Thanks Gerry, some common sense there. " There’s a virus that the CDC currently estimated has killed between 20,000 and 45,000 people in the United States -- influenza. But only half the country gets that vaccine.
There’s only 14 deaths [in the U.S., as of Friday afternoon] from COVID-19, but everybody would get a vaccine now. The point being: We’re not very good at assessing risk." I think we are up to 40 dead now from this Wuhan flu. ------------- Max Charleston SC On Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 12:24 PM archer75--- via Mercedes < mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote: > > > > Philly vaccine pioneer: We can’t rush a coronavirus vaccine | Q&A > > > At a White House news conference Tuesday, Anthony Fauci, the head of the > National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, told President Donald > Trump a coronavirus vaccine would likely not be available within the next > year or two. Trump responded: “I like the sound of a couple of months > better.” > > But a vaccine is not going to be available in the next couple of months, > and according to Dr. Paul Offit, that’s appropriate. Offit, director of the > Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is the > co-developer of the rotavirus vaccine. It took roughly 26 years to perfect > that protection against a disease that, according to the Centers for > Disease Control and Prevention, was the leading cause for severe diarrhea > in children before the vaccine’s introduction in 2006. > > Why is it unrealistic to expect a vaccine for coronavirus in a few months? > > Nobody’s ever seen this virus before. Therefore, if you’re interested in > making a vaccine, you first had access to that virus only a couple months > ago. That’s not long. > > [To make a vaccine] you first need to make a decision as to what approach > you want to take. Then you have to do extensive animal model testing to > make sure that the approach that you’ve taken is safe in animals, and that > it induces an immune response which would likely be protective. Then you > gradually do studies in people to make sure it’s safe, and then to make > sure that it induces an immune response. That takes time, a lot of time, > typically years. Then and only then, are you ready to put it into people to > see whether or not it works in an outbreak situation. > > In 2018, after the World Health Organization declared an Ebola outbreak in > the Democratic Republic of Congo, there was an experimental vaccine very > quickly. > > I think people got fooled by Ebola. When the outbreak occurred in West > Africa and we had a vaccine pretty much that rolled off shelf within weeks, > people thought, Ha! That’s easy. > > But what they didn’t realize is people have been working on an Ebola > vaccine for 20 years. They’ve done the animal model testing. They’ve done > the testing to make sure that the vaccine was safe and was immunogenic. > > But that’s not true here. This is a new virus. So we’re starting from > scratch. > > What is it about this virus that makes people confident that a vaccine > will be available? > > I don’t know. You know, I’d say about 15% to 20% of the respiratory > infections that we see in our hospital in the winter months are [types of] > coronavirus. This is a virus that has been around for 50 years. > > But here are these three newer strains of coronavirus — MERS, SARS, and > now this COVID-19. The first two viruses, SARS and MERS, have come and gone. > > I think this [COVID-19] virus likely will come back because it’s > different. If you were infected with SARS or MERS viruses, you were sick. > And it’s very easy to tell who was sick and who wasn’t. You could then > quarantine those people — put a moat around them, if you will — so that > they wouldn’t infect others. So those infections quickly died out. This > virus is more like flu. It spreads in a similar manner to flu by > respiratory droplet. It’s about as contagious as flu. It has the same set > of symptoms as flu. And I think in the end, frankly, it’s going to have the > same mortality rate as flu. > > There are certainly human studies showing that if you’re infected with a > coronavirus — meaning one of the typical coronaviruses — you can have > immunity to that strain for at least a year and probably longer. That’s > encouraging. If natural infection can protect you, then it’s encouraging > that it can produce an immune response which is protective and which you > should be able to mimic with vaccination. > > Vaccine development is tightly regulated. How much of that is about safety > vs. red tape? > > If you’re going to be testing this in otherwise healthy people who are > very, very unlikely to die from this infection, you better make sure it’s > safe. So you want those regulations in place. > > An example is the dengue vaccine. When it was tested in Latin America and > Philippines, it was found to actually increase your risk of dengue shock > syndrome. Children who were less than 9 years of age, who had never been > exposed to the virus before, were actually more likely to be hurt by the > vaccine than helped by it. Now, you only knew that from doing large > clinical trials with tens of thousands of people. > > The history of medical breakthroughs is littered with tragedy. You want to > make sure that things are safe. > > What do you think is behind the apparent willingness to skirt the rules to > rush a vaccine? > > I think that because we falsely overrate, or incorrectly rate, what the > mortality rate is, we’re willing to accept that things will be rushed > through. In fact, coronavirus doesn’t have a high mortality rate. > > There’s a virus that the CDC currently estimated has killed between 20,000 > and 45,000 people in the United States -- influenza. But only half the > country gets that vaccine. > > There’s only 14 deaths [in the U.S., as of Friday afternoon] from > COVID-19, but everybody would get a vaccine now. > > The point being: We’re not very good at assessing risk. > > > https://www.inquirer.com/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-trump-paul-offit-20200306.html > > Gerry > ........................................................................ > > > _______________________________________ > http://www.okiebenz.com > > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com > > _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
