Gene Therapy?
Daily Ramble
I heard something this weekend that I found unsettling but worth exploring: the mRNA vaccines are not vaccines but gene therapy. Now, before I get called an anti-vaxxer, which I’m not, you’re going to have to dance a little in the grey area with me while we get to the bottom of this. It’s not clear to me what “it” is, but I hope something more definitive floats to the surface by tapping my mind on the keys.
First, let’s start with the definition of a vaccine. The CDC says a vaccine is:
A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.
Next, let’s take a look at how the mRNA vaccine works, also from the CDC’s website:
mRNA vaccines are a new type of vaccine to protect against infectious diseases. To trigger an immune response, many vaccines put a weakened or inactivated germ into our bodies. Not mRNA vaccines. Instead, they teach our cells how to make a protein—or even just a piece of a protein—that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. That immune response, which produces antibodies, is what protects us from getting infected if the real virus enters our bodies.
Finally, let’s get a working definition of gene therapy from Wikipedia:
Gene therapy (also called human gene transfer) is a medical field which focuses on the utilization of the therapeutic delivery of nucleic acids into a patient's cells as a drug to treat disease.
Alright, so what do we have here? It’s neither a vaccine nor gene therapy in my mind. A vaccine stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity. That’s not what the mRNA treatment does, though. It teaches your body’s cells to create a protein, the spike on the COVID19 virus, to be specific. The protein/COVID19 spike is supposed to stimulate your body to create immunity to the actual COVID19 virus. The difference? A vaccine works directly. This works indirectly. Does it fit the definition of gene therapy? Nope. Gene therapy requires the cell’s nucleus to be breached where your sacred genetic code is housed. The mRNA molecule doesn’t do this.
What’s my takeaway? There’s a perverse incentive at play with the mRNA treatment. Pharmaceutical companies have no legal liability for vaccine reactions. Lawmakers shifted liability from vaccine manufacturers to the federal government in the 1980s. Since then, vaccine injuries are dealt with by the Health Resources and Services Administration. By successfully having the mRNA treatment labeled as a “vaccine,” they reduce their liability to 0, which increases their profitability. Perverse incentives are yellow lights, not red lights. I’ll leave it to you if injecting yourself with a synthetic molecule meant to create a synthetic protein is worthwhile.
Favorite Things on the Interwebs Today
This chart stopped me in my tracks. Let’s hope the flu sticks to retirement.
Bitcoin Price Prediction
Weekend: $55k - $65k
Today: $56.5k - $60k
Tomorrow: $56.5k - $65k
On Friday, I mentioned that we’d likely see expansion in the days ahead. It’s still the “days ahead.” Over the weekend, the bulls finally exhausted, and we saw price pullback to $56.5k. Funding had a chance to reset, and the tone has gotten a bit more bearish. Not a full reset like we saw at the previous low at $50k, but I anticipate that it’s enough to see us push up and past this $60k obstacle the bulls have had a hard time clearing. I’m anticipating the bulls will take through tomorrow to get the courage to try $60k again, but we’ll break it once they do. There’s only so long resistance can hold the price down. In other words, upward expansion is still the likely outcome here.
Bitcoin Q & A
Q: How does the Bitcoin protocol ensure that there are no more than 21M bitcoin?
A: The Bitcoin protocol regulates the flow of new bitcoin by increasing and decreasing miners' difficulty to create new blocks.
First, recall that miners secure the network by hashing transactions into the next block. The first miner to successfully create a new block broadcasts it to the network receives the block reward, currently 6.25 bitcoin, and transaction fees.
Second, recall that hashing is a process of taking data, in this case, all the transactions, and putting it through an algorithm that provides a unique hash. If even one character changes, like an “a” to an “A,” the entire hash is completely different. The miners must hash the block so that a specific prefix is matched. The only way is by constantly making small tweaks to the block itself until the miner stumbles on a hash with the matching prefix.
Every two weeks, the Bitcoin protocol automatically adjusts the difficulty in finding a new block by estimating the amount of time it’s taken to mine a block during the previous two weeks. If the time is less than 10 minutes, it decreases the difficulty. If it’s more than 10 minutes, it increases the difficulty. By regulating the flow of new blocks to 10 minutes each, the creation of new bitcoin becomes predictable.
Thanks for reading,
Kent
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