Ninja Nerd
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2020–2021
43:41 · 6.8M views · Dec 7, 2020
A Ninja Nerd whiteboard lecture on the Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech and AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines. It covers how each works, the preclinical and phase I-III trial process, and Operation Warp Speed.
HN recommended it in late 2020 as a detailed, science-based explanation of how the different vaccines work and how they were tested.
6 comments from Hacker News
this video by Ninja Nerd Lectures This is the best science based informative video I have seen on how these different Covid vaccines actually work.
It's not just proteins. The cells infected with the mRNA present those proteins on the outside of the cell to be recognized by other cells which start a chain process. Skip to around 12:30 in here: this video He goes through the entire biochem process. Even the cells infected with the mRNA will need to be removed by the immune system using cytotoxic T-cells, so they need to get the chain process going. The reason we have "memory" for viruses is because a ton of random stuff in our immune systems evolved to multiply exponentially when they come in contact with viruses or proteins that indicate certain infections. It's a lot of stuff and you can't just inject that memory in; you have to stimulate the immune system to create them at a very large scale. It's not just antibodies. There are memory T-cells, parts of the complement system that get activated; a whole host of things. My issue is that our immune systems are incredibly complex, and there are a lot of components to this "memory" that are not entirely understood. Every other vaccine is an inactivaed virus (via heat treatment) or attenuated (virus run through other hosts to make it less dangerous to humans). The first vaccine was just a close relative: cow/horse pox instead of smallpox. The former are not dangerous in humans, but seem to produce the same immune memory. The mRNA vaccines are at attempt to say, "Let's strip out all that other stuff and find just the thing we need." But our immune systems are incredibly complicat
Reposting this: these two videos answers a bunch of questions that are in the comments. Here's a 5 minute video explaining mRNA vaccines in laymen's terms (Cliff-Notes style) [LINK] Here's a longer, more technical, 43 minute video explaining them and the Moderna/Pfizer/BioNTech/Astrazeneca clinical trial processes in more detail. The biochem part starts at 12:30. this video
Here's a 5 minute video explaining mRNA vaccines in laymen's terms (Cliff-Notes style) [LINK] Here's a longer 43 minute video explaining them and the Moderna/Pfizer/BioNTech/Astrazeneca clinical trial processes in more detail. The biochem part starts at 12:30. this video
Biology is messy and you can not say for certain that there will never be a group of individuals with an autoimmune issue. That is why vaccines go through several clinical trial phases. I recommend listening to this lecture about the process: this video