A (possible) solution to Covid-19 • Hacker News Board

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#531

Post by sfj » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 5:40 AM UTC

hanspeter wrote: post #496

sfj wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like you'd need to manually administer this strain to millions of people. Yes, but this doesn't seem too hard. Just have some infected people spit in a cup, and mix it into large vats of raspberry jam and people can then just spread it on their toast on one morning.

> Currently, there is no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 by food. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-safety-during-emergencies/food...

What does food that regulated by the FDA have to do with this?

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#532

Post by ncmncm » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:00 AM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #475

anatoly wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry if it's a stupid question, but hypothetically, would we be able to engineer rather than find a harmless strain of coronavirus with the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2? If I understand correctly, antigens identify the virus by its S proteins. Would we be able to use the same methods as" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985'>as in this paper to replace the S protein in a harmless cold-like coronavir…

This is not a stupid question. Yes we could engineer such a strain, the problem would be testing it given we would not be able to predict how dangerous it was.

Having identified a harmless strain, and presuming regulatory agencies are too slow to be useful, then what?

Send people infected with the harmless version around, after lockdown ends in a month or two, to crowded places?

Would greater virulence be a desirable quality in our reduced strain?

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#533

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 10:55 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #504

dragonwriter wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Star Trek was an unique word in sci-fi (at least on-screen sci-fi) because of that bright idealism, that utopia. What utopia? Outside of the crew of the Enterprise itself in TOS and TNG (most of the time, when not under malevolent outside influence, abd even then there are some exceptions), neither Starfleet, the Federation outside of Starfleet, nor the galaxy outside of the Federation (in roughly descending order…

Maybe instead of "utopia" I should've said "as close to utopia as you can get without shattering your suspension of disbelief". The world was designed as a reachable utopia , and in my eyes, the vision didn't decay fast enough when Roddenbery left the scene to be lost by the time of ENT. > While, as noted above, it's flawed even then, it really doesn't work for DS9, VOY, or ENT. Compared to what? Relative to pretty m…

> The baseline is still visibly much more idealistic than everything else (including post-ENT Star Trek).

Picard, specifically, seems to differ from late TNG or DS9 not so much in the degree to which the Federation is or is not a utopia, but in that the focal characters are (at least initially, the arc if season one seems to have most of them evolving in the direction of more conventional ST focal characters) in places that would only have been occupied by non-focal characters.

(“Starfleet is doing bad things because it's upper echelons have been infiltrated by outsiders with an agenda that is, at least in chosen methods if not goals, anthithetical the the ideals towards which the Federation strives” is not inconsistent with the degree of idealism in TNG.)

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#534

Post by radu_floricica » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 2:31 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #469

brownbat wrote: post #372

I posted and deleted a few comments. I don't know what to make of this and it's getting controversial. If it could be helpful, I'd love to improve it. I just don't know where it fits in ongoing discussions by prominent researchers on analysis of strains and types. Three things that jump out at me: a) You'll get more credibility from having a thorough lit review than from listing credentials. Linking to magazine artic…

Just woke up (I am in Australia). I expect some harsh comments as the idea is controversial. To your specific points. a) The post was intended for a lay audience, not other scientists directly. The reason I didn’t write a scientific paper on this is it would sink without a trace as most scientists and doctors are too conservative. It is quite a radical idea and while scientifically sound, it will take mavericks outsi…

Tech billionaire for publicity, maybe. But just getting a guide ready might help more - everybody with a moderate amount of cash and access to the medical system somewhere can start doing this in his back yard.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#535

Post by radu_floricica » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 2:36 PM UTC

temac wrote: post #513

danieltillett wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADE is more a problem for the vaccine approaches. It is one reason we may never have a vaccine for this disease. Hard to rule out worst case scenarios, we just have to work with what we have and make hard choices.

Maybe in this context, making a "hard choice" is accepting that something like 0.3% of the world population dies? Historically we saw worse and recovered, while trying to engineer something with no guarantee it won't be massively worse, using an unprecedented and more or less unstoppable strategy, might not be the most prudent thing to do. Looks like a good movie plot though.

