Do you have any thoughts on the risks/hazards involved here? To me that’s a much more significant consideration than the price. Some thoughts / priors:
Snorting chemicals I got from the Internet / mixed up myself without really knowing what I was doing: Superficially, seems potentially pretty risky.
Snorting peptides (assuming that the stuff ordered online was what it claimed to be, was pure and not contaminated with anything hazardous, and that I didn’t accidentally create anything hazardous in the process): Definitely not as risky as snorting arbitrary unknown substances. Seems unlikely to be directly poisonous (although that’s without reading about the other contents of the vaccine.)
Snorting COVID-19 peptides, in particular: Should I be worried about things like antibody-dependent enhancement? Are there other possible hazards specific to experimental vaccine administration that I should worry about? I’m sure the paper talks about this stuff, but I’m not a biologist so I can’t promise I’d understand it if I read it.
Is there a possibility that this vaccine is both ineffective, and interferes in some way with the effectiveness of subsequent administration of a different vaccine?
From a risk perspective, the fact that this is intranasal rather than injected makes it feel safer to self-administer, I expect, but is that feeling really justified? Obviously for this vaccine to work, it has to be creating substantial immune effects, at which point I have to ask: what are the risks involved in creating substantial immune effects in my body using a thing I found on the Internet, which has received comparatively very little testing, and without enough knowledge to really verify any of the claims myself?
The main answer here is “see the paper”; there’s a lot of discussion about this stuff. I’ll summarize a few points, as I understand them, relevant to your particular thoughts.
The “snorting chemicals” aspect is generally not much of an issue, since every ingredient other than the peptides is food-grade, and the quantity in a dose is tiny (one dose is <1 mL, and most of that volume is vinegar and water). If you were eating this stuff in your food and coughed on it, you’d probably get a higher dose than what’s in the vaccine.
Peptide synthesis services generally provide various quality control checks on the product (some free, some upcharge). So at least you’ll know what you’re getting.
Antibody-dependent enhancement is one of the main things the paper discusses. It’s pretty rare to begin with, and the cases where it’s happened have some patterns to them which can be avoided; the peptides are chosen to avoid those pitfalls. Reading between the lines, it sounds to me like historical cases were largely a by-product of historical vaccine techniques (e.g. attaching pieces of one virus to the backbone of another in the case of Dengvaxia) which aren’t used here.
As I understand it, interfering with administration of a later vaccine while also being ineffective would involve basically the same pieces as antibody-dependent enhancement. The paper did not specifically discuss this, though.
From a risk perspective, the fact that this is intranasal rather than injected makes it feel safer to self-administer, I expect, but is that feeling really justified?
Tongue-in-cheek answer: I’m generally pretty comfortable snorting small amounts of things which go in food; this sometimes happens by accident when eating anyway. Injecting small amounts of things which go in food, not so much.
More seriously, all sorts of shit goes into our noses all the time. The blood depends more on being kept separate from the outside world.
[W]hat are the risks involved in creating substantial immune effects in my body using a thing I found on the Internet, which has received comparatively very little testing, and without enough knowledge to really verify any of the claims myself?
Regarding the final paragraph, “you need some level of expertise yourself before you can distinguish real experts from fake”: that has been the number one reason I didn’t beat johnswentworth to the punch and post first with my experience.
I have learned more about biochemistry in the last three months than in my entire prior life combined. It has taken me three months of research, asking questions, and conferring with experts to get sufficient confidence in my understanding to commit to the project.
I’m incredibly thankful to you (johnswentworth) for posting this article; it tracks almost perfectly with my understanding, and I have no significant model conflicts with any of your observations. It raises my confidence in both my understanding, and the project, substantially.
I’d be very interested in a post on what you learned! I relied mostly on general bio background from undergrad, it sounds like you probably went into more depth in areas specifically relevant to this.
Thanks, I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.
I should probably have clarified my current views / epistemic status in my comment, since I think it sounded more skeptical than I actually am. I would say it’s something like: “I expect this is quite possibly a good idea, and most probably at worst a neutral idea. I am interested in trying to elicit anything in the long tail of risks that could change that.”
(I guess I did also want to encourage other people to at least briefly consider risks before trying this themselves—although given the complexity and expense, perhaps I shouldn’t worry that anybody might rush to try it.)
How many times do you snort adjuvants with your food? I bet the concentration of adjuvants in your homebrew is much higher than what a person could accidentally inhale. This is on purpose of course, so that you are much more likely to get an immune response. But your comparison with things that are not designed to elicit an immune response seems somewhat optimistic.
I think a lot of these questions are answered in the radvac paper. I sent a copy of it to a biologist I know, and asked if he thought it was crazy to do this, and he read it and said “geez this looks safer than doing drugs”. I don’t have enough expertise to add anything beyond that.
Thanks, that’s helpful (and hilarious.) I am looking through the paper now, and it definitely at least purports to answer some of my questions/concerns. (I haven’t had a chance to follow the references to see the details.) I would love to hear more takes from people expert enough to weigh in.
