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We should make vaccines before viruses emerge
NorthCascades
Posts: 10,968 Member
in Debate Club
A lot like the flu shot, they make educated predictions about what strains will circulate before it happens. And we don't spend 15 years testing it, we know the framework for making flu shots is safe.
Sounds crazy, right? Because of SARS and MERS, public health people knew it was a matter of time until another coronavirus went pandemic. They thought it would arrive in Chicago instead of Seattle but got the rest right.
It took 2 days for Moderna to engineer a molecule that's 95% effective against the disease. Thanks to all the research during SARS1. That's how they knew to target the spike protein.
Scientists have a very good idea which virus families have the potential to become pandemic. Like the flu, if we have the vaccine on the shelf when the virus emerges, the best matching shot may (or may not) need tweaking if it's a novel strain, and for the most part only the changes will need to be tested, instead of the whole thing. Like the flu shot.
We can do Phase 1 & 2 testing ahead of time. We can even do some limited Phase 3 trials, verifying that the shot makes people produce antibodies. More efficacy testing would be needed it the virus became a problem, compared to starting from scratch.
This would cost about a millionth of what covid has so far. We could have jabbed our way to herd immunity by last summer. Almost 3 million have died so far worldwide.
This isn't my idea, it was cooked up by people smarter than me who work in public health.
Sounds crazy, right? Because of SARS and MERS, public health people knew it was a matter of time until another coronavirus went pandemic. They thought it would arrive in Chicago instead of Seattle but got the rest right.
It took 2 days for Moderna to engineer a molecule that's 95% effective against the disease. Thanks to all the research during SARS1. That's how they knew to target the spike protein.
Scientists have a very good idea which virus families have the potential to become pandemic. Like the flu, if we have the vaccine on the shelf when the virus emerges, the best matching shot may (or may not) need tweaking if it's a novel strain, and for the most part only the changes will need to be tested, instead of the whole thing. Like the flu shot.
We can do Phase 1 & 2 testing ahead of time. We can even do some limited Phase 3 trials, verifying that the shot makes people produce antibodies. More efficacy testing would be needed it the virus became a problem, compared to starting from scratch.
This would cost about a millionth of what covid has so far. We could have jabbed our way to herd immunity by last summer. Almost 3 million have died so far worldwide.
This isn't my idea, it was cooked up by people smarter than me who work in public health.
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Replies
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Vaccines and especially the new mRNA ones that can be retooled almost immediately are the most dramatic shift in the balance of power between viruses and living things in the 2 or 3 billion years viruses have existed.2
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Figure out a way to predict the future of something as complicated as a genome, and you'll be a very rich person. Until then, a genome has to evolve and arise, and demonstrate a significant risk before a vaccine can be developed for it. Vaccines will always follow the virus. But as NorthCascades said, mRNA vaccines may be a game-changer.8
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Yup there were a couple of SARS, MERS vaccines in the exploratory/research stages.
These however were ‘shelved’ for a number of reasons.
(I am more familiar with the Oxford research and they were able to move faster because of the research they had already done on the pervious viruses.)
1) By the time the vaccine was developed the virus had subsided to the extent that there was no one to run a trial on.
Phase 1 and 2 trials need subjects. Even for COVID 19 the trials had to be moved from the initial trial countries because there were insufficient subjects to spiking countries.
2) With the demand for medications and vaccines for ongoing current virus, disease, etc, money isn’t available for the development of ‘what if’ vaccines.
The big hold up to having partially developed vaccines is who is willing to invest. Researchers are wanting to research but, few individuals, charities, companies, governments, etc are willing to plough billions of dollars into a product that may never be needed and generate no profit.
Research into vaccines in general has been ongoing on a back burner but can only be amped up once the unknown is known.
I do think this pandemic will probably put more money into vaccine research, but I can’t see predicting the future.
More like as this vaccine was built on the bones of the previous SARS virus, so will the next be built on the greater knowledge we have now.
