•Spain 5%
•Italy 5%
•Sweden 5%
•Holland 3.5%
•Denmark 1%
•Norway 1%
•Ireland 6%
You will recall that Italy has had one of the worst outbreaks in the world. To get to herd immunity (assuming it’s possible for Covid-19), you’d need about 80 percent of the population to have antibodies; that means 16X more than have them now. Given that Italy had multiple hospitals overwhelmed, this means either a long time or a hell of a lot of dead people, or both. Even if the death rate didn’t soar (it would), you’d be talking about approximately 480K deaths.
This means there are only two ways to get rid Covid-19 under control:
- You get cases to zero or very near zero, and you have robust contact tracing and quarantine procedures if any new cases happen. This is the road Vietnam took (so far they have zero deaths, though it looks like they might wind up with one.)
- You get a working vaccine.
That’s it.
Well, there’s a third way, you go through multiple waves so that almost everyone catches it, meaning that you get much, much larger death tolls than we’ve had already.
So, don’t expect this to go away quickly if you’re in a bungler country which didn’t crush Covid-19 into the dirt and which refused to track, trace, quarantine, and mandate masks.
And if you live in one of those countries, expect that you aren’t traveling anywhere outside those countries without a two-week quarantine (if even that is allowed by your destination country) until there is a vaccine.
There are respected scientists on both sides of the “can we get a vaccine to this” question. My sense is that if we can, it’s about a year to eighteen months out before mass issue. Hopefully, it isn’t a company in the American IP zone that produces it, or they’ll try and make a trillion + by charging everyone through the nose for it.
Meanwhile, this situation is going to keep going on and on, especially if you’re in a bungler country. Americans, you’re in a Bungler country. Brits, same.
Be well, make your plans appropriately.
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Joan
I think countries should bar tourism coming out of the US. If Americans have the “right” to allow a deadly disease to run wild, then they can stay in America until this is over.
*sigh* sorry, that was bitter. I wonder if the concept of American refugees fleeing the US will become a thing because of this.
Every time someone says “herd immunity” my reply is “no human population has ever developed herd immunity against a corona virus, ever.” Thanks to Ian and the commentariat for providing alternate views to the narrative.
I really hope the vaccine is developed by someone willing to just sell it like crazy in order to save lives rather than price gauge.
bruce wilder
I have no expertise of course, but just the most superficial reading would justify considerable skepticism about whether a vaccine is even possible, as you say. And, for the same set of reasons, the most basic premise of herd immunity — that exposure to the disease yields some degree of immunity — has to be regarded with skepticism.
On the hand, there has also been little discussion of how many people are susceptible to begin with. As well as how many people who actually contract an infection will be contagious in a practical sense.
There are a lot of unknowns. About the disease and the processes of contagion. About the economic consequences of drastic, but ineffectual responses, not so many unknowns as simple, toxic bungling and cruelty and the consequences of corrupt and incompetent policy, played through a corrupt and incompetent professional and managerial class.
A resident of a bungler country, I do not feel confident that I know how the virus spreading will play out across what is a vast landscape and varied populace of enormous size and deep interconnectedness. The politics and the consequences of the palsied economic policy it generates seems utterly predictable.
Ian Welsh
Monkey trials show some monkeys getting immunity. OTOH, we know of many people getting it more than once. Right now my guess is that it provides weak immunity.
Better pray for a vaccine, I want to be able to go to packed venues again.
krake
Ian,
What appears to be promising about c-19 is the distribution, or lack thereof, of glycans on the protein spikes.
I’m not writing from expertise, but my SO does work for a research doctor who confirmed that this information appears to be firm:
‘Scientists are now directing their attention to the glycans that cover the SARS-CoV-2 virus to gain a better understanding of how COVID-19 works. They have found that the spike protein used by the coronavirus to bind to human cells is covered in a glycan shield — but one less dense than that of HIV and many other viruses. Moreover, those glycan sites don’t seem to mutate to the extent that they do in the flu.
