pre-script: i've heard it all, i've done my research, and the chances that anyone will read this post and glean education from it are slim to none, yet i will still write it out to absolve my conscience of the stresses of remaining silent. if i inadvertently teach someone something here--and no, i do not mean "about me"--a teacher's only request is that it is applied rather than forgotten.
it's funny, in that less humorous and more saddening way, how hindsight is 20/20. yes, that was a riff on the year. what i mean by that (thank you, Eddy) is how orderly the past events and revelations seem when one is far enough ahead of them to justify their happening. just on that note, we can go back to how my college course on expository writing had kickstarted my writing abilities and effected change in my way of thought in a manner that high school's "critical thinking" questions and "public speaking" class were unable to do. and any who know me know that i am not using this argument in defense of higher education; it is merely my giving credit where it is due.
now, after that introduction, it may surprise you that this post is not about education. i have written with that intent elsewhere, as well as on the topic, but this is perhaps a diary nay a journal entry (diaries are daily), a compendium for the knowledge i've gathered on the true subject (it's in the title, if you're lost).
nor is this manner of speech meant to imply that i have some sort of overabundant confidence in my own intellect and that i would use it to debate you on your own feeble opinions until you adopt my clearly superior understanding which i would dare to call "truth."
the sapphire satire ends here...i hope.
i would love to tell you how things used to be, before the ides of March cursed our American lives into a new era, one where--for the past 500+ days straight, mind you--i've not been able to avoid mention of "the virus." as a brief aside so you can understand my lightheartedness there, the "quarantine" people have been speaking of since all of this began had not stopped me from carrying on as usual, mainly--and i will cut the point short with this--because my employment was considered essential (to the economy) and working remotely was not an option. my first experience with quarantine (in the context of a health advisory) came more than a year after "government shutdown" initiated it for others. that's right. my wife and i got sick, presumably through our workplace because three other coworkers were out with it simultaneously.
i will use this as a launching point into the science here. for more than an entire year, i did not get sick: cold, flu, strep throat--nothing. and, to give due credit, yes, i feel our collective germophobia had something to do with that. whereas from the start i was scheduling a flu shot so that i could see my newborn niece, the priority was replaced with a vaccine that had yet to be fabricated, and needless to say, i did not get to see her face, image or otherwise, until she was one year old.
now, i learned more about vaccines than i will probably divulge here (in hindsight, this is a lie), some information of which revisited things i had researched in my college years for personal interest and certainly not for a grade. i will start with this, however: a vaccine works because it mimics how an infection works. to put it simply, it is a contained, controlled experiment looking to reproduce a healthy body's natural response to ward off said infection. i could probably blame my exposure to Osmosis Jones for envisioning the immune system as a police department, but to that effect, a vaccine is like...an anonymous tip. you know the PSA posters that say "If you see something, say something"? well, the vaccine is providing your body with vital information so that it can stop an infection before it starts.
that was good, right?
granted, the science of a vaccine and its implementation are two cities in the same precinct. the simile is waning, i know. the point is, anything sounds good on paper, even science especially medicine. an individual's body can react to a stimulus catastrophically different from another's. so, we conduct tests and trials to reduce the likelihood of those reactions as far as expectation goes. this is why the USFDA exists, and this is also why the claims of so many "nutrient supplements" are not FDA-approved. but that's neither here nor there. we're talking about drugs: synthesized, mass-produced medication used, not for regulating a condition (genetic or recreational) but, to treat a potentially fatal disease.
but what i'm getting to is this: sometimes, things go wrong, and we call it "risk."
prior to the mRNA-vaccine age we are now in, there were two types of
vaccines readily produced: inactivated (whether using a microscopic
piece off the surface or an entire pathogen rendered incapable of
replication) and attenuated. the former, by nature of its production, does not initiate as strong an immune response as a living, active pathogen might. the latter--and get this--actually depends upon its ability to replicate in order to achieve an immune response. "The immune system does not differentiate between an infection with a weakened vaccine virus and an infection with a wild virus."
