[acsinuk (OP)]

First UK, then South African and now Brazilian mutate.  We have got to get our act together and set up a fast track testing on guinea pigs who will not sue us if some side effects occur..  Any suggestions??

[alancalverd]

All new products are tested on guinea pigs, mice, dogs, or whatever the animal rights lobby can't prevent by intimidation and destruction. But unless the virus actually infects the said "model" (loathsome technical term) the test has limited validity apart from one of immediate toxicity. You may recall the wonderful case of thalidomide, which did no harm to rabbits.

I've offered to market veterinary medicines that have not been tested on animals, but nobody will buy them. 

In the case of COVID, which seems pretty harmless to bats, the only useful model is human volunteers. 

[Bored chemist]

thalidomide, which did no harm to rabbits.

Actually it does.
But it's much less harmful to mice- which are  cheaper than rabbits.

[evan_au]

Apparently, rhesus monkeys, mink, cats and fruit bats have been tried as animal models for COVID-19.
- But in the end, you need a clinical trial in humans.

For a comparison, see "Animal models for COVID-19": https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2787-6

[acsinuk (OP)]

Yes, we need human volunteers and people who will not sue the drug company if they were to die from side effects within a month as we need to issue the updated vaccine immediately not mess around 6 months waiting.  This is a national emergency not a lawyers health and safety tea party.

[alancalverd]

There is no shortage of volunteers (I assume you are one?) but you can't release a new drug until you have developed it, carried out the required toxicity and dose calibration tests, proved its effectiveness, catalogued its side effects and contraindications, and established a quality-assured production line. 6 months is pushing it in this case because you need to prove that your potion is more effective than the Mark 1 at dealing with the new variant, but just as effective at dealing with the old one which is still around.

As long as people complain about quarantine, the enemy will increase in numbers and broaden his range of tactics without abandoning the original strategy, so you end up fighting on more fronts every day without actually winning on any of them.

[Bored chemist]

Yes, we need human volunteers and people who will not sue the drug company if they were to die from side effects within a month as we need to issue the updated vaccine immediately not mess around 6 months waiting.  This is a national emergency not a lawyers health and safety tea party.

A long time ago I was told that it costs about 100 million to bring a drug to market. I imagine there's another zero on the price tag now.
Most of that money was spent on things that didn't work.

Are you suggesting that instead of rats (or cell cultures) we use humans because it would be quicker?
Well, for a start, it wouldn't, and for a finish we would run out of volunteers well before we got anywhere.

The usual (and recent, expedited,) protocols for drug testing do, of course, involve humans.
But a shortage of human volunteers is not what slows them down.
So, while it's true that we will continue to need volunteers, having lots more of them won't make a jot of difference.

It's like saying that vaccine testing needs chairs (it presumably does- people seldom get injected while standing) so we should donate furniture to the cause.

[acsinuk (OP)]

So we have a vaccine that works against all 3 mutates and before more mutates turn up we need to rush to vaccinate everyone who is in a virulent South African mutate area.  No point in wasting time testing people unless they request the test; get in there and jab everyone to stop the virus spreading so the kids can get back to school and we can lift the lockdown in shortest possible time.

[acsinuk (OP)]

We are doing well and should obtain herd immunity anytime soon. A lesson to learn though is that the Diamond Princess cruise ship showed us a year ago that only 12 in the 4500 passengers and crew died of the covid19 virus.  So the wild report from World Health Organisation that the pandemic could kill up to 5% of the world population was incorrect.
The Diamond Princess showed that about 2700 people would die per million population which meant that of the UK's  66 million population, there would be 178 thousand deaths of mostly old and vulnerable people.   
Did lockdowns help; well, not really just gave us a little more time to get the vaccines over the top tested and injected into the population .        Next time, we should be very careful not to listen to panic reports, don't you think? 

[Bored chemist]

We are doing well and should obtain herd immunity anytime soon. A lesson to learn though is that the Diamond Princess cruise ship showed us a year ago that only 12 in the 4500 passengers and crew died of the covid19 virus.  So the wild report from World Health Organisation that the pandemic could kill up to 5% of the world population was incorrect.
The Diamond Princess showed that about 2700 people would die per million population which meant that of the UK's  66 million population, there would be 178 thousand deaths of mostly old and vulnerable people.   
Did lockdowns help; well, not really just gave us a little more time to get the vaccines over the top tested and injected into the population .        Next time, we should be very careful not to listen to panic reports, don't you think? 

Are you an idiot?
The reason that I ask is that you seem not to realise that the ship had a lockdown (with passengers comparing the situation to " a floating prison") which worked.
It reduced the death toll from about 5% to about 0.27%.

