Covid-19 News

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/1…ue&recirc=taboolainternal


    One in five people worldwide is at risk of developing ‘severe’ cases of Covid-19, scientists claim.


    Scientists also estimated that 349 million people worldwide, or 4% of the global population, were at “high risk” of developing severe Covid-19 if infected with the virus. Individuals who fell into the high risk category were defined as those who would require hospital admission if they fell ill with the virus, and included people who may not have any underlying health conditions.


    Covid 19 could be the answer to global warming if the death toll would eventually climb into the billions.

    Quote from Wyttenbach

    Also UK: Confirming China did cheat about the October outbreak date

    https://dash.harvard.edu/bitst…df?sequence=3&isAllowed=y


    Today German press (FAZ,Spiegel) reports that first corona virus has been found 18.December in Italy's sink water! Thus the outbreak must have happen before 10.December! China is definitely Lying.

    Quote from axil

    Coronavirus antibodies may last only two to three months after infection, study suggests


    The problem could be that the main immune response does come from the classic corona antibody that almost everybody has in his body. The classic antibody could stay up to 17 years. This is not the time frame your are protected. The efficiency decreases over time. A good estimate can be gained from the fact that 20% of the colds are corona based what would tell that the "good enough" protection is lost after 5 years in average.

    The indirect classic corona protection also very well explains why older people are much more affected than younger as they have fewer chances to get a corona refresh.

    The thing that worries me about this corona virus is that it may be causing sustained damage. So when your "immunity" wears out, you can get it again and again and the damage to the organs may accumulate.


    That is way, it is best to find drugs (vaccine but I doubt that will happen) that prevent the virus from multiplying before it does significant damage and not just gets you out of the hospital this year.

    Quote from oldguy

    The thing that worries me about this corona virus is that it may be causing sustained damage. So when your "immunity" wears out, you can get it again and again and the damage to the organs may accumulate.


    That is way, it is best to find drugs (vaccine but I doubt that will happen) that prevent the virus from multiplying before it does significant damage and not just gets you out of the hospital this year.


    oldGuy - nothing can be ruled out because it is unknown. But this is unlikely, and the scare story above about no immunity looked to me to be one of these popular press things that is blown up and misinterpreted. It is pretty unlikely that an immune response once developed would not hang around for quite a while able to be reactivated on new infection. People are right to be cautious, because we don't know much yet, but no immunity (and hence also no vaccine) is pretty improbable.

    Quote from oldguy

    it is best to find drugs (vaccine but I doubt that will happen)


    You and some other people here have said that a vaccine is unlikely. Do you have a reason? Can you point to an authoritative source? The experts in the mass media in the U.S. and Japan seem confident that a vaccine will be developed. Their estimates of how long it will take vary widely, but they have not said it can't be done. It is difficult to develop a vaccine for some diseases, for various reasons. For example, seasonal influenza mutates rapidly so a new vaccine has to be developed every year, and one vaccine has to work for four different strains. Mass media reports say that COVID-19 does not mutate quickly the way influenza does, so this should not be a problem.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    authoritative source

    no, but I don't think that is possible to be sure and without doubts either way on a new virus


    I personally have doubts because there are no successful long term vaccines for things like the common coronavirus colds. Notice I a specifically speaking of corona virus and not flu. You arguments based on flu vaccines are not the as relevant applied to corona viruses.


    At any rate I have doubts about a vaccine in the short term that will work over long times. Notice I say I have doubts and I did not say it is impossible or unlikely. Those are different things. You seem to try to set up strawmen to push your points.

    Quote from oldguy

    no, but I don't think that is possible to be sure and without doubts either way on a new virus


    I personally have doubts because there are no successful long term vaccines for things like the common coronavirus colds. Notice I a specifically speaking of corona virus and not flu. You arguments based on flu vaccines are not the as relevant applied to corona viruses.


    At any rate I have doubts about a vaccine in the short term that will work over long times. Notice I say I have doubts and I did not say it is impossible or unlikely. Those are different things. You seem to try to set up strawmen to push your points.


    I understand that sentiment. It's true that scientists have been working on vaccines for years for other corona viruses and haven't produced a working one yet. I think the difference now is that a lot more resources are being thrown at Covid-19. It's a worldwide race to see who wins. That form of competition can be a key difference maker.


