[evan_au]

A cynic might say that the timing of this decision appears to be arranged so that Dr Fauci was unavailable to participate in the committee. I get the impression that he is a guy who speaks his mind politely, and is likely to influence others.

[Petrochemicals]

I too thought that the reason they did not develop a vaccine was the mutation, by the time you have manufacture it its useless, this is why we continue to be reinfected with colds. A problem in the corona vaccine.

I thought that the risks & discomfort associated with a cold vaccine would exceed the consequences of having a cold.
This is sufficient to make a cold vaccine unjustifiable.

There are vaccines and vaccines arnt there, but just think how many workdays are lost due simple colds. Conversley, think how we would have been annhialated by this corona if we relied on vaccines

[alancalverd]

Losing a workday from a cold (as evan has pointed out, there is no such thing as a "simple" cold) is an annoyance. The longterm debilitation of COVID is a tragedy. Life is more than economics.

There are indeed vaccines and vaccines, but my Reply #57 above explains why in the case of COVID, a "safe, effective" vaccine may do more harm than good.

[acsinuk]

 If we find a vaccine to cure the common cold then I think covid 19 will also be eliminated.
Funnily enough, I always used to get a cold every year for the first 70 years of my life but for the last 3 years at least I have been having the flu injections and had occasional sniffles but not a proper old fashioned cold.  Maybe the 2 are tied together.  What about you??

[evan_au]

for the last 3 years at least ... not a proper old fashioned cold

Most of the "common cold" symptoms do not come from the virus itself, but from your body's immune response to the virus.
- Despite the wide variety of viruses that make up the common cold, the symptoms are similar, because they all come from the same human immune system.

The fact that you haven't had any cold symptoms may reflect a change in environment: Perhaps you are now more isolated from circulating viruses?

Or, more likely, it may reflect the fact that as we get older, our immune response is not as active, producing fewer symptoms.

That means that as we get older, the virus is more likely to run amok, and cause more severe disease, and perhaps death.

[alancalverd]

Vaccines generally don't cure, they prevent.

40 years of clinical research ended ignominiously with the closure of the Common Cold Research Unit,  just as molecular virology became an effective research tool. Compare this with the speed of development of smallpox vaccination in 1774 and poliomyeletis vaccine (1948 - 52)  and you may get the impression that the common cold is a lot more difficult to characterise and prevent.

The quickest way to develop a COVID vaccine is to develop a COVID vaccine. However as I pointed out in reply #57 above this may not be a Good Thing, and given the 70 years that elapsed between announcing a worldwide vaccination program for smallpox and  its elimination, and the growing stupidity of antivax campaigns, it probably won't be effective in an acceptable timespan.

National quarantine can be instituted immediately and is demonstrably effective.

[Bored chemist]

 If we find a vaccine to cure the common cold then I think covid 19 will also be eliminated.

Setting aside the error about vaccines curing things...
Nobody who understand immunology thinks that.

[Petrochemicals]

If we find a vaccine to cure the common cold then I think covid 19 will also be eliminated.
Funnily enough, I always used to get a cold every year for the first 70 years of my life but for the last 3 years at least I have been having the flu injections and had occasional sniffles but not a proper old fashioned cold.  Maybe the 2 are tied together.  What about you??

Usually when im rundown, so that probably means you worked to hard all your life. Strenuous activity is known to lower the immune response, so being as your over 70 now i imagine your on permanent holiday  break geting lots of R&R so you may  be the most protected you have ever been, as long as your  body is ok you are probably in great shape.

[acsinuk]

We all understand that the common cold mutates each year and that it is a virus. So if covid 19 and common cold are similar then we must expect both to mutate but not panic and lockdown when it does.

[Bored chemist]

We all understand that the common cold mutates each year and that it is a virus.

You clearly do not understand.

The "common cold" is a name we give to illness caused by any of about 200 viruses, some of which are coronaviruses, (most are rhinoviruses).
Broadly speaking none of them is lethal.
Covid19 is quite often lethal.

So if covid 19 and common cold are similar t

They are not.
How did you not recognise that?

[alancalverd]

A mouse and a rhinoceros are both mammals, so there is no need to panic if you are charged by an angry rhino. Just tell your cat to kill it, and carry on as normal.

Philosophy is not science. Bad philosophy isn't even philosophy.

[Petrochemicals]

We all understand that the common cold mutates each year and that it is a virus. So if covid 19 and common cold are similar then we must expect both to mutate but not panic and lockdown when it does.

Flu mutates, thats why 90 percent of pregnant mothers in 1918 1920 who where infected for the first time with spanish flu died. But i do agree, it was pretty clear that pregnant women where not dying by the droves in wuhan, if we react like we are at present everytime corona mutates we would surely come to a halt as a species.