And yet you say that's a reason to believe that the 5% figure is wrong, and that lockdowns don't work.
Looking at the data on worldometer, I see that in the UK we have had about 120000 deaths and 2.5 million people recovered.
That's 4.8%.
Are you saying that the original WHO estimate of 5% is so badly wrong we should call it "wild".
I'd say it's pretty good.

Did lockdowns help; well, not really just gave us a little more time

That's the whole point.
Since you don't seem to understand what the lockdown was for, perhaps you should stop trying to preach about it.

Next time, we should be very careful not to listen to panic reports, don't you think?

I do think.
And it seems that next time we should listen to the science, but not to you.

[evan_au]

Did lockdowns help; well, not really just gave us a little more time

I disagree. If lockdowns had been implemented properly (including quarantine for all international travellers), then it would have given us a lot more time!
- With effective quarantine, you don't need big lockdowns - 5 days to 2 weeks in regions of New Zealand
- It would have reduced the number of infected people by an order of magnitude (at least)
- It would have reduced the number of vaccine-resistant mutant strains by a factor of 10 (at least), ie from roughly 2 to perhaps 0 (or <0.2)
- That may have allowed widespread international travel to resume in 2022 for vaccinated travelers

As it is, there are mutant strains circulating that will require reformulation of vaccines, retesting, resubmission of approval paperwork and revaccination of the entire (world) population. And until that is complete, you will need repeated lockdowns as each resistant strain comes along, and starts to spread in the population.

Lockdowns are effective, if you stop new cases coming in from outside (ie quarantine)
- Without effective quarantine, you are sentencing the population to repeated lockdowns.

[acsinuk (OP)]

Lockdowns are effective in stopping the spread of a virus but hugely disruptive to everyone affected.  There are bound to be many more flu like viruses or mutates hitting us in the future; so what to do?
Easy, develop a vaccine immediately and authorise Emergency Use {EUA} and inject a few thousand over 80 year old volunteers who live in care homes where they can be carefully monitored by experts. If they survive then keep injecting population until you get herd immunity. 

[alancalverd]

Thank you for volunteering to receive any kind of brew that might be produced by anyone in a shed, as long as it is done quickly. Your name is now top of a list of one.

Your implication that Phase 1 volunteers are not "carefully monitored by experts" will be passed on to my colleagues who monitor Phase 1 trials and may respond to the insult.

There is no point in vaccinating those least likely to become infected, or indeed conducting any trial on the over-80's since the confounding comorbidities will degrade the statistics. The object of early trials is to establish safety and tolerability of the product among the target population, which in the case of an infectious disease should be those most likely to be exposed to it.



Herd immunity takes a very long time to acquire by Darwinian elimination, and is ethically unacceptable in a civilised society, which is why we have medicines. Imposition by mass vaccination demands proof of benefit/risk for the entire population at risk, so you need to cautiously extend your trial to include babies, pregnant women and all ethnic varieties and comorbidities, so you have to  protect these groups (by quarantine - there is no other method) until you have demonstrated safety and efficacy  and then produce enough vaccine to do the job.                 

Prevention is far better but demands an intelligent response

We have now had more than a  year of good science and best practice being suppressed by greed, ignorance and (particularly in the USA) malice. I think the population has suffered enough of the kind of drivel that includes "Easy, develop a vaccine...".

[Bored chemist]

mutates hitting us in the future; so what to do?

Learn the difference between a noun and a verb.

Easy, develop a vaccine immediately and authorise Emergency Use {EUA} and inject a few thousand over 80 year old volunteers who live in care homes where they can be carefully monitored by experts.

Well, OK, let's imagine we do that.
And let's imagine that a virus pops up which is like the 1919 stain of flu.
We can test the vaccine in the over 80s and find that, though the side effects are rare they unfortunately cause more harm than the actual disease.
And we would, of course, on that basis not roll that vaccine out.

Meanwhile, those who aren't over 80 are dying in droves from a disease that (as with the 1919 strain of flu) affects the young, fit population more than the octogenarians.

If you have any other ideas like that, please feel free to keep them to yourself

[charles1948]

Is what worries most people about the new vaccines, that they lack credibility, because they have appeared too quickly.

[alancalverd]

Too quickly for what? How long should you wait before fixing a problem? How many deaths before you act? How ill would you like to be before taking the medicine that would have prevented it?

Some people resent the skill and success of others, but society would be better off without such miserable failures so I'm happy to let them die, as long as they don't infect the rest of us.