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Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

blogs.sciencemag.org

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Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#191

Post by the_af »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #84
the_af wrote: post #74

I see a lot of panicky comments, both in real life and in this very thread. I know COVID19 is different from a regular flu, but is it more serious? "Regular" flu is very contagious and kills lots of people every year. It's ok to study coronavirus and to try to find ways to effectively manage it, combat it or prevent the disease -- but why are we panicking? Nobody panics about the flu and it's proven to be fatal for a…

Spanish flu was also "just a flu" and killed between 17 and 50million people world wide Covid19 is more contagious and more deadly than "regular flu"

But that's what I'm saying. The flu is already a serious deal and nobody panics.

In any case, surely there are some differences between the 1918 world of the Spanish flu and the current world, both in actual medicine and what we learned about how to manage contagious diseases? Maybe the Spanish flu today (I mean, if it started today and hadn't happened before) wouldn't have as many victims.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#192

Post by mellavora »

jokoon wrote: post #135
gdsimoes wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harming the economy is also a risk to people’s lives, though.

To what extent? Please expand because this depends on how people's lives depends on the economy. You can take good measures that slows down the economy without endangering people's lives. Of course you can also consider social unrest to be a risk but that's another matter.

Well, for one, I depend on the economy for my food. I also depend on it for my drinking water. Oh, and in winter, for my heat.

Leaving that aside, I've also found the economy helpful in providing me with clothes and shelter.

And when I have gone off in the woods and played survivalist (and yes, I have), I depended on the economy not only for much of the gear which enabled this, but also for keeping me safe from attack by other tribes while off in the woods. No-one was fighting me for a particular foraging/hunting ground.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#193

Post by crmrc114 »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #29

I know Derek Lowe is an expert. However, sometimes, experts think that because things have always been a certain way throughout their career, they will always be like that. Drug development has been very conservative especially in the US for the past several decades. The FDA is all about making sure they never have a thalidomide incident and would rather lose a lot of good drugs than approve a bad drug. This is the s…

I feel like I should mention SV40 now https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SV40 When you do mass inoculation the last think you want to do is rush something out the door that could cause even more problems. Granted SV40 did not harm much at all, depending on who you talk too.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#194

Post by mellavora »

bluGill wrote: post #152
mellavora wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm, not quickly. Vaccine production requires very sterile facilities which take time to build. You do not want to be taking vaccines produced under non-sterile conditions. Also, are you assuming that supply chains are intact? How are you getting the raw and the finished materials to build the factories?

Raw materials are not my concern - the industries that supply them can get all the people they need from others. You might find yourself demoted from programmer to some third shift factory labor job, but with a few weeks training you can do it (with okay odds that you won't lose life/limb from missing some safety item)

You are conflating raw materials with trained employees. Which brings up another barrier to scaling up production.

Raw materials: you need pipettes, chemistry hoods, etc, lots of specialized manufactured items, in order to build the production pipeline. Where do you get these? What if some of these components are manufactured in China, guess what is on hold?

Employees. Vaccine production is high-skilled work. It isn't trainable in just a few weeks even if you have reduced workplace safety standards.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#195

Post by anu7df »

dgacmu wrote: post #174
anu7df wrote: post #154

Yes. It is worse than a regular flu. But, if you look at statistics from S. Korea, the only country with a substantial infection and trust worthy numbers (as in they test heavily), the death rate is around 0.6% overall. So not the end of the world, but nothing to be complacent about either. If the White house will get out of the way and let the system work, we may still have time to mitigate the worst here in the USA…

You're making a somewhat dangerous mistake in your analysis. South Korea's death rate is not well established yet: 7% of their cases were new just in the last day, and they've had very few people with confirmed recovery yet. There are likely to be more deaths to come.

Agreed. I had tried to account for it, but did not write it since I was hoping to avoid a longer comment and those calculations are more fraught with errors.. Edited my parent comment now to include all of it.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#196

Post by buckminster »

jimmaswell wrote: post #190
buckminster wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people's lives don't depend on the economy, why don't we all stop working?

Wall Street and stock prices are detached from day to day life for most people.

"The economy" isn't just what happens on Wall Street.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#197

Post by carapace »

lm28469 wrote: post #182
carapace wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> first sign of trouble of any kind with a new COVID-19 vaccine Like what? Vaccines do not cause autism.

Like serious side effects? If you want to vaccinate virtually the whole world and your vaccines turns out to have serious side effects in 1% of people because you rushed its development and didn't go through the regular extended long term tests it wouldn't be that good

> Like serious side effects?

Like what? What can a vaccine do that's worse than a pandemic?

Anti-vaxxers aren't rational people rationally concerned about real side-effects of vaccines, they are superstitious fools who think vaccines give kids autism. (There is NO scientific evidence for this idea whatsoever.)

Remember the Mayan Apocalypse? Remember how everybody stopped talking about it about fifteen minutes after midnight on Jan. 1st? That's what will happen to anti-vaxxer BS if^H^H when a real plague hits.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#198

Post by pier25 »

wooly_bully wrote: post #176
pier25 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't trust Italy with their numbers? Last time I checked it was around 3% there. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/coronavirus-deaths-ch...

In the linked figure in the article, the SK tests have about 5x more per million people so their denominator is likely a better idea of the true number of cases.

I don't disagree with the idea that the total number of cases is unreported but the WHO said yesterday it's actually 3.4% globally.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/who-says-coronavirus-death-r...

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#199

Post by isbadawi »

mellavora wrote: post #148
dnautics wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's arbitrary. What's the death rate for severe flu? If I define severe to be "throwing a fever of greater than 42 C" it'll be really high.

flu mortality is about 0.1% though, like Covid, varies by age group/pre-existing. Also varies by strain/year

The parent's point is about the metric of "death rate for severe cases", which is ambiguous depending on how you define severe. You could pick a definition of severe such that the death rate is 100%, but that wouldn't be super useful.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#200

Post by s9w »

mellavora wrote: post #181

Looking at this thread as an interesting datapoint. Typically HN is thoughtful, well reasoned, and well informed. This thread is not holding that same level. Wonder what this says about the level of concern over this bug.

I read on so many different places on the internet, and I have no idea where this is going. HN is very panicky, 4chan is the same or really in the post-apocalyptic stage. Reddit is extremely conservative / non-panicky (maybe because anything else gets banned). Newspapers and traditional media are all over the place with their panic levels. I don't know what to make of this.
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