Derek Lowe, a medicinal chemist, writes the Science 'In the Pipeline' blog on drug discovery, vaccines, and hazardous chemistry.
Commenters point to it as excellent background reading with citations, on topics like antibody-dependent enhancement and the aducanumab approval.
Fundamentally I agree with you and have been doing my best to remove 20th century laboratory science experiments from my diet. I mostly don't use Teflon at all and when I do I clean it using hot water jets instead of scrubbing it.
That being said, I'm not a chemist, I was just mostly awake during undergrad chem, and I know there are fluorine compounds that are enthusiastic oxidizers[1], but some like Teflon coatings are more or less chemically inert. I assume that's because the oxidization has been taken to the point it's going to go. Is there a fluorine compound that will happily oxidize Teflon? The point of my rambling is can it be conclusively shown in controlled laboratory experiments that these compounds are completely nonreactive with the human digestive tract?
[1] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/things_i_wont_work_with_dioxygen_difluoride
> No one can deny that it would be very hard, almost impossible at this stage to admit the existence of a problem should one be identified.
On the contrary, publications would salivate at the prospect of dropping a bombshell like this. People love reading and watching salacious, outrageous coverups and how they unravel.
You would need a multi-national conspiracy with various state and private actors coordinating and suppressing information about negative effects of the vaccine for it to be at a scale "equally dangerous" to the extent of the deaths and injuries caused by actual infection.
And it's not like we have no data about negative side effects. We have data on side effects: getting them is literally a handful in a million chance and they're manageable when they occur[1].
1. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/07/13/more-on-vaccine-side-effects
"It looks like there is no case at all to be made for some of these therapies, and for remdesivir, it looks like the argument now is “Does it help a bit or just not at all?” The only thing that I’ve seen that really seems to be making a big difference now is dexamethasone, and we may soon (I hope) be adding the monoclonal antibodies to that list. The SOLIDARITY enrollment is still moving along at 2000 patients/month, and will be looking at these and other newer ideas as it continues. And that means abandoning the older ideas, because – as we’re finding out – they’re not much help. It’s time to move on."
Just so everyone knows, this is the same guy that writes the 'Things I Won't Work With" blog. It's all about insane chemical compounds and is very much one of the best blogs ever written.
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/?s=things+I+won%27t+work+with
Personally, I think the Nobel in Chemistry should have gone to Harry Noller (UCSC), who established that the core function of the ribosome is implemented by RNA, not proteins. After 20+ years of making his case and generally not being believed (even though he had excellent data), a competitor did a crystal structure proving him right and won the prize.
https://reports.news.ucsc.edu/breakthrough/
https://www.mercurynews.com/2009/10/08/nobel-committee-skips-over-ucsc-chemist/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2821081/
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/books/2018/11/19/gene-machine/
Harry was my advisor and helped me start my career in computational biology back in the mid 90s. I asked him recently about the Nobel and he said it didn't bother him since one the Nobel was awarded, nobody ever doubted he was wrong about the ribosome again.
(I am not an epidemiologist)
(Edit: Please ignore below.
Checked the latest literature and cross-reactive antibodies have not demonstrated correlation with either preventing infection or hospitalization. [0] [1]
[0] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/10/does-prior-exposure-to-coronaviruses-protect-you [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.11.06.20227215v1 (pending publishing in Cell, but linked ArXiv for availability) )
Because pre-existing coronavirus antibodies have been proven cross-reactive to SARS-CoV-2.
And different populations have different endemic coronaviruses circulating in them.
This isn't some great mystery. This is a normal Tuesday for how human immune systems are supposed to work, as a species.
All your points should be addressed in this (IMHO excellent) blog post:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/myths-of-vaccine-manufacturing
In short - mRNA vaccines are cutting edge & require the most high tech machines and processes in some of their stages, which create the bottleneck. As for partnering/licensing - that's preatty much a thing & has been for a while, still there is quite some time to get a new production line working in a safe and predictable manner.
BTW, there is also a companion article about the bottlenecks for adenovirus based vaccines (Astra Zeneca and others), which have a different set of bottlenecks:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/08/how-you-make-an-adenovirus-vaccine