Sorry, not a scientist, just doing a bit of food for thought rambling.
Cheers, h.7 -
Pretty sure they have been doing this for years - I read a very in depth piece about it a while back that there are labs all over the world that create these more virulent viruses that are capable of infecting humans in order to study them and be prepared when one hits. One of those labs is in Wuhan. Coincidence I'm sure.
And since I'm sure I will get a TON of disagrees on this I am going to try to dig up the article that made a case for the possibility that this virus was man made - or at least laboratory enhanced. (FWIW I don't have an opinion either way but it was a very interesting read.)
Found it:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html?fbclid=IwAR3mq4n5WJ8SAnNy3f9ifusS20Ys-4fGZjHuRwDfA4usmFBAwUGNVtZtD1w
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It was first recognized in Seattle, but now we know that at least one person who died in California was sick with it in December.They thought it would arrive in Chicago instead of Seattle but got the rest right.2 -
YellowD0gs wrote: »Figure out a way to predict the future of something as complicated as a genome, and you'll be a very rich person. Until then, a genome has to evolve and arise, and demonstrate a significant risk before a vaccine can be developed for it. Vaccines will always follow the virus. But as NorthCascades said, mRNA vaccines may be a game-changer.
This is what I thought too. It's common sense. But, again, it took Moderna 2 days to design the covid vaccine because the approach to a SARS vax works on covid. If covid is even a descendant of SARS they're separated by almost 20 years and have passed through at least two other animals before coming back to humans. The idea being it's likely to be a small mutation that makes a virus turn extremely dangerous, if we have a shot ready for the first virus it might work for the second one, or it might need small changes. But we can cover a lot of the field ahead of time.
I don't have any illusions that this is going to happen, I'm posting to point out that it isn't impossible. Funding an adventure like this (obviously after this miserable pandemic is over) would be much less expensive for governments than funding relief packages, but more expensive than doing nothing, which is why it's not going to happen.1 -
Here is some news on research on the latest treatments and developing another vaccine
This is from biospace.com, I had to shorten the link.
https://bit.ly/31gDVDj1 -
1. I am not sure any sort of drug trial would be approved to treat a non-existant disease. Thats an interesting ethical delimma.
2. Research is half the battle. In a worldwide pandemic like SARS-COV-2 production is also a big limiting factor. Producing and storing enough "maybe" vaccines to be prepared for a mass roll-out would be expensive.3 -
#1 is a real interesting point. Pretty big stumbling block. Good catch!
I don't think production issues would be a problem for doing this though. If people knew what to produce they could get started sooner in the next pandemic. There could still be supply chain and production issues but starting to tackle them on day 30 instead of day 365 can only help the overall problem. 🙂0 -
NorthCascades wrote: »A lot like the flu shot, they make educated predictions about what strains will circulate before it happens. And we don't spend 15 years testing it, we know the framework for making flu shots is safe.
Sounds crazy, right? Because of SARS and MERS, public health people knew it was a matter of time until another coronavirus went pandemic. They thought it would arrive in Chicago instead of Seattle but got the rest right.
It took 2 days for Moderna to engineer a molecule that's 95% effective against the disease. Thanks to all the research during SARS1. That's how they knew to target the spike protein.
Scientists have a very good idea which virus families have the potential to become pandemic. Like the flu, if we have the vaccine on the shelf when the virus emerges, the best matching shot may (or may not) need tweaking if it's a novel strain, and for the most part only the changes will need to be tested, instead of the whole thing. Like the flu shot.
We can do Phase 1 & 2 testing ahead of time. We can even do some limited Phase 3 trials, verifying that the shot makes people produce antibodies. More efficacy testing would be needed it the virus became a problem, compared to starting from scratch.
This would cost about a millionth of what covid has so far. We could have jabbed our way to herd immunity by last summer. Almost 3 million have died so far worldwide.
