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0 pointsThe_rationalist4y ago0 comments

- delivery mechanism: you need to take a very unstable molecule, protect it from the environment - both external, and when inside the patient - and insert it into a human cell. (This is called the "platform", and is usually developed independently from the specific payload.)

Sounds like a problem you solve once and for all, for any vaccine. And also that this problem was already solved since decades (e.g viral vectors)

- testing: the newly-developed payload and the existing platform were integrated at small scales within weeks, but testing the thing for safety and efficacy took months And so many people have been killed by this overly conservative testing, phase ~<2.5 was enough

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TeMPOraL4y ago

> Sounds like a problem you solve once and for all, for any vaccine.

I strongly doubt it. It's more like a problem you solve once for a particular class of payload and particular destination. Biology doesn't do packet switching - everything is just rapidly bumping into everything else at random, so your envelope needs to be designed in a way that's ignored by everything else than molecules at your target site, and it needs to not react with the payload it's carrying.

> And so many people have been killed by this overly conservative testing, phase ~<2.5 was enough

Overly conservative? That's what super-accelerated testing looks like. We're lucky it went well; had they screwed up, it would scare a lot more people away from vaccinating, lengthening the pandemic and increasing death toll.

baq4y ago

a bad vaccine could kill much more than that. remember that RNA vaccines are developed for 10+ years now and COVID19 is the first time they actually worked without side effects.

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