[hammock]

In Mexico, maybe a year?

(Please don’t downvote me because you don’t like the tone of that. Europe banned artificial food colors and Japan is using self-replicating RNA vaccines. There is a wide spectrum of risk tolerance and healthcare does not revolve around the USA)

[gus_massa]

I'm not sure about Mexico, but here in Argentina I think we wait until the drug gets a the FDA or EMA approval and ask for a copy, well we probably ask for all the paperwork but I don't remember cases of weird fast local approvals. It's possible to buy Metamizole/Dipyrone here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamizole . Anyway, we have special cases, like a vaccine for a local illness https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_Jun%C3%ADn that I guess is not approved anywhere else.

Every few years, there is an scandal for illegal medicine, but I think most of the case it's about using industrial silicone in human cosmetic surgery or something as stupid like that, not cutting edge new drugs. Perhaps it's possible to get tourist-illegal-medicine, but I strongly advice against that.

---

> Japan is using self-replicating RNA vaccines

Do you have a source for that? I can try to take a look. I suspect it's very bad journalism reporting.

Self-replicating RNA are just https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viroid but they only survive in plants, not animals. If they make their own coating, they are retrovirus. Writing a retrovirus from scratch is too difficult, some vaccines use edited virus, where they add the interesting part but also remove another part to the virus can't reproduce outside the lab. And there are vaccines with "live" attenuated virus, like the oral polio vaccine, but they are more difficult to make.

[hammock]

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/japans-ministry-of-...

Your characterization is inaccurate, of both the reporting and the technology

[gus_massa]

Thanks. Very interesting. From the research paper:

> The ARCT-154 study vaccine consists of sa-mRNA encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles. The RNA comprises a replicon based upon Venezuela equine encephalitis virus (VEEV) in which RNA coding for the VEEV structural proteins has been replaced with RNA coding for the full-length spike (S) glycoprotein of the SARS-CoV-2 D614G variant.

IIUC the RNA makes copies of itself inside the cell, but it does not get a capsule of proteins to travel and invade other cells. Is this correct?

(A few more details in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MRNA_vaccine#Amplification but not enough for my curiosity level.)