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Thanks for pointing to the data. I'm not sure about the idea of using any particular strain as the basis for a vaccine. But the severity data for various strai

Thanks for pointing to the data. I'm not sure about the idea of using any particular strain as the basis for a vaccine. But the severity data for various strains might well be helpful in vaccine development. I'm guessing that this is a riff on using cowpox as a vaccine for smallpox. However, modern vaccines often use inactive virus, separated viral components, unrelated viruses for delivery, etc. And now, I've read, mRNA to drive host synthesis of antigenic viral components. Edit: OK, I see that you propose using less dangerous strains for testing vaccine effectiveness. Good idea!

danieltillett 6y ago
The idea in this post is not to use any safer strain as a vaccine, but to use it as a tool to speed up the development of other vaccines. If we can find a safer strain then we may be able to use it in a challenge trial which we can’t do with the normal dangerous strain for ethical reasons. This is explored in more detail in my [1] reference above.