[Squeako]

Did your part to end the pandemic? Haha, okay. It’s amazing you actually believe that. Even Merck said in their press release that “This decision follows Merck’s review of findings from Phase 1 clinical studies for the vaccines...the immune responses were inferior to those seen following natural infection and those reported for other SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 vaccines." But, you obviously don’t need my permission to take what you know what is and isn’t, especially for a virus that is over 99% survivable.

I’m a fan of Louis Farrakhan? Ooookay.

[BeauBo]

In addition to Merck, the French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi also pulled the plug on their vaccine candidate, when early results indicated that it was a weak performer. There is always that risk in drug development.

Operation Warp Speed sought to reduce this risk of failure, by diversifying across several different technical approaches, and funding two different ( competing) major companies attempt to rapidly develop each.

The OWS approach succeeded in producing multiple safe and effective vaccines (it looks like Novavax and AstraZeneca/Oxford will also succeed, with authorization in the USA expected in May).

The two using the mRNA approach were first to market, largely because of inherent speed in that approach. The Moderna vaccine was literally developed over a weekend - the rest was testing.

The mRNA vaccines do not cause cells to produce antibodies directly - they have the ribosomes produce an identifying spike protein, off of the surface of the COVID-19 virus. The immune system learns to recognize that, as it would off of a killed, weakened or neutered virus, but there is no possibility of that fragmentary spike protein replicating, as a virus might, if some escaped the process meant to kill, weaken or sterilize them.

The ribosomes only produce the spike proteins in response to the mRNA, which has a half life about ten hours. The spike proteins themselves don’t replicate, and wash out like any other protein fragments. While they are circulating, the immune system learns to recognize/reject them, as it would during the course of a temporary infection.

By having just the identifying features of interest produced, the available immune response is focused only on features unique to COVID, rather than a mix of all features on the surface. By having the ribosomes produce fresh and perfect copies of the spike proteins (not degraded by storage and handling), a greater payload of the exact immunity-stimulating agent is achieved, per unit of vaccine (effectiveness), with a minimum of extraneous material (such as complete virus), which could produce unwanted side effects (safety).