Can the Medical Innovations Used To Fight COVID-19 Finally Defeat HIV?
Phase 1 testing begins on new vaccine based on mRNA advances.
The same type of medical innovations we've used to successfully fight COVID-19 are now being marshaled to possibly cure HIV once and for all.
Last week Moderna announced it was beginning a human clinical trial of a new, experimental HIV vaccine. The vaccine uses messenger RNA (mRNA) biotechnology, similar to the COVID-19 vaccines. The drug stimulates the recipients' white blood cells to produce antibodies to fight and neutralize invading viruses.
If the vaccine works, this would be a massive step toward eradicating HIV. Innovations in medicine have already mostly neutered a virus that at one point was killing more than 50,000 people a year in the United States.
Current treatments have been successful at suppressing HIV within a person's body to such a degree that virus levels could neither be detected nor transmitted. As a result, the close to 38 million HIV positive people across the world can live close to normal lives with the assistance of antiretroviral therapies. That itself is an amazing turnaround in the lives of infected people over the course of just three decades.
But this treatment isn't the same as a cure. These suppressive therapies require regular medication to keep HIV under control. Availability and access to regular drug treatments can be a challenge. Currently only 75 percent of people who are HIV positive are getting the treatment. Only two-thirds of HIV positive people have taken enough of the drug treatment that the HIV virus is fully suppressed in their own bodies. And so continued HIV transmission remains a problem, with 1.5 million new infections reported in 2020.
An mRNA-induced response could take the success in fighting HIV to the next level and possibly even eliminate it, much as science has purged the world of the scourge of polio.
That's if it succeeds, of course. Previous attempts at HIV vaccines have made it to clinical trials but ultimately failed. Nevertheless, as Reason's Ronald Bailey noted last May, advances in mRNA technology show great potential to fight viruses and diseases beyond just COVID. BioNTech, which worked with Pfizer to develop that company's COVID-19 vaccine, has started clinical trials to attempt to use mRNA vaccines to stimulate the body's immune systems to try to fight off different types of cancer.
It's far too early to celebrate, but it is very much worth recognizing the speed of medical innovation compared to what we experienced just decades ago.
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Let me guess. The trials will show it’s “95% effective and stopping infection”
Then in a few months, vaccinated folks will be getting HIV. Then a few months later they will need a booster.
Then only 3 to 4 boosters a year after that…
Tony wants multiple boosters weekly.
He needs them.
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The vaccines were 95% effective at stopping infection… of the Beta variant, which was the dominant variant at the time the vaccines were created. Then the Delta variant hit, and the vaccine was less effective at stopping infection from that variant. And it is even less effective at stopping infection against the Omicron variant. I don’t know why this is so hard for people to understand. Thankfully, the vaccine is still very effective at preventing hospitalization and death, against all the current variants.
…that viruses change over time should not be news. That they did not plan vaccines based on that shows that they were interested in money over medicine.
I’d also like to see some independent verification of its near-total success in stopping Beta, since it did not actually seem to do that.
How do you plan for a mutation that hasn’t happened yet, given that you have no idea what part of the genome will mutate?
By the time the vaccines were available the original virus they were heavily targeted toward was not dominant anymore. Even Beta was a post-vaccine variant, with reduced efficacy
How do you plan for a mutation that hasn’t happened yet
By refusing to allow it to be called “effective” and then, then, then, after I’ve set the stage with honesty, I continue to tell the truth.
You should try it. You’ll die, because you’re allergic, but it’ll be fun to watch.
Right. Sure. This Kevin Smith commenter guy lied the American public about the vaccine’s effectiveness. And that’s why we are in the mess we are in today, folks.
Salty see-lyin’.
“How do you plan for a mutation that hasn’t happened yet, given that you have no idea what part of the genome will mutate?”
At the very beginning of the whole thing, very many people pointed out that the Coronavirus was much like the common cold, in that it is very difficult to develop a vaccine for it. Specifically, the virus- like rhinoviruses- mutates very quickly and makes it very hard to use traditional mechanisms (deactivated or weakened viruses) to vaccinate. By the time you mass produce a vaccine, the virus has mutated.
The hypothesis with the mRNA vaccines was that they could identify the Spike Protein that is ubiquitous with all coronaviruses and teach the body to fight it off. This hypothesis was wrong because the spike protein is ALSO mutating so quickly that by the time they mass produce the vaccines, the viruses have mutated so much that the spike protein is not recognizable (or at least substantially less recognizable) to the immune system.