"...When
a live attenuated vaccine does cause 'disease,' it is usually much
milder than the natural disease and is referred to as an adverse
reaction..../ Live attenuated vaccines may cause severe or fatal
reactions as a result of uncontrolled replication (growth) of the
vaccine virus. This only occurs in persons with immunodeficiency (e.g.,
from leukemia, treatment with certain drugs, or [HIV] infection)./ A
live attenuated vaccine virus could theoretically revert to its original
pathogenic (disease-causing) form. This is known to happen only with
live (oral) polio vaccine."
-https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/downloads/prinvac.pdf
the latter is also most commonly tied with the use of fetal cells sourced
from one of two abortions in the second half of the 1900s. the science
of culturing a disease effectively makes it less of a threat than it
initially posed (see: rubella). in a laboratory setting, years of cell-to-cell transmission
(which invariably produces strains) can represent a century of mutation
in the field, i.e. the world we live in. now, whether you look at this
as the lesser of two evils or as a political statement to back your
position as a Christian and/or vegan, it does not matter as far as our
present mRNA-vaccine is concerned. we are in a whole other state of
jurisdiction.
in this 21st-century pandemic, the initial batch of vaccines with which we have been supplied were manufactured in quite a different manner, one which expediated a process which was otherwise expected to yield a "viral" vaccine (pun: mass-application) after 5-10 years. a swift Google-search of "first mRNA vaccine" links an article as recent as 2018 (effectively 23 months before our world climate would express its overwhelming need request for it).
"mRNA vaccines represent a promising alternative to conventional vaccine approaches because of their high potency, capacity for rapid development and potential for low-cost manufacture and safe administration."
-Pardi, N., Hogan, M., Porter, F. et al. mRNA vaccines - a new era in vaccinology. Nat Rev Drug Discov 17, 261-279 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd.2017.243
my personal grasp on mRNA does go back to my high school days. to describe it visually, RNA is one-half of the double-helix DNA we've all known about since Jurassic Park. there's more to it than that, because the way DNA replicates is to split itself down the middle like a zipper, and certainly this does not turn it into RNA. i digress. the "m" prefix stands for "messenger," because this particular type acts like a mold, and tRNA ("t" for "transfer") acts as the cast, bearing striking resemblance to the original [segment of] DNA code. the fact that RNA is a natural part of how our bodies operate--producing proteins, enzymes, etc.--is overlooked by its reputation for how many viruses replicate.
but mRNA is specific in the thing it can produce. and so, much of the testing behind an mRNA vaccine, i assume, is to assure that which it produces in the body is not harmful information but only beneficial. the reason this is safer than older vaccinology methods is because, in a word, it eliminates the "middle man."
if a virus is a stolen car, then the protein which the mRNA helps cast is like a picture of the license plate. instead of using a protein directly from a virus and injecting said protein into your cells--which had previously been the best-case scenario safety-wise, and worst case efficacy-wise as dictated by a need for "booster shots"--the mRNA vaccine skips a step and simply puts out the warrant for arrest. and this is precisely how your body would work against an actual viral infection: white blood cells would replicate the foreign protein and prep the whole system to be on the lookout for more of the same.
there is a third type of vaccine which is like a cross among the others. Johnson & Johnson's Ebola vaccine uses an attenuated virus of a different family to introduce Ebola proteins into a body. similarly, their vaccine for the current pandemic sends mRNA into a body using a virus which is, by contrast, not harmful. if a virus is a taxi-cab, it's carrying contraband goods.
but now comes the issue: risks and comparisons. as far as risks are concerned, the side effects of our present panel of vaccines are wholly unrelated to viral infection, as discussed above. instead, such judgment must be weighed regarding both individual reaction to a needle (and i certainly don't mean being scared) and reaction to what the injection contains (and again, this is no implication that those contents are unsafe, but merely that a body has the potential to react adversely to it). to that point, no one should be forced to take a vaccine; it is a personal choice. and neither should it be declined lightly; it is a personal decision.
