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Why would a live vaccine be better?
I feel like the parent wasn't trying to argue that injecting people with live vaccines (er, live virus?) would be better? Rather the idea seemed to be to stop making more vaccines for COVID - kind of like how we deal with colds now.
Can anyone with more knowledge on this topic than me (I’m no expert) assuage my fears: by giving human populations such artificial resistances (non-live vaccines) we run the risk of selecting for viruses that are even harder for even our own immune systems to detect and destroy. Current Covid strains don’t seem all that bad, basically everyone I know has been infected now. Might we run the risk of making things worse…
Reducing the spread of existing variants reduces the number of replications the virus can make, which in turn reduces the occurrence of mutations.
I think the only reasonable response to the parent query is to address the core issue ... are there non-overlapping capabilities between "artificial" and "natural" antibodies apart from the speed and health-risk of their development/inoculation. In other words, is "artificial" immunity a better form of immunity in a way that "natural" immunity can never match? If so, seems like a pretty obvious case of "lock in".
Without being an expert, I imagine it isn't a trivial question to answer, as the evolutionary capabilities of a pathogen are a key factor, and well, we're still wrestling with predicting protein folding.
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Reducing the spread of existing variants reduces the number of replications the virus can make, which in turn reduces the occurrence of mutations.
That doesn't answer the question though, almost a non-sequiter.
An example of this happening is the Spanish flu, which was a mutation of the common flu that was widespread and uncontrolled with vaccines at the time.
The researchers have applied for patents on both the antibodies and the mouse model used to produce them. They hope to see their work developed commercially.
... followed by
This work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (INV-021989), the National institutes of Health (NIAID Consortia for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development UM1-AI144371, P01 AI158571, Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award GM130386, Harvard Virology Program training grant T32 AI07245), Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogen Readiness (MassCPR) SARS-CoV-2 Variants Award, Emergent Ventures fast grant, FDA (MCMi grant #OCET 2021-1565 and Perinatal Health Center of Excellence project grant #GCBER005), the Danish Technical University and SANA, and IONIS.
[sarcasm] Let me guess, $50,000 per dose MRNA vaccine that makes you immune to COVID, thanks for the grants suckers. [/sarcasm]
This is something that really annoys me (obviously) and I think it would make a lot of sense if "any patents arising from research done with monies given by will confer on a lifetime perpetual non-exclusive right to use and re-license said patent on what ever terms they deem acceptable."
It won't happen of course, but it should in my opinion.
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Reducing the spread of existing variants reduces the number of replications the virus can make, which in turn reduces the occurrence of mutations.
I've often wondered if other viruses (below) could possibly mutate into a more dangerous form. Perhaps there is a reason why they cannot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_virus_species
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But it is always going to continue to spread won’t it? A vaccine may slow it down which is good but my fear is that long term non-live vaccines like this could just make things worse when used with such a volatile virus.
Why would a live vaccine be better?
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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would a live vaccine be better?
Just in my non-expert head - a live vaccine is using the virus as it already exists to confer immunity - not trying to code against a ton of hypothetical variants which could select for more radical variants
It still triggers the immune system, but mutations in any of the major receptors or the like will cause it to be less effective too.