[refurb]

It's not a popularity content. Nobel prizes are typically not given until several years after the work is complete and enough time has passed to fully appreciate the significance of it.

I'd say it's a bit early for mRNA vaccines.

[Tomte]

That's the current practice, but siva7 is right in regards to timing and Nobel's will:

"to be distributed annually as prizes to those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." (https://www.nobelprize.org/alfred-nobel/full-text-of-alfred-...)

[refurb]

If you look back it’s usually a decade or more before a discovery gets a Nobel prize. Which makes sense, since it’s relevance isn’t usually immediately apparent.

[dustintrex]

Yes, but you'd be hard put to argue that there was an invention that got more benefit for humanity than mRNA vaccines in 2021.

[refurb]

Considering we’re about half way through an epidemic with new variants on the horizon I’d argue it’s a little early to start patting ourselves on the back?

[dustintrex]

It's not a silver bullet, but there are millions of people who are not dead now because they got vaccinated.

[ramraj07]

What exactly have this years Nobel research been significant for? Like in real terms?

[cinntaile]

Check out the image in their scientific motivation to see where this has played a role. https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2021/10/press-medicine202...

[ramraj07]

You can write lists like that for pretty much half the genes in the genome. If you ask a pharma company to rank order genes they would like to get exclusively as targets these would be ranked in 4 digits if not 3. There’s a reason no lab bothered to discover it for so long.

Sydney Brenner said in the 60s that they already discovered all there is to molecular biology and leave the details to the “Americans” (1). These are the details. This work would have been pedestrian back in the 60s, it’s downright boring at this point. When people ask why science sucks today this is a great example. Not that this research was performed, of course someone had to at some point. But that people have been led to believe this is worth of celebration at this level.

[1] https://www.hobertlab.org/how-the-worm-got-started/ and https://www.genetics.org/content/165/4/1633

[cinntaile]

I guess Sydney suffered from scientific hubris, it happens to the best of us ;)

What can I say. Next year there'll be a new price, maybe you'll be more impressed with next year's choice.

[ramraj07]

Sydney might be proud and vain but his statement of relevance here was not due to that. Scientists are supposed to constantly try and indemnify what’s hard and important and pursue those fields. He said that statement because back then he believed the important fields to explore were developmental biology and neuroscience. More recently he wrote an editorial suggesting how a field like connectomics would be the equivalent new, exciting, important field would be.

The celebration of mediocrity with Nobels for no real reason except probably politics (I sat near to the Nobel cabals in lectures these candidate prize winners will come give talks at) isn’t in the interest of science or progress is all.

[Cthulhu_]

On the one side, you are correct and it's only last year / this year that mRNA vaccines have seen widespread adoption.

On the other, mRNA research goes back to the 80's, and mRNA vaccine research goes back twenty years; these facts are often overlooked by the "it was developed too fast" crowds.

That said,

> It's not a popularity content.

And yet, they gave Obama the Nobel Peace Prize the year he was elected, without any merit or achievements to back it up. That decision was politically motivated. Same with giving it to Al Gore for his climate activism. They even tried to nominate Hitler in 1939, albeit in jest.

[dcgudeman]

The Nobel Peace prize has always had political motivations that have reduced it's credibility. Last year it was awarded to the "World Food Programme" and in 2001 it was awarded to the “United Nations”. It’s best view the peace prize separately.

[dahfizz]

The Nobel Peace Prize has been nothing but a meme for a while. The science prizes are still respected, and if they want them to stay that way then they should continue to award them based on science and not politics.

[chucky]

The Nobel peace prize is handed out by a different committee compared to the other prizes, so how its handled should generally not be seen as an indicator for the other Nobel prizes.

[bumby]

Does that go for the "Nobel" prize in economics as well?

[chucky]

I don't know and I don't care about that faux prize.

The Peace prize is handled by a special Norwegian committee in accordance with Nobel's wishes, so it has its own everything (including its own ceremony), while the other prizes are all under the same umbrella in some form (although I believe the scientific subcommittees doing the acual awarding are independent).

