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A (possible) solution to Covid-19

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Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#141

Post by danieltillett »

Lordarminius wrote: post #93
danieltillett wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can do better than 0.1% death rate. In principle there is no reason we can’t find a strain that is no more dangerous than the coronaviruses that cause the common cold. One thing is certain and that is unless we go out and look we won’t find anything.

@danieltillett I could quickly put together a team focused on southern Nigeria and Ghana to find through word of mouth, medical records, contact tracing lists and social media, people who have experienced covid-19 symptoms and are likely to have had the disease. My team would also collect samples from people in the worst affected areas who are asymptomatic. In this way, we could collect data and enough samples to iso…

It is probably best to contact me offline. My email details are on my website.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#142

Post by ajross »

jbermudes wrote: post #12

I'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.

This isn't really correct, and the proof is that most of east asia is relaxing restrictions right now without experiencing another exponential outbreak.

Testing, tracing and quarantine of infected people does work. It requires a bunch of infrastructure that we don't have yet (and in many places still aren't building, which is beyond frustrating). It also requires that the baseline level of the outbreak be small enough that you can catch most of the cases, which thus requires the continued lockdowns until we get back to that level. But it does work.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#143

Post by grey-area »

Taek wrote: post #80
jbermudes wrote: post #12

I'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.

I'd much rather live in a world where everyone is required to wear masks all the time than live in a world where we are all told to stay home all the time. I believe it's also well established that any measures taken to slow the spread of a new virus will always result in fewer total deaths, in that sense quarantining is much more effective than just being a pause button.

This is a false dichotomy. Masks or gloves as worn by ordinary people are nowhere near effective enough to mean lockdowns could end. They're very effective in clinical settings with proper ppe head to toe and procedures for taking them off outside the dirty ward, but there's no way most people can stick to those, nor keep their houses/shops clean enough.

I believe it's also well established that any measures taken to slow the spread of a new virus will always result in fewer total deaths

In the sense that they prevent a healthcare system being overwhelmed yes, in any other sense no, they are very much just a pause button for the spread of the virus, not a cure.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#144

Post by Grue3 »

bserfaty wrote: post #95

Can't the attenuated strain mutate back to a strong dangerous one after we spread it? (Hope this isn't a stupid question)

It's pretty hard to un-mutate a deleted gene sequence. It can mutate in a novel way to somehow cause more harm, but that won't be quick.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#145

Post by moopling »

ziga wrote: post #35

> More than 50% of the people infected with SARS-CoV-19 are asymptomatic (i.e. they have no illness). Note: asymptomatic at the time of testing. They may still develop symptoms over time. https://www.icelandreview.com/sci-tech/is-icelands-coronavir... https://twitter.com/cmyeaton/status/1246196001775460358

Doing this stuff will take time, you can later remove sequences where the person later developed symptoms

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#146

Post by anonymouz »

danieltillett wrote: post #81
anonymouz wrote: post #57

It seems the reason the vaccine will take so long (12-18months) to develop is because it needs to be tested for long-term safety which takes a trial with long-term monitoring. As this is essentially a sort of (active) vaccine, how do you propose ensuring it's long-term safety? It seems you'd run into essentially the same problem as with developing the vaccine.

By doing an end run around the regulations. Actually even if you were to follow all the vaccine regulations by choice this would still be faster as it would have already been tested in human. Nature has run the trials for us.

I don't see the point of this. Nature has most certainly not established the long-term effects of this virus, seeing as it has only been spreading in humans for a short while.

Skirting the regulations is pointless, because the important thing is the intent of the regulations. If it were just a problem with the regulations, we could also just change the regulations and give the untested vaccine.

Plus, if you want to argue from a pure legal background, this approach would probably still run into trouble, as in most countries it would be highly illegal to infect people on purpose.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#147

Post by foobarbecue »

yoz-y wrote: post #131
foobarbecue wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Has this ever happened in humans? I haven't been able to find an example.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#148

Post by danieltillett »

robocat wrote: post #92
danieltillett wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I want to do. I want to collaborate with those in the position to go looking for one of these attenuated viruses.

It looks like you need to find someone who can help make your post feel more professional - perhaps Ask HN for help or just directly email one of the clued up people here that are open to cold emails (patio11?). I almost didn’t read it because the title sounds too generically woowoo, and the domain you are using seemed unprofessional. Then on reading the article, you didn’t give your background, an irrelevant picture…

The site is my personal blog. I thought about writing a more technical level paper, but what I wanted to accomplish is to get this idea in front of a non-scientific audience who can think outside the box (like many of those on HN).

A standard scientific paper will sink without a trace -scientists are just too conservative to take something like this seriously. I hate to say it, but the people who will make something like this a reality are the tech billionaires of this world.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#149

Post by novaRom »

roenxi wrote: post #104
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.

Alas, if you do some order of magnitude calculations you might find that that'll take a very long time.

And if immunity lasts 6 to 24 months as this author suggests, there might well be no chance for a herd immunity.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#150

Post by notahacker »

buboard wrote: post #90
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…

> If it was killing 50-60% of people infected then yes the selection pressure would be there it isnt killing, but it's isolating them, preventing its spread

That's already baked in to human responses to suspected COVID-19 though, and a chance mutation to a less lethal strain would be unlikely to change human responses to an outbreak in a way which benefited the virus' ability to spread.
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