Keep me updated on which countries approve its use so I can add them to my travel plans.
Might be a great excuse to visit Denmark… I hear it’s wonderful there.
It is not really. But I guess that everything compares as wonderful compared to Palestine, Iran, Ukraine and the US, right now.
- source: live here
It is. Come visit (but like be respectful please it’s nice)
- source: live here
Are you made of Legos?
You are what you eat
🧱
For real, can a tourist get vaccinated there? I can’t get it in my country.
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?
Ah, no worries, I’ll do research. Thanks anyway
Make sure they’re also countries that will give vaccines to foreigners. I had a hell of a time getting routine flu shots in Spain, Hungary and Thailand. The systems are often set up with the assumption that you’re a citizen or have a national healthcare ID of some sort. Without that, good luck finding a clinic who will give you a shot.
india and thailand caters to medical tourism, i asusme alot will be either going to canada(maybe) or asia.
FDA approval in never.
FDA? That still exists?
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.
there are some international pharm companies that produces vaccines, im sure they wouldnt mind doing it,. glaxo kline smith is one of them, although people have dislike the company for many reasons.
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.
its pretty hard to vaccinate against the common cold, since coronavirus only represents like 15ish percent, the majority are all rhinoviruses there arnt any vaccines for those because theres too many strains(like 200+) to deal with, and also its so self-limiting its not worht it to produce anyway, in addition to trying to figure out which virus is causing the cold and which strain. also there a bunch of other viruses that causes colds, like entero,adeno, parainfluenza, RSV,etc.
I’m well aware of that, but taking only 15% out of a multi-billion-a-year market is still money. And there has been research into dealing with rhinoviruses in general, too, so that would take an even larger chunk.
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.”
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
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???
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.
i think only the USa DOESNT routinely vaccinate it against it, because they havnt found much efficacy, TB endemic areas do vaccinate against it, but it has limited efficacy. on the plus side, it is used with cancer therapy as a indirect effect to stimulate the immune system.
The point is that some businesses react rather violently on the loss of billions.
Hard for them to approve it if there is no FDA.
Latest FDA guidance: Take vitamin A, wash it down with raw milk, and attend virus spreading parties to build natural immunity.
Yeah, imma do this instead. The FDA seems trustworthy.
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.
Except you supercharge the mutation of the disease as well, so its a rinse and repeat cycle.
So human keeps dropping and more remote work?
Shit, I already have kids. Might as well skip it then.
Only for more genetically stable diseases that don’t mutate into new strains every single year.
Guess we’ll just have to cull the herd every year then.
Tha’s a new thing for me.
I wish they had detailed how the removal of glycans is accomplished. Alas, Wikipedia doesn’t even have an article about “glycoengieering”, which would likely be the term for this method.
Edit: oh, I also mistunderstood. I started thinking that it accomplishes removal of glycans from the invading virus, but instead it’s only removal of glycans from the vaccine, exposing more of the virus, leading to more diverse antibodies. Which is far more doable, and not a big technical novelty. But apparently, quite useful. :)
I wonder how this could help those with long COVID.
Took me over half a year to get over covid.last time. I coughed so.much and so hard for so long I got a hernia.
Sometimes I like to pretend that it’s still 2020, and the past 5 years or so have just been a COVID-induced fever dream
Many long COVID infections are causing/caused significant damage to organs (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11834749/). A vaccination isn’t going to reverse organ damage.
So I’ve read up a good bit on this topic / issue. Many times long covid can be a result of the infection causing neural damage which then leads to long term inflammation. While this isn’t the only reason for it, doing a protocol to repair damaged neural tissue and receptors has been effective with people I know. It has reduced or removed the symptoms they experience.
long covid, aka sequelae (medical term) means you had a long last complication that seperate from the virus. the inflammation couldve damaged parts of your body you are chronically suffering from. it might not help, since its not caused by the virus anymore.
its basically like having PHN, or nerve damage after shingles, the vaccine wont help you with that.
Well, I’m fucked.
Sometimes the nody heals though slowly, for me it took a first 6-9 months to get over the worst, and I’m way better today.
I don’t think it’s going to help them. long covid is past the stage of virus infection. It’s where the body is attacking itself.
Doesn’t chickenpox turn into shingles by infecting the nervous system?
Could long covid be related to that?
The virus that causes chicken pox, lies dormant in your nervous system, where your immune system can’t get it, for decades. Then much later in life the virus can reactivate, infect along those nerves, causing shingles.
This is the important part of the chicken pox vaccination the we don’t talk about nearly enough.
