Bill Gates' preferred vaccine

The Washington Post has a sitrep on the Corona vaccines. It explains the four types in the three-phase pipeline before approval.

The inactive virus is the best-known, it being a direct descendant of the smallpox inoculations of the eighteenth century. For whatever reason this field has been ceded to China. There's also "subunit" - that is, segments of viral protein. These vaccines are all phase-one except for, again, a Chinese effort.

Viral-vectored looks fun: they take a harmless virus, give it select outward-facing features of the virus we care about, and send that Brontosaurus into our immune-system. Phase Threes are in China YET AGAIN but also in Oxford.

Where Bill steps in is in his role in CureVac. CureVac by name're not actually in the WaPo article. But their field - nucleic-acid research - is represented: this is the famed Moderna third-phase, also Pfizer. Nucleic acids are, of course, DNA and RNA. Bill is involved in other vaccination projects as well, most notably for polio in India, until the Indian government decided it was time to kick out the training-wheels and go it alone. (And no, Bill's Foundation was not kicked out - the cow people love the man.)

The reason for the distrust (well, one reason, beyond classic Right paranoia) is that we, er, haven't any such vaccine yet. By that I mean: we have no *NA vaccines against any disease. CureVac were on a rabies RNA-vaccine before 2020 started: Phase One, at that. Which, if it ever did work, was going to veterinarians and not to your PCP.

So the RNA vaccine on humans isn't just untested technology, it is untested biology. Until Moderna and Pfizer this very summer, that is.

I suggest this vaccine be nonmandatory as yet. Fortunately others exist. If the Chinese (mostly) choose to let us in on their full process...

On a side note. If you object to the available vaccines to disease X, and if you don't want lockdowns: your activism needs to be placed in masking, social-distancing, and moving activities out of doors. Also, in frequent (=cheap) tests. Otherwise you are literally a vector of the disease, yourself; like a mosquito for malaria. If you consider this dehumanising rhetoric, then put some thought into being pro-human.