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This is: Another RadVac Testing Update , published by johnswentworth on the LessWrong.
Previously: Making Vaccine, Commercial Antibody Test Results, Mini-Update
I've now run 9 ELISA tests. The main result is noise: negative controls are all over the map, sometimes very blue (i.e. positive), sometimes not blue at all. I did see more positive results in the experimental group than I'd expect from noise alone, but I haven't gotten the noise to a point where results are consistently reproducible.
Meanwhile, I also ran one very simple test: I snorted a batch of the peptides, without the chitosan or anything else - just peptides in deionized water. Previously, on doses 3-6 of the vaccine, I had consistently been congested for a couple days after (and not congested the rest of the week), which strongly indicates an immune response. However, that response could have been to the chitosan or other contents of the vaccine, rather than the peptides. This test put that possibility to rest: after snorting just the peptides, I was very obviously congested for a couple days, in basically the same way as after the vaccine doses.
So thanks to that simple test, I personally am now pretty highly confident that I have an immune response to these peptides. Unfortunately it's not as legible as an ELISA test, so you should not necessarily be quite as convinced by this.
Now, this still leaves the question of whether an immune response to these peptides translates into an immune response to COVID. It could be that e.g. the conformation of the peptides' corresponding sequence within full COVID proteins is different enough that it doesn't carry over. Personally, though, I consider this a much less likely failure mode, for two reasons. First, the white paper indicates that the peptides were chosen based on antibodies developed by people who actually had COVID. Second, whether antibodies against these peptides bind the real proteins is something which I would not expect to vary much from person to person, so if it's worked for a few people it should work for everyone - and the whitepaper does indicate that multiple groups have seen positive results testing for binding against the full proteins.
None of this puts my confidence up close to 99%, but I'm now considerably more confident that the vaccine worked (~90%). Also, that confidence is distributed over fewer possible worlds - e.g. based on the info in the latest version of the RadVac whitepaper, I now very much doubt that the vaccine will induce a response in the blood (unless it's injected). I also now have very little weight on the possibility that it works for some people sometimes but didn't work for me specifically, so additional dakka is not needed (at least for me).
The next section will be a bit more detail on the ELISA tests, for people who are curious about exactly how that sausage was made.
ELISA Tests
This section is an abbreviated chronology of what-I-saw and my reasoning about it; it's intended to show how I came to the conclusions I did. I expect most people will not find it very interesting, but one of the benefits of blog posts is that I can show all the questionable decisions and opportunities for confirmation bias to sneak in, so that's what I'm doing.
First, some background on how these tests work in theory. We start with a "high binding plate" - basically some plastic treated so that proteins/peptides stick to it.
That’s the plate; each of the holes is called a “well”, and is basically a mini-test-tube with a high-binding surface.
We add a solution of our peptides, and some of them stick to the surface. Next, we dump that solution out, leaving behind only the peptides which bound to the surface. We add some "binding solution" - in this case nonfat dry milk with a little detergent in it. The proteins in the binding solution fill what...
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