I’ll believe it when I see it
This I want.
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. :)
Coronaviruses are not the only cause for what is considered the “common cold”. I remember that some Rhinoviruses, Adenoviruses and I think a forth family of viruses also cause symptoms that are counted as a cold. It’s kind of a catch all term.
Okay, sure. Then a third of all colds, which feels like a good start.
Sure, I’m not opposed either! Just want to make sure people here have the information needed to not be disappointed later.
Does it also contain the latest patches for my Autism?It includes the latest release, but it’s the same one included on last year’s flu vaccine.
I think the devs may be quietly winding down support over the next few years.
Abolishes higher education, public libraries, and free time
We’ve done it. We’ve cured autism.
Abolishes higher education, public libraries, and free time
Almost like the rise in people identifying as autistic and diagnoses could be connected the fact that we created a non functioning society that only values extraverted people who are willing to lie and hurt others…. That neurodivergence is pathologized primarily because it runs counter to functioning in a capitalist society, and that many autistic people struggling to survive today might thrive and not be seen as even ‘disabled’ in a world where struggling to make eye contact doesn’t get you disqualified in job interviews…
Oh this is a thing I can add to (PhD in Ed here, specialize in ed measurement specifically as it relates to Disabled students across spectrum of disability types). Definitely have ADHD, potentially low support needs AuDHD. Fully adding on to @[email protected]
This is not exhaustive, it’s not even the most nuanced, it uses a fair amount of terminology from a medical model which isn’t my favorite, but I’m tired and I wrote a lot. This is written from a academic perspective, uses mostly identity-centered terminology, and includes ASD under the Disability umbrella, as that is where it lives from a policy standpoint. For many of us in Education Research, Disability as a term serves as a reminder that the ‘one size fits all’ approach the basics of education policy doesn’t fit particular groups of people in fairly systematic, predictable ways, depending on what their unique needs are.
-Autism is now understood to be more than just the externalizing behaviors that highlight stereotypes of Autism. While stimming is still a very real indicator, stimming is no longer just hand flapping, head banging, and other large movements- finger/toe tapping, vocal stimms(even quiet ones), fist making, are now broadly acknowledged (among innumerable others), as are internalizing stimms associated with speedy thoughts, maladaptive self-talk, internalized singing, etc. Furthermore, as we now understand just how broad of a spectrum ASD is, we also acknowledge that a huge part of the Autistic population (esp. what are called ‘low support needs’ women, but also broadly across Autistic folx with low support needs/high masking) have primarily internalizing symptomatology both in their stimms, but also their specific interests. Teachers and parents don’t really bat an eye at a young girl who is really into drawing horses, or really loves to write about horses (I swear I’m not picking on horse girls), and loves to read books about horses. Drawing, writing, and reading are acceptable behaviors for girls according to how girls and women are socialized, so it’s largely ignored. Externalizing behaviors and vocal declarations of wants are more encouraged among young boys, until they are deemed problematic for whatever reason.
-When you remember that all of the ‘gold standard’ ASD screeners were based (almost) entirely on white, male, kiddos, it makes sense that the kiddos whose differences that would be most flagged would be those that align most closely with that demographic. Once upon a time, the ratio of girls to boy with ASD 1:5, it’s now 1:3.8. I anticipate this gap closing further as we understand more and develop better items for screening for internalizing aspects of ASD. Furthermore, different cultural groups have different expectations of behavior (particularly within gendered socialization), and that feeds into differing rates of ASD diagnosis across cultural groups (and the horrifying differences between white and Black kiddos being diagnosed with ASD instead of Conduct Disorder, but that is a much much larger conversation).
-Starting in the (I want to say late) 90s, Autism screeners became standard practice in early (toddler) pediatric medical appointments. If you (anyone reading) has kiddos, those questions the doctor casually asks you about your child/toddler’s behavior are largely part of different developmental screening batteries. These taper off around 4-5, as typically by that time we have identified a large portion of the higher support needs (level 2 and 3) kiddos. HOWEVER, this is also the time where kiddos are really developing their internal voices, which we’re not really addressing in those caregiver interviews. This means we miss those masking kiddos. As our understanding of ASD expanded into less of a intellectual disability with externalizing behavioral indicators and more into social communication and executive functioning (<- that being a big one) with more internalizing behavior indicators, the number of people diagnosed as Autistic also exploded.