[evan_au]

it was pretty clear that pregnant women where not dying by the droves in wuhan

A recent meta-analysis suggests that there is a slightly elevated risk of premature birth due to COVID-19.

Apart from premature birth, the usual COVID-19 risks apply, and disease is more severe in women with other chronic problems like diabetes or obesity.

[Petrochemicals]

it was pretty clear that pregnant women where not dying by the droves in wuhan

A recent meta-analysis suggests that there is a slightly elevated risk of premature birth due to COVID-19.

Apart from premature birth, the usual COVID-19 risks apply, and disease is more severe in women with other chronic problems like diabetes or obesity.

What would be interesting as a comarison to Spanish flu would be to see figures from people who live sterilised lives away from dirt filth etc versus those with lots of contact with corona like viruses, school teachers being the ones that pick up every cold under the sun. The people who had russian flu in the 19th century are thought to have had resistance to spanish flu

[alancalverd]

The population of Wuhan clearly had more exposure to COVID than anyone else, and died just as frequently as those exposed subsequently.

Workers in meat processing plants are not exposed to "dirt,filth etc", particularly in Europe where very strict legal standards of hygiene apply. They seem to be remarkably prone to COVID outbreaks. The key, I think, is in the permanently moist atmosphere.

[evan_au]

The population of Wuhan clearly had more exposure to COVID than anyone else

The Naked Scientists podcast this week spoke to a number of experts about the origins of the novel corona virus.
- Naturally, with limited evidence from the early months of the pandemic, there was a wide range of ideas
- One researcher tracing the family tree of the coronovirus suggested that the "ancestral" viral strain in humans appeared to come from another province, farther south than Wuhan. He suggests that the virus may already have been adapted to humans by the time it reached Wuhan, and started spreading through the fish market.
- Another speaker commented that for previous viruses, people living in close contact with local bats were found to have antibodies to bat viruses, indicating that they had been previously exposed to the virus, but without human-to-human transmission, it wouldn't become an epidemic or pandemic.

Perhaps the UN investigation team can find some more details, assuming that a cover-up hasn't been in full swing for the past 8 months...
See: https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-scientists-podcast/where-did-covid-come

[Edwina Lee (OP)]

Thanks Evan_Au. Interesting podcasts.
I don't know if the WHO's investigators can settle the political slurrs, as Trump has been slurring China and the WHO right from the beginning, claiming that China has to pay for the pandemic. Clearly, if the WHO's team comes up with nothing to 'convict' China, then Trump's political move would be to keep promoting the global attack on China and the WHO.
We have seen it all before with Bush's invasion of Iraq.

[acsinuk]

Forgetting the politics but the real problem is testing.  If the testing takes more than an hour even a day then it is not worth doing.  Why, because the person who was tested is still in contact with his/her family bubble who are all wondering around the shops and at work when they may be infectious.  Testing should be scrapped totally unless the results are available within an hour.  A total waste of time and leading only to misleading results!
Look at Sweden, they never locked down just advised the population of the necessity to wash hands mask up and avoid large indoor gatherings.  They had a high level of deaths in first month but now no second spike as herd immunity has been achieved by allowing everyone to mix carefully.  We do not need draconian measures to be foisted on us by vigilantism.

[Bored chemist]

Forgetting the politics but the real problem is testing.  If the testing takes more than an hour even a day then it is not worth doing.  Why, because the person who was tested is still in contact with his/her family bubble who are all wondering around the shops and at work when they may be infectious.

The grown -ups came up with a system where you didn't go wandering around until after you got the test result saying you were clear.
Granted that it's one of Boris Johnson's pipedreams, but the testing time isn't the real problem.

Look at Sweden, they never locked down

OK, let's look at Sweden.
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3031

"Sweden does not have a herd immunity strategy,"

"Sweden does not have a single approach to covid-19; its response is a mixture of policies at national, regional, and local levels and in sectors outside of the health system such as public transportation."

[alancalverd]

Sweden is twice the size of the UK, with one sixth of the population, and, oddly, whilst the tourist or business visitor won't notice the difference, has far less of a "native" hospitality industry: years of very steep alcohol taxes and VAT on restaurant food,  and a history of extreme poverty until the 1940s, have produced a very different social tradition among people who seem in other respects to be very like Brits. So with one twelfth of the population density and no great urge (particularly among adults and the elderly) to cram into sweaty pubs and curry houses at every opportunity, most exhaled viruses died of boredom before reaching a new host. 

I suspect there was also less governmental encouragement to infect retirement homes, and a century of dreadful, numbing, conformist socialism meant that hospitals were well equipped with fresh and effective PPE. 

Income tax is among the highest in the world. You get what you pay for.