“That suggests that antibodies may be a successful tool against SARS-CoV-2,” Lauc said. Although glycans protect certain regions of the spike protein, there are enough holes in that protection to make researchers suspect that the glycans play another role as well. They are now building models to tease apart those possible functions, which could range from maintaining the stability of the viral protein to helping it bind to the cells it infects.’
https://www.quantamagazine.org/sugars-on-coronavirus-spike-protein-offer-vaccine-clues-20200505/
It’s qualified good news, I guess.
Also, as an observational pessimist, I don’t count on hope or other delusions, esp. when it comes to human behaviors and social organization. But, that pessimism is always tested by investigatory science, and its practitioners.
Mallam
I don’t think people truly “get” just how long it would take to achieve herd immunity, if indeed it’s even possible. The fact that the corona virus spreads so quickly yet we still have so few with antibodies really lays it bare. New York City had R0 of 5-6 at one point and they have 25% with an infection (Stockholm also probably about 25%). There is some reason to doubt the serology studies at first, but they all seem to be landing on similar numbers which lends to their credibility. Also matches the predictions of COVID-tracker site from MIT Youyang Gu. No avoiding the fact that without an overwhelmed hospital system that the death rate is 0.8-1.0%, and when the system is overwhelmed seems to shoot up to 10%. I can’t even see herd immunity being a thing even if it’s possible because the second cases spike people will immediately react to it, so you’d have to purposefully infect your own population for such a strategy to work. So yeah, contact-tracing, or a vaccine. Only two options.
metamars
Part of the reality of living in the bungler state of the US is that there was more than enough time to conduct gold plated, double blinded, placebo controlled clinical experiments on optimal use of a reasonable hydroxychloroquine treatment protocol, but that hasn’t been done*. Although he’s not a medical guy, I think we can largely blame Trump. Even if he couldn’t mandate civilian agencies to conduct such trials, couldn’t he, as commander-in-chief, mandate the military to do so (using civilian volunteers)?
Oh, but Trump is getting HIS hydroxychloroquine! Isn’t he edgy! And the liberal media’s heads are exploding! Tee, hee! Score one for the MAGA crowd.
Too bad for the Americans who needed HCQ therapy, and never got it. I hear the lung damage, for serious cases that survived, and be permanent, or semi-permanent. Well, that’s no concern of Trump’s, now, is it? HE’S GOT AN ECONOMY TO RESCUE! He can’t KAGA, but he can MAGA #2!
I’m home from work, today, and didn’t email the reference to myself, but there was stunning data on vit D level vs. mortality from covid-19, reported recently. Mortality was very high from both deficient and middling levels. (From memory – don’t trust – >90% and >80%, respectively.) But for people with high vitamin D levels, mortality was something like 4%. (Also don’t trust. I will post, tomorrow.)
From another source I saw recently, Americans are about 40% deficient in Vitamin D. (And that’s using the conventional, ridiculous benchmark, based on bad science. See youtubes by Ivor Cummins for a data-driven discussion.) Amongst African Americans, it’s about 80%.
And we have an African American surgeon general!!! Bungler state, indeed.
* this is as per Dr. Chris Martenson and Laura Ingraham. However, I could have sworn such studies were approved in South Dakota, as of a few weeks ago. Maybe they haven’t started. Ingraham is reporting that because of all the smearing of hydroxychloroquine in the media, it is hard to recruit patients for a double blinded experiment.
Ironically, it should be hard to recruit patients for a double blinded experiment, but that’s because the placebo group would lose the opportunity for a cure. A more ethical double blinded experiment would be remdesivir vs. HCQ/zinc/Zpak. Since remdesivir is considered “standard of care” by Fauci {snicker}, this would be highly ethical.
anon
What plans can we make other than buying life insurance? In many states people are back to work and groups can gather again. I see most people not wearing masks unless it is required to enter into a store. How long can we continue on this path until the health system collapses and the number of dead can no longer be manipulated to suit the right wing’s agenda?