[adolph]

They could probably expand brand awareness by creating a NobelX prize for locally popular Nobel-esque work.

[jeltz]

Yes, it is not even a Nobel price.

[bacro]

>On the other, mRNA research goes back to the 80's, and mRNA vaccine research goes back twenty years; these facts are often overlooked by the "it was developed too fast" crowds.

I am on that camp, that it was developed too fast and I do not think people should be mistreated because they think that. After all, there has been some adverse effects for some of the people who took it (like the auto-immune disease for the Janssen vaccine or thrombosis that caused some deaths in women who were taking the pill at the same time). I am not against vaccines in general, I am just worried that, as there is clearly an economic interest in rushing things up, that some bugs may still be on these vaccines that will need to be fixed. We have no idea of the long-term effects these vaccines have, unless someone has invented a time-machine and gone to the future. When concrete, well-made studies have been made that these vaccines are safe long-term and effective, I do not see why should someone not take it. Until then, I will wait at the comfort of my home.

After all, even if I took the vaccine, I would also continue to spread the virus just as someone who did not take it.

Another point is: How deadly is this vaccine to someone who is healthy? Is that value so big that we should rush to take not fully tested vaccines? I would get that criticism if there was a rate of 20, 30% of guaranteed death to someone who contracted the virus. At these current values? I think I will take my chances.

[silvester23]

What I fail to understand is how you seem to think that you can can assess the risks associated with contracting the virus better than the risks associated with getting the vaccine.

At this point, so many more people have received the vaccine than have contracted the virus that I think it's fairly safe to say that we know much more about how people react to the vaccine than the virus (which also keeps mutating unlike the vaccine).

It's true that we don't know the long-term effects of the vaccine but

1) my understanding is that medically speaking, a few weeks after the shot every trace of the actual vaccine is gone from the body and all that remains is that your immune system has learned how to fight the virus and

2) we certainly do not know the long-term effects of the virus either

So unless you are in a position where you can completely seal yourself off and be sure you will not get the virus, it's a choice between getting vaccinated and getting the virus. Considering what I wrote above, to me that is an obvious choice.

[bacro]

> What I fail to understand is how you seem to think that you can can assess the risks associated with contracting the virus better than the risks associated with getting the vaccine.

As I said, I cannot. Actually, nobody can. What I do know is:

- A vast majority of who gets the virus does not die or get any effects. - A lot of people who die of Covid-19 has a comorbidity factor of 4 (Which means suffers from 4 comorbidities). - I am 40 years old and no other comorbidities than a very light asthma. I eat well and try to do some exercise (but not as much as I would like, for sure). - There are no studies of long-term effects of getting the vaccines or getting the virus. - Anyone who took the vaccine can be infected and spread the virus just as someone who is not vaccinated. - Things that are made under political/financial pressure rarely get right the first time.

So, with this data, for me it is logical for people to wait if they can. If they have comorbidities or are old, then it is another story.

[bumby]

>A vast majority of who gets the virus does not die or get any effects.

To the OP's point, the same can be said about the vaccine. Their point being, because of the transmissibility of the virus, it's fairly safe to assume that most people leading normal lives will be exposed to the virus at some point so the choice is whether or not to be exposed while vaccinated or not. There seems to be less uncertainty around the vaccine than the virus, so the risks are better known.

[bacro]

Both of these scenarios are possible (among others, obviously):

- I take the vaccine and either die or have a side-effect for life because of some unknown related to my body. - I contract the virus and have no symptoms at all.

Nobody knows which one will happen to each individual. That woman that took the vaccine and died one day later? We will never know if she was better off without taking the vaccine and having the virus instead. Our body is too complex to predict that right now.

I find it particularly amusing that people that question the vaccines safety are being treated as idiots that know nothing about science. Like, never the scientists were wrong before or the big pharma/government never had their own interests in their mind. I guess it is easier to attack us than to have a rational conversation.

[rmu09]

Janssen vaccine is vector based, not mRNA like Pfizer Comirnaty or Moderna.

