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A (possible) solution to Covid-19

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Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#131

Post by yoz-y »

foobarbecue wrote: post #122
tilolebo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a pause button, it's a playback speed button that slows down the contamination. Remember #FlattenTheCurve. What is true is that it would take waaaay longer to reach herd immunity this way. Another thing that people usually get wrong is the her immunity concept: from what I understand, it doesn't mean we ALL need to be infected. We just need to be enough, so the virus can't spread anymore.

Herd immunity doesn't happen until you have a vaccine.

Or until something like 95% of population has been infected and we know for sure that those who already had the disease can not spread it anymore.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#132

Post by foobarbecue »

Guthur wrote: post #99
coconut_crab wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I am not a professional, so what I write below might be wrong) Having more time to develop a vaccine or effective treatments is essential, it doesn't have to be herd immunity. Plus in countries where covid19 rate is low enough, social distancing can be helpful for finding and isolating clusters to suppress the epidemic.

Of course, there are two ways out of this, herd or vaccine. The above is a variation of herd that may result in less deaths. The real problem is that waiting until a vaccine is just not even remotely realistic for so many reasons that it's not even funny. We could end up causing more indirect deaths with social isolation than we could possibly imagine, worst case being a huge collapse in the economy results in a larg…

Herd immunity generally depends on having a vaccine. https://www.vaccines.gov/basics/work/protection

Are there any examples of humanity developing herd immunity without a vaccine?

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#134

Post by beoh »

danieltillett wrote: post #119
beoh wrote: post #113

This might be a naive question, but could this strain be created by some kind of gene editing?

Yes it could, but we wouldn’t know what edits to make. What this idea is using is nature to tell us what mutations make the virus less dangerous.

I see, thanks!

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#135

Post by danieltillett »

postingawayonhn wrote: post #110
danieltillett wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a question that really is unimportant at this point. What matters is what we can do today.

It's extremely important because it's a question a lot of people are going to be asking. You'll need a good answer as to why this approach should not be subject to similar regulations as vaccines otherwise this will go nowhere.

Is the FDA regulating the spread of the dangerous version?

More seriously there is nothing for the FDA to regulate here. It is a natural virus spreading in a natural way.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#136

Post by sysbin »

logicchains wrote: post #111
sysbin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not disagreeing with that opinion. I just haven't observed young adults taking the lockdown seriously. I personally work from home (as one of the privileged few being a programmer) and when I do go outside I take social distancing serious. My health in general isn't great although I'm not old (early 30s) and which is why I don't leave my apartment much anymore. I live in a college area and young adults are still…

>I live in a college area and young adults are still going over to each others apartments and without practicing social distancing when going out to buy groceries. That's my point: the young adults don't want to comply with the social distancing, so if someone said "hey, if you let me infect you with this virus that has a 1/50,000 chance of killing you, you can no longer get/transmit the more dangerous strain so you…

Why wouldn't they just say "no" and continue not social distancing?

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#137

Post by danieltillett »

sysbin wrote: post #69
logicchains wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I speculate young people wouldn't volunteer unless they have a health issue placing them in the high risk group. I suspect lots of young people would happily volunteer if it meant their life could return to normal. Heck, I'd bet even for the current strain, with a ~0.1% risk of death for young people, quite a few people would volunteer to get it if it meant they could get out of lockdown.

I'm not disagreeing with that opinion. I just haven't observed young adults taking the lockdown seriously. I personally work from home (as one of the privileged few being a programmer) and when I do go outside I take social distancing serious. My health in general isn't great although I'm not old (early 30s) and which is why I don't leave my apartment much anymore. I live in a college area and young adults are still…

The whole approach requires young people to not take the lockdown seriously. They will be the people who spread around the less dangerous strain of the virus.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#138

Post by danieltillett »

postingawayonhn wrote: post #108
danieltillett wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is really no selection pressure on the current dangerous strain right now. If it was killing 50-60% of people infected then yes the selection pressure would be there, but at a death rate of 1.5%-2% there basically is very little selection pressure on the timescales we are interested in. It doesn’t really matter to us today if this virus eventually becomes less dangerous in the next 500 years. We need to speed t…

Is there a significant difference between being dead and being isolated?

From the short term perspective of the virus no, but long term...

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#139

Post by ignoramous »

This is genuis if it could be put to work.

Many possible vaccines for covid-19 are discussed in this paper [0] which is surprisingly accessible. There's a table [1] that depicts categorization of vaccine candidates and it does mention attenuated virus as a possible solution, the one in development by Codagenix and The Serum Institute of India [2] expected in the second-quarter of 2022.

2022 seems to be an eternity away, and the problems, as the paper points out, with attenuated vaccines are:

1. Requirement of a much wider phase 3 trial than other vaccine types.

2. Very time consuming to create such viral strains in the lab.

There are overwhelming advantages working in its favour, though:

1. Human vaccines using the same platform exist for other diseases.

2. Existing infrastructure can be used to ramp up trials, approvals, manufacturing, and administration.

The proposed solution by Dr. Daniel Tillett here makes sense because it turns those disadvantages on its head-- a substantial number of people might already have been infected with proven mild inflection and the strain(s) can be isolated at a much faster clip!

[0] https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(20)30120-5

[1] https://www.cell.com/action/showFullTableHTML?isHtml=true&ta...

[2] https://seruminstitute.com/news.php

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#140

Post by eirini1 »

robocat wrote: post #34
danieltillett wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There is also everyone in poor countries that is beyond the reach of expensive vaccines.

A country without other options might be more interested in the idea? I imagine that many first world countries would be too worried about the potential liabilities.

good luck, we could have completely eliminated HIV by now but corporate profits are more important than that so the vast majority of the population who has the virus doesn't get the medication they need to not transmit it.
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