I was listening to an interview with a Yale epidemiologist on The Majority Report with Sam Seder . He did not really answer Seder’s question as to whether people who get COVID-19 are immune from getting it again. I don’t think anyone knows that answer for sure, but it does look like people who get the virus once can get it again. The only hope is for a vaccine but the question is how will Western countries and their incompetent leaders cope for the next 18-24 months.
metamars
I did a quick google, and found the study I mentioned in my previous post.
From “The Second Study on Vitamin D and COVID-19 Is Now Out”, using Indonesian data:
“Just under half (49.7%) of cases had normal vitamin D status, and only 4% of them died.
Just over a quarter (27%) had insufficient vitamin D status, and most of them (88%) died. Just under a quarter (23%) had deficient vitamin D status, and almost all of them (99%) died.”
Just stunning. If the US were a non-bungler state, free vit D tests would be relentlessly pushed by the government, with attendant propaganda; as well as free vit D (+ vit K2) for poor people who seriously can’t afford it.
Oh, and Fauci would be in jail. “America’s Doctor”, my rear end.
Eric Anderson
“Americans, you’re in a Bungler country. Brits, same.”
Theory:
It’s because we routinely elect bung holes.
S Brennan
Ian Welsh-Better pray for a vaccine, I want to be able to go to packed venues again.
=========================================================
“Vaccine, Cure, yeah sure, very, very nice but, not what’s needed.
What’s NEEDED is an EARLY, COST EFFECTIVE TREATMENT, that keeps 99.9% of the infected OUT OF THE HOSPITAL.
Then we have a serious problem but, not an existential calamity.
…if this effed-up society goes down it’s taking EVERYBODY with it. The people of the Palatine Hill were the richest of their time and yet not a single of their name survived the collapse of Rome, indeed, none of those fabulously rich houses are remembered except to note their collective passing into oblivion…
…Let’s focus on the stop gap solutions that turn this into a manageable problem.”
Again, I look forward to the multiple comment posts that are routinely used on this blog to censer comments that do not confirm the the multi-posting censors beliefs.
Mark Pontin
Ian wrote: “My sense is that if we can (get a vaccine), it’s about a year to eighteen months out before mass issue.”
So: yes, no human population has ever developed herd immunity to a coronavirus to date, and to some extent such viruses’ very nature mitigates against it. Yes, on the face of things a COVID19 vaccine might be in the same realm of difficulty as a vaccine for HIV, for example.
(But thanks, Krake, for passing on the word from your SO re. the greater vulnerability of the Spike protein variant used by COV19 as compared to HIV and many other viruses.)
But in 2020 we can with a *high probability* create a vaccine or therapeutics for COV19 (i.e. a synthesized peptide administered as an aerosol into the lungs which blocks the Spike (S) protein is something one company is working on).
That’s because classically a vaccine *was* a dead or deactivated sample of the pathogen being inoculated against. This is no longer necessarily true. If classical vaccines don’t cut it with COV19, there are other paths.
Moderna — the company that got the first vaccine candidate to human trials — received the genomic sequence of COVID19 from a lab in China and designed a vaccine in silico — all completely on computers, which is common practice these days. They then built real samples of both COVID19 and their vaccine model with automated DNA synthesizers in a couple more days. That vaccine model is what’s now in human trials.
What Modern has created is an mRNA ‘module’ as a vector that encodes for a prefusion stabilized form of the Spike (S) protein of COV19, which is the means whereby the pathogen penetrates a human cell. So this is a copy of one small component of the pathogen, but NOT the rest of it. The vaccinated individual’s antibodies and immune system, having been shown this protein, then recognizes it and learns to fight it.
This vaccine will *very likely* be effective to a greater or lesser degree and continue to sail through human trials. HOWEVER, whether the process can be scaled up to manufacture enough vaccine for a world of almost 8 billion people is the question.
