SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

4bars said:
You are right on the bold part. That is why WHO says it might not work. Not that would not work. Everything can happen, but corona virus history, doesn't show positive signs
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But it does. We know that for the closest virus to it (SARS), the antibodies were present for around 3 years. We also know that there were vaccines for SARS, but they didn't reach the trial stage cause there were no incentives to do so. We saw the first vaccines being created within almost 2 months ago. We are already seeing good signs for at least one anti-viral (remdesivir) and good anecdotal evidence that hydroxychloroquine might work. There are also signs that the mortality rate might be well below what originally was thought (just check the numbers of the countries which have done massive testings like Iceland). There are also signs that many more people than we thought might be infected, which further lowers the mortality rate. And we have already seen countries who without a shelter at home have managed to contain the outbreak.

Sure, we can speculate that it will evolve to both something more deadly and more contagious (Spanish flu), that not only an infection won't give any immunity but it might make things worse for the second infection (dengue fever), that no vaccine will be created (HIV), that no anti-viral will be effective (Ebola). But chances for either of these happening are quite low, very low in fact, and chances for all of them happening are negligible.
 
Alabaster Codify7 said:
Belarus are blatantly worse, but nobody has any expectations or standards for Belarus. Hence my 'pound for pound' comment. Belarus seems a pretty cool country, one which I'd like to visit one day, but it also seems very backward in many ways and I think most of Europe recognises that so has no expectations of them to act like anything else.
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I’d posted it mostly just to share that last paragraph with the Caf because it’s so glorious
 
Wibble said:
Hard to see how it isn't going to become endemic.
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Yup. The hope is that it will either become manageable like the flu (which can happen if we find out efficient anti-virals) or a vaccine with high success rate is discovered.
 
Revan said:
But it does. We know that for the closest virus to it (SARS), the antibodies were present for around 3 years. We also know that there were vaccines for SARS, but they didn't reach the trial stage cause there were no incentives to do so. We saw the first vaccines being created within almost 2 months ago. We are already seeing good signs for at least one anti-viral (remdesivir) and good anecdotal evidence that hydroxychloroquine might work. There are also signs that the mortality rate might be well below what originally was thought (just check the numbers of the countries which have done massive testings like Iceland). There are also signs that many more people than we thought might be infected, which further lowers the mortality rate. And we have already seen countries who without a shelter at home have managed to contain the outbreak.

Sure, we can speculate that it will evolve to both something more deadly and more contagious (Spanish flu), that not only an infection won't give any immunity but it might make things worse for the second infection (dengue fever), that no vaccine will be created (HIV), that no anti-viral will be effective (Ebola). But chances for either of these happening are quite low, very low in fact, and chances for all of them happening are negligible.
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We know already that antibodies are created in significant numbers in recovered patients (logical given that people are actually recovering) and signs that a workable vaccine will be developed are good to date even if it does take quite a while to test and get one or more to market. Most viruses with this sort of infectiousness and fatality rate to the host don't evolve rapidly so a vaccine should give us a couple of years which is plenty to keep the vaccine up to date with the viruses evolution. We should also immunise everyone at the same time for flu as people are really slack at getting that shot. An antiviral would also be a huge boost as it will reduce pressure on medical services while a vaccine is developed. Fingers crossed for Remdesvir trials.

As for Spanish flu, it is debatable that it was more deadly or contagious but rather it was the terrible conditions that prevailed at the time with lots of young people in close proximity with poor hygiene and malnutrition etc due to the war. Compounded by aspirin poisoning. Dengue Fever is an outlier but it is doubtful that this will occur with this virus.

The trick is going to be getting to the point where we can vaccinate and/or treat adequately without overwhelming medical services or going bust first.
 
Wibble said:
We should use this as a criteria for selecting people for fast track virus trials. Specifically for the control group who are given a placebo before being infected.
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I’ve always said that the best thing that could happen to the world would be a virus that eliminates all lunatics of that kind. Basically something that kills 100% infected but vaccine is made very fast, but they refuse to get vaccined because conspiracy. World needs that.
 
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-volunteers-vaccine-trial-april-a9470896.html

One can dream...

"The Oxford team join three other groups of researchers – two in the United States and one in China – in beginning trials on humans."

Some from this forum should contact those scientists and let them know that they are wasting their time; as there is no chance in hell of them succeeding in less than 10 years.
 