perhaps here, it should also be noted that the US Emergency Use Authorization effectively forgoes the rigorous approval standards which are normally required for vaccines to be released for public inoculation. phase III of clinical trials are nothing less than that: trials. ordinarily, applications for FDA-approval are filed after phase III is completed, and further studies test for ongoing potency and safety, so those accepting vaccinations under EUA are nothing short of volunteers. i only say this because the decision to do so should similarly not be made lightly.
before fully addressing the comparisons, however, there is another side to immunization which i mentioned at the start of all this: natural infection. from our vantage point, it has the potential for the greatest risks, so i do not speak of it as though it were an option worthy of consideration. it is not. i am not telling people to go out and get sick. what i am saying is that naturally attained "immunity," as we often use the term, is probably the most efficacious solution we have available to us. and if i were to give you any required reading, it would be the following string of quotes:
"Antibodies directed to the spike protein, both those that target the [receptor-binding domain] and those that target other regions of the protein, have been shown to neutralize the virus.... Neutralizing antibodies have now also been implicated as a correlate of protection in humans after studies of an outbreak on a fishing vessel; however, it is important to note that natural infection induces both mucosal antibody responses (secretory immunoglobulin A (IgA)) and systemic antibody responses (IgG). The upper respiratory tract is thought to be mainly protected by secretory IgA, whereas the lower respiratory tract is thought to be mainly protected by IgG. Vaccines that are administered intramuscularly or intradermally induce mainly IgG, and no secretory IgA. It is therefore possible that most vaccines currently in development induce disease-preventing or disease-attenuating immunity, but not necessarily sterilizing immunity..."-Krammer, F. SARS-CoV-2 vaccines in development. Nature 586, 516-527 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2798-3
"Beyond sterilizing immunity, immune responses that confine SARS-CoV-2 to the URT and oral cavity would minimize COVID-19 disease severity to that of a 'common cold' or asymptomatic disease."
-Dan, J., Mateus, J., Kato, Y. et al. Immunological memory to SARS-CoV-2 assessed for up to 8 months after infection. Science 371, eabf4063 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abf4063
"With these vaccines, an individual's immune system is trained to prevent illness, yet the pathogen can persist in that person's body, potentially allowing them to infect others. A lack of sterilizing immunity means that the pathogen can continue to circulate in a population, where it may cause illness in unvaccinated and vulnerable people or evolve to evade our immune responses,..."
-https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/vaccines-need-not-completely-stop-covid-transmission-to-curb-the-pandemic1/
sterilizing immunity is border control. i tried.
from the start, the world's political response has been all about "curbing transmission," and that's precisely the goal of the vaccines we have produced unprecedentedly quickly. not immunity: only attenuation. and if these vaccines can, at best, turn a person into an asymptomatic carrier, then it only makes sense for every possible person to become vaccinated. even if, scientifically, we know that some people should not receive them--namely, those who would have adverse reactions, which, of course, we haven't the capability to detect. because even the very conditions that put my wife and me at higher risk for the disease could not predict our less-than-moderate symptoms.
so, now that all the players are on the field, we can finally enter into the realm of statistics, as our ongoing studies list them; but i won't. for one, the efficacy percentages hold notable discrepancies dependent upon region, ethnicity and variants in transmission at the time of study. and if science has taught me anything, it's that an experiment ought to test one variable at a time. but if you so wish to compare and constrast the vaccine options, you need only look up. we, as a human race, have come a long way in laboratory research this year, and there are many less unknowns surrounding this virus than the general public would soon accept. certainly, however, our understanding of the vaccines must change, both personally and politically. we cannot assume their perfection; nor can we deny their advantage.
post-script: i originally wanted to say a word about the stigmas which have formed between the "vaccinated crowd" and the "unvaccinated crowd," and how the irony is that a year ago we were being taught not to hold such ill will against individuals who had contracted the virus. i think this footnote suffices, because i really don't need to mind another derisive, divisive argument.
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