-Finally, IDEA (now IDEIA) and Rehab Act (Section 504) tied a lot of the funding for supplemental services from the Feds to a diagnosis. The EHA was reauthorized as IDEA in 1990 and that’s when ASD was explicitly added to the list of included Disabilities. 1997 the re-authorization added some supports and need for tracking, and the re-authorization and renaming to IDEIA clarified the importance of IEPs and qualifications for federal funding of services. Funding for services for students qualifying under IDEIA or as English Language Learners are actually the 2 largest (direct student) functions of the trying-to-defunct Dept. of Education. All this to say, in order to receive the appropriate supports for a “fair and appropriate public education” (FAPE, a cornerstone of the Dept. of Ed), diagnosis was rather key. And you see this when you look at the changes in prevalence over time.
The combination of expansion of the definition of ASD/better understanding the spectrum (ASD becoming more than non-verbal folx with high support needs), coupled with integrated screenings at the doctors office, and then later better identification of internalizing features of ASD (in 2 stages) accounts for a huge proportion of the increases. According to the CDC (these are all for 8 year olds), the incidence was 1:150 in 2000 (for kiddos born in 1992), stayed above 1:100 until 2008 (this is that integrated screenings in peds appointments), and then increased in prevalence again in 2010 (kiddos born in 2002) likely partially attributable to the increase in social communication items on screeners, and then again in more recent years to 1:36 (2020, kiddos born in 2012) (imo ‘omg, girls can be Autistic too’). And all of this is coupled withe some of the legislative changes mentioned earlier.
And not to ignore the original parent comment: the earliest foundations of formal education systems within the US were definitely to create an ‘appropriately educated’ population during and after the industrial revolution, and that foundation is still very present in formal education. Frankly, ‘back in the day’ those that would be classified as level 2/3 would more often dropped at institutions, generally abandoned, for the state to take custody of, and generally abused and abandoned, there was no real thought to how to integrate them into the industrial revolution at any level. Frankly when the factory education model was developed, Disabled people of any variety were not considered in the slightest.
PSA: Also note that vaccination counts (as in the number of vaccinations kiddos receive) have stayed fairly stable since like the 1970s. There was a decent jump in 2005, but also some that were dropped off. Not that you could realistically tease out anything close to a causal model looking average vaccinations rates (or counts) with panel data (too many history effects). There are too many other things that support a much more realistic explanation. So with all my heart I remind you all that vaccines don’t cause Autism (I know that was never a question here, but a reminder nonetheless). ETA: Not vaccinating your kiddo because you think vaccines cause Autism implies that you’d rather your child be dead than Autistic, that means you suck.
Tl;Dr: It’s complicated, race matters, gender spectrum matters, socialization matters, research is slow, follow the money and there is your explanation.
the rise in people identifying as autistic and diagnoses could be connected the fact that we created a non functioning society that only values extraverted people who are willing to lie and hurt others
Or it could be the strict formalization of psychiatric studies, combined with the more broad based diagnosis and categorization of the school aged working class. We’ve invested more labor and professional expertise in analyzing public education and its consequences, so we’re picking up on a wider variety of psychological variants and aptitudes.
That neurodivergence is pathologized primarily because it runs counter to functioning in a capitalist society
Capitalists are more than happy to profiteer off of neurodivergence both coming - via commodification of prodigy and other unusual pools of talent - and going - via medical marketing and “normalization” therapies. I wouldn’t say it runs counter to capitalist social agendas, because nothing runs strictly against an agenda that is fixated exclusively on maximizing future profit. We’re continuing to invent exciting new ways to exploit people’s psychological differences, always with an eye towards alienation, segregation, and surplus extraction. Identifying and capturing neurodivegent individuals and squeezing them for their productive value has been a big part of the modern Finance Sector and Silicon Valley projects.
in a world where struggling to make eye contact doesn’t get you disqualified in job interviews…
We’re creating a world in which everyone interfaces through computers, where individuals are encouraged to self-segregate and alienate one another, and where information is constantly mediated through attention-grabbing infographic spectacles that reward the users for engagement.
