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Comment by Gravityloss | Hacker News Reader

Is testing fast now? Do patients who don't have symptoms spread it effectively?

I'm not an expert, but I see two main possibilities: It can be contained. Or it will spread all around the world and only vaccines will later make it go away, if a large enough percentage of the population is vaccinated. How long does it take to create a vaccine nowadays? And mass production...

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Here's a Twitter thread from an expert with thoughts on what we'll need to do if it's not contained: https://twitter.com/t_inglesby/status/1221434570714669056

It’s so infuriating to try to read that great info in a million disjointed tweets. I don’t get Twitter character limits at all in the year 2020.

It's so infuriating to see people using Twitter for what it's not, and also in this case for causing undue worry.

It's indeed sad, but apparently many people think "if it's good enough for the POTUS, it's good enough for me!"

I hate people using it as a freaking Powerpoint replacement... Bullet point after tedious bullet point, great job presenting your knowledge, Mr. Expert! /s

Probably it's just the wrong tool for this job.

It's heartening to see the way that we're reacting to this threat.

We need to be doing exactly the same thing in the fight against climate change.

> How long does it take to create a vaccine nowadays?

https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/artic...

From this article: “If the vaccine appears effective and safe in a number of animal species, it will go into clinical trials on humans. This takes at least one year even if expedited,” Yuen said.

Is that including production? Or just getting approval?

Even fast-tracked development will take 1-2 years.

Edit: sorry, I basically repeated what the comment above said. Somehow I overlooked that...

Inovio of San Diego already have a computer designed but untested DNA vaccine. In the past DNA vaccines have not been approved for use in humans but they are partnered with a Chinese company and I'm not sure the Chinese will be as conservative as the FDA in terms of trying things. [pasted from another thread]

Their previous Elboa vaccine seemed to work well in tests though I think it never made it to the field. http://ir.inovio.com/news-and-media/news/press-release-detai...

I sometime think the testing protocols are a bit over cautious when you have a candidate that is probably safe and quite likely effective.

The virus changes rapidly, not unlike the flu. A vaccine isn't likely to be effective to eradicate it, and it will likely stay around as a permanent epidemic like the flu or HIV. Virulence can increase or decrease randomly in the future, but the spread doesn't seem like it can be contained, since a perfect quarantine can't be maintained at this scale. We'll have to live with a new virus and pay the price of some natural selection.

Polio also changes rapidly (it's faster than HIV), but we are nearing polio eradication with vaccine. Relationship between vaccine and mutation is complex.

I didn't know it changed, let alone that fast. Really makes it all the more impressive.

Does immunity still hold for the changed virus?

Depends whether the targeted antigen has changed. Best case (for humans) is if it couldn't escape the targeting without deactivating the virus.

RNA viruses do change quickly, but influenza's probably on a different level with its multi-segment, randomly assorted genome.

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