Jim Woodgett, former Director of Research at Mount Sinai Hospital (2005-2021)
Answered May 5, 2021 · Author has 217 answers and 441.6K answer views
The SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein encodes a 1273 amino acid protein. Multiple by 3 to get the number of nucleotides and add some untranslated regions for directing translational start and aiding in stability it rounds to approximately 5,000 nucleotides. 1 nucleotide of RNA has a mass of (averaged) of 320 Daltons. So an RNA comprised of 5,000 nucleotides has a mass of 1600 kiloDaltons.
There are 30 micrograms of RNA in a Pfizer/BioNTech single dose (in 0.3 ml). That means there are about 11.3 x 10 to the power of 12 molecules of RNA per shot.
11,300,000,000,000 molecules of RNA (approximately). The Moderna shot typically uses more RNA.

Erwin Claassen, Wetenschappelijk Huurling at Waar Niet
Answered May 5, 2021
a shitload… dose is 100µg of mRNA (not all vaccines is mRNA), that is around 505.440.000.000.000.000.000.000 copies… more or less.

Can you get COVID-19 from the vaccine?
You cannot.
You don’t have to listen to me, you don’t have to listen to Dr. Fauci or the CDC, or anyone in the government.
All I ask is that you don’t listen to “the internet.” Ask your doctor, the one who’s been taking care of you for years. Ask them any question you want to about it, even if you think it sounds stupid. My wife has been fielding questions for months now, she’s happy to answer.
(Me: I would not trust my doctor further than I can throw a grand piano and he knows it)
Getting COVID from a vaccine is a 100% impossibility because the vaccines do not use whole, live viruses. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in fact, don’t use Covid Virus at all.
Most of the vaccines being administered right now are a relatively new technology called mRNA that we started studying in the early 1990s.
One of the most prolific categories of misinformation about the COVID vaccines relates to mRNA, how it works, and how thoroughly tested the technology is.
“”First, it’s important to know that this is a relatively new technology, not brand new. We didn’t just suddenly decide to try mRNA last year when COVID-19 started running wild. The idea has been around for almost 30 years and has been used in human trials for a number of vaccines, such as Zika, and previous coronavirus threats, like the 2003 SARS outbreak. In fact, much of the reason we were able to get a vaccine so quickly was because of the nearly 20-year head start SARS gave us””
It is true that the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines are the first mass-produced mRNA vaccines authorized for use with the general public.
The other big category of disinformation is about how mRNA vaccines work, specifically, the idea that they “change your DNA.”
Let’s be clear. That is completely, categorically, 100% false. The mRNA never even comes near the nucleus of the cell where the DNA is.
The way it works is “mRNA” or “messenger” RNA is injected into the arm with exactly that. A message. The message is an instruction.
Here is what the instruction tells our cells that it encounters:
“I want you to make a harmless piece of what is called a “spike protein.” I want you to make it JUST like this. The picture is the spike protein found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19.”

Our immune system sees that spike protein and knows it doesn’t belong, so it builds antibodies to attack it, just like if you had actually been infected. In doing so, it learns how to destroy that protein. And most importantly, it REMEMBERS. So the next time it sees that same protein, this time on an actual virus, it knows exactly what to do.
The reason you get 2 doses is that researchers learned during clinical trials that your body does ok with one lesson, but 2 lessons REALLY sets it in stone.
It learns the lesson so well that 9 out of 10 times, it will be able to take out the virus before it infects your body, and in the VAST majority of cases where the virus does manage to infect an immunized individual, it will fail to cause serious illness, even in the more at-risk portions of the population.
The final category of disinformation is about how thoroughly tested the vaccines are. And this one worries a lot of reasonable people and fairly.
What it is important to know is that these vaccines have been tested just as thoroughly as any other that hit the market. How then did they get it done so quickly?
It was not by skipping or shortening steps.
What Operation Warp speed allowed the pharmaceutical companies to do by removing bureaucratic roadblocks (me:Geneva Convention) was instead of being forced to do Step A first, then Step B, then Step C, it allowed for a lot of multi-tasking. In other words, we still needed to complete steps A through I, but we didn’t have to wait for step A to be done while we worked on step D or G which had no need for information from Step A. We were able to test a number of factors simultaneously, and in doing so accomplish 3 years of work in less than one.
It wasn’t that we didn’t run all four laps of the relay race. It’s that all four runners were allowed to start at the same time.
This allowed for complete and thorough testing to be done in record time allowing for human trials WAY faster than we had ever been able to get to human trials before. And in the case of Pfizer and Moderna, those human trials proved the safety and efficacy of their Vaccines sufficiently to gain emergency use authorizations from the FDA.
That’s it. Years from now, we will look back at this as a massive achievement. And years from now the success of this effort will probably lead to problems, as people use the success of this effort to try to cut corners with the development of other drugs or therapies.
But the bottom line is that the development of this vaccine is a massive success story. The vaccines are safe, they are effective, and the sooner we get to herd immunity by vaccinating the vast majority of the population, the sooner we can get back to normal.
The one thing I’ll tell you, from my experience having had both doses of Pfizer.
I have one major side effect to report.
A MASSIVE weight off my shoulders.

Kevin Richards, Masters Microbiology and Immunology, Cornell University (1987)
Answered December 30, 2020 · Author has 290 answers and 395.2K answer views
Have mRNA-based vaccines been used prior to COVID-19?
Originally Answered: Has mRNA been used as a vaccine before Covid?
No – although mRNA vaccine technology has been in the development stage for about a decade, this is the first time a vaccine has been created using the technology.
And its dangerous to say the least. Animal testing was skipped over in favor of human trials – something NEVER done for conventional vaccines. This is a dangerous precedent to set for future vaccine safety trails.
There is a reason the FDA takes 5–7 years (sometimes decades) to approve vaccines for human distribution – safety.
Quora (Quora does not like me, won’t let me sign in again)

Me” We didn’t just suddenly decide to try mRNA last year when COVID-19 started running wild. The idea has been around for almost 30 years.
How reassuring, so why has it taken 30 years to produce a test vaccine and why is it still in the “test” phase and why would the virologists play with these mRNA paticles on human’s secret trials with ZIKA, SARS 2003 and other illnesses and why was the Geneva Convention not observed and what were the secret trials mRNA results?
When I copied this article from Quora, I was unable to sign on again, as I seem to have been made, persona non grata and also the above post seems to have been removed – too late, however.
Richard