This is not a system designed to exclude individuals with autism. This is a system designed to feed on them.
Or it could be the strict formalization of psychiatric studies, combined with the more broad based diagnosis and categorization of the school aged working class.
Is autism diagnosis really that formalized?
I was tutoring psych the other day, and the book the student had still claimed that women were much less likely to be autistic. It’s fascinating how many women don’t get diagnosed well into their thirties. It makes me really wonder what is being used to diagnosis autism, and how much of it might be affected by the tester’s bias and beliefs.
(Personally, I’ve always wanted to be tested but the 12 month plus waiting list and the $5k not covered by insurance means that I’ll probably continue going through the rest of my life without any form of work accommodation…)
Is autism diagnosis really that formalized?
Certainly moreso than a generation ago.
(Personally, I’ve always wanted to be tested but the 12 month plus waiting list and the $5k not covered by insurance means that I’ll probably continue going through the rest of my life without any form of work accommodation…)
Not unusual for kids to be picked out in grade school and referred for further diagnosis. But yeah, I can definitely get not wanting to bother going out of pocket on something like that as an adult. Not unless there’s a pressing need.
Not unusual for kids to be picked out in grade school and referred for further diagnosis.
Primarily children of one gender presentation, to this day. Which again, makes me very curious as to the validity of the “autism” construct.
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?
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.
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
They still won’t take it.
Who gives a shit? I will take it as will my entire family.
In the '80s, Reagan thought that AIDS was killing the right people.
Now it’s the other way around.
Herd immunity and whatnot
You realize if the morons die out everyone else remaining still has heerd immunity, right?
There are people who have genuine medical reasons to not take vaccines (e.g. an allergy to a common ingredient) or who are so immunocompromised that a vaccine won’t keep them alive, and they rely on other people getting vaccinated to avoid dying. It’s not just antivaxers who antivaxers kill.
it’s not just antivaxers who antivaxers kill.
Reminded of the family whose kid died of measles saying “Our other kids survived, so it was fine”.
That young child wasn’t the one who had been deluded with misinformation.
Selection bias. All the survivors will say “See! We didn’t need the Fauchi Ouchie!” while all the dead won’t say anything.
I’ve straight up been at an event where a speaker asked “Raise your hand if you’ve died because you didn’t get vaccinated! Nobody? That’s what I thought.”
Yes, but we’re slowly evolving away the dumbest and most dangerous of the population.
In the past we sent them running eagerly into the meat grinder of war.
Now they’re building up like cord wood, and starting to smolder.
we’re slowly evolving away the dumbest and most dangerous of the population
Do you believe that exposure to misinformation is a consequence of genetics? Like, people are just born with an ear uniquely tuned to anti-vax radio, television, and social media?
Now they’re building up like cord wood, and starting to smolder.
“RFK Jr is getting his eugenics backwards” is one hell of a take.
I believe vulnerability to misinformation is an effect of genetics, and this puts pressure on those genes to go extinct as they are not suited for survival.
Necessary to protect people with weak immune systems, certainly. But we rarely get better than 60% of the population flu vaxed. It is still vital to deter higher instances of hospitalization and to blunt the rate of spread.
Doesn’t matter, they ll die by measels before anyway
They can die from it alone in their house. Stop going to the hospitals and infecting infants and newborns that can’t get it.
I know my state would find a way to ban this shit. They hate anything that prevents needless suffering.
*country
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.
CSIS go take this research and get it developed for the world
They researching for quite a while now. I really hope this will get to the market. Another bonus is, that it theoretically doesn’t need to be rushed.
But the antivaccines movement will totally Lose it.
Three microchips at once that’s awesome!
FDA approval in never.
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.
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.
Shit, I already have kids. Might as well skip it then.
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?
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.”
The point is that some businesses react rather violently on the loss of billions.
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???
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.
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.
FDA? That still exists?
Hard for them to approve it if there is no FDA.
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?
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.
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.
🐱🐱🐱🐱🐱
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)
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’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!
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?