It is not clear to me whether this was a huge surprise to the people developing the vaccine, or if it was a known risk and they merely down-played it because politicians desperate for a win were shoveling money their way.
When it comes to AIDS vaccines, I am not certain how often HIV mutates or what the immune response they are trying to create is based upon…
Tony Fauci said it was effective against the variants. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that?
Just tossing our ideas.
He shouldn’t have said that. Correct.
fuck off, douche bag
How do you plan for a mutation that hasn’t happened yet, given that you have no idea what part of the genome will mutate?
You don’t have a vaccine that targets few cell receptors. You target many so when it mutates you still have a good chance of efficacy. Or you just use an attenuated vaccine so all the cell surface markers are targeted. Also, why is the most vaccinated (90+%) country (Israel) with the most boosters given (up to 4) having an increase in deaths during Omicron? Way too early to tell, but months ago there were virologists that were concerned that these boosters could end up inducing a state of antigen induced enhancement (AIE) that would make the most vaccinated people more prone to the effects of the virus. Not saying this is what’s happening, but it should make you wonder…
The plan to stop all these variants was to get most people vaccinated. That plan didn’t work because partisan morons are making stupid personal medical decisions for political reasons.
Shut up, liar.
Maybe you can explain why MORE people died with a less virulent version of it WITH vaccines AND knowledge on how to treat it than they did in 2020 when we had neither much detail?
Cite?
Ok. Now please explain.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20211122/us-covid-deaths-2021-surpass-2020-total
how the fuck do you live with yourself?
“The plan to stop all these variants was to get most people vaccinated. That plan didn’t work because partisan morons are making stupid personal medical decisions for political reasons.”
Mike let his mask slip here, folks. Next time he claims that he isn’t partisan, or that he is just following the science, let’s come back to this post.
For the record, there is ABSOLUTELY NO PROOF that had we (impossibly) gotten 100% vaccination in the United States, that the virus would have been stopped.
* The delta variant came from India and Omicron came from South Africa. No variant of sufficient spread has been identified as coming from “partisan morons” in the United States or elsewhere.
* Indeed, we see that even in countries like Israel where we had 90% vaccination, the virus is not stopped by vaccination.
* The virus is in the wild. It is in cats and deer, and coursing through poor countries that will likely never be able to vaccinate quickly and thoroughly enough to stop the virus. It will forever be spreading and mutating, and the vaccine has been shown ineffective of dealing with this.
But what is COMPLETELY HILARIOUS is that Mike is contradicting the statement he JUST MADE below:
https://reason.com/2022/02/02/can-the-medical-innovations-used-to-fight-covid-19-finally-defeat-hiv/?comments=true#comment-9336630
He insists in that post that “no one ever claimed the vaccine was perfect” but above he is ACTUALLY CLAIMING that had we just all vaccinated, the vaccine would have perfectly stopped the virus.
This is how bad his gaslighting has become- where he can’t even keep his stories straight on the same post.
smh.
Mike is never one to let partisanship stand in the way of facts. Wait, I got that backwards.
“The plan to stop all these variants was to get most people vaccinated. That plan didn’t work because partisan morons are making stupid personal medical decisions for political reasons.”
There was no way we could vaccinate 70-90% of the WORLD! It’s not because there were some people that did not get vaccinated in America. What percent of 3rd world countries are vaccinated? Not even close to what is needed to stop the virus early in the pandemic and not even close to the percent vaccinated in America. Plus, the virus has non-human hosts making them endemic which is why we never quite get the vaccine for influenza correct, influenza is constantly mutating. BTW, you’re not very well versed in science/medicine but you are well versed in ideology.
Operation Warp Speed – the name tells a lot. They were in a big hurry to get something done, and the government was guaranteeing to buy whatever they produced. On that basis they did a reasonable job.
But the mRNA vaccine ONLY targets the spike. More traditional vaccines made from dead viruses can target many features on the vaccine, hence more effective and more broadly effective vs later mutation. Simple biochemistry.
The crime is that we didn’t have a parallel program to develop a ‘whole virus’ vaccine that was not spike-only.
This just in: Lockdown aren’t worth shit.