Moderna’s technology is a ‘personalized medicine’ approach. So, forex, they also have a cancer vaccine under review by the FDA — and how can you have a cancer vaccine?
By using the same approach. A sample would be taken of an individual patient’s specific cancer, various tools would be used to assay that specific cancer’s vulnerabilities, and then an RNA ‘module’ with a copy of specific parts of that cancer’s structure would be ‘shown’ to the individual patient’s immune system.
This is high-end, ‘bleeding-edge’ biotech. I spoke to a partner in the biotech VC firm that created Moderna. He described visiting Moderna’s automated factory, which is equally high-end (and, yes, in the U.S. on the East Coast).
Now, once you’ve created one mRNA vaccine that attacks COV19’s Spike protein, that should be generally applicable. So this won’t be the completely personalized approach of Moderna’s other vaccines and therapeutics.
It *does* present questions about whether it will be scalable for a world of approaching 8 billion people.
My *guess* — since I haven’t gone through the 80-120 different COV19 vaccine strategies being tried around the world — is that, given the difficulties of ‘herd immunity’ and vaccines humans have faced with other coronaviruses, the majority of COV19 vaccine strategies may be taking a high-end biotech approach. Some will work but the scaling/manufacturing issue — always a problem with a new vaccine — will be the serious issue.
You can extrapolate how this will likely play out technologically (biogenetic technologies already advancing fast will accelerate further) and socially (especially in the U.S.).
Zachary Smith
I very much want to add to that lonely twosome “You get a functional treatment”. Unfortunately that outcome doesn’t seem to be in the cards. From the CDC website:
“No Specific Treatments…”. And no vaccine for any of the ordinary/routine corona viruses we’ve had for ages. That makes the prospects for a working Covid-19 type to be more than a little bit ‘questionable’.
By elimination I’d say we need to hunker down and make mask use mandatory for mingling with others in the public. Perhaps the next CARES-type payout ought to be $1,000 AND a box of high-quality masks.
S Brennan
ZS; this is untrue:
“and there are no specific treatments for illnesses caused by human coronaviruses”
In fact, the CDC is spouting utter nonsense. Currently, people who talk about treatments used during SARS 1 are being banned over at Moon Over Alabama and elsewhere. There are KNOWN TREATMENTS that REDUCE THE SEVERITY. Don’t take my word for it google search “treatments used during SARS 1”.
Which is my point above, just as HIV does not have a “CURE” we do have effective treatments that have kept a friend of mine alive for over 25 years and counting. And since when…did people on this blog start taking every word spoken by a government agency as gospel truth?
dbk
Mark Pontin: Thanks so much, really helpful description of what the Moderna vaccine is attempting to achieve. Great. May I use it in my own writing?
I might add that studies of the mutation genealogy (its “tree”) of COVID-19 suggest that its “spikes” are not mutating, which would bode well for Moderna’s approach. Actually, the apparent stability of the protein “spike” is what makes the prospect of a vaccine possible – as others note, until now it hasn’t proven possible to create an effective vaccine for a coronavirus given its tendency to mutate.
I listened to a longish interview with Moderna’s CEO this afternoon, but he didn’t really get into detail about the vaccine’s design.
Although this design looks promising and trials have started, we still have to anticipate a year (or more?) before mass production could begin. (The CEO was quite vague on this.)
In the meantime, surely some labs must be developing therapeutics, which would be a tremendous boon during the waiting period.
Social distancing, mask-wearing and hand-washing are measures which can – if widely-employed – contribute to flattening the curve, but they can’t really bend it forcefully down towards an R factor well below one.
Contact tracing will help somewhat, but without its correlate as applied, e.g. in South Korea and Hong Kong, namely isolation and a mandatory 14-day quarantine of contacts identified, it won’t be nearly as effective as it was in those countries.
I think the most likely scenario for the U.S. is a series of open-up, shutdown measures applied in the various states over the course of the summer as we experience the results of premature opening up and consequent topical outbreaks owed to super-spreader events (e.g. church openings) and congregate cases which contribute to community spread.
