This sounds great. I'm genuinely interested, how is the potential vaccine going to be presented to volunteers in Phase I? And do you also deliver a placebo vaccine for blinding?
It seems like believing you are vaccinated would increase risky behaviour. This is bad in itself. It is also bad if the vaccine is only partially effective, since the risk effect might balance the vaccine effect.
With a placebo, knowing you only have a 50/50 chance of getting the actual trial vaccine might also help mitigate the risk effect.
Anyway, just wondering how all this works. Finding an effective vaccine would be fantastic; keep up the good work!
Thank you for your support! Yes it will be presented as a double blind, placebo controlled study. Regarding the risky behavior point, this is a well known challenge with all vaccine studies. And yes telling people that they don't know whether or not they have the actual vaccine helps in mitigating the risk effect.
> It seems like believing you are vaccinated would increase risky behaviour. This is bad in itself. It is also bad if the vaccine is only partially effective, since the risk effect might balance the vaccine effect.
But this will also be true of the vaccine as employed in reality, and thus a useful piece of information to capture.
