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A (possible) solution to Covid-19

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Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#161

Post by rhn_mk1 »

akiselev wrote: post #152
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.

The whole idea of herd immunity in this context is fucking nonsense . No self-respecting epidemiologist would even bring it up this early into a pandemic. Herd immunity is the last resort for the immunocompromised or unvaccinated, not the foundation for public health policy.

Not sure who says it's last resort. There's a paper linked in a sibling comment about herd immunity's role in smallpox eradication.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#162

Post by baybal2 »

danieltillett wrote: post #19
jka wrote: post #10

This 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.

Wouldn't an attenuated strain vaccine still require years of paperwork and clinical trials too?

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#163

Post by danieltillett »

new299 wrote: post #160

You make this statement: "The most important thing to note is that such a virus would not be a vaccine from a regulatory perspective." Can you provide any evidence to back up this statement? If you were to start intentionally infecting people with a (naturally) attenuated strain claiming that it will confer immunity I suspect authorities would request you get regulatory approval. If you're approach does require regul…

You are looking at this from the wrong perspective. If people start spreading this attenuated strain around on their own what are the regulatory agencies going to do?

Even if you wanted to go down the regulatory pathway for some reason it still has a number of advantages over other approaches.

1. We would know it is safe in humans before we began.

2. We would know what mutations make the virus less pathogenic.

3. Once used it would drive the pathogenic strains to extinction.

4. It will be work in poor countries that can’t afford or distribute a conventional vaccine.

5. It will infect and protect those that are not deliberately infected through contact with others.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#164

Post by normalnorm »

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…

> 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?).

It would probably have the opposite effect. This way it looks like a probably serious scientist wrote an idea that is probably worth considering on his personal website / blog.

If you give the site the "Hacker News treatment", I suspect that it will immediately look like "somebody with funding is trying to sell me on an idea for some reason". This stuff might work for naive consumers, but naive consumers don't matter here. I am sure that this post is already being shared among experts, and they are the ones who need to decide if this idea has merit or not. Throwing marketing bs at them will probably just hurt the cause.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#165

Post by gmanis »

cjbprime wrote: post #121
gmanis wrote: post #107

Daniel, Why can’t we use the virulent strain but in extremely small quantity? Like 1/1000 of the typical viral load?

That's covered by the post: because the person who received the small viral load will infect others and give them a large viral load.

Thanks. How about a quarantine say 14 days after the small viral load delivery.

Maybe we can do that to a subset of healthy young population so that they can go back to work without risking others?

I don’t have much idea about either virology or molecular biology. Just curious.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#166

Post by nabla9 »

There are several pre-clinical studies with live attenuated viral vectors and replicating viral vectors going on against SARS-CoV-2. https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/key-action/l...

Developing attenuated-virus vaccines is by screening serially propagated SARS-CoV-2 for reduced pathogenity has also been suggested already.

1. The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia calls for viral vaccines https://www.nature.com/articles/s41541-020-0170-0

2. Regla-Nava, J. A. et al. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses with mutations in the E protein are attenuated and promising vaccine candidates. J. Virol. 89, 3870–3887 (2015). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25609816/

Authors idea of spreading the attenuated virus is based on the idea that if the immediate COVID-19 disease can be avoided, increasing viral load in population is smaller risk. I think that's the weak point. If the vaccine is developed and the virus establishes itself in the population, the number of people getting infected will be lower overall and less people will get severe disease due to natural immunity + vaccine.

ps.

> appears to be killing between 1% to 3.5% of the people it infects

Author is confusing case fatality rate (CFR) with infection fatality rate (IFR). Infection fatality ratio seems to be something like 0.6% according to recent estimates. IFR estimates seem to go down over time.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#167

Post by danieltillett »

baq wrote: post #114
danieltillett wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no stupid questions, just stupid politicians. We are looking for an attenuated strain and that will be found in people with a mild case. We could sequence all cases, but we would exclude any strain that puts someone in hospital so it is a waste of resources to sequence viruses from people in hospital. From a practical perspective it is better to concentrate on people with only mild cases.

> There are no stupid questions, just stupid politicians. politicians aren't stupid, they just play a different game and it looks really dumb from the outside. for them, their moves make sense, they're pros at it. anyway, you've done very well to find yourself on the top 30 of HN. the smarter press reads this directly. the less smart press reads it a few days later after it spreads through the net via reddits, facebo…

Well I have met quite a few politicians is real life (low level) so I am not sure I would agree with that assessment ;)

Yes hopefully this thread gets some attention from others.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#168

Post by travisporter »

nabla9 wrote: post #166

There are several pre-clinical studies with live attenuated viral vectors and replicating viral vectors going on against SARS-CoV-2. https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/key-action/l... Developing attenuated-virus vaccines is by screening serially propagated SARS-CoV-2 for reduced pathogenity has also been suggested already. 1. The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia calls for viral vaccines https://www.natur…

I think you mean infection fatality rate. You gave me a heart attack for a second as I wiki’d it.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#169

Post by ubercow13 »

How would you allow the harmless strain to spread without also spreading the deadly strain? If you relax or reverse social distancing, wouldn't the deadly strain also have a chance to spread widely again? It seems like you'd need to manually administer this strain to millions of people, or have very carefully administered 'contagion parties' where everyone is pre-screened for the deadly strain, while everyone else keeps social distancing.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#170

Post by danieltillett »

nabla9 wrote: post #166

There are several pre-clinical studies with live attenuated viral vectors and replicating viral vectors going on against SARS-CoV-2. https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/key-action/l... Developing attenuated-virus vaccines is by screening serially propagated SARS-CoV-2 for reduced pathogenity has also been suggested already. 1. The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia calls for viral vaccines https://www.natur…

This is not a proposal for a live attenuated vaccine.

These numbers on the death rate are not mine, but what has been reported in the scientific literature. Probably the best numbers come from South Korea where they have done a pretty good job of tracking down everyone infected. There the fatality rate is around 1.8%.

Even if the true death rate is 0.6% that still means the deaths of nearly 50 million people worldwide.

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