Hugh
I am reminded of the observation of that great statistician General “Buck” Turgidson commenting on an accidental nuclear war:
“I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.”
Learning how to stop worrying about the virus is a simple, straightforward 3 step process.
1. Focus on the numbers, not the people.
2. Then hide the numbers.
3. Then ignore the science.
If you take these to heart, you should already be feeling more relieved. Hope this helps.
Mark Pontin
dbk wrote: ‘May I use (Moderna vaccine description) in my own writing?’
Sure. Glad to be of assistance. You might also want to look at the vaccine Pfizer is developing, which is a mRNA vaccine too and so presumably the same general strategy as Moderna.
dbk wrote: ‘…some labs must be developing therapeutics, which would be a tremendous boon during the waiting period.’
Yup. You and S Brennan are both right there.
Re. hydroxychloroquine, there’s been so much noise about that, and I currently haven’t the patience to wade through the literature, nor the expertise to be sure any assessment I might come to would be correct. It *has* had seriously adverse side-effects in lots of folks.
dbk: ‘… the most likely scenario for the U.S. is a series of open-up, shutdown measures applied in the various states over the course of the summer as we experience the results of premature opening up and consequent topical outbreaks ….’
And beyond summer. It’ll be endemic in parts of the (former?) U.S. for years to come. Historians will look back and see these as golden years for the Darwin awards.
Mark Pontin
Hugh wrote: “…you should already be feeling more relieved. Hope this helps.”
Uh. Not really, Hugh.
From the human comedy angle, it *is* interesting how ‘experts’ try to bring the hammer of their specific academic ‘expertise’ and blindly apply it to the nail of COVID19 and epidemiology, often without doing the work of actually looking at the relevant data on the virus.
Economists and statisticians particularly.
The Darwin awards prize here may go to the U.K. government who in October 2019 got rated — by an ‘expert’ international review — as having the second-best pandemic preparedness program in the world. (After the U.S., which was first!?!)
In response to COVID19, the U.K. government doggedly rolled out an expert-formulated plan from 2011 to fight an influenza epidemic. It’s now got one of the highest death-tolls per million in Europe.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/21/did-the-uk-government-prepare-for-the-wrong-kind-of-pandemic
Article concludes: “You have a model based on your central case, and you have a whole set of useful things you’ve learned from some exercise or other,” (an expert) said. But if the crisis being dealt with is substantially different from the one a government has planned for “then a central case will distract you from thinking. That is, in a way, what happened.”
“In a way,” motherfucker?
Synoia
Well, there’s a third way, you go through multiple waves so that almost everyone catches it, meaning that you get much, much larger death tolls than we’ve had already.
Well that would be exceptional.
We know who like to be exceptional.
Watch Wisconsin over the next 3 weeks. They have had their supreme court strike down distancing and sheltering. Now that’s Exceptional.
capelin
We need to listen to nature’s feedback, not arrogantly attempt to blow Covid out of our way or invent a majic injection-shield so we can carry on with normal.
Covid is proliferating because humans are a filthy, selfish, overcrowded species that shits it’s bed, warehouses sick old people, and daily jets around the globe for recreation, greed and war.
Ian, your focus on vaccine as saviour appears to me to be a fear-based hole in what is otherwise an impressive body of logic-and-empathy based work.
Big Pharma and Big Tech will not save us.
Long term harm-reduction (taking into consideration all aspects of this pickle) is the proper way out.
Stirling S Newberry
Fontatublal
You say that you want perfection,
Every little comma shined chic into Rond de Jambe
Smooth caress of the painter’s art.
But then you do not read the efforts
That I have spun for you,
And at best, spin them to back widow
On some trash magazine,
Unheralded by you buffoon of expert art critics,
Thinking it unworthy of your time.
You do not read what has been written,
And so, no more shall be unclasped
Whether by pen, or song, or wheezy stroke
Upon that thwack of eager type.