We don't have that option, unfortunately. In real life we're dealing with hospitals permanently jammed and new covid patients keep dying every 6 months, plus the huge economic costs from keeping hospitals _at_ capacity as opposed to 10x over capacity.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#536

Post by carapace » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #500

carapace wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo! Take away Roddenberry's vision of a better future and you've got Babylon 5, eh? Like I mentioned in a sib comment, it turns out that this was a tension going right back to the original series. It's hard to write! (You like the Klingons? To me they seemed derivative of (LotR) Orcs but I haven't spent time to really know.) > I miss that, because (with the possible exception of the Orville) there's nothing like t…

> Take away Roddenberry's vision of a better future and you've got Babylon 5, eh? I'd wish! I find B5 to be great in a different way than Star Trek. It has one of the deepest and most interesting stories I've ever seen explored in sci-fi on the screen. I wish there was another show like this. Alas, it seems that if you take away a vision for a better future, the shows you get today are cookie-cutter action flicks. Th…

Someone posted a sci-fi short film yesterday:

"Destroyer of Worlds" by Samual Dawes https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22839165

...and it lead me down a rabbit-hole. It seems all the good sci-fi these days is being done as shorts by mostly independent filmmakers and posted to youtube. Here are some I found last night:

"The Beacon" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w75oqvMlXXE

"A Tessellation" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi865sBG9Js

THE BOOGEYS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0R80Lp3JYI

STORM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cq_Xy0Fc-I

"Next Floor" by Denis Villeneuve https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t60MMJH_1ds

PRISM Jackson Miller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRK5roxWRc4

"The Looking Planet" - by Eric Law Anderson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8LRxIANzQs

"Final Offer" by Mark Slutsky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv8kOzRZK8g

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#537

Post by ineedasername » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 5:57 PM UTC

danieltillett wrote: post #525

ineedasername wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the whole article through. Now I have done so twice. Maybe I have a blind spot, maybe I misunderstand something, but I don't see where you address the number of tests needed. Certainly you don't address the need (or lack thereof) for geographically & genetically diverse testing. Your background also does not appear to contain detailed experience within the manufacturing and deployment side of vaccines, so I ho…

I address the number issue here. With little cost we could sequence a few thousand viral strains, or even tens of thousands of strains, from positive test sample from asymptomatic and/or mild case until we find a virus strain with the right mutations to make it harmless and which could work like a vaccine. The manufacturing issues are not really my strength or extremely relevant to the idea, but this involves a live…

You address how many viral strains could be obtained, you don't address how many people have to be tested to obtain that many strains. Since you would need to find asymptomatic people, and current testing prioritizes only those with relevant symptoms, you would need to test many, many people to obtain enough asymptomatic occurrences. You do not provide an estimate for that number. Or if my assumption is wrong, then please take it as a sign that people without your specific expertise may come away with the same assumptions.

I don't necessarily expect you to answer all my questions: I offer them, and hope you take them in the spirit in which they are intended, which is as a sort of peer-review process (Though I am certainly not your peer in these matters: I mention that as an analogy) because I believe you do have a compelling idea, but I believe for it to gain much traction there are details that must be filled in, and others that must be spelled out more plainly for outsiders to your field that don't have your knowledge.

I certainly appreciate you engaging with me and indulging my curiosity, and questions that perhaps seem to have obvious answers to someone with more expertise in the field than I have.

Thank you.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#538

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:40 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #527

dang wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this would add much value, because it would attract attention away from submissions to the meta-business of their provenance on HN. I'm wary of adding bookkeeping facilities for that reason generally.

Fair enough; just thought I'd mention it because the lack of such bookkeeping seems to attract attention as well.

It certainly does. It's a perennial sore spot, understandably. I just fear that trying to eliminate that pain would cause more pain.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#539

Post by dang » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 7:41 PM UTC

carbocation wrote: post #447

dang wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can always unflag!

That's a bit uncomfortable because I thought it deserved the flag, but knowing that this has been mod-reviewed means that flagging probably doesn't serve a constructive purpose.

Oh, if you still think it deserves the flag, that's entirely your choice.

Re: A (possible) solution to Covid-19

#540

Post by danieltillett » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 8:32 PM UTC

thawaway1837 wrote: post #347

danieltillett wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you are missing here is what is the novel part of my idea and what is the conventional. It is not novel to think of an attenuated vaccine, what is novel is to look for an attenuated strain in a pandemic using genome sequencing. I hope someone else has thought of this, but so far I haven’t seen any evidence of this. Waiting for vaccine is not a good option. This is a situation with only hard choices.

Why else are hundreds of different labs around the world genome sequencing?

To assess the diversity and spread of the virus it appears. To the best of my knowledge nobody is systematically looking for a natural attenuated strain by genome sequencing. If you are then please get in contact with me.