Nobody would admit that, but that could potentially be most efficient way to combat a future global pandemic (assuming people keep sabotaging the system by not cooperating).
My understanding is that viruses replicate by hijacking human cells and I don't think those cells survive the ride.
Feeling sick is usually your immune system reacting and killing off the virus. If it didn't react at all, the virus would eventually kill enough cells to kill the host.
The only way to not get sick from a viral infection is for your immune system to react quickly before the virus spreads too much, which would kill the virus before the host had enough of it to start shedding it and become infective to others.
It’s also easier to control dosage with inoculation, and therefore control for side effects. A naturally reproducing virus, even one that begins benign, can infect different people with varying severity, and change via mutation over time.
Not saying this is a good idea though.
Obviously, vaccine is preferable IF people were getting vaccinated.
Also, it is normal for viruses to infect vaccinated people. The point of most vaccines is not to protect any single person, it is to protect the population. This happens by making it difficult for the virus to find a new host.
When enough people are not vaccinated the virus is perfectly "happy" to mostly spread through unvaccinated population and hit the vaccinated population in the process.
Think about this way: imagine a town densely built with wooden houses.
Any fire would quickly consume entire town.
Now imagine replacing 25% of wooden houses with brick houses.
The fire will still consume entire town and it will still consume most or all of the brick houses.
Does this mean that brick houses spread fire as readily as wooden ones?
The UK managed to vaccinate approximately 700-900K people per day during the recent drive.
During the same time period we had approximately 200,000 confirmed cases (via test) per day. The general consensus is that the real number of infections approached 1 million.
It's not impossible to imagine that if the R rate were a bit higher the virus could spread faster.
You do have the issue that it won't reach people locked indoors, but then again vaccination doesn't reach all people either.
I mean the crafted virus would have to be significantly more transmissible than the deadly one it tries to outpace.
I know this might sound like a radical idea, but vaccinations can only be effective when people are actually getting vaccinated.
I'm worried that we'll make a super fast spreading but mild virus, then it'll mutate.
The issue with COVID is that some people are hit hard and a lot of people develop hard to detect complications.
If you could modify the virus to avoid complications and avoid hitting some people very hard, you could have pretty effective way to innoculate population.
The thing you are after is a virus that has same basic spike protein for your immune system to recognize and only enough mechanism to multiply itself.
> The thing you are after is a virus that has same basic spike protein for your immune system to recognize and only enough mechanism to multiply itself.
The version of that that is feasible is a viral vector vaccine e.g., ChAdOx1.