In 2020, President Donald Trump presided over Operation Warp Speed, with a goal to quickly develop vaccines for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Three primary ones were given Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA: Johnson & Johnson’s adenovirus product, Moderna’s mRNA product and Pfizer/BioTech’s mRNA product.
These three were announced to the country (and the world) as “vaccines” to be used against COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 (the virus).
The latter two of these represented the first widespread use of mRNA technology in humans, a technology which is a biological agent. When I say “biological agent” I mean exactly that: a “agent that delivers a package biologically”. What’s the package? The encoding instructions to cause cells to produce the spike protein, which then triggers the immune system to create antibodies against those spike proteins. By doing this, the body is then “primed” for when/if it encounters SARS-CoV-2 (the virus) to either stave off or mitigate COVID-19 (the disease).
So saying it is a “biological agent” is not demeaning, but rather more precise than saying it’s a “vaccine”.
The definition of “vaccine” for a very long time used to be pretty precise as well. Here’s CDC’s own definition back in 2016:
Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.
Vaccines produce immunity. Full stop.
What is it now? As of Jan 2022:
Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.
So what?
You might say that’s fine… why not broaden the terminology like the CDC did?
Because I believe language and terminology matters. And precision matters!
If we as society “water down” the term “vaccine” then eventually all sorts of things could fall under that umbrella. Technically, taking Vitamin D stimulates your body to have a stronger immune system. Is Vitamin D now to be considered a vaccine?
Why aren’t they “vaccines” then?
Are these three products, then “vaccines” by definition?
By the newest, loosey-goosey definition, yes. They are preparations and they stimulate the body’s immune system against SARS-CoV-2 to protect against COVID-19.
By the original, and long-in-use definition, NO.
We have known for a long while that these “vaccines” do NOT prevent you from getting COVID-19, nor from spreading it.
What they do is reduce the severity of COVID-19. That is a good thing!
But it is NOT, by long-held definition, what a “vaccine” does!
So what are they then?
In my estimation, the two best definitions for these products are:
biological agents
viral treatments, of a sort, as in: “they treat the disease to reduce it’s severity”
Add to that the fact that they are still under EUA (I’ll post about Comirnaty sometime soon), and I add the accurate and more-precise adjective “experimental”.
Thus, they are, in my estimation: “experimental biological agents”, or if I’m feeling magnanamous, “experimental viral treatments.”
To that end, I try to always refer to these products as “vaccines” (with quotes to intentionally signal that I believe they are not vaccines) or as an experimental biological agent (EBA).
Addendum
It does occur to me that “biological agent” is typically defined in a bio-warfare sense, and thus defined to be specifically and intentionally harmful.
I recognize that and am open to a more “neutral” term for what these products are: a delivery mechanism of biological information to stimulate spike protein creation. Maybe “experimental biological stimulant”?
Suggest alternates, if you will.