Hound Dog said:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-volunteers-vaccine-trial-april-a9470896.html

One can dream...

"The Oxford team join three other groups of researchers – two in the United States and one in China – in beginning trials on humans."

Some from this forum should contact those scientists and let them know that they are wasting their time; as there is no chance in hell of them succeeding in less than 10 years.
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Only brave and altruistic people will get the vaccine at this stage.
 
Hound Dog said:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-volunteers-vaccine-trial-april-a9470896.html

One can dream...

"The Oxford team join three other groups of researchers – two in the United States and one in China – in beginning trials on humans."

Some from this forum should contact those scientists and let them know that they are wasting their time; as there is no chance in hell of them succeeding in less than 10 years.
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This has been in the news for sometime now. The Chinese are already in the second stage and seems to be the most advanced at this time. They should know how effective it is by mid May the latest.
 
Revan said:
Only brave and altruistic people will get the vaccine at this stage.
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I am aware of that. I am also aware that no one has any idea if it will work. Or work while causing side-effects, which is even worse.

Still, there is definitely progress being made and no one can say with certainty that it will take ages for a vaccine to be approved, which is what I have been hearing a lot in this thread. All I want is for people to admit that they have no idea about this.
 
Hound Dog said:
I am aware of that. I am also aware that no one has any idea if it will work. Or work while causing side-effects, which is even worse.

Still, there is definitely progress being made and no one can say with certainty that it will take ages for a vaccine to be approved, which is what I have been hearing a lot in this thread. All I want is for people to admit that they have no idea about this.
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We have an idea though. The forecast since the beginning has been 12-18 months and nothing has changed to believe that it is gonna take less time than that (and it can take longer if all the vaccines in trials don't show effects, or as you said, have bad side effects).

I think that Moderna administered the first dose of their vaccine in a human more than a month ago, and there are another few vaccines already in trials. Just that for the vaccine to be administered in mass, it needs to pass quite a few checks, so reasonably speaking, it is quite unlikely that it will be ready until next summer. And even then, there will be a hierarchy if who gets the vaccine first (likely it is gonna be the elderly in developed countries, followed by other people in developed countries, followed by the remaining), but even in a best-case scenario it is hard to see more than 7 billion people getting vaccinated by the end of 2020.
 
Revan said:
We have an idea though. The forecast since the beginning has been 12-18 months and nothing has changed to believe that it is gonna take less time than that (and it can take longer if all the vaccines in trials don't show effects, or as you said, have bad side effects).

I think that Moderna administered the first dose of their vaccine in a human more than a month ago, and there are another few vaccines already in trials. Just that for the vaccine to be administered in mass, it needs to pass quite a few checks, so reasonably speaking, it is quite unlikely that it will be ready until next summer. And even then, there will be a hierarchy if who gets the vaccine first (likely it is gonna be the elderly in developed countries, followed by other people in developed countries, followed by the remaining), but even in a best-case scenario it is hard to see more than 7 billion people getting vaccinated by the end of 2020.
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I did not mean "we" as "humanity", I am talking about the Redcafe posters who are constantly giving their own estimations (ie, the forecast is bogus it will certainly take more time than that) that differ from the experts' forecasts.
 
Revan said:
We have an idea though. The forecast since the beginning has been 12-18 months and nothing has changed to believe that it is gonna take less time than that (and it can take longer if all the vaccines in trials don't show effects, or as you said, have bad side effects).

I think that Moderna administered the first dose of their vaccine in a human more than a month ago, and there are another few vaccines already in trials. Just that for the vaccine to be administered in mass, it needs to pass quite a few checks, so reasonably speaking, it is quite unlikely that it will be ready until next summer. And even then, there will be a hierarchy if who gets the vaccine first (likely it is gonna be the elderly in developed countries, followed by other people in developed countries, followed by the remaining), but even in a best-case scenario it is hard to see more than 7 billion people getting vaccinated by the end of 2020.
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And as many have said before a vaccine typically takes 5-10 years to get to market. 12-18 months would be unprecedented (drink). The only way to speed things up (assuming all goes well at each stage) is to miss out some of the normal testing and go almost straight to trials on health volunteers. Which is hugely risky and illegal in most places.
 
