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I’ve had an intuition for a while that the coronavirus scare would be mostly over by September.
I think there are inklings that it might be so.
The international race for a virus seems to be entering the
final lap. Russia has actually announced that have one ready for distribution. This
is a bit of a dodge; they are simply skipping the traditional third stage of
trials, and will be testing it while using it. In this emergency situation, this
seems to me to make sense.
But it means that they have not yet won the race; we will
only know in a few months, as with several of the other candidates.
And it is a race; an international race for allies and
prestige. Whoever does get a good vaccine out the door first will have scored a
major coup. The Russians at least are well aware of this—they’ve named their
vaccine “Sputnik V, an intentional reference to the space race.
Another prime candidate in this contemporary space race is England. All seems on track there; the New York Times reports that their Oxford vaccine has already been given to more than 10,000 volunteers in Britain, Brazil and South Africa. 30,000 people in the United States are to receive the vaccine next week. This means they are actually ahead of the Russians. AstraZeneca is poised to put out two billion doses if and when it is approved. Some months ago, the Oxford team was saying September was possible; it looks as though it may be.
The next strong competitor is China; or rather, a China-Canada collaboration. They are also into stage three, and still looks promising. China has several other candidates, one of which they have already, like Russia, begun using on their military.
The US of course has several vaccines in development too, and are pouring a lot of money into them, with “Operation Warp Speed.” They are pre-producing massive numbers of doses to roll out as soon as one is approved. Dr. Fauci says he is cautiously optimistic that one will be ready by the end of the year.
Evidence is growing that there is already widespread semi-immunity to the virus. The figure that comes up most often is 50%: 50% of the population already immune, due to prior exposure to other coronaviruses, aka the common cold.
This bodes well for finding a vaccine for the other 50%; in effect, we already have one. Quick and not so dirty: isolate the virus, and expose people to it. They get a cold; they do not die from coronavirus.
And if a cold can do it, it stands to reason that a lab-based vaccine should do it equally easily.
This also suggests that “herd immunity” is a lot closer than we thought. If we already are 50% immune, only another 20% of the population getting vaccinated should do it. There are indications that herd immunity has already taken effect in Sweden, or in London or New York City.
If herd immunity is this close, the Swedish approach might have been the right one: at worst, just open things up, let it rip, and in a month or two, the virus will be spent everywhere. The death rate in the meantime is going down, as we learn more about how to prevent and how to treat. The virus is becoming steadily less deadly.
The next strong competitor is China; or rather, a China-Canada collaboration. They are also into stage three, and still looks promising. China has several other candidates, one of which they have already, like Russia, begun using on their military.
The US of course has several vaccines in development too, and are pouring a lot of money into them, with “Operation Warp Speed.” They are pre-producing massive numbers of doses to roll out as soon as one is approved. Dr. Fauci says he is cautiously optimistic that one will be ready by the end of the year.
Evidence is growing that there is already widespread semi-immunity to the virus. The figure that comes up most often is 50%: 50% of the population already immune, due to prior exposure to other coronaviruses, aka the common cold.
This bodes well for finding a vaccine for the other 50%; in effect, we already have one. Quick and not so dirty: isolate the virus, and expose people to it. They get a cold; they do not die from coronavirus.
And if a cold can do it, it stands to reason that a lab-based vaccine should do it equally easily.
This also suggests that “herd immunity” is a lot closer than we thought. If we already are 50% immune, only another 20% of the population getting vaccinated should do it. There are indications that herd immunity has already taken effect in Sweden, or in London or New York City.
If herd immunity is this close, the Swedish approach might have been the right one: at worst, just open things up, let it rip, and in a month or two, the virus will be spent everywhere. The death rate in the meantime is going down, as we learn more about how to prevent and how to treat. The virus is becoming steadily less deadly.
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