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Three vaccines (Pfizer / Biontech, Moderna and AstraZeneca / Oxford) against Sars-CoV-2 have crossed the production finish line. If you add Chinese (Sinopharm) and Russian (Sputnik V), that would be five. All manufacturers report that the vaccine reliably elicits an immune reaction and that there have been no serious side effects to date. So far, all reports of success have only been press releases. That means: not scientifically evaluated yet.
However, the figures mentioned are considerable. All vaccines were tested in phase III on several thousand volunteers. What you don’t know, and this applies to all vaccines, are three things: How long does the protective effect last? Are there long-term effects? Y: Are there serious side effects that only appear much later?
ADE does not mean “Goodbye” here
In terms of long-term effects, it is feared that so-called infection-enhancing antibodies (antibody-dependent potentiation, ADEs) may be produced. Vaccination produces antibodies against the virus, but these are only those that bind to the virus and do not inhibit it sufficiently, but rather weaken the effect of neutralizing antibodies. Then a second infection would be even stronger due to the vaccination that does not protect.
The phenomenon was discovered in a dengue virus subtype. Among other things, the Marburg and Ebola viruses are said to react similarly, so far there is no indication of the corona virus.
And the side effects?
Nothing can yet be known about the side effects that occur later in the life of a vaccinated person. It is feared that the mRNA method may cause this. With it, the “building instructions” (genetic information of the virus) for the protein that serves as the antigen are injected. Vaccination uses a process that is carried out continuously: the cell must initiate protein synthesis. Then the mRNA is broken down.
And if he stayed, he probably couldn’t do anything other than what he was injected to do: induce immunity to Sars-CoV-2.
Yuck: genetic material in the vaccine! The objection sounds similar to: I don’t want any chemistry in my body! Unfortunately, not much else happens there.
So unusually fast and therefore doubtful?
It would take years to find a vaccine, it was said at the start of the pandemic. Now, after about a year, five vaccines are already being tested. Was the work questionable? There are reasons for the speed. The effort required for Phase III, testing on volunteers, was unprecedented. Recruiting and organizing several thousand volunteers in various countries is something that only multinational pharmaceutical companies can do. And they did it this time.
China’s first molecular biological findings contributed to the research. The virus was recognized early on and its genome was sequenced shortly after. It was also unusually early in how the virus worked.
For traditional vaccines, which consist of weakened or killed viruses, the pathogens first had to be raised in hatched chicken eggs (eg, influenza viruses) or other colonies in order to experiment at all.
