Agreed that the risk:reward ratio here would be worth it. This sounds super promising. That being said, how is it known that having had the mutated strain provides immunity to the dangerous strain?
A (possible) solution to Covid-19
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Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#12I'm glad people are realizing that all this social distancing is merely a pause button on the virus. Once we press play on society, exponential growth will happen again and we will have effectively rolled back the clock until we reach herd immunity through things like the OP's suggestion.
At least this next time we'll hopefully have more PPE.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#13I see two problems with this approach, both political / social: - No one will want to be the one "deploying" the attenuated strain in a human and then be responsible for some unforeseen death (even if it's just 1 in a billion). Utilitarianism is not widespread nor socially accepted. Even less so in politicians, who are quite risk averse. - There is no lobby supporting it. There's no $$ to be made and the "vaccine" is…
No one will want to be the one "deploying" the attenuated strain in a human and then be responsible for some unforeseen death (even if it's just 1 in a billion). Utilitarianism is not widespread nor socially accepted. Even less so in politicians, who are quite risk averse.
I would give them more credit, especially in a situation where the status quo includes so many deaths. I was impressed with how readily most states licensed self-driving vehicles, knowing that there would certainly be deaths. Their rationality here likely came from seeing tens of thousands of people dying on the roads each year.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#14Interesting, I wonder if this could explain to some extend different death ratios that are currently blamed on hospital capacity, age etc. - in other words, what if Italy has spread of more danerous mutation kind and Japan has spread of less dangerous one.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#15You say
> The reason why is immunity to respiratory viruses (like corona) doesn’t last long – 6 months to 2 years.
I haven’t read anything like this before. It seems like you’re extrapolating from the flu vaccine, which doesn’t last because the flu mutates too quickly. Coronavirus mutate much slower and the thought is that we’ll likely only need one vaccine. Have we actually found any less deadly strains? My understanding is that there have been mutations, but all are small and as far as we can tell superficial. You would likely need to create such a mutation and then you’re back in vaccine trial territories, except dozens of labs that are experts on this have a head start.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#16Agreed that the risk:reward ratio here would be worth it. This sounds super promising. That being said, how is it known that having had the mutated strain provides immunity to the dangerous strain?
It probably won't be known at first, but we're talking a timescale of months to work out things like that. Things could be back to normal by the end of the year if we start now-ish. That is not blind hope either, it's just simple math.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#17This is a repost since last time you asked how to reach Bill Gates.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#18> it would be much better to just post a sample of the virus to everyone for example
If COVID-19 is human malware, then this is a human software update.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#19This seems risky but worth consideration. Can you provide peer / concept review from virologists? A few items of feedback: - You could use a title that includes a distinct word to identify your proposed solution: "Using accentuated COVID-19 strains as a (possible) solution". This helps people to communicate and refer to the idea concisely. - The top three paragraphs may be known to your target audience; consider allo…
I am a virologist - well I have published many papers in this area. I have a PhD in molecular microbiology and have been a tenured professor (I now work in the biotech sector). This is not intended to be a scientific paper, but a layman’s summary of the idea so non-technical people can understand the idea.
It is not risky to go looking for a naturally attenuated virus. This is the first step that needs to happen.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#20This is a repost since last time you asked how to reach Bill Gates.
I invited danieltillett to repost https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22798626. My reason is to build up a body of community reactions to the idea, that can serve as a basis for deciding whether to promote it further. I don't know Bill Gates, but I do know some people inside YC who are hard at work on this problem, and maybe they know someone who knows someone, etc.
If it's just a repetition of the previous thread, I'm sorry. Repetition isn't good and that wasn't my intention.