More
specifically, stringency index studies find that lockdowns in Europe and the United States only
reduced COVID-19 mortality by 0.2% on average. SIPOs were also ineffective, only reducing
COVID-19 mortality by 2.9% on average. Specific NPI studies also find no broad-based evidence
of noticeable effects on COVID-19 mortality.
While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects,
they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted. In
consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy
instrument.”
Johns Hopkins team
https://www.bing.com/search?PC=YE22&q=A+LITERATURE+REVIEW+AND+META-ANALYSIS+OF+THE+EFFECTS+OF+LOCKDOWNS+ON+COVID-19+MORTALITY&FORM=SLYEPK
the screen told you these things.
Why do you believe the latest spin so thoroughly when all the previous spins turned out to be wrong?
A vaccine that doesn’t prevent you from getting sick isn’t a vaccine.
This is like polio or MMR vaccine recipients claiming “I only got a little bit of paralysis, at least I didn’t have to go to the hospital!” or “It was just a mild rash!”
Pre-2021, vaccines were supposed to PREVENT ILLNESS, not merely hospitalization. That’s why the flu shot was always hedged that it was for certain guessed variants, because people who got the flu shot could still get the flu (like I did in 2013, when I had a flu bug that was even nastier than COVID and didn’t get out of my system for a solid month).
The vaccine is trash. I know, because I’m vaxxed and still caught COVID.
Meanwhile, Senator Ben Ray Lujan just had a stroke–he’s only 49, and while he’s clearly on the heavy side, he’s not a deathfat like Jerry Nadler or JB Pritzker.
MMR vaccine is about 88% effective against mumps, and 97% against measles and rubella, and the polio vaccine is about 90% effective, so I guess they aren’t vaccines either
Read harder.
“A vaccine that doesn’t prevent you from getting sick isn’t a vaccine”
Read what he just wrote. It means that MMR doesn’t keep people from getting mumps about 12% of the time, etc.
No vaccine is perfect effective.
Do you really want to compare efficacy of MMR vaccines to the COVID ones?
Why not?
I’m not the one trying to push some politically based view of vaccines. To me, they are what they are.
They aren’t “what they are” if you change the definition of vaccine.
“I’m not the one trying to push some politically based view…”
LOL
Literally an hour earlier, he was arguing that “because partisan morons are making stupid personal medical decisions” the virus wasn’t stopped. Get it? The virus has raged all over the world, but it was Republicans who foiled our attempts to stop it.
But not a partisan, folks!
The risk/benefit calculations for MMR are entirely different from other vaccines.
You talk about “vaccines” like Crystal loving hippies talk about “chemicals”.
MMR doesn’t keep people from getting mumps about 12% of the time,
The problem is that the new vaccines only prevent people getting Covid, what, about 25% of the time, and later variants less than that. They are still valuable because they very effectively prevent DEATH. Not a bad prophylactic.
Those are lifetime failure rates. The lifetime failure rate of the COVID vaccines is likely 100%, given current data.
Those are DNA viruses. Coronaviruses are RNA.
Mumps virus is a 15.3-kb enveloped, nonsegmented, negative-strand RNA virus in the Paramyxoviridae family.
The measles virus is a single-stranded RNA virus of the genus Morbillivirus and the family Paramyxoviridae.
Rubella virus is an enveloped, positive-stranded RNA virus classified as a Rubivirus in the Matonaviridae family.
Or maybe I got it backwards.
Nope. You just got it wrong. Coronaviruses are also RNA
If COVID vaccine was even 70% effective against transmission, there’d be fewer gripes. Within 2-3 months, it is less than 50% effective.
Why make comparisons that make your point look poor?
How about this: If an AIDS vaccine had the IDENTICAL success rate in transmission prevention as the COVID ones do — would you still choose to have sex with somebody who is HIV positive?
They understand. They just pretend not to for partisan political reasons.
Cite?
Thankfully, the vaccine is still very effective at preventing hospitalization and death, against all the current variants.
Assumes facts not in evidence.
Unless you can know how badly a person would have reacted to being infected, if not jabbed, you can’t say they were less effected by being jabbed.
That the “vaccine” made their illness less dangerous is nothing but conjecture.
Nobody is making any claims of effectiveness for any individual person. They are all statistical claims for particular demographics — and that doesn’t depend on knowing how badly an individual would have reacted to being infected.
