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Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

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Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#21

Post by brownbat »

Robin Hanson and other public intellectuals are engaged in ongoing debates about variolation, with several variations on that theme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFnP5TK61aI

https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/wh...

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/04/reply-to-cowen-on-vari...

I know your proposal is not exactly that, but it has some overlap with those ideas. I'd recommend joining those discussions on those blogs.

If yours significantly improved the safety of their proposals, it would be a welcome addition to those discussions.

Note though that it shares some obstacles with widespread vaccinations, in that safety and efficacy testing is the major delay, not the chemistry.

We could alternatively do low dose variolation on the young with technology today, with infectious strains administered through a cut on the shin to encourage lower severity progression. We might lack implementation capacity and social will to try very experimental approaches. If so, "found strain" vaccination will face similar capacity issues while also introducing new questions about safety and effectiveness and requiring significantly more research.

So I'm not sure it's a silver bullet, or how it fares against existing proposals, but seems an avenue worth exploring in parallel, and raising first with others generating policy ideas in this space.

N.b.- Tyler Cowen has a foundation that is actively providing grants or prizes for work on COVID-19, he's not Gates, but not just some random blogger either.

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#22

Post by _Microft »

danieltillett wrote: post #4
_Microft wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to summarize this in the submitted post itself to reduce friction for the readers (and thereby maybe increasing the odds of success).

The post is pretty much just a summary, but I will post it here too. Edit. HN is not letting me reply to people with questions (shaking small fist). If would like me to answer anything then post a question on my blog.

It will in a while. There is a delay (dead time) until a reply link appears which increases the deeper a comment is in a thread. This is to prevent particularily heated discussions where people just fire responses without thinking too much.

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#24

Post by loftyal »

danieltillett wrote: post #2

If anyone wants to know what this possible solution is I have written it up here in non-technical language [0]. 0. https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/05/a-solution-to-covid-19/ Edit. HN seems to have put me on the “posting too fast” treadmill so I will have to edit this post. While effectively the same as a vaccine, it is quite different. Any such attenuated strain identified can be used outside of the regulatory syste…

A decent percentage of people are also asymptomatic with most influenza strains. You probably know friends/acquaintance who says they never get the flu in winter, even though it's highly likely they have gotten the virus before, it's just their inflammation response for whatever reason (likely genetic variation) doesn't produce symptoms.

Source: https://www.nhs.uk/news/medical-practice/three-quarters-of-p...

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#25

Post by jerome-jh »

danieltillett wrote: post #2

If anyone wants to know what this possible solution is I have written it up here in non-technical language [0]. 0. https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/05/a-solution-to-covid-19/ Edit. HN seems to have put me on the “posting too fast” treadmill so I will have to edit this post. While effectively the same as a vaccine, it is quite different. Any such attenuated strain identified can be used outside of the regulatory syste…

Well that is interesting, for a SW developer point of view :)

Do you have reasons to think biotech's are not currently putting the same methodology into place for their upcoming vaccine?

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#26

Post by Jugurtha »

Can you put the desired action and the solution in the first sentence, then back it up in the rest of the post?

The post has an academic style, and academia optimizes for writing articles, not for the articles to be read or impact the world.

If you rub a lamp and a genie appears, better get to the point.

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#27

Post by danieltillett »

jerome-jh wrote: post #25
danieltillett wrote: post #2

If anyone wants to know what this possible solution is I have written it up here in non-technical language [0]. 0. https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/05/a-solution-to-covid-19/ Edit. HN seems to have put me on the “posting too fast” treadmill so I will have to edit this post. While effectively the same as a vaccine, it is quite different. Any such attenuated strain identified can be used outside of the regulatory syste…

Well that is interesting, for a SW developer point of view :) Do you have reasons to think biotech's are not currently putting the same methodology into place for their upcoming vaccine?

No idea. Someone has to be the first person to have thought of any idea and maybe it is me (unlikely). I personally don’t care about this, I just want to see the idea acted upon.

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#28

Post by buboard »

danieltillett wrote: post #2

If anyone wants to know what this possible solution is I have written it up here in non-technical language [0]. 0. https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/05/a-solution-to-covid-19/ Edit. HN seems to have put me on the “posting too fast” treadmill so I will have to edit this post. While effectively the same as a vaccine, it is quite different. Any such attenuated strain identified can be used outside of the regulatory syste…

> test asymptomatic people for COVID-19 and then genome sequence the SARS-CoV-2 strain that has infected them with the aim of identifying a virus with mutation(s) in an essential viral gene(s)

But without these essential genes the virus would not multiply / infect people anyway, right? Also, how is it different from inactivated vaccines that are currently being developed ? Also, why cant someone engineer such a virus with appropriate deletions?

https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(20)30120-5...

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#29

Post by danieltillett »

singularity2001 wrote: post #16
danieltillett wrote: post #2

If anyone wants to know what this possible solution is I have written it up here in non-technical language [0]. 0. https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/05/a-solution-to-covid-19/ Edit. HN seems to have put me on the “posting too fast” treadmill so I will have to edit this post. While effectively the same as a vaccine, it is quite different. Any such attenuated strain identified can be used outside of the regulatory syste…

It is a good idea, but just like the other dozens of possible vaccines it still needs to go through all trial phases, so it's not quicker than the other vaccines which could 'potentially be deployed today' (RNA etc)

No it doesn’t which is the reason why the idea is more than an idea for another vaccine. Even if it did it, it would be a ecological solution that would mean we could stop vaccinating in the future - a bit like how we were able to stop vaccinating for smallpox once the attenuated viral vaccine drove it to extinction in the wild.

Re: Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention?

#30

Post by randomfoo931 »

danieltillett wrote: post #5
danieltillett wrote: post #2

If anyone wants to know what this possible solution is I have written it up here in non-technical language [0]. 0. https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/05/a-solution-to-covid-19/ Edit. HN seems to have put me on the “posting too fast” treadmill so I will have to edit this post. While effectively the same as a vaccine, it is quite different. Any such attenuated strain identified can be used outside of the regulatory syste…

Here is the post for those who don’t want to follow the link. Like nearly everyone on the planet I am worried about COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) appears to be killing between 1% to 3.5% of the people it infects and has a R0 (i.e. how many new people each person infected goes onto infect) of between 2.5 to 3.9. Left to run wild, the virus will likely kill tens of millions of people worldwide.…

I'm no expert in this field, hence my dumb question: lets assume we find such an attenuated strain and "infect" people with it such that they could all build the anti-bodies for it. Couldn't the dangerous strain still mutate itself over time in a way where the anti-bodies for the attenuated strain wouldn't help anymore or is this rather considered unlikley (since the virus then would have to become fundamentally different)? In other words, would we then end up with the possibility of similar mutations as with the seasonal flue where this "vaccine" with an attenuated strain would have to be renewed periodically? In any case, thanks for working on this!
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