Hound Dog said:
I did not mean "we" as "humanity", I am talking about the Redcafe posters who are constantly giving their own estimations (ie, the forecast is bogus it will certainly take more time than that) that differ from the experts' forecasts.
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The people who seem to be commenting e.g. Pogue, Revan and others, know what they are talking about. They aren't plucking this stuff out of thin air.
 
Wibble said:
And as many have said before a vaccine typically takes 5-10 years to get to market. 12-18 months would be unprecedented (drink). The only way to speed things up (assuming all goes well at each stage) is to miss out some of the normal testing and go almost straight to trials on health volunteers. Which is hugely risky and illegal in most places.
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To be fair, it is a much bigger incentive than usual (easily the biggest incentive since smallpox). And the technology has advanced much more than before, several vaccines (which are completely different from each other) were built within 6 weeks or so of the genome sequence being sent from the Chinese researchers.

I think it is quite understandable to go faster than usual. For example, it made sense to do parallel trials in both humans and animals. Of course, I believe that the researchers who are doing this are extremely cautious.
 
Wibble said:
The people who seem to be commenting e.g. Pogue, Revan and others, know what they are talking about. They aren't plucking this stuff out of thin air.
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You give me too much credit. :)

I have been read a lot about covid-19 and infections diseases since this started, but it is totally out of my topic, so often in this thread, I have (by mistake) posted total crap.
 
Wibble said:
The people who seem to be commenting e.g. Pogue, Revan and others, know what they are talking about. They aren't plucking this stuff out of thin air.
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There seems to be pretty much a consensus among the scientific community on when and what we can expect. At least roughly. What Revan is posting is in line with this.

I find it difficult to take anyone going against those estimates seriously, as long as they are not a part of a team working on a vaccine or something. And yet, we have had several of those here over the last few days.
 
Hound Dog said:
There seems to be pretty much a consensus among the scientific community on when and what we can expect. At least roughly. What Revan is posting is in line with this.

I find it difficult to take anyone going against those estimates seriously, as long as they are not a part of a team working on a vaccine or something. And yet, we have had several of those here over the last few days.
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I must have missed those. Are people saying faster or slower? Or?

The problem is that the short estimates either rely on us doing something very risky like not testing properly (the estimates below a year) or everything going perfectly (12-18 month estimates) which often isn't the case with any vaccine or drug test. There is also a possibility that we won't be able to develop a vaccine. I'm hoping this is unlikely but it is possible.
 
Wibble said:
I must have missed those. Are people saying faster or slower? Or?

The problem is that the short estimates either rely on us doing something very risky like not testing properly (the estimates below a year) or everything going perfectly (12-18 month estimates) which often isn't the case with any vaccine or drug test. There is also a possibility that we won't be able to develop a vaccine. I'm hoping this is unlikely but it is possible.
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There have been people who have said that probably we won't ever have a vaccine, cause there are no vaccines for the other coronaviruses. Which IMO is a weak argument, cause the need for this vaccine is much higher than for the others, and when humans have an incentive, they find a way. Obviously, not much money is put on a vaccine for common cold coronaviruses (cause there are four different coronaviruses who cause the common cold, and all together cause only around 25-30% of common cold diseases). Then there was not much incentive for SARS, cause SARS was gone (and how do you even do clinical trials for SARS).

Here, there is a lot of incentive (and for the private sector, a lot of money to be made).

However, there is an unlikely, but real possibility that a vaccine won't be found at least short term. That would really suck, and it means that tens of millions (lower bound) will unfortunately perish from the disease.
 
Wibble said:
I must have missed those. Are people saying faster or slower? Or?

The problem is that the short estimates either rely on us doing something very risky like not testing properly (the estimates below a year) or everything going perfectly (12-18 month estimates) which often isn't the case with any vaccine or drug test. There is also a possibility that we won't be able to develop a vaccine. I'm hoping this is unlikely but it is possible.
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The estimates are what Revan has posted and what you wrote; 12-18. I have read dozens of articles and statements regarding this and everyone who sound like they know what they are talking about (apart from Pogue mostly) agree that this is the time that will take.

What you are not taking into account is that 12-18 is an estimate for everything going perfectly in one trial, but we have around 40 of those going on in parallel.This is normally not the case. All that we need is for one of the teams to succeed and that will be the end of it and this is why the 12-18 is the mainstream prediction. Just too many teams working on it for all of them to not be successful.

