There’s no change to any DNA with the mRNA vaccines. The mRNA can’t even get into the cell nucleus, and even if it could, there is no known method by which it would perform cuts or inserts into the DNA there. And if it did by some miracle, with nothing to direct changes, they would result in cell death or termination by NK T-cell lymphocyte.
And yes, they are vaccines. If you want to restrict the definition of “vaccine” to just a killed or attenuated pathogen, you’re excluding most vaccines including whooping cough and tetanus. Few vaccines today use the old method of an attenuated or killed pathogen. Those were gen 1 vaccines. Gen 2 vaccines include conjugates, subunit vaccines, toxoids, and others. And gen 3 vaccines including the mRNA platform are also vaccines. The basic concept remains the same. The technology has continued to evolve since the 1950s. The first conjugate vaccine (hib) was licensed back in 1987. There’s no pathogen. A piece of the original bacterium’s shell is attached to a protein carrier. It’s still a vaccine.
Not sure where you’re seeing a change to the definition of herd immunity, but all of my education pointed to the herd immunity threshold as being 1-1/R0 and it is reached when immune individuals (regardless of how they became immune) reach that ratio within a given population. The ability of an infectious agent to continue transmission depends upon the availability of hosts it is able to infect. If it cannot infect a given host (for whatever reason), that host exists outside the vulnerable group.
Excuse my format below. I didn’t want to mess around w/html at the moment. I copied your text, put in a divider and then responded.
text:
There’s no change to any DNA with the mRNA vaccines. The mRNA can’t even get into the cell nucleus, and even if it could, there is no known method by which it would perform cuts or inserts into the DNA there. And if it did by some miracle, with nothing to direct changes, they would result in cell death or termination by NK T-cell lymphocyte.
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response:
Off target. It is gene therapy in that it directs cells to produce a foreign protein. The mRNA is a delivery system/operating system and any instruction (kill cancer cell/produce changes to combat genetic defect) can be substituted for the protein production. That is how the developers describe it.
As for calling it a vaccine, as I said, I understand using the definition. However, it neither prevents contracting the disease nor prevents the transmission. It is actually a treatment, since all it does is lessen symptoms.
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text:
Not sure where you’re seeing a change to the definition of herd immunity, but all of my education pointed to the herd immunity threshold as being 1-1/R0 and it is reached when immune individuals (regardless of how they became immune) reach that ratio within a given population. The ability of an infectious agent to continue transmission depends upon the availability of hosts it is able to infect. If it cannot infect a given host (for whatever reason), that host exists outside the vulnerable group.
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response:
The discussions about dictionary change of definition centered around the definition of *herd immunity*. Dictionary.com (& possibly others) changed the definition to exclude anything other than acquired immunity via injection.
It was not about definitions from a scientific medical POV (which are not in contention), but about means of achieving that state. It was done to exclude the naturally immune & the recovered. It was politically directed to drive inoculation acceptance.
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It’s obvious you want to repetitiously huff & puff only on a few points. Knock yourself out. Peace out.