I think the HPV vaccine is used more than it was in the beginning based on the information I've seen just on the overall reduction rate in cancers they've seen in folks a little younger than me (I did get one of the 2 shots needed when it first came out. I had a really bad muscle reaction and did not get the second shot. Knowing now why those reactions happened I wish I had but they also say now just one shot gave some protection so I'm glad I at least got that).

I think the few people who got serious side effects were paraded around like with the whole covid misinformation but people were not dying in front of us 1000s by the day with HPV literally getting coughed in your face just by going to the store so there wasn't the urgency to stop the misinformation out there.

Plus there was the "not my child getting the shot! Thats a sex thing and they will never have sex!" I know that I had to have someone drive me in case there was a reaction and the only person available was my grandpa. I was at the top of the age range when it came out, I think like 19, and he was a little grumbly about it because it was "a sex thing" but he also knew in his head that a cancer prevention was a cancer prevention. He died from cancer just a couple years later btw so you know, fuck cancer.

But now you can get it so young and even older and boys and girls so I do wish pretty much everyone who could get it would. I'm so happy that I have some protection. I just wish the guys my age had that option too.

Also if anyone is curious the muscle reactions were because they shouldn't have been giving them where they were. It just wasn't the ideal place to put them, they were literally triggering the muscle spasms by the location.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Just to circle this back to the initial comment, HPV is a DNA virus, but yes, the vaccine is effective and greatly reduces the risk of awful cancers in both men and women. I plan to have both my children vaccinated when they are old enough.

There's been decades of work on an HIV vaccine, obviously. One of the most promising a bit over a decade ago was able to stimulate antibodies quite well just like the one in the story - maybe event the one u/redrightreturning got, who knows. Sadly, it turned out that individuals who had been vaccinated were more likely to get HIV. Why?, and the perpetual problem with HIV vaccines - HIV targets white blood cells. When you vaccinate someone, you're potentially instructing the immune system to find the virus, and at the same time the virus now has a backdoor access key to get into those white blood cells (the antibodies you made with the vaccine).

Making vaccines for most viruses is not overly complicated - we have many of the tools and approaches hammered out pretty well now, but there's still areas that can be improved (targeting CD4 vs. CD8 T-cell responses for one). mRNA vaccines were the next frontier for covid, but there are other, more tried approaches that work OK too - the ChAdOx approach is pretty common, and Sinovac is as simple as it gets. One virus, a DNA virus in fact, that has been especially problematic is African swine fever. No direct concern to you or me, but one of the most economically important viruses of agriculture out there. All sorts of new tech has been tried with that virus, with mRNA vaccines under development now...but I'm not incredibly hopeful.

Some viruses, though rarely, just don't respond to any of the vaccine approaches we've come up with.