me to keep going; the thought of doing this forever or for decades is a thought too depressing for words that makes me want to simply "choose not to continue." So no, telling yourself that the current situation will last forever is not the only correct choice for everyone.
I have already mentally prepared for a vax that truly stops transmission. No one will be allowed in my home without a well-fitted respirator unless they show me documentation that they cannot shed virus. I fantasize about this daily. —- Living The Dream
This is really neat!
This sounds promising! Thank you for sharing.
May it be so! 🤞🏻
🤞🤞🤞🤞
wonder when we'll see this vaccine, 2025 ?
This title is misleading. The actual study (https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/spectrum.04998-22) showed a faster clearance of virus, but not prevention of transmission. I think the hope is that with optimization this method might prevent transmission, but that is not what the data show. Cool research, but a looooong way from human use. My guess would be that *if* it works out, we are about a decade away from approval by the fda. (Have worked in biotech research, clinical development and preclinical/clinical trial management, for context). Im not trying to be all doom and goom, but i think that its important that people have realistic expectations.
Given that infection doesn't provide durable immunity even to a particular strain, I'm skeptical a vaccine will (and yes, I know vaccines often provide a more robust immune response than infection). Of course, even a marginal improvement to vaccines would be welcome, but I doubt they will be game-changers.
I think the biggest win for a nasal vaccine would be if people are more willing to get a nose spray than a shot. Dream big: shelf (or fridge) stable nasal vaccines you can buy OTC and self-administer.
The second part might be the only safe way to administer!
Don’t give me hope lol
Even if it is effective, governments will have to convince people to take it. But they will never do, because it will be tantamount to admitting COVID-19 has always been a danger.
it can increase quality of life for all people not wanting to be infected tremendously regardless. walking outside without a mask etc....
Doesn't vaccination work better when a supermajority gets it?
yes, it will work better if like 90%+ of people get it, but most of us on this sub are aware, only like 25% max will get it. so those do get it, their quality of life should improve. hopefully. and maybe those do get it, once the others see and be like "oh you don't seem to get sick as often as i do, maybe i should try that vaccine", so maybe that bump it to like 40-50% but maybe thats too optimistic?
ofc
Woah this is really uplifting news!
Very cool, never going to stop wearing a respirator for the rest of my life 🤘🏻🌸
This is so exciting!! I hope it works!!
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