this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2025
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[–] turtle@lemm.ee 133 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Now consider that Scripps Research, who is developing this, is US-based and receives a lot of federal government funding, and that Trump/Musk/DOGE have been slashing and burning all kinds of federal science staffing and funding. Also consider that their main federal funding comes from HHS, which RFK Jr., notorious vaccine hater, heads.

Then weep. Progress on this may be stalled for a long time.

[–] tempest@lemmy.ca 38 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Maybe, or maybe some other country poaches them.

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[–] ThePantser@sh.itjust.works 141 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Keep me updated on which countries approve its use so I can add them to my travel plans.

[–] HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth 54 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Might be a great excuse to visit Denmark... I hear it's wonderful there.

[–] frank@sopuli.xyz 34 points 1 month ago (3 children)

It is. Come visit (but like be respectful please it's nice)

  • source: live here
[–] insaneinthemembrane@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

For real, can a tourist get vaccinated there? I can't get it in my country.

[–] frank@sopuli.xyz 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I have absolutely no idea. I wouldn't know how to do it without a yellow card and that requires residence. Maybe there's clinics?

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[–] CodingCarpenter@lemm.ee 8 points 1 month ago (2 children)
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[–] Zippygutterslug@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'll believe it when I see it

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[–] Nougat@fedia.io 190 points 1 month ago (5 children)
[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Theoretically, this could approved in Europe, which is fine for me. But I doubt the pharmaceutical industry will let a working, permanent immunisation against the common cold happen. That would mean billions and trillions of lost business.

[–] Supervisor194@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I never understand it when this argument is made. It assumes that there aren't entities out there making $0 on the common cold that would refuse to take the absolute fucking windfall that would be generated if such an immunization were to be brought to the market.

Like "oh, you know, we'd like to make this immunization and make billions of dollars ourselves but these OTHER guys are already making billions of dollars and we sure wouldn't want to step on their toes."

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

The point is that some businesses react rather violently on the loss of billions.

[–] turtle@lemm.ee 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Well, consider all the money that pharmaceutical companies make every year on over the counter medicines for cold symptoms. I'm sure it's not a perfect example of malfeasance like "hey, we have this perfect cure for the cold in our pockets but we make more profits from our over the counter cold medicines so let's just bury the cure", but through a complicated process they often end up at a similar result.

Recent example: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-big-pharma-company-stalled-tuberculosis-vaccine-to-pursue-bigger-profits

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I sorta don't understand this. A TB vaccine has definately been around for awhile and the article does not seem to say what would make this one special. Is it the same vaccine with the thing they says makes vaccines more potent added and they are just not adding it???

[–] turtle@lemm.ee 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

It sounds like this new vaccine would be 50% effective (including adults?), according to the ProPublica article. The old vaccine, BCG, appears to only be 37% effective on children, not adults (based on a web search - edit: on a second look, different articles are claiming wildly different effectiveness rates for BCG). The disease kills 1.6 million people annually. In other words, it sounds like this new vaccine would save tons of lives compared to the old one.

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[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 45 points 1 month ago (1 children)

FDA approval in never.

I'm not even bothering with FDA recommendations anymore with Kennedy in charge. I'll be reading the Canada Health and NHS (UK) notices. If it means crossing a national border to get a vaccine, I'm onboard.

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[–] Lemmyoutofhere@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 month ago

Hard for them to approve it if there is no FDA.

[–] IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world 148 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Latest FDA guidance: Take vitamin A, wash it down with raw milk, and attend virus spreading parties to build natural immunity.

[–] NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah, imma do this instead. The FDA seems trustworthy.

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 34 points 1 month ago (6 children)

That last part actually works by culling the people who have the most severe symptoms. So you would be building natural immunity in the population, over a long period of time, by dying before you produce offspring.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

Shit, I already have kids. Might as well skip it then.

[–] shininghero@pawb.social 30 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Only for more genetically stable diseases that don't mutate into new strains every single year.

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 13 points 1 month ago

Guess we'll just have to cull the herd every year then.

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[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 28 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

OK, so if I understand this correctly, they don't train the immune system to target these sugars, since they're used by human cells. Instead, they remove them during the vaccine administration so the immune system can train on the bare spike protein. Cool. Now how would this help when new virus copies come in with sugar-coated proteins, some time after the sugar stripping agent is gone from the system?

[–] Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io 29 points 1 month ago (18 children)

What they've found, from the article, and abstract (alas I didn't see any links to full text paper, which may come available after the ACS Spring 2025 meeting), is that they indeed do get an effective broad based immune response against coronaviruses. The 'sugar stripping agent' process is used in the production of the immunogen (basically a glycan stripped version of the more highly conserved spike protein that occurs in all/ many/ a lot of coronaviruses, i.e. which cause common cold, MERS, and COVID19), such that a broad based immune response is evoked when applying it, some time after the sugars (glycans) have already been stripped. Remember the spike is the consistent (conserved) part, and the glycans are the camouflage bits. Researchers have been trying to come up with something based on the spike protein for some time, and this is the sort of breakthrough that they've been working towards. Doubtless more info will be available after the research has been officially presented, March 23-27. (https://www.acs.org/meetings/acs-meetings/spring.html) So it's literally happening now. And may show up on Chi-Huey Wong's google scholar page (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=GQLirSoAAAAJ) or at Scripps/Sinica (https://www.genomics.sinica.edu.tw/chihueywong/)

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[–] AlolanYoda@mander.xyz 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Yeah I also don't understand this part. Can the antibodies targeting the bare spike protein attach to it despite the presence of the sugars? Or are there a few spike proteins in the virus which do not have the sugars, not enough to effectively develop antibodies but enough for already existing antibodies to attach to?

I may have missed it in the article, I'm not in life sciences so I don't have all the prerequisite knowledge for this

Edit: this came out sounding super negative, I'm actually super excited about this development and all I want is to understand a bit better how it works

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 month ago

Yes same, I see they've gotten a positive result so I assume there's a process, I just don't understand it.

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[–] shittydwarf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 1 month ago
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