re: Moderna says FDA refusing to review application for its first mRNA-based flu shot

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The flu shot has missed more years than not lately which means the current process ain’t good enough... On a political message board where 90% of the posters don’t know the difference between an antigen and an ant hill?

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Good point. You need a public framework that laypeople could look to (and honestly would be helpful for professionals reading & commenting too) for guidance on what kind of evidence would actually settle the question. For me, a strong comparison would need more than isolated efficacy numbers or mechanistic arguments, it would require convergence across multiple lines of evidence, especially head-to-head clinical outcomes, durability of protection, harm profiles, and whether the immunology predicts what we see clinically. If y'all could point to those, then you could make some progress (maybe )

ETA: this is ideal case. Obviously, you could make some headway short of this, but less definitively. mRNA tech is new enough that these comparisons aren't available across a variety of diseases, so it won't be definitive, but it shouldn't need to be. If it's at least (1) comparable w/r/t efficacy and risks and also simultaneously (2) faster (of this latter one there is no doubt), then the edge goes to mRNA (controlling for cost of course, so yeah, there's a lot of variables to judge).

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In a day and age where funding drives studies (and results), I would like to see you asking more questions of the study you're citing though.
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On a political message board where 90% of the posters don’t know the difference between an antigen and an ant hill?

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Right.
But I'm not addressing "90% of the posters."

With regard to medical issues, I'd up that number to "99% of the posters" on a fairly bright board.

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E.g., How many kilobases is the Pfizer translated segment?
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I don’t know

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You should though.

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The flu shot has missed more years than not lately which means the current process ain’t good enough. That is more people are choosing not to get it which further reduces confidence in vaccines. Unless of course you don’t care about keeping people healthy and don’t mind ER and hospitalizations that could have been prevented if the flu vaccine actually worked.

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The characteristics of the pathogen matter though. The problem is that the mutation rate of viruses, in particular positive-strand RNA viruses, makes them very difficult in terms of vaccine design. And vaccination alone cannot do very much to reduce infections without a cogent, broader strategy. We have never effectively controlled a pathogen without attempting to mitigate its transmission rate. For pathogens like influenza, a seasonal vaccine might be the best we can do until we develop some new breakthrough.

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Yes.
Until mRNA includes broader antigenic targets rather than just a fraction of the viral surface, tradvax will be more effective.


Yep. The mRNA was 4 kilobases, the virus was more than 7X that. no wonder exposure to the virus provided far better immune response

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A German study looking to why some people were already immune to covid19, found that they had had another of the coronaviruses that are part of the "common cold." Might have been a better solution.

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In a day and age where funding drives studies (and results), I would like to see you asking more questions of the study you're citing though.
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On a political message board where 90% of the posters don’t know the difference between an antigen and an ant hill?
Right.
But I'm not addressing "90% of the posters."

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Ok but 90-99% of the posters can still reply with BS and derail the conversation into talking about unrelated stuff.

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You should though.

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Why? How is that bit of information going to affect anything that I as a PCP and hospitalist have control over? Is knowing if the protein produced is 10 kilobases or 15 billion killobases going to make convincing reluctant patients to get the flu vaccine? No it is not. Being able to tell patients that there is a booster (again used for lack of a better term) that does cover the predominant strain will likely help me convince people to get a flu vaccine.

You say that an mRNA vaccine for the flu is not needed because it would be inferior to traditional vaccines. Yet you do not link one single study to backup your claim. You think that an mRNA vaccine is not needed. I disagree. Our inability to reliably predict which strains will be circulating during the flu season makes the flu slut ineffective and this season is a perfect example of why a midseason booster is needed. You doubt that a midseason booster could be produced in time and that is a fair position. However, it is theoretically possible given the mRNA production timeframe that I linked earlier. Even though a midseason booster is only theoretically possible with mRNA vaccines it is impossible with traditional vaccines. At present mRNA vaccine technology is the only technology that offers the possibility of a midseason booster in the future. In the future, we are going to need that a midseason booster because the rates of COPD is predicted to increase by 23% by 2050, asthma prevalence is supposed to increase as well. Basically all the comorbidities that make complications from influenza more likely to occur are predicted to increase by 2050. If we do not have a better flu vaccine to prevent the flu then that means hospitalizations and worse from influenza and its complications will increase.

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Even though a midseason booster is only theoretically possible with mRNA vaccines it is impossible with traditional vaccines.

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"Theoretically possible" is a completely different fact-set

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fell from 35 to 13 if you gave the second shot >35 days after the instead of 22 days. That is why the WHO changed the recommendation to wait 8-12 weeks between doses instead of 4 weeks as it was initially given. But no we have people here and elsewhere just saying to ban it because pureblood good and vaccines bad, etc.

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This is what bothers me. If they didn’t have the dosage information down pat, what exactly are they doing, or NOT doing, in their trials? The updated recommendations and other similar “corrections” were significant. Also significant is the number of unfortunate people that were damaged due to their lack of knowledge. It’s going in our bodies. Shouldn’t stuff like dosage be figured out, at a minimum, prior to telling (sometimes forcing) folks to put something into their body?

You’re wasting your time.These PT doc’s were all in for the MRNA Covid “vaccine”,insisting it was safe and effective,argued for it ad nauseum.It was neither but here they are shilling for a MRNA flu shot.I can’t grasp why they think it will be any safer or more effective than the Covid version.
I know one thing, I didn’t take the Covid version and I’ll never take a flu version.
Actually,I haven’t taken any flu shot last 3 years,I’m done with it.
My PCP doesn’t push flu shots,his emphasis is on Vit D3,he like a level of 50.He feels that is more effective against contracting the flu than the shots.
The whole family,wife and I,children,grandchildren(10 of us) are all on Vit D3,none of us have had the flu and there has been a lot of it around here.