But no, instead of accepting this already depressing time frame, this thread has devolved into a sequence of unfounded what ifs. What if this is like Dengue fever, what if it is contagious like the smallpox, etc.
 
If a working vaccine was ready tomorrow, how long before it could be mass produced for the whole world? 7 billion vaccines would surely take years to produce?

The old, weak, compromised and rich would be first in line. So what for the rest of us? Vaccinations in 2022? 2023?
 
Hound Dog said:
The estimates are what Revan has posted and what you wrote; 12-18. I have read dozens of articles and statements regarding this and everyone who sound like they know what they are talking about (apart from Pogue mostly) agree that this is the time that will take.

What you are not taking into account is that 12-18 is an estimate for everything going perfectly in one trial, but we have around 40 of those going on in parallel.This is normally not the case. All that we need is for one of the teams to succeed and that will be the end of it and this is why the 12-18 is the mainstream prediction. Just too many teams working on it for all of them to not be successful.

But no, instead of accepting this already depressing time frame, this thread has devolved into a sequence of unfounded what ifs. What if this is like Dengue fever, what if it is contagious like the smallpox, etc.
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It probably is. The higher end estimations for both are around R = 6 (though covid-19 has a much lower end R estimation).

What I don't understand is how both this and SARS have the same estimated R, but this has managed to infect a thousand time more people.
 
Revan said:
However, there is an unlikely, but real possibility that a vaccine won't be found at least short term. That would really suck, and it means that tens of millions (lower bound) will unfortunately perish from the disease.
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Recent data coming from Italy and Germany from asymptomatic people tested suggest that the virus is far more widespread than originally thought. The actual current death rate might actually be below 0.5% (and this is with several health systems already being overwhelmed) so it is hard to see this getting into the hundreds of millions.
 
Revan said:
It probably is. The higher end estimations for both are around R = 6 (though covid-19 has a much lower end R estimation).

What I don't understand is how both this and SARS have the same estimated R, but this has managed to infect a thousand time more people.
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I meant the chickenpox, sorry.
 
Garethw said:
If a working vaccine was ready tomorrow, how long before it could be mass produced for the whole world? 7 billion vaccines would surely take years to produce?

The old, weak, compromised and rich would be first in line. So what for the rest of us? Vaccinations in 2022? 2023?
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Not sure. You don't need egg embryos and other staff like for old vaccines. It should be much faster than normally, considering that the technology (at least that of Moderna) is different.

I guess that billions are going to be vaccinated within the next year providing that the clinical trials end on the first half of next year.
 
Hound Dog said:
Recent data coming from Italy and Germany from asymptomatic people tested suggest that the virus is far more widespread than originally thought. The actual current death rate might actually be below 0.5% (and this is with several health systems already being overwhelmed) so it is hard to see this getting into the hundreds of millions.
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Sure, but if the entire world gets infected (several times) which will happen in case no vaccine is found in the next 10 years, then you get those really high numbers even with 0.5% death rate (which I believe is close to the true death rate, and might even be an overestimate).

Of course, the fact that there are several dozens of trials going on, makes me believe that by the end of the year we will have confidence that several vaccines look very promising and safe.
 
Revan said:
Sure, but if the entire world gets infected (several times) which will happen in case no vaccine is found in the next 10 years, then you get those really high numbers even with 0.5% death rate (which I believe is close to the true death rate, and might even be an overestimate).
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Do we have any reason to believe that herd immunity is not a thing? I thought that the medical community was mostly in agreement that, once around 70%-80% gets infected, it is over?
 
Revan said:
To be fair, it is a much bigger incentive than usual (easily the biggest incentive since smallpox). And the technology has advanced much more than before, several vaccines (which are completely different from each other) were built within 6 weeks or so of the genome sequence being sent from the Chinese researchers.

I think it is quite understandable to go faster than usual. For example, it made sense to do parallel trials in both humans and animals. Of course, I believe that the researchers who are doing this are extremely cautious.
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Accelerated testing could happen and then you just have to cross your fingers nothing disastrous will result.
 
Hound Dog said:
Do we have any reason to believe that herd immunity is not a thing? I thought that the medical community was mostly in agreement that, once around 70%-80% gets infected, it is over?
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Herd immunity is a thing but if the higher estimates of R0 are correct then we need a HIT of 85% and getting to this without a vaccine will result in millions of deaths - 11-70 million depending on the actual R0 and death rate. And then immunity to viruses often only lasts 1/2/3 years.

