4 ms·

This is great. We are really playing the victim with this virus. I think we should be attacking it on all fronts. Let’s spend the next ten years building a sys

This is great. We are really playing the victim with this virus. I think we should be attacking it on all fronts. Let’s spend the next ten years building a system that can produce a vaccine in three months. Maybe have a national reserve of people standing by to participate in vaccine trials during a crisis. Don’t have some of the technology? Invent it! Rules don’t allow it? Change the rules!

MattGaiser 7y ago
> Let’s spend the next ten years building a system that can produce a vaccine in three months. The big problem is that we have to test it long term on a bunch of live human beings to make sure it doesn't deform babies or something. That is the major delay. Build whatever system you want, but a perfect vaccine ready today would still be well over 3 months from deployment due to the need for safety checks. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/coronavirus-vaccine-when-will-we-have-one-covid-19 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/coronavirus-va...
- mrfusion 7y ago
  How about a crisis only approval. During which time you don’t give it to babies, pregnant women, etc. It would still be enormously valuable for first responders and elderly. You make sure they have all the information about the unknown risks and let them be consenting adults. A terrible idea for normal times but maybe ok weighed against the cost of doing nothing in a crisis.
  - dmurray 7y ago
    One problem with this idea is that the coronavirus just isn't that severe. If the mystery treatment has a 5% rate of severe complications, then the cure would be worse than the disease. Even 1% might be too much: consider that not everybody will contract the coronavirus, and the people most at risk from it (elderly or with comorbidities) are also likely to be at the highest risk of complications from some novel drug. A 5% risk of serious complications isn't unusually high: thalidomide was around 50% for pregnant women. If the coronavirus death rate was comparable with the Spanish flu - around 10% instead of 1%, and severe in young healthy people - we'd be a lot more justified in rushing through untested treatments.
- vikramkr 7y ago
  If we have a rapid, flexible platform and a great enough need, those 3 months could be enough. But the solution isn't just with the vaccine platform. If, in 10 years, we get lab on a chip working and replace mice with chip based experiments that better reflect human physiology, and/or see a moores law type spike in quantum computation, and/or see breakthroughs in ai, and/or some other set of breakthroughs I cant even imagine right now, we can make the current model obsolete. So it's not just about the vaccine and the drug, but also the ecosystem to test and evaluate them, that needs technological breakthroughs to fuel it.
  - MattGaiser 7y ago
    We already skipped the mice and went right to human trials.
    - vikramkr 7y ago
      Who skipped animal studies? J&Js vaccine, one of the most promising ones, went through preclinical trials before human trials started[0]. So did novovax[1]. Even moderna, who was particularly light on animal testing, worked with the naiad to run a trial in lab mice[2]. The industry has been working on covid vaccines since january[0], there has been less time than usual, sure, but nothing to the best of my knowledge has gone into humans without preclinical work. [0]https://www.jnj.com/johnson-johnson-announces-a-lead-vaccine-candidate-for-covid-19-landmark-new-partnership-with-u-s-department-of-health-human-services-and-commitment-to-supply-one-billion-vaccines-worldwide-for-emergency-pandemic-use https://www.jnj.com/johnson-johnson-announces-a-lead-vaccine... [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/health/coronavirus-vaccines.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/health/coronavirus-vaccin... [2]https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/11/researchers-rush-to-start-moderna-coronavirus-vaccine-trial-without-usual-animal-testing/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/11/researchers-rush-to-star...
pedalpete 7y ago
This is very much how the world was built. How many people do you think questioned the Queen of Spain's logic in paying for Columbus to go yatching? But it lead to the "discovery" of America and massive amounts of European expansion. Ok, debatable benefit... How many people questioned the validity of the space race? Which the entire world now benefits from the knowledge and technology created during that time. To pmarca's own history, how many people questioned the resources put into developing the internet, or why the University of Illinois was wasting their time with students building a "web browser"? Private Public partnerships for the most part, seem to be the only things that can really drive these huge changes. The only counter-example I can think of (and I'm probably wrong) is the computer revolution, which was a grass-roots development.

MattGaiser 7y ago

> Let’s spend the next ten years building a system that can produce a vaccine in three months. The big problem is that we have to test it long term on a bunch of live human beings to make sure it doesn't deform babies or something. That is the major delay. Build whatever system you want, but a perfect vaccine ready today would still be well over 3 months from deployment due to the need for safety checks. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/coronavirus-vaccine-when-will-we-have-one-covid-19 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/15/coronavirus-va...

mrfusion 7y ago
How about a crisis only approval. During which time you don’t give it to babies, pregnant women, etc. It would still be enormously valuable for first responders and elderly. You make sure they have all the information about the unknown risks and let them be consenting adults. A terrible idea for normal times but maybe ok weighed against the cost of doing nothing in a crisis.
- dmurray 7y ago
  One problem with this idea is that the coronavirus just isn't that severe. If the mystery treatment has a 5% rate of severe complications, then the cure would be worse than the disease. Even 1% might be too much: consider that not everybody will contract the coronavirus, and the people most at risk from it (elderly or with comorbidities) are also likely to be at the highest risk of complications from some novel drug. A 5% risk of serious complications isn't unusually high: thalidomide was around 50% for pregnant women. If the coronavirus death rate was comparable with the Spanish flu - around 10% instead of 1%, and severe in young healthy people - we'd be a lot more justified in rushing through untested treatments.
vikramkr 7y ago
If we have a rapid, flexible platform and a great enough need, those 3 months could be enough. But the solution isn't just with the vaccine platform. If, in 10 years, we get lab on a chip working and replace mice with chip based experiments that better reflect human physiology, and/or see a moores law type spike in quantum computation, and/or see breakthroughs in ai, and/or some other set of breakthroughs I cant even imagine right now, we can make the current model obsolete. So it's not just about the vaccine and the drug, but also the ecosystem to test and evaluate them, that needs technological breakthroughs to fuel it.
- MattGaiser 7y ago
  We already skipped the mice and went right to human trials.
  - vikramkr 7y ago
    Who skipped animal studies? J&Js vaccine, one of the most promising ones, went through preclinical trials before human trials started[0]. So did novovax[1]. Even moderna, who was particularly light on animal testing, worked with the naiad to run a trial in lab mice[2]. The industry has been working on covid vaccines since january[0], there has been less time than usual, sure, but nothing to the best of my knowledge has gone into humans without preclinical work. [0]https://www.jnj.com/johnson-johnson-announces-a-lead-vaccine-candidate-for-covid-19-landmark-new-partnership-with-u-s-department-of-health-human-services-and-commitment-to-supply-one-billion-vaccines-worldwide-for-emergency-pandemic-use https://www.jnj.com/johnson-johnson-announces-a-lead-vaccine... [1]https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/health/coronavirus-vaccines.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/health/coronavirus-vaccin... [2]https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/11/researchers-rush-to-start-moderna-coronavirus-vaccine-trial-without-usual-animal-testing/ https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/11/researchers-rush-to-star...

pedalpete 7y ago

This is very much how the world was built. How many people do you think questioned the Queen of Spain's logic in paying for Columbus to go yatching? But it lead to the "discovery" of America and massive amounts of European expansion. Ok, debatable benefit... How many people questioned the validity of the space race? Which the entire world now benefits from the knowledge and technology created during that time. To pmarca's own history, how many people questioned the resources put into developing the internet, or why the University of Illinois was wasting their time with students building a "web browser"? Private Public partnerships for the most part, seem to be the only things that can really drive these huge changes. The only counter-example I can think of (and I'm probably wrong) is the computer revolution, which was a grass-roots development.