Comment by zamfi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zamfi | Hacker News Reader

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> Underneath this post is the assumption that the author is so much smarter than everybody else because they are Rational with a capital R and can therefore harness the power of science to make a vaccine

I didn't get this from the post at all -- they didn't invent the vaccine, they're just trying a protocol put together by some other biologists they seem to trust.

The certifications and testing is not for show, and no one serious is claiming that. Asking an entire population to vaccinate is a huge responsibility; if you're making claims to the public that an injection is safe you'd better be as sure as you can reasonably be that it's true.

If you're just experimenting on yourself, the bar is lower: as here, you just need to convince yourself that your risk of adverse outcomes is very low.

An individual may be willing to accept a 0.1% risk of severe adverse outcome. A society that asks 300 million people to take that risk will experience 300,000 severe adverse outcomes.

Which is higher, the risk of the vaccine or the risk of COVID (and not just for you, for people you meet and possibly care about)?

Risk of Covid is significantly higher. just stating for others.

Well, if you’re talking homemade vaccines, depending on your age and underlying conditions it could easily be that.

Homemade vaccines are not contagious (just stating the obvious).

This is obviously false in the case that an error is made in the process. E.g. someone vaccinates themselves with a live virus, or possibly accidentally engineers an even more virulent strain.

If you are making your vaccine from artificial peptides that are a hundred times shorter than a live virus, this seems unlikely. There was no way for live virus to be introduced into this process.

The parent said "Homemade vaccines are not contagious (just stating the obvious). ", they didn't say "homemade vaccines made from artificial peptides are not contagious".

So? I’m not worried about the effects on others if I squirt peptides and chitosan up my nose. I’m worried about the effect on me.

A homemade vaccine is both unlikely to be effective (and therefore do nothing for others) and probably more likely to harm me personally than covid. It’s certainly the greater harm for most people.

The risk of permanent smell changes, possible neurological changes, and a chance of hospitalisation and death from COVID is unlikely to be smaller than ingesting a microscopic quantity of a peptide.

Disagree because you’re looking at it as if my options are get Covid or take homemade vaccine.

I can pretty easily avoid Covid for the couple more months it’ll take before I get a real vaccine, so it’s low danger for me. I’m also younger and healthier so my risk if I get it is quite small. High enough that I’m modifying my life to avoid it, but still pretty small.

And since I think the homemade Covid vaccine is unlikely to work, it is unlikely to decrease the odds of any of the things you mentioned anyway.

However squirting strange chemicals up your nose adds risk. People die from Neti pots and that’s just water.

If I’m currently faced with the choices of taking a homemade vaccine or not taking a homemade vaccine, the latter is clearly the less dangerous course of action. I think that’s the spirit of the comment to which we were all replying, and it’s the actual choice being discussed.

Now if I were an 85 y/o diabetic in a nursing home and there weren’t a vetted vaccine available that might be different.

> If I’m currently faced with the choices of taking a homemade vaccine or not taking a homemade vaccine, the latter is clearly the less dangerous course of action. I think that’s the spirit of the comment to which we were all replying, and it’s the actual choice being discussed.

Well, the actual content of the comment we’re all replying to is a mix of “it’s impossible for a non-expert to come up with an idea that’s worth experimenting with for anyone” and haughty derision about Rationalism and what the commenter perceives as the “hubris” that goes along with that.

What the original comment misses is that the people who came up with this protocol are not pitching it as anything other than an experiment for themselves and maybe others who are interested — they make no safety claims, no claims about the real vaccines, no claims that it’s a good idea, etc., and no one is arguing that taking a homemade vaccine is good or better than the real vaccines or other precautions, which seems to be the strawman you’re debating in your post.

That said, historically, a significant number of vaccines were demonstrated to work initially by the inventors trying them on themselves and then challenging themselves with live virus.

The fact that at it’s not a good idea for the average person to try a homemade vaccine (and to be clear: we are 100% in agreement here) does not imply that the original radvac authors here should not have put together their protocol.

I would say your risk in taking a homemade vaccine is greater than your risk from Covid if you don’t take the homemade vaccine. The homemade vaccine is unlikely to work so it won’t decrease covid risk much to you or others. The expected value is low.

It seems like it’s probably more likely to harm you, either directly because you’re shooting amateur-made chemicals up your nose, or indirectly because it might give you false confidence or make Covid hurt you more if you do contract it.

It’s an interesting idea to make your own vaccine, but clearly a bad one.

Why do you think it's a bad idea to make your own vaccine?

Does your opinion change if you assume the person making the vaccine has had lab training?

I guess there would clearly be some people who would be much more likely to be successful than others. I can’t imagine it’s a good idea in our current situation, in which there are very effective vaccines that have gone through extensive testing that will soon be readily available.

Several of the vaccine candidates from a year ago have failed. So even pros with virtually unlimited budgets fail a decent amount of the time.

Perhaps there’s a case where someone for whatever reason will not be able to buy a safe vaccine soon, is at real risk of contracting covid, is demographically at high risk from covid, and has enough knowledge and access to proper materials to make their own, and for that person it is a smart move. I don’t know. Anything is possible.

I’m also defining bad idea as worse than the alternatives. It’s like riding a motorcycle. I consider that a bad idea because you have a much, much higher chance of dying than in a car. But your most likely result is neutral. Most people who try to make a vaccine will probably just lose a little money and time.

And I should note I do things that are bad ideas sometimes too. If you’re doing it for fun or education or whatever else that’s fine, you should just be realistic about the risk you are incurring.

It's so strange to see people switch to the other side in an open source/hacking debate, when it comes to hacking systems that are not 'traditional' computers.

Of course in this case the systems in question are actually most definitely Turing complete on many levels; and much, much older.

'Life' is ultra-advanced (non-artificially) intelligent (non-alien) nano-technology. If that doesn't seem totally fascinating and something people might want to hack... what on earth does?

Yeah it’s interesting. I read the article and enjoyed it. I’ve really got no problem with someone doing it. I’m not suggesting people shouldn’t be able to so I don’t feel I’ve switched sides.

But someone said that your risk from covid was higher than your risk from a home made vaccine, and to me that’s almost certainly untrue for nearly everyone at best. That’s where the thread started. I was disagreeing with someone’s obviously poor risk assessment.

Fair enough. Thanks for taking the time to explain your thinking!

There are no safety/effectiveness guarantees for the vaccine https://radvac.org/faq/

Here's direct quote from the link: "we cannot guarantee safety"

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