- If you get chicken pox, you’ll probably be ok (although not everyone is) and get over it, becoming immune. But the virus will still lurk, opening you to shingles attacks when you’re much older
- if you get the vaccination, you’ll probably not only not get chicken pox, but will also not get shingles
Supposedly something like one in three elderly will get shingles, when they can’t as easily deal with it. As current generation gets old, that illness will practically disappear
If you have older relatives and friends (50+), do remind them that we have shingles vaccine: Shingrix.
And let them know it hurts for a few days, so get it on a Friday.
Nah don’t fuck up your weekend, call in sick as needed if you’re working.
This is a good point. I do tend to get my vaccine shots (Covid and flu) on Fridays to account for recovery days.
We can save shingles if we stop vaccinating now!
the varicella vaccine prevents severe infections, but its not entirely protective against it, it just makes you asymptomatic, and once you get reinfected it can still become dormant, and get hsingles, just less chances of getting it.
different issues. varicella can cause shingles, when it travels to your dorsal root ganglia near your spine or the ganglia in your head,or rarely it can become dormant in your autonomic nervous system.
varicella, a herpes isnt the same thing as coronavirus. long covid is just laymen terms for complications or sequalae. Covid can trigger shingles, because your immune system is fighting the covid virus instead of shingles.
It depends! Sometimes it’s autoimmune, sometimes it’s lingering virus, sometimes it’s disrupted regulatory systems, etc. When it’s the immune system or lingering virus, a new vaccine can often get the immune system to relearn how to correctly handle the virus
Three microchips at once that’s awesome!
Meanwhile, in the U.S. I’m sitting here wondering if we’ll even have a flu shot available for next winter, let alone a new vaccine that can protect from Covid and the common cold.
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?
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/)
Finally, someone speaking actual biology instead of paranoid rants. Impressive grasp of glycosylation and conserved epitope exposure - you’ve clearly done your reading beyond headlines. The sugar-stripping approach is ingenious precisely because it targets what viruses try to hide. Current research trajectory looks promising but I’ll wait for peer-reviewed publications after that ACS meeting before joining the hype train.
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
Does the sugar stripping affect any other bodily functions? Stripping is temporary but it still may have permanent effects for some existing conditions.
Does a coronavirus need to be introduced at the same time sugars are stripped or is it assumed that there are already many in the body?
Ok, you’re missing a bit here. The “sugar stripping” happens in the lab, during the production of the immunogen, which would then later applied as a vaccine. From there the vaccine induces a response from the immune system, creating antibodies which are specific to the highly conserved part of the stalk structures on corona viruses. As a result one’s immune system is prepared for when a corona virus shows up at some point after the vaccination.
Ah. Yes. I was thinking the sugar stripping happened in the body. So this more a vaccine enhancement tool.
i was thinking the same about the abstract, the glycans were shielding the conserved parts epitopes that arnt prone to mutations, as opposed to the exposed parts of the proteins which the virus mutates much more rapidly. you can say the conserved parts can mutate, but it might compromise the structure of the protein, making the virus defective(it probably does happen, but they dont survive)
This didn’t answer the question for me.
I get the 1st part: They’ve unhidden a stable spike protein hidden by sugars and used it to create an immune response.
The long-term effectiveness is where I’m getting lost. How will the immune system know when to use these particular anti-bodies in the future? If, say, 5 years after being vaccinated I’m infected, surely the relevant spike proteins are hidden by sugars. So how can my body recognise them as the same protein and make more of the correct anti-bodies?
As I understand it, “hidden” is a relative thing. Before exposure one’s immune system doesn’t know what to look for, after exposure, and immune response, one’s T and B cells have a much better chance. That’s why denovo immune response to an epitope may not be sufficient, but once the immune system has been ‘exposed’ or ‘educated’ the response is much more specific. There are two parts to the immune system, innate, basically structural, and adaptive (T’s and B’s) that can be primed with certain factors to create a very precise response. The long term nature of immune response is dependent on those cells, which come in number of different ‘flavors’. Tissue Resident Macrophages hang out in the area of initial infection, waiting for “that guy” to show up again. They can sit relatively dormant for years. I don’t want to mislead, our understanding of the long term memory function of the immune system isn’t completely understood. And so we don’t know how long a given immune response will last, at least not yet. Does that help? I’m not an immunology prof, or researcher, so I may not have been clear.
Tissue Resident Macrophages hang out in the area of initial infection, waiting for “that guy” to show up again.
This is specifically the bit I’m struggling with. How will they know it’s “that guy”?
It’s a bit like saying “We know this criminal uses disguises. We’ve given everyone copies of his mugshot, which they’ve used for target practice. Now if he wanders in wearing a disguise, people will recognise him.”
