In reply to Dan Arkle:
This is a pretty major Ebola outbreak and the new vaccine has surely slowed its spread significantly. It’s quite terrifying to think what would have happened without the vaccine.
This immune system reprogramming is meddling with forces we don’t fully understand.
There’s no doubting that when it works it’s phenomenal - some of the stuff using retroviruses to reprogram a person’s immune system to target their specific cancer is up there with the Ebola and HIV work in terms of sheer impressiveness that was beyond science fiction not that long ago.
But when it goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong. It’s a fast changing field and they’s more caution over the staging of clinics trials now. Whilst I think it’s awesome that this vaccine is available to those most at-risk, I’m glad that taking it isn’t in my immediate future.
Wintertree Jr has just been for a pair of immunisation jabs. The look of betrayal as I held them tight for the second needle to go in, and the aggressive immune response with side effects to one of the jabs - I can imagine some parents just can’t make themselves go with it out of their own lack of strength, and then jump on the anti-vax bandwagon to “rationalise” their weakness away. It’ll be interesting to see how much “needle free” injection addresses this, although the movement now has such a critical mass of absolute shite behind it I fear it’s unstoppable. Also how did it take until 2017 to get a real life hypospray? http://news.mit.edu/2017/startup-needle-free-drug-injector-gets-commerciali...
Edit: Okay - I muddled some memories; reading into it, the Ebola vaccine isn’t in the activity reprogramming immune system category, but I’m still damned grateful I don’t need to take it.
Post edited at 21:07