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.