Squirm harder.
There is zero evidence that the COVID vaccines do anything other than reduce the rate of transmission.
That’s very different from the lifetime risk of vaccine failure for other vaccines.
You are comparing apples and oranges.
LOL
HIV generates many variants over the course of infection in each patient.
Can the Medical Innovations Used To Fight COVID-19 Finally Defeat HIV?
Considering the track record with the wuflu vaccine, no.
What we have ‘learned’ is that we just need to be sure politicians get a piece of the pharma action, declare an “emergency use authorization” to be the same as approval, and pass laws to make everyone “buy” the medicine, and everything will be just fine.
Well, except for the people who still get sick and die.
And the people who realize the actual science, and get fired for it.
But other than that – – – – – – – –
I am not taking this vaccine. Behavior can stop 99.9% of the transmissions.
If Andrew Sullivan can’t be barebacked in a NYC “bath house”, are we really free from the scourge of HIV/AIDS?
Am assuming there will be an OSHA mandate barring unvaccinated gay men from the workplace until those gay men can prove via documentation that they are fully vaccinated. This measure should only last two weeks.
Andrew “poz pig” Sullivan knows that mandatory condom usage violates his civil liberties.
Someone should tell him to put a plug in it.
By “workplace”, you mean the bathhouse?
I’m looking forward to the condom mandate in public places – to replace the mask mandates.
https://notthebee.com/article/huge-breakthrough-scientists-have-finally-realized-two-years-later-that-lockdowns-did-nothing-to-stop-the-virus-but-had-devastating-effects-on-our-country-and-economy
By the way, this process you’re witnessing in the media is what Bret Weinstein referred to as “the scramble”, and what Peter Hitchens referred to “people showing up with their tin cups and emptying them out upon the embers”.
It’s amazing to watch this happen in real time.
“Well, sure, maybe some of our policies were a bit overwrought and… sure some mistakes were made…”
Stand by for the Branch Covidian Democrat media to “fact check” this claim with the typical hand-waving.
I said this months ago, but it bears repeating. The exact same preventative measures we tried 100 years ago–social distancing, masks, lockdowns, etc.–didn’t do JACK SHIT to stop the spread of the virus, both then and now. Once China sent its infected population out of Wuhan and across the globe, it was inevitable that COVID was here to stay, and we were just going to have to suck it up and deal with it.
And even “The Science” knew that in March 2020. The area under the curve is the same regardless of shape. But after impeachment theater failed, they needed a new way to get rid of Trump.
“Well, sure, maybe some of our policies were a bit overwrought and… sure some mistakes were made…”but it was all worth it because the main goal was achieved; to get Donald Trump out of office.
And destroy ways of life, trust in neighbors, and the middle class.
Trump was just our shield
If they didn’t stop COVID, how in hell are they gonna stop HIV?
Masks?
Double
bagmaskThe HIV vaccine will keep you from being hospitalized with HIV. It is still recommended that you use a condom if sexually active and refrain from indiscriminate sex in case there is a breakthrough variant that will infect you even with the vaccine. And the booster vaccine six months later is also recommended, but continue to condomize-up and stay safely away from your promiscuous friends.
Umm, it’s a completely different disease.
From THESE trustworthy corporate sponsors…!
You just made the case for this worse.
If, by ‘defeat HIV’ you mean that you can still get, carry, and spread HIV after being vaccinated against it multiple times, then sure.
Amazing how just a few short months ago, this wasn’t a problem, wasn’t happening and was the raving fever dream of Fox News Hosts.
Same newspaper:
I literally laughing out loud.
These good little stalinists are serving the politburo with all their hearts.
Government Budget Winfall!!! I will be expecting an Aids-Free Dividend (just like the Peace Dividend) now that government no longer needs to spend funds searching for a cure.
“The same type of medical innovations we’ve used to successfully fight COVID-19 are now being marshaled to possibly cure HIV once and for all.”
Pardon me while I fight the urge to run screaming.
Also, horse paste.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3327999/
lolz not if Fauci has anything to say about it he’s had it in for the gays since his own repression 45+ years ago
medical innovations we’ve used to successfully fight COVID-19
I dont think that word means what you think it means.
I don’t think that word means what _you_ think it means. Nobody has said the new mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are perfect, but they have saved a lot of lives and a lot of misery.
