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No, a vaccination was not always known as not possible. It still isn't, in fact. And amazing amounts of effort are being spent to make the administration of te
by lazyasciiart 6y ago
No, a vaccination was not always known as not possible. It still isn't, in fact.
And amazing amounts of effort are being spent to make the administration of tests easier. The first tests required trained research technicians. Today tests are still not widespread because they require specialized machinery or other materials. If it were possible to pee on a stick as a self test, everyone would be ecstatic - but it's not, so far.
The pandemic planning stuff I've read from before this year seems to suffer from a number of assumptions that were violated by covid, from asymptomatic transmission to the long lead time. E.g in MERS or Ebola or even flu, the infectious but asymptomatic period is more like Contagion. You don't have to worry about infected people wandering around town for a week or two.
Most planning mentions the need for having tests, and quickly gathering materials etc, and then moves on to tactics for containment and vaccine development. Where testing is focused on, it's as a way to differentiate between people who have symptoms but are actually infected with a non-panfemic disease, so that resources aren't wasted quarantining them. I haven't yet found a scenario studied with a long lead time and possible low level or asymptomatic presentation as standard.
- pmoriarty 6y ago"If it were possible to pee on a stick as a self test, everyone would be ecstatic - but it's not, so far." It is possible. Listen to episode 640 of This Week in Virology[1] for details. [1] - Starting at about 6'20" - https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-640/ https://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-640/
- lazyasciiart 6y agoAudio doesn't work for me, but if you have a written source I would be curious to see it.
- pmoriarty 6y agoNo, I don't have a transcript, but you could give this direct link to an mp3 version of the show a try: http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV640.mp3 http://traffic.libsyn.com/twiv/TWiV640.mp3 It should play in any media player.
- lazyasciiart 6y agoSorry - I didn't mean technically, I meant I can't listen to voices easily.
- TaylorSwift 6y agoFrom the article: Bloomberg: You seem optimistic researchers will succeed in coming up with vaccines. How do you assess the prospects and potential risks? Stohr: The coronavirus is not a particularly difficult virus to handle. Even the conventional vaccines could make a difference, and we have different approaches, vector vaccines, mRNA. That is very promising. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-18/covid-most-of-world-to-face-virus-without-vaccine-expert-says?srnd=premium https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-18/covid-mos...