As I understand it, “hidden” is a relative thing.
I guess this is the answer?
Going back to my analogy, you’re saying his disguises are pretty simple. So he might wear glasses or a fake beard, but he isn’t likely to turn up in a full clown outfit, with multi-coloured hair, make up, and a big red nose.
I like your examples, and they might be close enough metaphorically. To stretch your metaphor to the breaking point, if the camo is so big it interferes with function, like the clown outfit, then the virus is “dead in the water”, and can’t replicate. If it’s just a different hat or glasses, and doesn’t interfere with function, then replication can happen.
I’m also waiting for that virologist or immunologist who is gonna correct the bits where I’m missing the point. I know some of those folks are out here ‘on fedi’, lol, but they might be disguised. ;-)
It looks like there’s some discussion going on over on Bluesky about this presentation at ACS Spring 2025, which found using Universal Coronavirus Vaccine search string. Denis - The COVID Info Guy seemed particularly informative.
Thank you so much for taking the time to explain, I really appreciate it.
It’s pretty exciting, as this is something long sought, which appears to finally be coming close to fruition. Glad to be able to help.
How does the body target the real virus though if it has the camouflage? Can the body just bypass it if it knows whats beneath, but we’ve been training on the camouflage so it doesn’t know?
Like, the camouflage doesn’t offer any protection if seen through?
I’m not a biologist, so forgive me for being a complete layperson about this - but to check my understanding, this means that the material in the vaccine itself (‘immunogen’) has had the sugar stripped, correct? In other words, if we think of the sugar as “armour” on the virus, the vaccine isn’t injecting some sort of armor removing enzyme, it’s sending “armourless training dummies” into your body that THEY used an enzyme on, so your immune cells can prepare to hit their “vital organs”?
Reading the abstract itself it was a bit hard to parse, but we do try!
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
from what ive gathered from the abstract,t he glycosolation prevents a more robust immune response, less antibody titers, when they removed it they noticed the immune system recognizes the spike proteins more easily so a stronger immune response and more antibody produced, and a longer titre of antibodies.
first when they removed the “glycans” it revealed more of the protein of the virus, so the immune system recognizes different parts or more of it, so stronger and longer last immune response. the conserved parts is the parts of the proteins that dont mutate much so its easier to become immune to it, the sugars originally hid that part.
Yes same, I see they’ve gotten a positive result so I assume there’s a process, I just don’t understand it.
No way they’ll let Americans have it
No FDA means no one to stop it! 😂
We’ll have an fda, once they rip it to sheds they’ll stock it with whoever they want to and then say look we fixed the fraud, listen to these guys now. Having a government agency that can say “no drug that competes with an oligarchs drug you can’t be approved” or “yes, you can shove unproven computer tech into people brains” is far to powerful to throw completely away.
is far to powerful to throw completely away.
They could do the same with DoE and it isn’t saving that agency. There’s no particular reason the FDA would fare any better. They’ll strip it to the bone and some states will cheerfully make it completely legal for their citizens.
Is this annually or once and done? I may just go over seas if it’s a one-time deal.
Doubtful you’ll be able to leave as a private citizen without a good reason tbh.
What? I’m going to Europe for a ‘camping trip’. They aren’t limiting private citizens travel in or out, yet. But, I certainly will not be bringing my phone.
Yeah, but if you’re a certain shade of brown, you might not make it back in.
Or gay, or have voiced opposition to the Trump administration: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/18/germany-investigates-after-national-with-green-card-arrested-at-us-border
To my knowledge, there is nothing indicating this is the plan at this time.
And I sincerely doubt we’ll “ever” have that policy. Because the people most likely to go on leisure (or even work) international trips are generally middle/upper middle class who need to be kept placated to make sure they still post memes on reddit but secretly cheer that the fbi is going to protect their teslas.
Whether other countries are going to block our access is a different conversation but is also unlikely.
That said: Anyone who CAN get out should work on getting out.
The venn diagram of totalitarian regimes which restrict the free movement of citizens is basically a circle, it’s coming as soon as they think they can get away with it
The US is following the (modern) russian model.
Outside of war time concerns over draft dodgers (which is not restricted to totalitarian regimes), there are no “extra” restrictions on citizens outside of needing a passport. There ARE restrictions placed on “political opponents” but that can be considered an extension of the “normal” restrictions on people with pending legal issues and so forth and gets into a greater discussion of the role of law in a society.
No. The big restriction is monetary. Which is also how control is maintained and oligarchs are protected.
