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@hector The irony is I literally got seriously sick from a vaccine (not the conspiracy shit, like a known side effect doctors confirmed and all), yet im fairly pro vaccine.
With that said if you take the COVID vaccine considering it skipped all of the usual safety tests you'd be a fool IMO.
@hector I assume you are referring to the pfizer's mRNA vaccine administered through muscle injection and not the one you hear more about lately that is administered through eh nasal cavity?
@hector So to answer your question much of the technology around various types of vaccines we are dealing with here are, in fact, new, this is true. While that should concern anyone deciding to take it lets not let our bias against it cloud the question at hand, which is should they call it a vaccine.
So on the one hand I kinda get your concern, its such a new tech that it can create a false sense of security to just call it a vaccine as people may assume its just as reliable and tested as a technology as other vaccines on the market.
With that said the issue to me isnt so much that the tech is new, yea that compounds safety concerns, but really its not that at all. Its that even classical vaccines require about 5 years of clinical testing to establish their safety, any less than that even for very serious illnesses has never been ok in recent history... Here we have a vaccine rushed through in 1/5th the time AND doesnt resemble traditional vaccines, thats a dangerous combo IMO.
With all that said is it a vaccine though? I'd say as much as I'd love to argue it isnt in truth it is.
The definition of a vaccine has always been something like the following "Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person's immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease." so anything that gets your immune system to recognize a disease and be able to defend against it is a vaccine.
Furthermore while the specific tech is a bit new and the pfizer vaccine is unique in that it intentionally is designed to promote replication, it would still fall rather neatly under one of the 4 major types of vaccine: 1) live virus vaccines (attenuated) 2) inactivated vaccines (dead) 3) Subunit vaccines, 4) toxoid vaccines.
The pfizer mRNA based vaccine would fall clearly under #3. Though this may be the first subunit vaccine that is also a live vaccine of a sort as it can still replicate (though only part of the virus replicates and cant replicate a second generation. So I'd say its pretty well within the realm of the word vaccine.
Anyway this teleological-sounding redefinition of vaccine worries me. It's getting close to circular logic where "vaccine" means "anything designed to produce immunity to something" which tells you absolutely nothing about how it actually works and only what it's intended to do. It's like the word "antipsychotic" describing the intended effect of a medication, which is deceptive IMO compared to describing the actual mechanism of action. Science should have long moved past "oh hey chew this herb it will stop your headache" phase and onto the "SSRI inhibitor" phase, actual descriptions.
@hector yea its more accurate to say encoding.. and while I agree it hasn't been thoroughly tested im not sure that is a requirement for the definition. Even a dangerous and failed vaccine is still a vaccine.
To me it isnt a redefinition of vaccine at all, it satisfies both existing definitions.. it is a subcomponent vaccine (has a component of the virus, specifically the mrna from it), and it is designed to trigger an immune response. so it satisfies both definitions.
Its dangerous, we shouldnt let it out to the public without testing, I share all of your concerns. Just saying, despite not liking it, it is a vaccine.
I think what your arguing is that the term is so general (and not descriptive of the fact that it is an entierly new approach) that the term vaccine is not useful, or good for us to use... in that sense I somewhat agree, the term vaccine is vague to the point of not being terribly descriptive, which is concerning as it masks a lot of the concern. On that we agree.
In a way I think your just arguing something different than what your saying.. you aren't really arguing "This doesn't fall under the definition of a vaccine so we shouldn't call it that"... you are really arguing "The term vaccine is far too vague to be useful so we shouldn't call it or anything a vaccine, we need new more descriptive words".. If i am correct then I'd be more likely to agree with the latter than the former.
