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A virologist is quoted comparing the search for a corona virus vaccine to the search for an HIV vaccine? Have I misread all the science over the last six months
by iandanforth 6y ago
A virologist is quoted comparing the search for a corona virus vaccine to the search for an HIV vaccine? Have I misread all the science over the last six months? That seems like an absurd comparison.
- bosswipe 6y agoMind explaining why it's absurd?
- iandanforth 6y agoThey are very different and HIV is very nasty. As a retrovirus that targets the immune systems (T-Cells, macrophages etc) with an unusually high genetic variability it is really hard to reliably invoke the kind of immune response that normal vaccines rely on for their efficacy. Corona virus on the other hand is an RNA virus that mainly attacks the respiratory system and invokes a strong (often too strong) immune response. They just arn't very similar beasts, if you had to draw an analogy about the difficulty of the problem it would be that we don't yet have a cure for the common cold (which is a corona virus.)
- josephcsible 6y ago> the common cold (which is a corona virus.) A minority of them are. Most instances of the common cold are caused by rhinoviruses.
- acqq 6y ago> They just aren't very similar beasts It took a lot of HIV vaccine research to figure that out. Before that research, nobody knew. Of course now it is knows, when the people started, it wasn't clear what the problems will be. Likewise, a lot of research is needed this time too. And the logistic needed to have the results usable is simply huge and everything needs time even if some steps are overlapped. On that level, of still being far from having a ready solution, one can compare, on the level of the sameness of the virus it is of course now known that the viruses behave differently.