Modified covid spike proteins are produced by host (i.e. a vaccinee's) cells. The spike proteins are anchored within the cells but "poke out" through the cellular membranes so they're able to elicit an immune system response.

The cells expressing the mod-spike are ultimately destroyed. If you review pop-sci / marketing materials produced by Pfizer and Moderna and government agencies and non-profits who promoted the shots, the fate of these cells will be glossed over, but that's what happens.

This is why it was important that the contents of the jabs stayed in the muscle tissue near the injection site and the process of translating all of the vax mRNA into mod-spike be rapid. If vax mRNA travelled around via the circulatory system and was taken up by cells in, say, the walls of blood vessels throughout the body or cells in the heart or pericardium or in other tissues, then some cells in those locales would be destroyed and, if enough cells in the wrong place at the wrong time were destroyed this way, bad things could happen. Observing vax mRNA persisting or existing weeks and weeks post-administration is not good for this (and additional) reasons.

> If vax mRNA travelled around via the circulatory system and was taken up by cells in, say, the walls of blood vessels throughout the body or cells in the heart or pericardium or in other tissues, then some cells in those locales would be destroyed…

This is something that you would consider to be common knowledge?

Also can you elaborate on why having prior knowledge on this topic disqualifies you from being knowledgeable on this topic?

Wouldn’t the papers you’ve read have been written by people in the field of immunology or bioscience? How are those people not disqualified due to prior knowledge?

edit: Also please elaborate on how I identify the “right” blogs.

Sorry this is frustrating for you. I do not regularly come to HN for biology knowledge from software devs that can’t seem to provide any sources or credentials. What GP is trying to convey comes pretty close to medical advice and “people that have studied this professionally are categorically untrustworthy” seems a bit like some uh, less than germane bullshit, to be frank.

1. The vaccines cause cells to take up the mRNA and express the spike on their surface. This is uncontroversial and covered in any detailed enough intro to how the vaccines work, see the diagram here for an example:

https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Understand...

2. This results in the cells being destroyed. This is exactly what you'd expect if you've sat through teen-level biology classes: T cells (CD8+) identify other cells that appear to be expressing antigens and destroy them. Bioscience people hate admitting this in plain English, so finding papers stating it clearly is a complete pain in the ass. They normally only talk about "stimulating a cellular response". But this page does at least partly spell it out:

https://www.pri-med.com/blog/2020/the-new-mrna-vaccine-expla...

> In contrast to the older vaccine models, the Moderna and Pfizer research shows that the new mRNA vaccines produce powerful helper and cytotoxic T cell responses

Cytotoxic means "kills cells".

3. If they got into the heart, they'd destroy heart cells. Here's a case study series paper that looks at heart damage caused by vaccines:

https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/23/13/6940/html?s=09

> Importantly, infectious causes have been excluded in all patients. The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein has been detected sparsely on cardiomyocytes of nine patients, and differential analysis of inflammatory markers such as CD4+ and CD8+ T cells suggests that the inflammatory response triggered by the vaccine may be of autoimmunological origin.

i.e. the heart sac becomes inflamed because the immune system attacks it, and the immune system attacks it because of the vaccine.

> edit: Also please elaborate on how I identify the “right” blogs.

They tend to cross-link to each other a lot. Start from the Alex Berenson archives, El Gato Malo, Igor Chudov, Daily Sceptic. None are perfect but they are well network and try to build arguments based on published papers and primary evidence. If you don't like them, branch out from there. Also look on HN with showdead turned on. Many inconvenient stories about the vaccines get flagkilled.

> “people that have studied this professionally are categorically untrustworthy” seems a bit like some uh, less than germane bullshit, to be frank.

Sure, and I guess Google employees are the world's experts on ads and privacy so if they say something about those topics you couldn't possibly disagree right? Also, oil companies are the world's expert in energy, so we should do whatever they say, and so on and so forth.

Hate to break it to you but yes, people who have studied these topics professionally are categorically untrustworthy. If they say or do anything that might reduce people's willingness to take vaccines they get fired and sometimes blacklisted from their entire profession, ending their careers overnight. Any attempt to speak out is systematically suppressed by the media who have all complicit in pressuring people to take the vaccines too. No surprise that the only people who can actually talk honestly are the ones who aren't already fully committed.

when you do an intramuscular or subcutaneous injection you don't end up in the blood stream typically

We've known that forever. There's been studies done with luciferase to see where the mRNA triggers protein production in small animals.

We know that a big portion of the activity is in the liver, distant from the IM injection site (a lot of the activity is at the site, too).

e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4624045/

"When mRNA-LNPs were injected intramuscularly and intratracheally, similar to intravenous and intraperitoneal deliveries, a large portion of the luciferase activity was detectable in the liver, demonstrating systemic spread of the nanoparticles."

Also this study didn't find significant uptake of mRNA in the heart (though it did find notable uptake in the lungs).

