The reason we want a vaccine is because there's a huge logistics difference between a twice yearly injection and the real magic of something more like an MMR shot where one dose is usually effective for life.
I’m more familiar with malaria, where the preventative medicines are currently more effective than the vaccines.
We also have education and stigma. While within the LGBT community it is far more common to be open about status and taking prep and doxy (far from perfect though), it still feels like outside of that the conversations are not happening as much as they should.
Throw in doctors that are not being proactive about the conversation.
Right now it seems like having prep and doxy is largely considered only if you are engaged in "risky" behavior (not saying that in a judgmental way to be clear), instead of just being sexually active and protecting yourself. Money and investment alone won't fix that, that is a societal shift around how we talk about sex.
That is also before we get into the cost issues in many other countries just for those that do need it.
Most people want to believe they are in a monogamous relationship and thus not having risky sex - even though they are the one cheating. Either PReP needs to be more common, are people need to stop their risky sex activities (that they are not even admitting to).
Vaccines are the "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"
The power of a vaccine is you can give it to adults and kids before they are sexually active and protect them, potentially, for the rest of their lives.
I'd also be curious to know if the combination of ART + the vaccine might cure someone of HIV. Which is also a pretty big deal.
Also, even if it were a solved problem, the methodologies developed here can probably help with other viruses too in the future. This has already happened with the antivirals originally developed for HIV.
Access is a valid point. Perhaps the money being used to fund a superfluous vaccine should be used to fund access to PrEP in the Third World.
It's a positive step, but still a fair way off for humans.
That being said, I don't understand enough to parse this very buzzword heavy release. Is this fundamentally different than the every 6 month vaccine we have now and is a more traditional vaccine or is it just continuing on that trend?
It's an incredible system, and a product of probably a billion years of evolution since the first multicellular organisms had to protect themselves from infection.
short_sells_poo•48m ago