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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

#251

Post by koheripbal »

mellavora wrote: post #159
owlninja wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear more people talking about anti-vaxxers than I do from any actual anti-vaxxers. I don't think they are all that powerful.

Huh. Wonder where you heard this? Perhaps you missed the recent American Academy of Family Physicians survey on the topic? Here is the NBC recap: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/cold-and-flu/millennials-leas...

This survey did not find that anti-vax had a meaningful impact on vaccination rates. The NBC article is poorly written and misleading.

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

#252

Post by koheripbal »

shrubble wrote: post #30

Is it the case that SARS (of many years ago) had a vaccine developed for it, but it had too many side effects or was not effective enough to get past trials? And that while this virus is different it is similar in many respects... leading me to think that a vaccine may also be difficult to produce.

By the time the SARS vaccine was nearly completed testing, the outbreak had burned out.

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

#253

Post by vondur »

Someone1234 wrote: post #120
vondur wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be correct about the death rate, but the disruption that it's causing the global economy may change the calculus in the FDA.

We should risk people's lives because doing otherwise may harm the economy..?

I'm not saying that, but I'm sure there are people in the Government who are taking that point when making these decisions.

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

#255

Post by mygo »

Psyladine wrote: post #235
blobbers wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`...would rather lose a lot of good drugs than approve a bad drug.` Thanks for saying this, and rightfully so! Approving a bad drug in the world where distribution channels are very well set up could have disastrous effects. We can point to things like the opioid crisis in the USA right now - a drug that is so addictive it should have never been put into use the way it was.

>Thanks for saying this, and rightfully so! Approving a bad drug in the world where distribution channels are very well set up could have disastrous effects. Denialism's Michael Specter disagrees. Vioxx was one solution to the pain problem but 2.4% of participants showed heart problems when using it, so it was pulled off shelves. That's like saying no, 97.6% of the population can't have penicillin because 2.4% are al…

That’s about the current death rate of Coronavirus and there is panic so yeah

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

#256

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #150
HelloNurse wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Production of pharmaceuticals (such as a vaccine, when it's ready) and medical equipment (such as ventilators) can be ramped up by commissioning and requisitioning an arbitrary number of factories, but developing a vaccine is inherently a sequence of trials that can only be "multithreaded" between relatively few research teams trying different approaches semi-independently.

True, but we can speed it up a lot. There are a lot of researchers currently looking something else that be a great research assistant (I know you are a great cancer researcher - that means you have the biology background to be a lab assistant). Even those who don't have a medical background can do menial data entry tasks, or clean up tasks.

[deleted]

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

#257

Post by harambaebae69 »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #180
haunter wrote: post #162

So some comments here say 60-70% global infection [0] and 3-4% death rate [1]. Is this really possible? That would be like ~150 million deaths. 0, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22485485 1, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22485692

Outcome of critical cases is heavily reliant upon whether the medical system can handle the number of infected. If someone requires a ventilator and you're out of ventilators they're kinda fucked. There's also evidence that lots of people show little to no symptoms. There's probably a large number of people that simply don't know they had it. Which is both good and bad. If we manage to keep it from spreading too far…

Commercial aviation had barely begun when the Spanish Flu occurred, and the world was nowhere near as connected.

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

#258

Post by kiterunner2346 »

empath75 wrote: post #71
kiterunner2346 wrote: post #61

The key may not be a vaccine but simply staying alive. Covid-19 kills with a "cytokine storm": cytochine release syndrome(cytokine storm): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_release_syndrome Article discussing coronavirus et al and cytochine storm: "Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China" https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... From the article:…

I haven’t seen anyone say it kills with a cytokine storm — spanish flu did that.

Lancet Article(February 22, 2020): "Reducing mortality from 2019-nCoV: host-directed therapies should be an option"

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

from the article:

"In most moribund patients, 2019-nCoV infection is also associated with a cytokine storm, which is characterised by increased plasma concentrations of interleukins 2, 7, and 10, ..."

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

#259

Post by blobbers »

viklove wrote: post #243
mhb wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public seems able to understand that there is a cost/benefit tradeoff in driving cars. They could probably understand that idea in the case of drug approval also.

People accept the risk of driving because they feel like they're in control and can prevent a bad outcome. The same is not even remotely true about a drug.

I agree. I think this is why self driving cars will be difficult for society to accept. It's an odd topic because most people would never want to drive their own plane, yet willingly get on airplanes with some % chance they will crash.

The notion that there is some % of cars that will crash seems more palatable when you're the one driving rather than some robot. Or maybe that's just because I pretend I'm a better driver than the self driving cars. This sort of "I could do it better..." psychology is probably what drives these behaviors.

I can't build a better drug; .'. I trust that medical professionals will keep me safe. I can't fly the plane in a safer manner; .'. I trust that pilots will keep me safe. I might be able to drive in a safer manner; .'. I don't trust a self driving car.

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

#260

Post by Bender »

Bender wrote: post #2

It is interesting to me that people are so laser focused on test kits and vaccines. In my less than humble opinion, people should focus on improving their immune system. You can reduce the load on your immune system by not eating sugar and reducing carbs as much as you can. We also know from history and science that every plague that killed people from respiratory virus infections was due to a lack of vitamin D3 and…

Not sure why this is so taboo, I know there are molecular biologists on this site. Anyway, Zinc is the only thing that will slow the RNA transcoding process of the virus in your lungs, but getting enough zinc into cells is hard. You can use a prescription drug Chloroquine to improve the transport, but it has nasty side effects. Vitamin D3 isn't a vitamin at all. It is a precursor to the hormone 25 hydroxy. That is used by several hundred functions in your body, including your adaptive immune system, in conjunction with L-Glutamine to produce white blood cells and much more than I could cover on HN. The virus binds quite easily to ACE2, so you have to slow that down enough that your adaptive immune system can keep up. Smokers and obese people and eldery have the most ACE2 from lung inflammation.

Some things to watch or look at

CoV Map: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.h...

CoV Rates: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Mutations: https://nextstrain.org/ncov

MedCram: https://www.youtube.com/user/MEDCRAMvideos/videos

The mutations are probably the most interesting. I would be curious what company is going to cover all of them in a vaccine.

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