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Comment by bamboozled | Hacker News Reader

Not sure if I can give you sources, but have you followed the Oxford University vaccine story? It seems like they're working miracles while many other scientists are pretty skeptical if a vaccine can be found at all, or at least within such short time frames.

This is anecdotal, but I do agree with the OP, there is a lot of conflicting information available.

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Several vaccine projects have reported good stimulation of antibody production in trials. The big problem is that we don't yet know what kind of immunity that may provide or how long it might last. But it seems getting people to produce antibodies without making them ill is extremely possible.

From the Moderna Phase I results published recently [1], I'd point out that most vaccine candidates are also performing antibody challenges and T-cell counting, to better characterize the effective immune response generated [2], beyond antibody production.

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2022483

[2] Via assessment methods in the above: "pseudotyped lentivirus reporter single-round-of-infection neutralization assay (PsVNA) and by live wild-type SARS-CoV-2 plaque-reduction neutralization testing (PRNT)" & "T-cell responses against the spike protein were assessed by an intracellular cytokine–staining assay, performed on specimens collected at days 1, 29, and 43"

There are many vaccine projects showing promising results.

> there is a lot of conflicting information available

That's the nature of science. There is conflicting information because it is unknown what works yet. There are many approaches that show promise.. until they don't.

We will find out eventually whether the Oxford University vaccine works or becomes an example of "and then nothing". But it is definitely not a "and then nothing" yet.

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