    This is a good article below on the state of vaccine development. I think they do a nice job in this article providing different views on where we are at with it. I think there will be a vaccine for Covid by the end of 2021, but there is some over-promising (and marketing) going on with the people behind them. But the end of Covid by way of a vaccine will be choppy and there will still be outbreaks in different parts of the world for the next couple of years at least.


    https://www.fiercepharma.com/v…-vaccine-become-a-reality

    Quote from oldguy

    No, but I don't think that is possible to be sure and without doubts either way on a new virus


    No one said it is possible to be sure. However, the experts say it is likely a vaccine can be developed. You disagree. Why?


    Quote from oldguy

    I personally have doubts because there are no successful long term vaccines for things like the common coronavirus colds.


    The experts say the two are very different, and the fact that there is no vaccine for the cold is no indication there can be no vaccine for the coronavirus. That's what I read, anyway. Did you read something different? Where? Sources, please.



    Quote from oldguy

    At any rate I have doubts about a vaccine in the short term that will work over long times.


    "I have doubts" is not evidence. If you cannot point to reason, your doubts mean nothing to me. Perhaps you have a gut feeling. Intuition. If that is what you mean, you should say so.

    • Official Post

    Scathing COVID-19 book from Lancet editor

    Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, has written “a sort of history, diagnosis and prescription” of the COVID-19 pandemic in real time, writes reviewer Stephen Buranyi. Horton’s new book is haunted by the question: how did two of the richest, most powerful and most scientifically advanced countries in the world — the United States and the United Kingdom — get it so wrong, and cause such ongoing pain for their inhabitants?

    Nature | 6 min read

    Quote from Alan Smith

    Horton’s new book is haunted by the question: how did two of the richest, most powerful and most scientifically advanced countries in the world — the United States and the United Kingdom — get it so wrong, and cause such ongoing pain for their inhabitants?


    I don't know about the UK but my answer for the U.S. is that our society has turned away from science & technology. We abandoned our traditions. We abandoned our birthright! Granted, the U.S. and all societies have always had an uneasy relationship with science. It upsets people. It discovers things that some people do not want to hear about, such as the theory of evolution. But our elite going back to George Washington, Jefferson and Franklin have always supported science. Franklin himself was one of the greatest scientists of his era.


    The U.S. would never have become a unified nation without technology, especially the telegraph and the railroad. We owe our existence as a nation to science. We have forgotten that.


    Quoting the book review:


    "Politicians are easy targets, though. Horton goes further, to suggest that although scientists in general have performed admirably, many of those advising the government directly contributed to what he calls 'the greatest science policy failure for a generation'."


    Cold fusion was the greatest science failure for generation. For the last two centuries.



    "Elsewhere, the book discusses places with less-egregious failures, such as Spain and France, and the rare successes, such as New Zealand, and Kerala in India."


    This is nonsense. So far, the successes outnumber the failures counting by population. The successes include China, 1.2 billion, Korea and Japan. Could it be the author and the reviewer are unaware of these? tthey cite New Zealand, which is a good example but it is a small country.

    Here is  a podcast that contains a pretty good tutorial on immune response and how it relates to SARS-Covid-2 and other viruses. You can listen to the podcast, or simply read the Show Notes as a summary.


    Quote

    An experiment displaying the enormous variability from person to person (Upcoming paper out of the Rockefeller lab)

    • 70 people who had coronavirus
    • They looked for the presence of neutralizing antibodies
    • Almost 20% of them did not make neutralizing antibodies
    • In other words, 20% of people that had IgG/IgM antibodies did not actually have antibodies that could neutralize the virus when a special assay was done
    • Furthermore, each person made a different volume (titer) of neutralizing antibodies (some made tons and others made little)
    • It’s unclear how those 20% without neutralizing antibodies were able to survive the virus/or how they clinically responded to the virus
    • I.e., They could have had a lower inoculum of infection, or they might have been asymptomatic

    -David’s takeaway:

    • There’s enormous variability in the B cell response to coronavirus
    • The B cell response is what creates antibodies
    • The open questions are…


    • Can those individuals that did NOT make a good neutralizing antibody response be reinfected?
    • If so, how soon after?
    • And that ability to be infected… does it correlate with neutralizing antibodies in the serum?
    Quote from JedRothwell

    No one said it is possible to be sure. However, the experts say it is likely a vaccine can be developed. You disagree.

    NO I did not say anything about the likelihood of a vaccine. READ don't twist. I said I had doubts. I gave no statistical level of my doubts or probabilities of likelihoods.


    Let me reverse this and ask you- Are you trying to say you have no (zero) doubts that usable successful long term vaccines will be available shortly? How can you be so sure about that with 100% probablitiy? Give your authoritative source.