So we really need a vaccine.
 
Hound Dog said:
Do we have any reason to believe that herd immunity is not a thing? I thought that the medical community was mostly in agreement that, once around 70%-80% gets infected, it is over?
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Very likely there won't be a lifetime immunity. MERS gave immunity for around a year, SARS for around 3, human cold coronaviruses for a few months to a few years. So, I don't think it is game over once we reach that stage, more likely the spreading gets limited from a high R0 to a R0 lower than 1, but there will still be some spreading. I guess a lot depends on how much immunity we gain. With a bit of luck it could be several years.
 
Wibble said:
Accelerated testing could happen and then you just have to cross your fingers nothing disastrous will result.
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I think so. From what I have understood, it is not that they are removing the clinical trials, just that they will do them faster. So typically, they would experiment a couple of years or so with animals, while now they are doing it in parallel with a small group of people already getting the vaccine.
 
Revan said:
There have been people who have said that probably we won't ever have a vaccine, cause there are no vaccines for the other coronaviruses. Which IMO is a weak argument, cause the need for this vaccine is much higher than for the others, and when humans have an incentive, they find a way. Obviously, not much money is put on a vaccine for common cold coronaviruses (cause there are four different coronaviruses who cause the common cold, and all together cause only around 25-30% of common cold diseases). Then there was not much incentive for SARS, cause SARS was gone (and how do you even do clinical trials for SARS).

Here, there is a lot of incentive (and for the private sector, a lot of money to be made).

However, there is an unlikely, but real possibility that a vaccine won't be found at least short term. That would really suck, and it means that tens of millions (lower bound) will unfortunately perish from the disease.
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I agree but that said there would surely be lots of money if there was a vaccine for the various viruses that cause colds? Although since no one viruses accounts for more than 15% of colds on average it would be hard to eliminate them all. But if you could take out the top 2 or 3 the benefit to society would be huge.
 
Wibble said:
I agree but that said there would surely be lots of money if there was a vaccine for the various viruses that cause colds? Although since no one viruses accounts for more than 15% of colds on average it would be hard to eliminate them all. But if you could take out the top 2 or 3 the benefit to society would be huge.
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Most people don't even take the flu shot, with flu being a much bigger deal and the vaccine giving a good protection against 3-4 most common influenza viruses (which cause close to all human flu infections). And as I said, there are 4 coronaviruses that cause common cold (with all of them combined causing a small ratio of what is known as the common cold). So if we would have vaccines for all four of them, and then everybody in the world would get vaccinated yearly, we would reduce the common cold for 20% or so (accounting some people for whom vaccine has no effect). A lot of trouble for not much gain, when instead you can just sell paracetamol and vitamin C.

Additionally, not many people would get a shot that gives you 20% protection against common cold.
 
Wibble said:
Herd immunity is a thing but if the higher estimates of R0 are correct then we need a HIT of 85% and getting to this without a vaccine will result in millions of deaths - 11-70 million depending on the actual R0 and death rate. And then immunity to viruses often only lasts 1/2/3 years.

So we really need a vaccine.
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I actually agree with all this, I was responding to the assessment that tens of millions is a lower-end estimate.
 
Revan said:
Most people don't even take the flu shot, with flu being a much bigger deal and the vaccine giving a good protection against 3-4 most common influenza viruses (which cause close to all human flu infections). And as I said, there are 4 coronaviruses that cause common cold (with all of them combined causing a small ratio of what is known as the common cold). So if we would have vaccines for all four of them, and then everybody in the world would get vaccinated yearly, we would reduce the common cold for 20% or so (accounting some people for whom vaccine has no effect). A lot of trouble for not much gain, when instead you can just sell paracetamol and vitamin C.

Additionally, not many people would get a shot that gives you 20% protection against common cold.
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People are idiots. I got pneumonia with flu ages ago, possibly the 2009 Swine flu. It wasn't good at all and I've had the flu vaccine every year so far. Since then nothing worse than a mild cold. I'd take a shot that reduced the chances of me getting a cold by 20% every day of the week. The benefits to productivity would be huge as well.

People still don't get their kids immunised against chickenpox FFS.
 
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