Why stop fighting when it becomes just a cold? The common cold costs billions (not to mention making people miserable).
Did you know there are four coronaviruses that cause cold-like symptoms? I didn't, because I didn't really care. That's all Op is saying.
In recent history we haven’t bothered fighting colds at all and this attitude has not served us well. Up until March 2020 it was socially acceptable to roll into your office, church, or school coughing and sneezing everywhere. In 2020 we even had to produce public health videos to teach people how to wash their hands and why it was a good idea to do so! This was taking place in high income, well educated countries that would consider themselves technologically advanced and socially sophisticated.
That casual posture is obviously gone for a generation, but what underpinned it was our collective delusion that we had conquered infectious disease while all visibly ill from all the infectious disease circulating in the population every year.
The research efforts are interesting because it seems to be a very tough vaccine candidate due in part to the sheer number of viruses and strains you’re dealing with. I’ve not seen the financials, but I’d be surprised if we were spending anything like the estimated costs of tens of billions of dollars on finding a solution. I guess it’s a case where the costs are borne in a very diffuse way but the solutions have to come out of specific research budgets. Why bother researching and getting approval for a vaccine, when you can just sell people over the counter snake oil like cough medicine?
We don’t have to shrug when our low baseline expectations for life get even worse. We can and must do better if we believe in progress.
At the medical science level, we absolutely do investigate common cold pathogens and others, and have developed a battery of techniques, all of which were very rapidly brought to bear on Covid-19.
Where I think we do need to do a lot better is in international co-operation and co-ordination. In the USA the CDC needs competent leadership again, they need their seat back at the US national Security Council and they need their international outreach budget back. Europe needs to develop their own equivalent to the CDC that's well funded and effective.
The WHO also needs thoroughly upgrading. I think given the way national governments have ensured the WHO stays a political football, they actually overall do a lot of good. A lot of nations are thoroughly reliant on them for advice and technical assistance, but clearly their chronic dependence on the good will of nation states has severely compromised their ability to act as an independent and effective organisation. They need more funding and more independence, not bullying by China and the USA to serve domestic agendas.
What do you mean? Don't do what?
Please don't make that argument your making? Please don't make your argument in that way? Please don't argue at all? Please don't ask questions?
Literally, all the comment you responded to did what ask a question to invite further discussion of an idea they were interested in.
When I hear "please don't do that" I picture kids pulling up flowers in someone's yard and they yell out "please don't do that!" It seems aggressive and unspecific for a civilized discussion among equals.
Regular mask wearing and careful avoidance of problematic public situations is already more effective than any vaccine for this virus will ever be.
Quarantines, maybe. The vulnerable already have to shield themselves as protection, and the economic losses are pretty steep before you factor in the human cost of suffering.
Do regular challenges play a role in modulating immune response and health?
Keyword being existing. Future advances may change the landscape significantly, and not just for colds. For that, we need a stable society, competent governance, and investment in foundational science.
It seems quite strange to me that this should be multiplicative. There should be some economics of scale, especially for viruses from the same family.
(It is also quite strange to me that the SARS-2 vaccine takes some long, as if we have to invent the vaccine technology from scratch. But granted, I don't know much about this field. Maybe it is not a technology problem but mostly testing and approval)
For the “common cold” vaccine, you’re looking at hundreds of strains across about nine types of virus, so a pretty tall order using traditional approaches.
A couple of hundred does seems tall at all, especially when it is basically just 9 different types. It seems to me that this is easy to scale once a general approach is found.
But since there is basically no progress on the common cold, I assume it is just not solved for any of these families, so the total number of strains or families doesnt matter anyway. Or it is mutating faster than we do anything. But I dont get how a small number like couple of hundred should matter - at least from the technogical perspective.
It would be cool if we could test a method, rather than a vaccine, and next time just whip up a vaccine with the tested method and apply it quickly.
But nobody will accept a full quarantine, commerce restrictions, or any of the other heavy actions for fighting a normal cold. And with a lot of reason. It's best if people don't even propose carrying those practices after the disease gets less lethal, because even proposing them can bring bad consequences right now.