See tables 3 and 4.

Moderna does seem to have an effect in the direction you name; the Pfizer vaccine seems to have a lower risk than infection in all categories. Overall, the myocarditis risk is lower with vaccination than infection with both Moderna and Pfizer, but it may not be in some subpopulations with Moderna.

Finland, Denmark and Sweden recommend against getting vaccination for young men as they have almost no risk with Covid outside of extreme co-morbidities.

Denmark is probably the most stark -- after they had >80% uptake in their initial vaccination drive and then Omicron proved to be less dangerous, they no longer recommend boosters for under 50s unless you have risk factors.

Sweden still recommends 3 doses for everyone over the age of 18 (https://www.krisinformation.se/en/hazards-and-risks/disaster....) They no longer recommend that all children receive the vaccine but that's a much more neutral stance than "recommend against getting it".

And Finland still recommends the vaccine for everyone, almost regardless of age (https://thl.fi/en/web/infectious-diseases-and-vaccinations/w...)

You may be confusing their recommendations with their preference of the Pfizer over the Moderna vaccine in men?

There’s are a whole list of countries that have backed off recommending vaccines for the young and that alone is enough to disprove your attempt to dismiss a very, very important topic.

By doing so you potentially have moral responsibility to men who may be missing out on critical info that could save their lives. The data supports it and the fact that many very pro vaccine countries are now stepping back their recommendation is a massive positive indicator that it’s worth discussing.

I don’t have to prove beyond a doubt it’s unsafe, just that there’s gray area. You meanwhile called any gray area dumb, and therefore need to prove beyond a doubt that it has clear benefit to young men. It doesn’t.

And yes the banning of Moderna is a huge, massive piece data because we know it’s much worse re: Myocarditis. So we basically know for a fact it’s a bad trade off for young men. Pfizer would require your own research but again it’s not clear it’s even neutral. So why argue it’s dumb to even discus? This is the sort of weird argumentation I’ve seen throughout the pandemic where it’s like a religion that can’t ever admit faults lest it all come apart. You can admit there were mistakes and are flaws, it’s ok, it doesn’t ruin your belief system at all.

Finland and Sweden suggest 3 doses for everybody over 18; Finland recommends vaccine for everyone.

None recommend against vaccine in children.

This is very, very, very far from "recommend against getting vaccination for young men" which is simply wrong (uninformed or bad faith?) They all recommend young men get vaccinated.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/finland-limit-childrens...

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-decides-against-...

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

I was very careful to say they withdrew recommending it, which is true.

Now the interesting convo is why they did that, which you seem to be keen to avoid.

---

Not to mention its easy to bring in tons more data to show it's worth a discussion. Whether countries recommend for/against is weak, but still here a strong signal because these countries have been very pro-vaccine and naturally will avoid admitting things to protect themselves, so any admission is big.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccin...

---

The realest question here is why? Why try and cordon this scientific discussion away as off-limits when it's clearly an evolving and unsettled story. I'm so curious to figure out exactly what's going on and follow the research. Just feels strange to come in blasting saying you know the truth and this topic is settled when it clearly isn't. Why?

You know we can all see the chain of comments here, right?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886149

> Finland, Denmark and Sweden recommend against getting vaccination for young men

"Withdrew recommending" is them reverting to a neutral stance -- "recommended against" is very much not neutral - and it's still wrong in either case because 2/3 countries you listed still recommend for vaccinating all young men.

It's so tiringly frustrating to discuss any of this with antivaxxers. Your language is so imprecise and sloppy that it's impossible to have anything resembling a productive conversation. I provided links to the actual policies published by the actual countries here and your response is just spamming with vaguely related news articles and insinuations instead of a moment's reflection that maybe, just maybe, your confidence in your understanding of any of this is misplaced.

Try defending your point rather than name calling.

I will agree my "against" wording was a bit strong but I corrected it in the last reply anyway, so again this isn't a gotcha. But I'm very much closer to truth than saying they are still recommending it, you changed the denominator to over-18.

Withdrawing a recommendation is recommending against of course - if someone says they recommend to do something, they say they DON'T recommend to do it, and I told you "the government is no longer recommending youth take it based on efficacy and Myocarditis risks" who would you think that statement more supports in this thread? My arguments or yours? It's very clear.

It's also the strongest we could reasonably expect as governments are very conservative and self-interested.

Every article linked is relevant.

Meanwhile you are doing exactly what you want to do - distract from the fact that this is a real issue by trying to bury the conversation behind a bunch of sequiturs about pedantism, language, name calling, exasperation, etc.

From 2017 https://www.flagshippioneering.com/press/moderna-announces-p...

And also from 2017 Safety, Reactogenicity, and Immunogenicity of mRNA-1653 in Healthy Adults https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03392389

The research and testing for mRNA had been a decade in the making and was already present in 2019.