See this is a perfect example of Mike trying to rewrite history in order to look reasonable.
First, the strawman: “Nobody has said the new mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines are perfect”
Notice how he constructs and disputes a falsehood. Woodchipper never said people claimed it was perfect. And Mike also tries imputing a little middle-of-the-road humility here.
“but they have saved a lot of lives and a lot of misery.”
And here is the gas-lighting. It is clear that Woodchipper is referring to the fact that less than a year ago, “Success” was stopping the spread and returning us to normal- not reducing an already tiny chance of hospitalization even further. Mike of course knows this, because less than a year ago he was insisting that people get vaccinated in order to stop the spread and return us to normal.
Why does Mike do this? Why does he so calmly imply that Woodchipper faulted people for not making a “perfect vaccine”? Why does he brazenly gas light us that “success” was merely reducing the chances of hospitalization? Because he is disingenuous, and here on bad faith. He pulls this shit every day so that people will get frustrated and snap at him, so he can play the wrongfully accused. This is why people call him a sea lion.
Mike Liarson is a dedicated see-lyin’.
Given how HIV functions, if mRNA vaccines are as effective against it as they are against COVID, they are completely useless.
Looks like CNN is imploding
https://www.newsmax.com/finance/streettalk/jeff-zucker-resign-chris-cuomo-relationship/2022/02/02/id/1055158/
Exactly how does an executive announce the existence of a “relationship” with an employee?
Is it a “relationship” before the first “date”?
Is it a “relationship” after the first date but before sex?
Is it a “relationship” only after it results in sex?
Who really gives a damn?
Who is John Galt?
As Andrew Cuomo’s former communications director, I’m his fling is well suited to provide an interview – especially as she’s still employed.
I can guarantee you that this “Undisclosed Relationship” was a final parting shot from Cuomo. Fuck him over, and he’ll let everyone know where the bodies are buried.
After repeatedly promising to defeat covid, Biden is now claiming he’s going to reduce cancer deaths by half.
https://www.newsmax.com/health/health-news/cancer-biden-deaths-reduction/2022/02/02/id/1055127/
Biden made these same absurd promises after his son’s death, when as VP, he gave billions of US dollars to some biomedical companies (that likely contributed to Biden’s campaigns).
If Biden truly desired to reduce cancer deaths, he’d have supported (instead of opposing) the many public policies I’ve advocated that have reduce cigarette consumption by 75% in the past 35 years.
He’d also nominate someone who supports tobacco harm reduction products and policies to replace former Big Pharma lobbyist Mitch Zeller as the Director of FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products.
During Zeller’s 8 year tenure at FDA, his only accomplishment was to impose a cigarette protecting rule banned the sale of >99.9% of nicotine vapor products (which FDA hasn’t enforced because doing so will cause cigarette sales to skyrocket).
Grifters gonna grift. Midtermsssss
While the vaccines have been useful, it’s pretty clear that they aren’t nearly as effective as they were touted to be
mRNA is only a delivery vehicle, it can’t be an effective vaccine without an effective antigen to stimulate a controlling immune response. Since we have not seen such a beast in nature, I’m not optimistic that it will be created in the lab.
Yes, mRNA requires two steps. 1) your body must take in the mRNA and make the spike protein, and 2) your body must respond to the spike proteins produced. Each person will respond differently in both steps,so a wide range of responses.
Conventional vaccines need only one step since they inject the dead virus – spike protein and all other components – and your system responds. Your body has many different components against which to act, not just one.
Ultimately the problem is that scientists figured the spike protein was the most ubiquitous component of the corona virus. That is, they figured that the virus might mutate tons, but it needed to have a spike protein to spread, so if you could cause the body to recognize and respond to that, you could stop any coronavirus variant.
Unfortunately they were wrong. Delta and Omicron variants have mutated, and many of the mutations are ON THE SPIKE PROTEIN. These mutations make it more difficult for the body to actually recognize the spike protein and mount a defense.
The COVID vaccines have been ineffective at preventing transmission, they just attenuate acute disease. Such a vaccine would be utterly useless for HIV, which is a chronic retrovirus. Not to mention that every HIV antigen has been tried for vaccination and failed.
mRNA vaccination opens up a few new avenues, but it’s still a long shot. Most likely, we will never see a successful HIV vaccine.