Corona Virus Treatment

I was reading only this morning about councils noticing the impact of the lockdown on their recycling collections

 

My parents had large parties when I was a kid. No wine bottle recycle back then ... Mother wouldn't allow my Father to put them out for the dustman ("It looks So bad" !!), so he and I used to have fun letting them go down the well one-by-one, and listening to them whistle on the way down ...

 

Good progress - keep up the pace Oxford

The Oxford University vaccine has been successfully tested on animals and the next step is for 510 humans to be tested next week.

 

I fear it's because no one knows Armandii...this one has got them completely baffled IMHO...

 

The Swedish way.
The most interesting discussion I'm reading at the moment in Finnish media (sorry, haven't found translations yet) is comparing the very different approaches Finland and Sweden have taken. Finland has followed the lockdown path, whereas in Sweden the country remains open. The infection and death tolls are naturally strikingly different, 5 to ten fold higher in Sweden.

Yet the discussion is about the cost to the society in the long run. The fact remains that until there is a vaccine or a treatment, it is likely that 100% of the population will be infected and the mortality rate will be roughly the same in all areas with similar health care capacity. This will happen quickly or can be slowed down. A steep curve or a flat curve.

What will be different is the collateral damage cost in economy, which is already enormous in any lockdown country. In Sweden, the businesses are open and the cashflow going to support the impacted is minimal.

The key is the time it takes to have a solution i.e. a vaccine or treatment. If it's three months, lockdown countries are probably better off in a way that so many lives have been saved. If it's a year, Sweden will probably have the only strong economy left in Europe, with a massive death toll but not too unlike the lockdown countries where the deaths have accumulated more slowly, but still have done so.

So a steep curve, or a flat curve. The end number of deaths are likely to be similar in countries where the healthcare system has capacity to support it. It's about the path, and how much it costs.

The head of Finnish health care organisation acknowledges this, and says there is no right solution, there are just several bad options and the aftermath will be scrutinised in the decades to come. He did however say that it is humane to show that the society is doing it's utmost to protect the vulnerable at any cost, rather than doing everything to keep the society economically sound. Even when we know that the number of deaths will likely to be the same in the end.

I appreciate the way he worded the situation.

 

It shouldn't be to hard as there's be 18 Covid virus's before Covid 19

 

When our glass recycling was in open baskets, we'd scavenge empty bottles of Moet from the back of the local hotel after wedding receptions and 'garnish' the top of our glass recycling basket with them.

 

This is what we need - produce the vaccine now - if it fails - nothing lost except money - if if succeeds....

The team at Oxford University will start the first UK study of an experimental vaccine against COVID 19 next week.

But so great is the need, and so high their confidence that it will work, that they will start large-scale production before the trials are even complete.

 

Are you calling my parents alcoholics? !

I reckon they won't know until they know ...

First step will be to test everything they have on the shelf to see if it has any efficacy. Not a vaccine as such, but something that helps in treatment. For anything that has already been through trials - even if it was useless at fixing the originally intended problem - the side effects etc will already be known, so anything showing any promise can be used immediately. No need for double-blind trial / placebo as sadly plenty of data to compare again. The retrovirus drugs - e.g. for HIV - seem to have provided some possible candidates.

For vaccine many/most will fail during trials - even if no side effects they may not be sufficiently effective. Something that prevents infection is best of course, but anything that reduces either infection rate, or intensity of disease, can be used to reduce death rate and number of people off work, so can buy time in the interim until a prevention vaccine becomes available.

Whatever the popular press may be saying, a new vaccine will take 12 to 18 months before being widely available. Hard to imagine that we will still need it by then ... and if the virus mutates even a vaccine that is highly effective for the current stain may be useless for its new sibling.

So a number of avenues of attack will be being pursued (spell check wanted to choose "perused" - I guess that too!)

But it is entirely possible that Covid-19 will disappear after the summer (I'm doubtful ... but ...). Isolation removes opportunity of spreading to new hosts, as does heard immunity from the people who have had it; no idea how many youngsters have had it, with mild symptoms, but may very well be "a lot" ... if they can't catch it again then the ability for it to spread will be dramatically less than first-time-around. SARS and MERS disappeared without trace ... and, sadly, the Vaccines being developed to treat them at that time got to clinical trial and the funding was pulled because no one wanted to pay to stockpile a vaccine that might never be needed. If the scientists had continued that work perhaps we would have been better placed - with plenty of relevant research knowledge - this time around.

With infinite funds we'd be able to do everything of course ...