If someone needed a reminder that the American health secretary and avid anti-vaccine lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Do not have a background in science or medicine, then look no further than the video he posted on social media on Tuesday evening.
In the clip of two and a half minutes, Kennedy announced that he is canceling nearly $ 500 million for the development of mrna-based vaccines against diseases that pandemic threats. The financing will be reclaimed from 22 now destroyed contracts that have been granted through the federal agency charged with the development of medical countermeasures for the threats of public health. The agency is the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (Barda).
Kennedy is generally against vaccines, but he is particularly hostile to mrna -based vaccines. Since the remarkably successful debut of MRNA COVID-19Gaccins during the COVID-19-Pandemie Die with an unprecedented speed have been developed and in mass-produced-Is Kennedy waves apart and they spread wrong information about them.
In the video on Tuesday, Kennedy continued that trend, who wrongly said that: “As the pandemia showed us, mrna -vaccines do not perform well against viruses that infect the upper respiratory tract.” In reality, COVID-19 vaccines have saved more than 3 million lives in the US in just the first two years of the Pandemie and at that time they also prevented more than 18 million hospital admissions in the US. Almost all COVID-19 vaccines used in the US are based on mrna.
Kennedy's video, however, only ran more from the rails from there. He continued this nonsensical explanation:
Here is the problem: mrna codes only for a small part of viral proteins, usually a single antigen. One mutation and the vaccine will not be effective. This dynamic drives a phenomenon that antigene shift is called, which means that the vaccine paradoxically encourages new mutations and can even extend pandemies, because the virus constantly mutates to escape from the protective effects of the vaccine.
Control
To unpack this nonsense, let's start with how MRNA-based vaccines work. These vaccines provide a fragment of genetic code – in the form of Messenger RNA (MRNA) – to cells. Our cells then translate that MRNA code into a protein that can essentially use the immune system for goal practice, which can produce antibodies and cells-based responses against it. Then, if the immune system ever encounters that excerpt on an actual penetrating virus or other germ, it will recognize it and set up a protective reaction. Such fragments of germs or other harmful things that an immune response can cause are generally called antigens.
