Researchers Step Up Efforts to Develop a 'Universal' Flu Vaccine
npr.org
npr.org
> By contrast [with the flu], this new coronavirus has only just started circulating in humans. "We basically have the opportunity to prevent spread of a new respiratory disease in the first place," says Althaus.
The reason I care more about ncov is it's about to overwhelm our hospitals far past capacity and even without that has what seems to be a _much_ higher fatality rate than the flu.
We also don't know what the graphs would have looked like if we didn't enact social distancing -- even if the graph is not flattening right away, it doesn't mean that we should give up. For all we know, the graph could be way worse without these measures (assuming a hypothetical world where we have perfect knowledge and have enough PPE and swabs and machines to test every person who suspects they have COVID-19, which the US currently doesn't).
Please don't give up!
A problem with this approach is that viruses mutate and change over time. In the future, the coronavirus could evolve in ways that render a drug like remdesivir useless. This arms race between drugs and viruses is why you need a new flu shot every year.
Alternatively, a drug can work by blocking a viral protein from interacting with a human protein it needs. This approach – essentially protecting the host machinery – has a big advantage over disabling the virus itself, because the human cell doesn’t change as fast. Once you find a good drug, it should keep working. This is the approach that our team is taking. And it may also work against other emergent viruses.
Compare to my aunt, she got the first shot but not the second and third because she does not see the point. No amount of urging by family has changed her mind.
If the 7 part shot was available now, I would get it and finish it. Not everybody would because humans be oddballs.
We have plenty of vaccines which require multiple shots. If he just halved it to 3-4 shots I think it would be a huge win for the world. Move from there to the idea of 1 shot.
My worry is, COVID-19 causing SARS-CoV2 shouldn't become another Rhinovirus due to mutations from the large spread. There was a paper form China telling there has already been at-least one mutation in Wuhan; but the accuracy of that research is disputed due to small sample size.
Edit: Mixed Flu with common cold, corrected.
Flu is caused by Influenza viruses. Common cold is caused by a grab bag of viruses, some - but not all, of which are rhinoviruses. There are in fact already coronaviruses that cause common cold.
if we can't detect mutation, can we really tell other coronavirus from SARS-CoV2?
Most of them are irrelevant noise but some likely alter behaviour.
The influenza virus is more inviting to evolution due to having multiple nucleoproteins. If multiple strains of influenza manage to infect the same cell, the virions produced will contain a mixture of the nucleoproteins. The process is called reassortment.
Corona on the other hand has only one conneted RNA strand.
This is only what I gathered from the internet, not an expert on this.
So far I've only read [1] that wrote about Nextstrain. While he clearly did his homework with a group of people, you can read in the comments that experts think his conclusions about the mutating genome are a bit too strong. Too strong as in: it could be the case but you can't state that it is the case.
[1] https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th...
We don’t even know the mechanism of action of many commonly prescribed drugs with certainty. We can’t cure rheumatoid arthritis or many other autoimmune diseases. Humanity is far indeed from from a universal vaccine.
From my understanding, most of what's inside our bodies isn't part of our genetics. For example there's lots and lots of bacteria, microbes, whatever that constitutes the fauna of the digestive system, it's not produced by the body but is essential to its functioning.
Once again, I don't really know what I'm talking about
Scientists don't have that precise knowledge of what the human body is made of. There is a whole microbriome of non human organisms that are vital to our health.
2) Even if we did, it would still be a major accomplishment to find something that kills everything else but not us. We are happy when we find a treatment that kills 1 bad thing without killing us.
3) The only mechanism we have for artificial immunity is vaccines. These do not kill anything; they just train our immune system. Given how our immune system works, this limits us to a blacklist approach, of training it to attack specific proteins.
Prevention is better than cure, prevent infections by preventing unhealthy lifestyle.
If we have prevention and cure at the same time, people is going to be reckless. Enforce prevention methods as first step.
20 students breathing together in a classroom are going to pass something on no matter what.
Short of living under eternal quarantine, there's no "healthy lifestyle" that prevents.