Do you have any thoughts on the risks/hazards involved here? To me that’s a much more significant consideration than the price. Some thoughts / priors:
Snorting chemicals I got from the Internet / mixed up myself without really knowing what I was doing: Superficially, seems potentially pretty risky.
Snorting peptides (assuming that the stuff ordered online was what it claimed to be, was pure and not contaminated with anything hazardous, and that I didn’t accidentally create anything hazardous in the process): Definitely not as risky as snorting arbitrary unknown substances. Seems unlikely to be directly poisonous (although that’s without reading about the other contents of the vaccine.)
Snorting COVID-19 peptides, in particular: Should I be worried about things like antibody-dependent enhancement? Are there other possible hazards specific to experimental vaccine administration that I should worry about? I’m sure the paper talks about this stuff, but I’m not a biologist so I can’t promise I’d understand it if I read it.
Is there a possibility that this vaccine is both ineffective, and interferes in some way with the effectiveness of subsequent administration of a different vaccine?
From a risk perspective, the fact that this is intranasal rather than injected makes it feel safer to self-administer, I expect, but is that feeling really justified? Obviously for this vaccine to work, it has to be creating substantial immune effects, at which point I have to ask: what are the risks involved in creating substantial immune effects in my body using a thing I found on the Internet, which has received comparatively very little testing, and without enough knowledge to really verify any of the claims myself?
The main answer here is “see the paper”; there’s a lot of discussion about this stuff. I’ll summarize a few points, as I understand them, relevant to your particular thoughts.
The “snorting chemicals” aspect is generally not much of an issue, since every ingredient other than the peptides is food-grade, and the quantity in a dose is tiny (one dose is <1 mL, and most of that volume is vinegar and water). If you were eating this stuff in your food and coughed on it, you’d probably get a higher dose than what’s in the vaccine.
Peptide synthesis services generally provide various quality control checks on the product (some free, some upcharge). So at least you’ll know what you’re getting.
Antibody-dependent enhancement is one of the main things the paper discusses. It’s pretty rare to begin with, and the cases where it’s happened have some patterns to them which can be avoided; the peptides are chosen to avoid those pitfalls. Reading between the lines, it sounds to me like historical cases were largely a by-product of historical vaccine techniques (e.g. attaching pieces of one virus to the backbone of another in the case of Dengvaxia) which aren’t used here.
As I understand it, interfering with administration of a later vaccine while also being ineffective would involve basically the same pieces as antibody-dependent enhancement. The paper did not specifically discuss this, though.
Tongue-in-cheek answer: I’m generally pretty comfortable snorting small amounts of things which go in food; this sometimes happens by accident when eating anyway. Injecting small amounts of things which go in food, not so much.
More seriously, all sorts of shit goes into our noses all the time. The blood depends more on being kept separate from the outside world.
This is one of the great challenges of Rationality: you need some level of expertise yourself before you can distinguish real experts from fake. There is no substitute for learning at least some amount oneself, and thinking through the gears oneself.
Regarding the final paragraph, “you need some level of expertise yourself before you can distinguish real experts from fake”: that has been the number one reason I didn’t beat johnswentworth to the punch and post first with my experience.
I have learned more about biochemistry in the last three months than in my entire prior life combined. It has taken me three months of research, asking questions, and conferring with experts to get sufficient confidence in my understanding to commit to the project.
I’m incredibly thankful to you (johnswentworth) for posting this article; it tracks almost perfectly with my understanding, and I have no significant model conflicts with any of your observations. It raises my confidence in both my understanding, and the project, substantially.
I’d be very interested in a post on what you learned! I relied mostly on general bio background from undergrad, it sounds like you probably went into more depth in areas specifically relevant to this.
Thanks, I really appreciate you taking the time to respond.
I should probably have clarified my current views / epistemic status in my comment, since I think it sounded more skeptical than I actually am. I would say it’s something like: “I expect this is quite possibly a good idea, and most probably at worst a neutral idea. I am interested in trying to elicit anything in the long tail of risks that could change that.”
(I guess I did also want to encourage other people to at least briefly consider risks before trying this themselves—although given the complexity and expense, perhaps I shouldn’t worry that anybody might rush to try it.)
No worries, these are the right questions to ask and I’m glad someone brought them up.
How many times do you snort adjuvants with your food? I bet the concentration of adjuvants in your homebrew is much higher than what a person could accidentally inhale. This is on purpose of course, so that you are much more likely to get an immune response. But your comparison with things that are not designed to elicit an immune response seems somewhat optimistic.
I think a lot of these questions are answered in the radvac paper. I sent a copy of it to a biologist I know, and asked if he thought it was crazy to do this, and he read it and said “geez this looks safer than doing drugs”. I don’t have enough expertise to add anything beyond that.
Thanks, that’s helpful (and hilarious.) I am looking through the paper now, and it definitely at least purports to answer some of my questions/concerns. (I haven’t had a chance to follow the references to see the details.) I would love to hear more takes from people expert enough to weigh in.