It’s time for my semi-regular Patron Q&A! It’s like a colonoscopy, only more frequent.
I’ll answer any questions anyone might have, but if you don’t ask any, I’ll just talk about the transition from “On Vacation!” to “Jesus, I have so much grading to do!” It’ll be fun!
As an exercise in basic biology (yeah you’re not a virologist or immunologist, but still), maybe if you lack questions I found this nifty laity oriented article that taught me something new. It’s geared to the important debunking of claims that “experimental” mRNA vaccines alter our DNA. I knew about lacking reverse transcriptase and integrase but the nuclear access signal thing Offit mentioned was a new one for me. So many hurdles. The J&J may access our nuclei but can’t integrate.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210719/covid-19-vaccines-not-gene-therapy
My undergrad schooling in biology was over 20 years ago. If anything the pandemic has me doing some remedial reading.
A more developmental topic could be discussing how immunocytes alter their own DNA for a more diverse response to invaders. Hypermutation, if it gets that far (???) could technically be (narrowly construed) pathogens and vaccines indirectly participating in the alternation of somatic (immunocytic) but not germline DNA. Weismann‘s barrier. This immunology primer may be asking too much, but the debunking of vaccines altering DNA as above would be cool.
Here’s the link for Penn Jillette reconsidering stuff including his libertarian stance because COVID:
https://youtu.be/kXtD3zTxjO4
Could be dated material so don’t know if he backed away or doubled down since.