Although vaccinated people can be infected and even spread the virus, the disease is usually mild, amount of infectious virus and the time they are infectious is much smaller. And that is no speciality of covid immunizations, other vaccines like measles or influenza also don't prevent infection, but aim to prevent the disease.

The "not fully tested" meme is nonsense, many hundred million people have been vaccinated in the meantime, the safety profile is known.

Regarding long time effects beside immunity of vaccines, this interview https://lexfridman.com/vincent-racaniello/ goes into some detail. TLDL: there is nothing to expect/fear.

[bacro]

> Although vaccinated people can be infected and even spread the virus, the disease is usually mild, amount of infectious virus and the time they are infectious is much smaller.

I confess I haven't watched that video yet, but I believe there are not any studies that claim that "amount of infectious virus and the time they are infectious is much smaller". But I will watch it later and see if something new came up. I claim this because not long ago, our prime minister was infected after being fully vaccinated and had to be at home for 10 days before coming back to work.

Like I said, I am healthy and can work from home, so I have the luxury of waiting a little while to make my decision. After all, I am only affecting myself with this decision. A lot of people die from smoking/drinking alcohol as well, should we prevent them from getting it?

[beerandt]

Part of the Israeli study showed that the viral count/load of breakthrough infections was not significantly lowered compared to non-breakthrough infections.

[rmu09]

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01316-7

I know of one other study (can't find it at the moment though) that specifically looked not for CT value but if they are able to infect cells. The outcome was something like vaccinated people do replicate virus, but the spikes of those viruses are (mostly) deactivated by antibodies and therefore not as infectious as virus obtained from unvaccinated people. In rt-PCR tests you can't really distinguish infectious from deactivated virus.

[howinteresting]

Every death is a tragedy.

The correct null hypothesis is that in the counterfactual world where those people had gotten the virus rather than the vaccine, they would have ended up dead anyway.

[xattt]

You may be conflating the mRNA vaccine with viral vector ones.

[bacro]

Not at all. Here is the news of a woman who died after getting the Pfizer's vaccine: (In Portuguese) https://politica.estadao.com.br/blogs/estadao-verifica/gover...

The news say that it was unrelated to the vaccine and it was a heart attack. However, I do not believe in coincidences and am very skeptical that the vaccine has not had some effect on this. Note that she died 1 day after getting the vaccine.

[rmu09]

Such "anecdotal evidence" doesn't say much per se.

In austria, a women died of a heart attack while waiting in line to be injected. Just imagine what would have happend if the heart attack would have happened 30 minutes later, it would have been very hard to convince people the heart attack was not related to the vaccination.

[bacro]

Sure it does not, but it does not say that it was not from the vaccine as well.

I am also very distrustful of our government influence in investigations after covid vaccines. The government wants the vaccine to work so that it can go back to normality and not have to worry about the impending financial crisis that would come faster if there was no vaccine.

How do I know that other people that died after getting the vaccine were not from a side effect of it? How can I be sure that these numbers are 100% correct? How can I be sure that all those covid deaths are really from covid and not something else unrelated to it? I am not saying that the vaccines are responsible for 20, 30% of the deaths or something like that, but there is the incentive from the government to not provide the real picture of these numbers (if they are not ridiculous numbers of course).

As in tech, be very distrustful of everything version 1.0. It always has some bugs to iron out ;)

[GuB-42]

6 billions vaccine doses have been injected, about 1% of the world population dies every year, doing simple math, it means about 160000 people should die less than one day after getting the vaccine from unrelated causes. Heart attacks are a common cause of death, if not the most common, at around 1/4. It means 40000 of these deaths should be heart attacks.

That's enough for me to believe in coincidences.

[jeltz]

If you did not confuse them why did you mention the Jansen vaccine which is vector based and uses DNA rather than mRNA?

[bacro]

That was only to make a point that it was a vaccine that was developed very fast and had some (nasty) side-effects and that we should be careful not to rush things out. But rest assured that the second example I gave about the woman who died, died after taking the Pfizer vaccine.