per MEDSCAPE...Ebola virus is still around.....the timeline of acquiring a vaccine....2014 thru2015 was the initiation of research, it was finally
brought forward at the end of 2019......TAKE THAT IN.....how long for corona to come to a valid vaccine? ANYONE?
The long time frame just seems so bizarre when so many nations are individually working on finding a vaccine. The Smallpox vaccine was done with 16th century medicine why is it taking so long in the 21st century?
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Ebola is a really, really tough virus, and it's pretty much impossible to compare virus types and the ability to make a vaccine against them. Some viruses we have vaccines for confer nearly lifetime protection, others like tetanus require boosters every ten years. Influenza mutates so quickly, has so many strains circulating, and is structurally difficult to raise an antibody against that is universal, so we keep having to formulate new vaccines every year.
The safest consideration of this virus is to look at what's been done with former corona viruses. They are also tough to raise antibodies to, but there were a couple to the last SARS (SARS-CoV-1) that made it to clinical trials. I read that one of those labs tried a novel technique of "freezing" the viral proteins (thus not only inactivating, like they do with heat), but giving immune cells a "locked" target to ID. There are over a dozen vaccines in development and being tested, and the government is awarding grants to move ahead with mass production in the hopes that one or a few are proven safe and effective so millions of doses can be available quickly.
I don't know that we'll have one in the original 12-18 month time frame that was initially spoken of, but I don't doubt that we'll have something. Trying to reach natural herd immunity would mean millions of deaths and that's a horrible solution.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
If we hadn't taken any measures to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2, and given the R0 and even lowest CFR x the world's population, it's not a stretch to say millions would've died.
I even did some rough math based on a non-peer-reviewed study Pony Soldier shared here
showing that we could have 294K-490K deaths before achieving herd immunity in the U.S. alone. You can revise that downward a bit if it turns out that we can reach herd immunity at only 60% of the population infected, but right now we don't know what that percentage is. Nor do we know actual deaths because they've been under-reported since testing has been a sh**show. And that's just the U.S., we have no idea how many are actually dying of this virus because China, Iran, and Russia are hiding their numbers, and there's inadequate testing nearly everywhere.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
I beg to differ. It is a stretch to say that millions would have died.
First I find it important for readers to understand what the R0 is. The following is a brief summary:
"R0 is one of the numbers epidemiologists use to describe how an infectious agent spreads through a population. But it’s important to remember that it’s simply a statistic that describes some of the numbers we see.
CFR is the simplest method of calculating mortality. To find the CFR of a disease, researchers take the number of people who die of the disease and divide it by the number of people who test positive for it. As simple as that seems, however, there is a lot of ambiguity about both numbers.
According to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus research center, COVID-19 has a CFR of about 5.7 percent in the United States. This means that someone who tests positive for the coronavirus has a 5.7 percent chance of dying of the disease. But this is not an accurate estimate of the fatality associated with COVID-19. Why? Because the sickest people are tested first, and many people who are and were infected with COVID-19 are never tested at all.
Third: your comment "Nor do we know actual deaths because they've been under-reported since testing has been a sh**show. " Clearly indicates that the CFR and IFR will decrease,in the U.S.A., in that the actual deaths are reported and even over-reported, in our country.
Last edit: 26 Apr 2020 16:18 by MyMountainTown. Reason: deleted excess quoted material and added links to articles per Fair Use Guidelines
HOW can U compile accurate numbers and produce an ACCURATE accounting,when the virus
is new,novel, and NOT well understood.....seems like a shell game to me.....BEST GUESS and
roll the dice to gather the data....no one REALLY has an answer
Anecdote: One pharmacist compared the sales of Tamiflu last year compared to this year. Almost no sales this year. It appears social distancing does make the influenza season much more mild.
So do we shut down the economy every flu season to save 30,000 lives?
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
SC,
Someone on MYM decided to edit my post. It was in response to your statement that "millions would have died". I took exception to that, pointed out three reasons for my position, and arguments supporting them. You and/or your editors have chosen to edit the post and in my opinion it is not an accurate representation of my position.
Is there a mechanism on MYM that a responder can contact MYM or me and read my comments in totality?
ramage,
You can see who edited your post at the bottom, and we sent you a private message last night about it. We've asked you several times not to excessively quote from articles and to provide the links to the articles from which you are quoting so we stay in compliance with Fair Use Guidelines.
You copied the entirety of the two articles you were discussing - this is against the law and could get us shut down. We simply deleted the excess quoted material and added the links after doing a Google search to find them. If we ended up grabbing some sentences that you had written in there, our apologies, it was hard to tell what was from the articles and what was your own words because the quotation function wasn't used (which we also added).
You can find your Private Messages, and write one or reply back, by going to your Profile Page or by hovering over the "Community" menu to open the drop-down and clicking "My Messages."
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
