No. Those are disposable, not sterilized. There’s no chain of transmission.

They could become contaminated during production.

If prions stick to surgical instruments "like glue" how do they come off when used for surgery in the second human being infected? (And can we use that mechanism to get them off to sterilize them?)

Could you wash the instruments in proteas?

Seems BACE2 might be promising.

Those are all one time use though, right?

Apparently lots of diabetics reuse lancets (thread on another HN story a day or two ago). But I can't imagine anyone sharing used lancets (or needles... except for desperate addicts).

Would be interesting to see the rate of Alzheimer's among addicts and former addicts. But I imagine the sets "IV drug users who share needles" and "people who live to be old enough to be at risk for dementia" don't really intersect in any meaningful way.

Can confirm, am diabetic T1. Lancets don’t get changed much on my meter, but if anybody is curious I have a whole separate glucose meter/lancer device and brand new lancets to use.

Sure do. But yeah, no sharing. Never.

Is this thought experiment how antivaxx happens?

Careful thought is the _opposite_ of how antivax happens.

Only if you take the result of the thought experiment as absolute truth and skip the part where you’re supposed to confirm it with a real experiment.

If you have a couple spare hours give Vaxxed a watch. It'll help clarify how such a movement happens.