The US is rapidly speedruning a christofacist oligarchy. But that is still going to be a lot closer to a Russia or a China than a North Korea. The latter is possible and should be feared but would require a massive shift that takes away the “Things are bad for me but they are worse for Them” that conservatives globally depend on.
doubt we’ll “ever” have that policy.
They likely won’t do it just to do it; driving forces would be required.
If we reach a point where there are serious side effects of lacking engineers, doctors, and nurses due to expatriation, they’ll stop allowing travel. It’ll come as part of a martial law crackdown.
In the long run, people won’t put up with it; in the short run… would you REALLY put it past them?
Vaccine tourism will become a thing.
Knowing the current administration, it will end up just like abortion tourism… but instead of only being persecuted in red states, it will be federally outlawed.
Think about all the capitalist profit businesses make for common cold symptoms alone, with over the counter meds and stuff.
No way something like this would be allowed in our current society.
But does that outweigh the amount of days lost from people taking sick days?
Oh sorry America. The civilised world would be making that calculation though.
Just an interesting thing to share… I lived in the US until I was 40 and moved to Norway. They just don’t sell “cold remedy” meds here, or at least not even close to the extent the US does. We have sore throat drops, and OTC pain relief. Some cough medicine but it’s pretty weak imo. I suspect this is because the expectation here is that if you’re sick, you take sick time off work. You can rest and recover. Going to the doc to get sick time approved is at most like $20 and if you and your doc have a good relationship, you can do this via email. In the US, you’re expected to power through unless contagious and even then, just try to pretend you’re okay.
What you’re saying hits home.
Conservatives have this tough guy routine, that going to work when you’re sick is just manly or “alpha”. It’s bullshit. Then they spread it so everyone else can get it.
But the tough thing to do, is go to work, after pumping yourself full of nyquil, or Tylenol, or whatever. It’s just so stupid and obvious. They’re so “tough” yet they need all this OTC junk to ease the symptoms. Not to mention, not being productive at work, cause you feel like shit. As well as taking longer to get better.
Personally, I prefer not to take any meds at all. Just go home, sleep a lot, drink water, eat soup, chill, rest, etc.
Back at the start of the millenium. Way before even one day work from home was common. I worked at a place where if you were sick and did not take a sick day they expected you to work from home. You would get some ribbing for being in the office and coughing. That place was great. Also always had hand sanitizer and tissue.
I just got over being sick for 2 weeks and even though I was lucky enough to have that much sick time, I absolutely wanted the strongest meds I could get because I was miserable.
you’re expected to power through unless contagious
No, you’re expected to power through and they don’t give a fuck whether you’re contagious or not.
dextrotomorphan, is the cough medicine, i find it has little effect on coughs. i believes its the 1st generations(diphenhydramine, doxylamine,bropheneramine,etc) anti-histamine that is preventing the smptoms, because also prevents mucus production via anti-cholingernic effects and the cough, besides the fever.
and pehnyleprine has no effect on you what so ever, you need the pseudoephedrine, but its regulated in the usa, and only available at the pharmacy counter, because Pseudoephedrine is used to make METH. dextromorphan is also recently been regulated, requiring ID, because stupid young children teens, are robotripping on it apparently.
However, I’d expect businesses would also want to reduce cold and covid’s impact on employee productivity? Wouldn’t fewer employees needing to take sick time because of cold/covid increase their profits? Outside of businesses that profit from cold/covid, I don’t see what the motivation for businesses would be against this vaccination.
Agreed, but you could spin it a number of ways. The “tough guy work ethic” cultural propaganda is to just go to work when sick. The fact that your not as productive when you feel shitty, well, the owners would have to actually care. Their argument is they’d probably prefer a sick employee only working at 70% their normal productivity, is better than letting them stay home.
The other much bigger thing is, how much money is over the counter meds industry profiting? Do they have lawyers and lobbyists? Is this profit entrenched in Wall Street investors and quarterly profits?
Which wins? Altruism for the worker bee, or rich peoples money and power?
Where can I get one?
CSIS go take this research and get it developed for the world
I’ll believe it when I see it
deleted by creator
I know my state would find a way to ban this shit. They hate anything that prevents needless suffering.
*country
Also, fuck cancer. (Cancer vaccines may be next, the end of the article.)
I see this often, but cancer isn’t caused by a viral infection. Are there vaccines that exist to prevent non-viral related diseases?
Some of them can be. HPV is the typical cause of cervical cancer, which is the one I can think of off the top of my head.
That’s not actually true. There’s a bunch of viruses that can cause cancer:
So we’d be vaccinating those infections, not cancer itself
Vaccines could theoretically be used to train the immune system to essentially attack cancer cells in much the same way we already use immunotherapy. Though as far as I understand it, we have yet to fully develope one.
