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A (possible) solution to Covid-19
341–350 of 585 posts
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#342Finding an attenuated strain that spreads as easily but is less deadly does sound like our best hope. Such a strain would "crowd out" the deadly strain, effectively blocking it from causing harm. If life was a Star Trek episode, Picard would be saying "Make it so" right about now.
Could a strain like this be created with genetic modification? If you just need to delete a bit of it that doesn't sound too difficult. But I know nothing about this subject, so that's probably why...
We don't know exactly what each bit does, so we don't know what to delete.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the attenuated live viral vaccines spread. This is one of the reasons they are so effective since they keep herd immunity up. For example, every kid that gets the live polio vaccine spreads it around to their peers and parents.
That’s a bug, not a feature: the OPV went to bivalent a few years ago to reduce the odds of vaccine-related cases.
Well your bug is a feature.
The polio vaccine actually went to the inactive form to reduce the risk of polio from one of the vaccine strains reverting to wild type and infecting others. It is still less effective at achieving herd immunity than the live version because of the lack of viral spread.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#344Finding an attenuated strain that spreads as easily but is less deadly does sound like our best hope. Such a strain would "crowd out" the deadly strain, effectively blocking it from causing harm. If life was a Star Trek episode, Picard would be saying "Make it so" right about now.
"Captain's log, stardate 73740.9. The Enterprise has taken on board a distinguished Federation virologist, dr. Daniel Tillett, to help him with his search for a less harmful strain of the virus that's currently ravaging several planets in Federation space. The doctor is confident that such an attenuated strain could be used to swiftly end the ongoing pandemic." I would watch that episode. Hell, I'd watch any new epis…
And then it turns out similar to "Ethics", where the virologist's work is questionably founded and potentially quite dangerous, we get a Picard speech about how sacrificing some to save others is wrong, Data and Crusher technobabble up a treatment that doubles as a vaccine, the photogenic kid gets saved at the bottom of the fourth act, Admiral Nechayev and Picard fence a bit, credits.
Pretty wild to count Enterprise as "real Trek", but not Discovery. And hey, TNG was seminal and I loved it growing up too, but let's be real, it's showing its age quite badly these days.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the attenuated live viral vaccines spread. This is one of the reasons they are so effective since they keep herd immunity up. For example, every kid that gets the live polio vaccine spreads it around to their peers and parents.
I call BS on this. Viral shedding is a myth.
I am sure all the kids that got polio from someone else vaccine are glad to know this.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#346This entire article is a waste of time from the beginning. The “two strain” theory was debunked the very next day as bad science. http://virological.org/t/response-to-on-the-origin-and-conti... I can’t believe that a month later, this bad science is still being circulated, by a purported PhD and former professor.
I'm confused, the paper that's being debunked in your link:
https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nsr...
Is not the same paper he's pointing to as having found a milder strain: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.20033944v...
What am I missing? Are they both based on a flawed understanding?
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how would they know someone is asymptomatic? afaik they are mostly testing people who have symptoms There was literally a paper published yesterday (or the day before) on a blanket screen done on a population in germany to get some data on the undercount of asymptomatic cases. It was front page news on all the mainstream news sites... I gotta be honest. This whole discussion has an "amateur hour" vibe. I have a har…
I think what you are missing here is what is the novel part of my idea and what is the conventional. It is not novel to think of an attenuated vaccine, what is novel is to look for an attenuated strain in a pandemic using genome sequencing. I hope someone else has thought of this, but so far I haven’t seen any evidence of this. Waiting for vaccine is not a good option. This is a situation with only hard choices.
Why else are hundreds of different labs around the world genome sequencing?
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#348This will happen naturally. No need for intervention. The longer it goes the better.
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#349This reminds me of a story 20 years ago when Pittsburgh Steelers (American football) announcer Myron Cope ran into head coach Bill Cowher...
Myron said, "I see that Lee Flowers is playing today after a high ankle sprain 2 weeks ago. But I thought that high ankle sprains took 4 weeks to heal. What gives?"
Coach Cowher replied, "4 weeks is true, Myron, for the first high ankle sprain. But if you recall, Lee had a high ankle sprain on the same foot last year. And since subsequent high ankle sprains only take 2 weeks to heal, he's ready to play."
Myron paused and asked, "Then why don't you just take the whole team out in February and sprain all their ankles?"
(We laughed 20 years ago. Nobody's laughing today.)
Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19
#350This 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 didn't realize this; I actually flagged this article.