    Merck chief casts doubt on coronavirus vaccine timeframe

    https://www.ft.com/content/7b7…ed-460f-b100-7bf74e3f4cbf


    you want doubts,.... here are a few to get you started.



    Scientific Doubt Tempers COVID-19 Vaccine Optimism

    https://www.the-hospitalist.or…covid-19-vaccine-optimism

    https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/931330


    Groups sow doubt about COVID vaccine

    https://www.modernhealthcare.c…d-vaccine-one-even-exists


    Doubts over US government plans for COVID-19 vaccine

    https://pharmaphorum.com/news/…ans-for-covid-19-vaccine/


    Doubts Over Oxford COVID-19 Vaccine After Animals Tested Catch Virus

    https://www.newsweek.com/covid-19-vaccine-u-k-1504841


    AstraZeneca makes multi-million COVID-19 vaccine dose promise but efficacy doubts remain

    https://www.thepharmaletter.co…ut-efficacy-doubts-remain


    HIV Scientist Doubts Coronavirus Vaccine; Claims Social Distancing is Better to Fight COVID-19

    https://www.techtimes.com/arti…ter-to-fight-covid-19.htm


    oldguy - vaccines are uncertain. It is the name of the game. So there are always doubts. But of the 70 or so candidates most people reckon at least 10% will succeed and become useful vaccines.


    time frame is another matter and depends on:

    money thrown to do mass production early on likely non-working candidates

    efficacy tests in places that have a high enough infection rate to make them quick

    regulators willing to sacrifice high safety (e.g. safety tests taking years) for a quick working vaccine. Some techniques are safer than others, more likely to get early approval.

    Quote from oldguy

    give your sources...


    Mainly experts quoted in the New York Times, NHK, and statements from the W.H.O. and the CDC. The director of the W.H.O. and others giving press conferences express confidence that a vaccine will be developed. They do not say they are certain, but they are optimistic. See, for example:


    https://medicalxpress.com/news…llions-covid-vaccine.html


    "The World Health Organization said Thursday that a few hundred million COVID-19 vaccine doses could be produced by the end of the year—and be targeted at those most vulnerable to the virus.


    The UN health agency said it was working on that assumption, with a view to two billion doses by the end of 2021, as pharmaceutical firms rush to find a vaccine."

    Quote from oldguy

    Scientific Doubt Tempers COVID-19 Vaccine Optimism

    https://www.the-hospitalist.or…covid-19-vaccine-optimism

    https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/931330


    These articles do not say it can't be done. They say it will probably not be done as quickly as some optimists hope. Quoting your first ref:


    "'If all the cards fall into the right place and all the stars are aligned, you definitely could get a vaccine by December or January,' Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said last week.


    But Fauci said a more realistic timeline is still 12 to 18 months, and experts interviewed by Medscape Medical News agree. They say that although recent developments are encouraging, history and scientific reason say the day when a COVID-19 vaccine is widely available will not come this year and may not come by the end of 2021. . . ."


    I said the experts differ on how quickly it can be done. Granted, some of them wonder whether it can be done at all, but the majority of experts I have read are optimistic.


    Most of the other articles you reference express doubts about one of the specific vaccines now under development. They do not say that a vaccine -- any vaccine -- probably cannot be developed.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    These articles do not say it can't be done.

    exactly. They are there because you try to twist my saying I have doubts into something else. I get tired of you twisting what I and others say. I never said it can't be done. You still have not said why you think there is 100% chance that it will be done. If there is not 100% chance then there is doubt..... Get a life.


    Why do you want to try to twist what I say?

    Quote from oldguy

    I never said it can't be done.


    You say it is unlikely. Why? Do you have a reason? Just curious.


    Quote from oldguy

    You still have not said why you think there is 100% chance that it will be done.


    I never said 100%. For that matter, I never said anything myself. I said the experts say it is more likely than not. They are optimistic. I wouldn't know. You seem to know. Reveal your source of wisdom, like nature revealing herself to science, oh wise one.


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…_la_Science,_Mus%C3%A9e_d'Orsay,_photo_by_emilee_rader_1.jpg


    Quote from oldguy

    If there is not 100% chance then there is doubt.....


    Anything can be doubted. But, when ever major world-class health organization expresses optimism about an outcome, it is a good bet that outcome will be achieved. Granted that has not been the case for curing cancer and some other medical challenges. Not a sure thing, but as Damon Runyon said: "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that is the way to bet."

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