beetle is the jman we all need.
@j8i3h289dn3x7 you’re a lawbro, no? just curious where u get your confidence in expertise
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It’s a dead virus. You are not ever getting the flu as a result of getting the vaccine.
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I thought viruses weren’t even technically organisms or lifeforms… dunno what the technical language is.
They’re like inert, latent threats. A protein with genetic instructions, that only animates once in a host
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For someone who is likely to have a reaction to the vaccine and has no kids, isn’t an old, doesn’t travel much, etc? In the 15 years since I’ve stopped getting flu vaccines I’ve never gotten the flu. If I had kids or flew a bunch I probably would tough it out and get the shot. I’m not saying it’s a government conspiracy to dilute our bodily fluids or that it’s not effective or anything like that. But I get a pretty unpleasant reaction when I get it and it seems like I’m not all that high risk to catch the flu.
I stopped getting the shot the last couple of years as well. Maybe dumb, but it never seemed to prevent me from getting the flu, and many years I didn’t get the shot I also didn’t get the flu.
that’s right. i like to think of them as somali pirates. “pirate oil tankers” don’t really exist in the wild, but if some pirates happen to get into an existing oil tanker they can take over the machinery and use it for their own nefarious purposes, like building more somali pirate boats instead of refining oil or whatever an oil tanker normally does. sometimes the oil tanker bursts open and thousands of somali pirate boats scatter out in all directions, and sometimes somali pirate boats are constructed and slowly released into the sea without destroying the tanker. the metaphor is breaking down at this point but i still enjoy it
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I remember in The Hot Zone iirc, how they characterize ebola… bricks and bricks, dense in virus, like bricks of cocaine or marijuana, with all that compacted potency.
So in 10-14 days we find out if 3% of the world population dies or if this is basically a bad flu season?
This is a great post. The flu is basically a clump of RNA (similar to DNA) wrapped in a shell of proteins and covered in things called antigens. It can’t reproduce on its own. It can only reproduce if it hijacks some human cells. So there is some debate about whether it’s really a living thing or just a thing like a computer virus (is a computer virus a living thing?).
@beetlejuice can check me if I’m wrong but basically the nasty RNA sutff gets centrifuged out and you get injected with mostly the antigens. Maybe there are some weird allergy issues. idk if viruses are alive or not, but the vaccine is definitely not alive any way you slice it. It is a protein with no genetic instructions.
And like, I get some people run bad and wind up getting the shot and then also getting the flu.Some people don’t get the shot and don’t get the flu. Don’t be a rigtard, Listen to the people who know their shit and made +EV decisions. And wash your hands.
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I don’t think an oil tanker has a manufacturing lab inside that can manufacture Somali pirates, but that just speaks to how amazing human cells are.
you wouldn’t think so, right? but these pirates have billions of years of experience
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I feel this calls for a “Keep calm and play Walrus” badge.
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Never seen this argued for the flu and I thought that herd immunity is only a significant factor when nearly everyone gets the vaccine. I think about half of the US population doesn’t get the flu vaccine, so is this currently really a consideration? I’ve also always thought that many years there isn’t enough vaccine to go around for everyone who wants it and since I really don’t want it I don’t get it.
officially, by scientists and shit, viruses are only considered alive during the infection phase. most viruses have dna, sometimes it’s double-stranded, but can be single-stranded. some viruses carry their genetic material on rna, which can be single or double stranded too. single-stranded genomes are able to mutate more rapidly because a virus’ dna gets checked and proofread the same way the integrity of our own dna is maintained, and it always helps to keep an extra copy around. rna is an intermediary form of genetic information between dna and proteins.
they absolutely do have specific instructions. to build the protein coat of the daughter viruses is something shared by all viral genomes. from there, different viruses have different strategies to get around the cellular response to invasion (there are loads, this has been a multibillion-year battle between the eukaryotes (us) and the viruses), and their little tricks that make them successful are all coded into their genomes. a lot of it involves hijacking normal cellular machinery and directing it to build more viruses with copies of its genome.
regarding vaccines, they have different styles. like i know the hpv vaccine they copy dna directly from the virus, ONLY the protein coat, not any of the bad stuff, into a bacterium and grow big vats of bacteria that all overproduce these viral coat proteins, and you get a big expensive jar of viral coat proteins that you can sell to a drug company. your immune system can recognize shapes of proteins on a molecular level, and they have a big book, like a bible, of all the known shapes that belong to their god (you!). and if these ghost priests that haunt your body recognize any heresy, they spread the word far and wide, posting wanted posters like in the old west (mixing metaphors but go with it), and the US marshals roll in and add the wanted posters to their bibles and mercilessly destroy anything that reeks of heresy against you, their god.
the flu shot is a mix of the most common/likely mutations of that virus that year. you’re immune against those (their non-you protein shapes have been added to the bibles of the invisible US marshals living inside you) but flu is a rapidly-mutating virus and yeah you can get unlucky and catch a rare one. your odds of avoiding flu are absolutely increased and there’s no downside besides maybe a slight pain in your arm for a day. every gambler should get a flu shot.
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Viruses are fascinating. There are a class of them called retroviruses that when they get into a cell, they use an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to transcribe their RNA into DNA, which is the reverse of the way it usually works, also they write that shit directly into your cell’s genome, so the cell then starts making copies of the retrovirus. Since the retrovirus is copied into new cells during cell division, this obviously makes them really hard to get rid of once they’re in there. It’s basically an arbitrary code execution exploit in biological form. HIV is a retrovirus.
Also, retroviruses can eventually become integrated into the host genome, and can end up being so thoroughly integrated that they are co-opted into playing a role in the host’s biology. Something like 5% of the human genome was originally retroviruses.
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these last 2 posts are what I’m talking about.
comprehending about? not so much. but wow yes
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If you feel a little shitty and get a mild fever after getting a vaccine, that’s your body mounting an immune response to the virus.
Also what some people don’t realize is that getting the actual flu caused by the influenza virus is horrible. A lot of people say it’s like a “bad cold” but it’s more like “the worst fucking cold of your life multiplied by 100.” Chills, nausea, body aches, probably a week out of work.
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^^ oh, hey, people should listen to this shizz.
Yo, fuck prokaryotes, I never trust those assholes. No cell nucleus or any of that shit.
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Speaking on behalf of the immunocompromised, please get your flu shot 
I am visiting my sister in Vegas this week…I think I’ll just drive up.
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