4 ms·

Even if we create a vaccine how are we going to vaccinate people in conflict zones? If we can’t immunise everyone with the oral polio vaccine, then we have no c

Even if we create a vaccine how are we going to vaccinate people in conflict zones? If we can’t immunise everyone with the oral polio vaccine, then we have no chance of immunising everyone against SARS-Cov-2. There is a possible ecological solution - we drive the dangerous strains to extinction by deliberately spreading a harmless strain. Unfortunately few people seem interested in investigating this idea.

jamiek88 6y ago
That's like vaccinating the virus itself. Interesting idea - what's to stop the harmless one from mutating back though? Presumably it'd be engineered to be both a) harmless to humans and b) spread better than existing SARS/COV strains. If that super spreader then mutated to become harmful to humans we could end up in a worse spot, no?
- danieltillett 6y ago
  The solution is to use a harmless strain that has gene deletion(s). These sort of mutations are very unlikely to back mutate as the information has been lost from the viral genome. The harmless strain doesn’t have to spread naturally better than the dangerous strains and it is likely any harmless strain would not spread better. We can artificially spread the harmless strain around so even if it is less contagious than the dangerous strain we tip the ecological balance in favour of harmless strain. This is really how an attenuated vaccine like the Sabin polio vaccine works from an ecological perspective. The risk of the virus mutating is there right now. It is much less likely that a harmless strain becomes very dangerous than a dangerous strain become very dangerous. This would be a bigger jump in evolutionary space. Ultimately as the immediate downvoting of my OP suggests this idea doesn’t appear popular. This doesn’t mean that it is not a scientifically valid approach that could work.

4 ms·

Even if we create a vaccine how are we going to vaccinate people in conflict zones? If we can’t immunise everyone with the oral polio vaccine, then we have no c

by danieltillett 6y ago

jamiek88 6y ago
That's like vaccinating the virus itself. Interesting idea - what's to stop the harmless one from mutating back though? Presumably it'd be engineered to be both a) harmless to humans and b) spread better than existing SARS/COV strains. If that super spreader then mutated to become harmful to humans we could end up in a worse spot, no?
- danieltillett 6y ago
  The solution is to use a harmless strain that has gene deletion(s). These sort of mutations are very unlikely to back mutate as the information has been lost from the viral genome. The harmless strain doesn’t have to spread naturally better than the dangerous strains and it is likely any harmless strain would not spread better. We can artificially spread the harmless strain around so even if it is less contagious than the dangerous strain we tip the ecological balance in favour of harmless strain. This is really how an attenuated vaccine like the Sabin polio vaccine works from an ecological perspective. The risk of the virus mutating is there right now. It is much less likely that a harmless strain becomes very dangerous than a dangerous strain become very dangerous. This would be a bigger jump in evolutionary space. Ultimately as the immediate downvoting of my OP suggests this idea doesn’t appear popular. This doesn’t mean that it is not a scientifically valid approach that could work.