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Meanwhile, in flu world ...

Researchers at MIT, Harvard and Mass. General report progress in developing a "universal" flu vaccine that would work by getting the body to recognize a flu protein that rarely mutates but which the human immune system normally does not recognize.

Vaccine makers currently have to come up with new flu vaccines each year because the parts of the virus the immune system does recognize mutate frequently.


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Comments

Finding that one protein is amazing science even without its practical use. If they manage to produce such a vaccine, it would be more effective than the guessed-at vaccines we have now and we could avoid the vaccine shortages that happen when a new flu comes along.

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n/t

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Sorry, my kids will not be getting any so called vaccines that are approved/accepted under the Orange Man's administration. Nope. Not any day of the week that ends in Y. We are still self quarantining, home schooling so we stay safe and wearing our masks when we have to go out for essentials. I don't trust anything that comes out of Orange Man or his people's mouth.

MIT, Harvard, Mass General - I would surely have faith in them a long time ago but nowadays not so much. Orange Man can pay or threaten some unsuspecting or unscrupulous people to go along with his shit.

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By the time this vaccine is put out to market (assuming it ultimately works), so I don't think you have to worry.

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The person was not too keen on vaccines before 2016, either. Or, they may just be trolling.

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I don't troll. Have been getting my local news here for years. I also have never been anti-vac in the past. I SIMPLY REFUSE TO ALLOW ANYTHING THE ORANGE MAN or his so called experts claim is "safe " to be injected into my chidren.

I mean, who can trust Orange? Oh it's fake. Oh it came from China. Oh drink bleach. Then China is making a vaccine. Then not wearing a mask but suddenly around the corner from election you & your wife magically caught this "fake" virus.

I wouldn't believe shit out of his mouth even if Jesus Christ came here & said so.

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You realize trump has nothing to do with this research and a potential universal flu vaccine still wouldn't be available for another several years, right?

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Again, to your 1st, sure, his ass isn't in anyone's lab actually researching anything. My point was I have 0 trust in our so called
leader & anything he even suggests or that his people suggest is suspect to me. You know the saying, money talks and bullshit walks. I just feel that at his behest, there's some shady & underhanded shit going on. So no thanks, but you enjoy your flu shot in a few years.

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I work in medical research (not this type, but close enough.) We've gotten some letters from study members along the same lines as this, except they are supporters of the current administration and don't trust the "liberals" and think we're all brain washed. Academic research is very much insulated from politics, except as far as chasing the buck of the next federal grant. If MIT or Harvard or BU or Tufts (etc) researchers told me something, I would believe them, even if Trump jumped on the band wagon and agreed with them.

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This has been in the work for YEARS. It is not "at his behest". It has absolutely nothing to do with the Trump administration.

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He is currently controlling the length of the trials for Covid vaccines. The FDA wanted to follow people for 60 days after they received the vaccine and Orange man nixed it.

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So, if Trump says the sun rises in the East, suddenly it doesn’t?

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Please let me know the day he actually says that...I will politely wait (cues Jeopardy music).

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Maybe you will understand, maybe you won't

The problem is that Trump is interfering with a very well established process for vetting vaccines.

I will not accept a vaccine that does not pass the very well established process.

Vaccines have been around a long time. Those standards are based on nearly a century of experience with success, failure, side effects, unintended consequences, etc. We ignore them to "GET THE VACCINE OUT BY THE ELECTION!!!!" at our peril.

Keep in mind that this vaccine will need to be administered to billions of people. Multiply "rare" adverse effects by billions and you will begin to grasp the problem with rushing it out against better scientific judgement.

These are SCIENCE-based requirements, not optional bureaucratic hurdles. Politicians who don't understand science to the point where they consider important public health safeguards to be "hurdles" to their ambitions have no business controlling the process.

TL/DR: I don't care who is president. I will not accept a vaccine that has not passed scientific scrutiny based on generations of experience.

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The universal flu vaccine is not the same as a covid vaccine. It is not being pushed out before the election. It has nothing to do with your very valid concerns about Trump putting pressure on the covid vaccine approval process. If you want those concerns to be heard and understood, don't conflate them with irrelevant matters.

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That said, don't you think it is a HUGE leap from Trump's desire for a vaccine to be rolled out in the next month to the point where any vaccine approved by the FDA, per the regulatory processes that have been in effect for a long time, should be discounted because it was developed between January 2017 and January of either 2021 or 2025?

But hey, science should be apolitical until you want to interject your political views, no?

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Until/unless the anti-science profiteering stops, we will continue to see rush-outs of all manner of therapies.

Until/unless ANY vaccine or therapy for ANY disease is subject to proper scientific vetting, I will not trust the FDA approvals.

GOT THAT?

Good.

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I read similar, yet slightly different, things from people who are the political opposite from you. This is the part of our political culture that deeply disturbs me. So you are saying that the career civil servants at the Food and Drug Administration cannot be trusted? Interesting.

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... who's Ariel?

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Sure! Just activate some inactive part of the human genome! What could possibly go wrong?

Good thing Dear Leader must have missed the rerun of Star Trek: DNA9 - errr.... Star Trek: The Next Generation the other night on Channel 38 - this sounds like the origin of Barclay Protomorphic Syndrome!

< /s >

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