Gone fontatublal on winded button
Helvetica forgotten.
Ché Pasa
This is turning into quite a storm season. The virus is just part of the problem we’ll be facing for quite a while to come. The collapse of much of the economy may ultimately be as deadly or more deadly than the virus. Layered on top and bottom is the accelerating pace of climate change which we can be reasonably sure will release and create new pathogens in abundance, and directly cause more human and natural world disruption and grief.
It would be nice to think that government and/or science/industry held the well-being of the population as a whole as a priority, but at least in the US/UK axis, they don’t. I’ve made disparaging remarks about the English-speaking world in general not having much regard for the masses, but at least with respect to the virus, the US/UK are unique among their linguistic kin for their disregard of the well-being of their populations. Does this have to do with the pre-eminence of the finance sector of their economies? Is it a religious or political cult or ideology among the ruling class? Is it something inherent? I don’t know. But the failed state behaviour of both countries essentially in tandem is striking, even compared to what used to be known as the Third World.
“Herd” or community immunity from the virus is unlikely. Vaccines may or may not be made available. Maybe if a large enough percentage of the “herd” is infected, once we’re past the initial die-off, the survivors may be able to adapt to the perpetual mutation and reappearance of the virus, much as we do with the common cold. But then adaptation will also require a major adjustment to the disappearance of major sectors of the economy (the Rust Belt has plenty of experience with this problem) and the problems associated with climate change will dog a growing percentage of the survivors simultaneously. Humans are remarkably adaptable. There will be survivors, and I guess the Big Idea of our rulers is that a hardy group, ready for anything, will emerge on the other side of these catastrophes, and of course it will be dominated by the descendants of the present ruling class.
Changing this dynamic may not be possible in the short term, but over the long term, we’ll see the creation of a whole social/political/economic system or systems that we wouldn’t recognize. Much smaller — but beyond that, it’s not at all clear. The empires and nation states of the present and past are likely to go away. What comes next?
And will this future society even care about the presence of pestilence and will it have the scientific ability to do anything about it if it does?
GlassHammer
“Does this have to do with the pre-eminence of the finance sector of their economies? Is it a religious or political cult or ideology among the ruling class? Is it something inherent?” – Che Pasa
The problem in the U.S. has many layers and even though I have lived here my entire life I can’t tell if the sheer number of layers is worse than some of the more onerous problems.
You need to understand, our strength as a nation has always been a bit more of a marketing/propaganda trick than a lived reality. What set us apart were two oceans protecting us, an absurd amount of natural resources, a semi functional culture, and a semi functional government.
Hugh
Ché Pasa, it isn’t just English speaking countries. There’s Bolsonaro in Brazil, Duarte in the Philippines, and Erdogan in Turkey. There’s Putin in Russia and Xi in China. Xi is firming up his dictatorship in the traditional imperial Chinese heavy handed style. The dynamic in both countries is the same. The dictator doesn’t want to hear bad news, and his bureaucracy doesn’t tell him bad news, –until it can’t be avoided. This is why Xi and the Chinese blew the initial response to Covid-19. Contrast this to Trump who was told but ignored and continues to ignore the severity of the crisis. But back to the list. There’s Modi in India and the mullahs in Iran. There’s Macron in France who is using Covid-19 to suppress protests against his policies. And then there is Merkel and the Germans whose complete lack of leadership and ongoing looting of the EU is destroying the fiction of Europe. Covid-19 with its border closures simply highlighted the underlying reality.
When I look out at the world, I see no bright spots. Plenty of blots though.
Ché Pasa
@Hugh
Indeed. Add in Sweden whose deaths per million are slightly greater than the US, and Belgium whose toll is somewhat greater than the UK.
What do these places have in common I ask. Language and culture in the case of US and UK, but what is the commonality between China, India, Brazil, Italy, Spain, Sweden, etc?