This isn't my idea, it was cooked up by people smarter than me who work in public health.
I think this would be great. However, I've seen warehouses filled with unused medications (for emergency outbreaks like malaria) so I have to ask, what happens if they guess wrong?1 -
NorthCascades wrote: »A lot like the flu shot, they make educated predictions about what strains will circulate before it happens. And we don't spend 15 years testing it, we know the framework for making flu shots is safe.
Sounds crazy, right? Because of SARS and MERS, public health people knew it was a matter of time until another coronavirus went pandemic. They thought it would arrive in Chicago instead of Seattle but got the rest right.
It took 2 days for Moderna to engineer a molecule that's 95% effective against the disease. Thanks to all the research during SARS1. That's how they knew to target the spike protein.
Scientists have a very good idea which virus families have the potential to become pandemic. Like the flu, if we have the vaccine on the shelf when the virus emerges, the best matching shot may (or may not) need tweaking if it's a novel strain, and for the most part only the changes will need to be tested, instead of the whole thing. Like the flu shot.
We can do Phase 1 & 2 testing ahead of time. We can even do some limited Phase 3 trials, verifying that the shot makes people produce antibodies. More efficacy testing would be needed it the virus became a problem, compared to starting from scratch.
This would cost about a millionth of what covid has so far. We could have jabbed our way to herd immunity by last summer. Almost 3 million have died so far worldwide.
This isn't my idea, it was cooked up by people smarter than me who work in public health.
I think this would be great. However, I've seen warehouses filled with unused medications (for emergency outbreaks like malaria) so I have to ask, what happens if they guess wrong?
That was part of the point I was trying to make with my #2 above. This idea proposes we expand the amount of emergency drugs we keep on hand, which the governmeny has to buy, and then stores, then replinish their stock if they do not get used by their expiration date. How much taxes do you want to pay for "maybe relevant one day" drugs.
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4legsRbetterthan2 wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »A lot like the flu shot, they make educated predictions about what strains will circulate before it happens. And we don't spend 15 years testing it, we know the framework for making flu shots is safe.
Sounds crazy, right? Because of SARS and MERS, public health people knew it was a matter of time until another coronavirus went pandemic. They thought it would arrive in Chicago instead of Seattle but got the rest right.
It took 2 days for Moderna to engineer a molecule that's 95% effective against the disease. Thanks to all the research during SARS1. That's how they knew to target the spike protein.
Scientists have a very good idea which virus families have the potential to become pandemic. Like the flu, if we have the vaccine on the shelf when the virus emerges, the best matching shot may (or may not) need tweaking if it's a novel strain, and for the most part only the changes will need to be tested, instead of the whole thing. Like the flu shot.
We can do Phase 1 & 2 testing ahead of time. We can even do some limited Phase 3 trials, verifying that the shot makes people produce antibodies. More efficacy testing would be needed it the virus became a problem, compared to starting from scratch.
This would cost about a millionth of what covid has so far. We could have jabbed our way to herd immunity by last summer. Almost 3 million have died so far worldwide.
This isn't my idea, it was cooked up by people smarter than me who work in public health.
I think this would be great. However, I've seen warehouses filled with unused medications (for emergency outbreaks like malaria) so I have to ask, what happens if they guess wrong?
That was part of the point I was trying to make with my #2 above. This idea proposes we expand the amount of emergency drugs we keep on hand, which the governmeny has to buy, and then stores, then replinish their stock if they do not get used by their expiration date. How much taxes do you want to pay for "maybe relevant one day" drugs.
Thanks for bringing up this thread again. I was trying to remember the name and where it was. I have since heard some interesting info pertaining to this subject.
