Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Nomentatus 1245 days ago
tangent: I've been saying for some time: "What about a live vaccine?" Meaning an killed-virus version of COVID-19, not an adenovirus with additions. A killed vaccine would present all the proteins and give much better immunity.

But now the answer occurs to me: that's what Omicron and Krakus are doing, too. By now we've all been infected and reinfected, giving us all the value a killed-virus vaccine would have.

You get the RNA vaccine, then mild Omicron that doesn't kill, then mild Krakus that doesn't kill; and then you're as well protected as by getting the killed-virus vaccine, which just takes too long to create.

So maybe the real question posed by this study is, does a subsequent infection by Omicron reverse the toleration induced over time by the RNA?

1 comments

Inactivated COVID-19 vaccines (that is, vaccines using virus copies that have been killed - live vaccines would be ones where the virus has been weakened) have been a thing for some time. IIRC China used a lot of them.

My understanding is that they're not quite as good as mRNA in terms of efficacy (though I haven't looked this up in some time.)