It’s got to be something in the thought processes of their rulerships.
bruce wilder
Centralization is a great puzzle for large-scale societies. Even the words — centralization/decentralization — are deceptively simple: people think they know exactly what they mean, but operationalizing a clear definition can be very hard. Adam Smith recognized that specialization was a source of productivity and wealth, implying great gains to scaling up political economy. That insight was of very little importance compared to Smith’s proto-libertarian stance, the implied but never argued presumption that neither the state nor really any locus of command-and-control is necessary: the state has very little it need do to coordinate a polity of deep specialization beyond the functions of police and arbiter of disputes. (Yes, I know a few scholars have argued Smith was no libertarian; I have read An Inquiry Into the Wealth of Nations.)
There are two poles to effective coordination by authority: effective leadership and intelligent followership. In the U.S., a bungler state, we are frustrated by failures at both poles. We have fools in the center of authority (Trump, Biden, Pelosi) and, apparently we have many fools-and-tools in the periphery of followership and plenty of fools in between.
I despair of ever finding the collective will to do better, but that is a dramatic rendering. The will to do is largely identical with the capacity.
For the U.S. the collective decision to disinvest, to run down rather than renew infrastructure and institutional capability has had consequences for the capacity to govern ourselves well. It just ain’t there.
StewartM
To add to the chorus of the great Wall Street Hope, ‘herd immunity”:
1) Only a few diseases, like measles, do people as an individuals acquire a “one time and done” lifetime immunity.
2) With most diseases, you as an individual either get permanent immunity to a specific strain (but viruses in particular keep morphing into new strains, so you can always catch the next strain) or you get an otherwise temporary immunity (norovirus, the ‘stomach flu’ bug). You can keep getting sick, despite having had ‘it’ before.
3) As a species, and therefore important when speaking of this in social terms–whatever immunity you do pick up is an acquired trait. You don’t directly pass acquired traits on to one’s progeny, so therefore any resistance to a bug as a species is a *very* long process–if indeed possible, as the bug is reproducing and morphing far faster than you.
So the only options are–a vaccine, which you might have to keep updating every year for new strains (like with the flu) or more effective treatments. Oh, and yes, there’s the other thing you can do, socially, which is to actually make it mandatory that people can stay home and get paid when sick, and moreover do so without fear of retribution from their employers. So much of the problems with these respiratory illnesses spreading are social in nature; even if an employer offers paid sick leave I have seen jobs where employees were essentially punished if they actually used it. Having sick people go into work should be a no-no supported by everyone.
GlassHammer
“For the U.S. the collective decision to disinvest, to run down rather than renew infrastructure and institutional capability has had consequences for the capacity to govern ourselves well. It just ain’t there.” – Bruce wilder
We don’t have a framework for scarcity and no one has ever pushed our expansion back to our own boarders.
Mark Pontin
StewartM: “As a species … whatever immunity you do pick up is an acquired trait. You don’t directly pass acquired traits on to one’s progeny, so therefore any resistance to a bug as a species is a *very* long process–if indeed possible, as the bug is reproducing and morphing far faster than you.
Actually, not true.
Two scientifically well-proven paths off the top of my head (without getting into any woo-woo about epigenetics): –
[1] Microbiome transmission between generations is almost universal because during a natural vaginal birth, specific bacteria from the mother’s gut are passed on to the baby and stimulate the baby’s immune responses. So forex: –
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/11/181130094328.htm
“Altered microbiome after caesarean section impacts baby’s immune system”
[2] Any gene polymorphism — which is when more than one allele occupies that gene’s locus within a population — has to happen for the first time, if you think about it.
In layman’s terms, polymorphism means your basic single-gene mutation which, if conferring benefits, then gets selected for.
And there’s always got to be an instance when that polymorphism first occurs accidentally in one individual specimen in one generation, then gets passed on the progeny. There’s no other way evolution could occur, right?
So, one instance of a polymorphism would be CCR5-Δ32, which is what He Jiankui CRISPR-edited into the genes of those two Chinese embryos, and which exists in a very few individuals in European populations and confers HIV resistance.