So the current pandemic price is around $20 Trillion. I think that's total but maybe for the US?For about $2 billion, Crowe said, he and his colleagues could develop monoclonal antibodies that could protect against the 100 most likely human epidemics. The focus would be on "how much of the mat can you cover with your antibodies, rather than picking the virus du jour," he said.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/02/21/develop-universal-coronavirus-vaccines-treatments-fight-next-pandemic/6784129002/
So to me, it makes sense to do this now.2 -
4legsRbetterthan2 wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »A lot like the flu shot, they make educated predictions about what strains will circulate before it happens. And we don't spend 15 years testing it, we know the framework for making flu shots is safe.
Sounds crazy, right? Because of SARS and MERS, public health people knew it was a matter of time until another coronavirus went pandemic. They thought it would arrive in Chicago instead of Seattle but got the rest right.
It took 2 days for Moderna to engineer a molecule that's 95% effective against the disease. Thanks to all the research during SARS1. That's how they knew to target the spike protein.
Scientists have a very good idea which virus families have the potential to become pandemic. Like the flu, if we have the vaccine on the shelf when the virus emerges, the best matching shot may (or may not) need tweaking if it's a novel strain, and for the most part only the changes will need to be tested, instead of the whole thing. Like the flu shot.
We can do Phase 1 & 2 testing ahead of time. We can even do some limited Phase 3 trials, verifying that the shot makes people produce antibodies. More efficacy testing would be needed it the virus became a problem, compared to starting from scratch.
This would cost about a millionth of what covid has so far. We could have jabbed our way to herd immunity by last summer. Almost 3 million have died so far worldwide.
This isn't my idea, it was cooked up by people smarter than me who work in public health.
I think this would be great. However, I've seen warehouses filled with unused medications (for emergency outbreaks like malaria) so I have to ask, what happens if they guess wrong?
That was part of the point I was trying to make with my #2 above. This idea proposes we expand the amount of emergency drugs we keep on hand, which the governmeny has to buy, and then stores, then replinish their stock if they do not get used by their expiration date. How much taxes do you want to pay for "maybe relevant one day" drugs.
I dunno. I'm happy to pay taxes to have fire fighters available even though my house never caught fire and I don't think it ever will. Almost everyone thinks it's smart to pay for car insurance. I know I don't want to pay a lot of taxes to keep paying almost every citizen $1k+ several times a year and bail out half the industries that exist.5 -
Isn't what you propose exactly like the flu shot. I see someone already trying to combine themNorthCascades wrote: »A lot like the flu shot, they make educated predictions about what strains will circulate before it happens. And we don't spend 15 years testing it, we know the framework for making flu shots is safe.
Sounds crazy, right? Because of SARS and MERS, public health people knew it was a matter of time until another coronavirus went pandemic. They thought it would arrive in Chicago instead of Seattle but got the rest right.
https://www.precisionvaccinations.com/flu-shot-and-covid-19-vaccine-combo-launches-phase-1-study
I'm curious if the flu vaccine will move to mrna now that covid has broken the way.
I expect we'll need a regular shot, to cover the latest variants of COVID and boost general protection. It would be nice if it's merged into a single annual covid/flu vaccine.
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Lack of will to fund is a real stumbling block. Heard a piece about lack of malaria funding last month:
https://www.wbur.org/npr/979809529/covid-19-vaccine-progress-could-mean-good-news-for-malaria-vaccine
"...probably in the 10 months of 2020, in excess of $14 billion were invested in developing SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. The one [malaria] vaccine that we have, RTS,S - that's taken 30 years to develop, probably all along received far less than $1 billion. So vaccines against malaria because they are targeted to some of the poorest sectors of our global community represent a market failure, and they therefore don't attract the type of resources that can be and are mobilized when the problem does affect other parts of the world."2 -
Pretty sure they have been doing this for years - I read a very in depth piece about it a while back that there are labs all over the world that create these more virulent viruses that are capable of infecting humans in order to study them and be prepared when one hits. One of those labs is in Wuhan. Coincidence I'm sure.
And since I'm sure I will get a TON of disagrees on this I am going to try to dig up the article that made a case for the possibility that this virus was man made - or at least laboratory enhanced. (FWIW I don't have an opinion either way but it was a very interesting read.)
Found it:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html?fbclid=IwAR3mq4n5WJ8SAnNy3f9ifusS20Ys-4fGZjHuRwDfA4usmFBAwUGNVtZtD1w
I believe without a doubt it was man made and intentionally released.3 -
Pretty sure they have been doing this for years - I read a very in depth piece about it a while back that there are labs all over the world that create these more virulent viruses that are capable of infecting humans in order to study them and be prepared when one hits. One of those labs is in Wuhan. Coincidence I'm sure.
And since I'm sure I will get a TON of disagrees on this I am going to try to dig up the article that made a case for the possibility that this virus was man made - or at least laboratory enhanced. (FWIW I don't have an opinion either way but it was a very interesting read.)
Found it:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/coronavirus-lab-escape-theory.html?fbclid=IwAR3mq4n5WJ8SAnNy3f9ifusS20Ys-4fGZjHuRwDfA4usmFBAwUGNVtZtD1w
I believe without a doubt it was man made and intentionally released.
I wouldn't doubt that it could have been man made, or at least enhanced or manipulated, the article makes a good case for that. Manipulating these viruses does happen in the name of research all the time.
But I believe in that case that the release would have been accidental.
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You cannot make a highly effective vaccine before you know the genetic sequencing of a virus. You cannot know the sequencing until the virus fully mutates. If we knew what virus was going to develop, then we could prevent it from ever happening. Another thought is we don't have a vaccine for the coronavirus that manifests itself as the common cold. Such has eluded even the best medical minds dedicated to virology.2
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Unless I read something to the contrary, I'm skeptical that they've tried hard to find a vaccine for the common cold, since there are a many different viruses that manifest that way, as I understand it (https://www.cdc.gov/features/rhinoviruses/index.html), and so even apart from mutations (which I would guess are common), it would be a very expensive proposition without much expected payoff.
Interestingly, one thing I learned this year is that I have more allergy symptoms than I'd realized (all pretty mild), that I'd mostly chalked up to colds that were (in mind mind) more common in certain seasons/change of season.0 -
NorthCascades wrote: »4legsRbetterthan2 wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »A lot like the flu shot, they make educated predictions about what strains will circulate before it happens. And we don't spend 15 years testing it, we know the framework for making flu shots is safe.
Sounds crazy, right? Because of SARS and MERS, public health people knew it was a matter of time until another coronavirus went pandemic. They thought it would arrive in Chicago instead of Seattle but got the rest right.
It took 2 days for Moderna to engineer a molecule that's 95% effective against the disease. Thanks to all the research during SARS1. That's how they knew to target the spike protein.
Scientists have a very good idea which virus families have the potential to become pandemic. Like the flu, if we have the vaccine on the shelf when the virus emerges, the best matching shot may (or may not) need tweaking if it's a novel strain, and for the most part only the changes will need to be tested, instead of the whole thing. Like the flu shot.
We can do Phase 1 & 2 testing ahead of time. We can even do some limited Phase 3 trials, verifying that the shot makes people produce antibodies. More efficacy testing would be needed it the virus became a problem, compared to starting from scratch.
This would cost about a millionth of what covid has so far. We could have jabbed our way to herd immunity by last summer. Almost 3 million have died so far worldwide.
This isn't my idea, it was cooked up by people smarter than me who work in public health.
I think this would be great. However, I've seen warehouses filled with unused medications (for emergency outbreaks like malaria) so I have to ask, what happens if they guess wrong?
That was part of the point I was trying to make with my #2 above. This idea proposes we expand the amount of emergency drugs we keep on hand, which the governmeny has to buy, and then stores, then replinish their stock if they do not get used by their expiration date. How much taxes do you want to pay for "maybe relevant one day" drugs.
I dunno. I'm happy to pay taxes to have fire fighters available even though my house never caught fire and I don't think it ever will. Almost everyone thinks it's smart to pay for car insurance. I know I don't want to pay a lot of taxes to keep paying almost every citizen $1k+ several times a year and bail out half the industries that exist.
The difference (to me) in these two examples is we know fires do happen and car accidents do happen. So we all pool our money (so to speak by paying of insurance) in order to cover our chances of said event. In comparison, to me this is more like buying insurance on a space ship presuming that will be my method of transportation in the future.0 -
You cannot make a highly effective vaccine before you know the genetic sequencing of a virus. You cannot know the sequencing until the virus fully mutates. If we knew what virus was going to develop, then we could prevent it from ever happening. Another thought is we don't have a vaccine for the coronavirus that manifests itself as the common cold. Such has eluded even the best medical minds dedicated to virology.
I think you're confused.
Why would the best minds in medicine be working on something unimportant like the common cold? Instead of, you know, cancer, and other stuff that kills people in appreciable numbers?
Vaccines are the least profitable things pharmaceutical companies make. They take many years and are very high risk meaning most never go to market, but it'll cost untold millions to make either way. A vaccine against something that's a minor annoyance for a few days isn't going to be a wind fall even if it works is it?
There was a randomized controlled trial of a candidate cold vaccine in the 1960s. Doesn't seem like there's been much work since. I don't think "it's not worth the effort" counts as eluding the best minds.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28516442/
Also, about the generic sequence stuff, please notice we have many covid vaccines, we also have many covid variants. The first vaccine against covid does a pretty good job against all of the mutated versions, better on some than others but effective against all including mutations that didn't happen until after the vaccine was already in production.1 -
4legsRbetterthan2 wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »4legsRbetterthan2 wrote: »NorthCascades wrote: »A lot like the flu shot, they make educated predictions about what strains will circulate before it happens. And we don't spend 15 years testing it, we know the framework for making flu shots is safe.
Sounds crazy, right? Because of SARS and MERS, public health people knew it was a matter of time until another coronavirus went pandemic. They thought it would arrive in Chicago instead of Seattle but got the rest right.
It took 2 days for Moderna to engineer a molecule that's 95% effective against the disease. Thanks to all the research during SARS1. That's how they knew to target the spike protein.
Scientists have a very good idea which virus families have the potential to become pandemic. Like the flu, if we have the vaccine on the shelf when the virus emerges, the best matching shot may (or may not) need tweaking if it's a novel strain, and for the most part only the changes will need to be tested, instead of the whole thing. Like the flu shot.
We can do Phase 1 & 2 testing ahead of time. We can even do some limited Phase 3 trials, verifying that the shot makes people produce antibodies. More efficacy testing would be needed it the virus became a problem, compared to starting from scratch.
This would cost about a millionth of what covid has so far. We could have jabbed our way to herd immunity by last summer. Almost 3 million have died so far worldwide.
This isn't my idea, it was cooked up by people smarter than me who work in public health.
I think this would be great. However, I've seen warehouses filled with unused medications (for emergency outbreaks like malaria) so I have to ask, what happens if they guess wrong?
That was part of the point I was trying to make with my #2 above. This idea proposes we expand the amount of emergency drugs we keep on hand, which the governmeny has to buy, and then stores, then replinish their stock if they do not get used by their expiration date. How much taxes do you want to pay for "maybe relevant one day" drugs.
I dunno. I'm happy to pay taxes to have fire fighters available even though my house never caught fire and I don't think it ever will. Almost everyone thinks it's smart to pay for car insurance. I know I don't want to pay a lot of taxes to keep paying almost every citizen $1k+ several times a year and bail out half the industries that exist.
The difference (to me) in these two examples is we know fires do happen and car accidents do happen. So we all pool our money (so to speak by paying of insurance) in order to cover our chances of said event. In comparison, to me this is more like buying insurance on a space ship presuming that will be my method of transportation in the future.
Ok now I know you're pulling my leg. 🙂0
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