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I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread. For any new cases you simply test everyo

I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread. For any new cases you simply test everyone in the vicinity of the infected person. But I don't think even that will be necessary. 90% efficiency reduces R so much, it will probably die out on its own. The real problem is mutations that are not covered by the vaccine. If it mutates as efficiently as flu, it will be a challenge.

garethrowlands 6y ago
Corona viruses cannot mutate as efficiently as flu. They are very different beasts.
- thelittleone 6y ago
  17 million mink culled in Denmark for mutated Covid which was passed on to humans. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-denmark-mink-factb-idUSKBN27M2L4 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-denmar...
  - dboreham 6y ago
    "as efficiently"
  - lbeltrame 6y ago
    This vaccine targets the entire spike protein. It is very difficult, from an evolutionary point of view (very high affinity for the ACE2 receptor), that the spike protein would change so much that the vaccine would be completely ineffective.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      So why are they slaughtering millions of animals, on the basis that any mutation might reduce the effectiveness of a vaccine? If you're right then Denmark is engaging in mass cruelty to animals on an epic scale.
      - ragged 6y ago
        As if their life in small cages wouldn't be cruelty enough.
      - deeeeplearning 6y ago
        I believe the mass cruelty was farming minks on a massive scale. Culling them is likely merciful in comparison. Never mind the fact that I'd happily trade 10 million minks to save a few human lives.
        meddlepal 6y ago
        This is a useless response that contributes nothing nor answers the question. You basically danced around the question and justified the plan based on some sort of appeal to emotion.
        Falling3 6y ago
        No. It's addressing a nonsensical claim in the parent comment. It is relevant in the context of that comment. And it's no more an appeal to emotion that the original comment was - which is to say not at all.
        mkolodny 6y ago
        I think both are mass cruelty. The way we treat animals is the slavery of our time, if not much worse. We keep using words like "cull" instead of "kill" or "mass murder", as though it's not killing if the animal doesn't look like us. Just because you're more intelligent or more capable than a different kind of animal, that doesn't mean that your life is worth more than theirs. And it definitely doesn't mean your life is worth millions of times more than theirs.
        deeeeplearning 6y ago
        >The way we treat animals is the slavery of our time, if not much worse The woke police would like a word with you lmao... >Just because you're more intelligent or more capable than a different kind of animal, that doesn't mean that your life is worth more than theirs What kind of rinky dink PETA argument is this? If you have kids I hope you explain to them that in an emergency you are likely going to save the dog and not your child because "your life isn't worth more than the dog's."
  - easytiger 6y ago
    That doesn't make it a rational act. Welcome to the zero risk society.
sanp 6y ago
Yup. But we do need the government to step in and do this (contact tracing etc.). Hopefully, with the new administration...
- freebasenic 6y ago
  Our rate of transmission is too high to do a nationwide contact tracing effort I think. We need to reduce the daily number of cases before we properly implement a contact tracing program.
  - standardUser 6y ago
    Perhaps a better way to say this: we need to implement a national contact tracing program immediately so that when the transmission rate declines to manageable levels it is operational.
- smt88 6y ago
  I assume you're talking about the US. My belief is that contact tracing is a cultural non-starter here. There are people who protest with large, semi-automatic rifles because they don't want to wear masks inside private businesses. There's absolutely no way they're going to trust a contact-tracing process championed by the government, even if there's no way for the government to access the data. I suspect much of the population will continue to ignore the virus and winter weather will cause a spike that will cripple hospitals.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    They don't mean make sure everyone is comfortable with it. They mean by force via executive order and penalty of fines or imprisonment. If people don't want to obey they will make you obey and a large part of the country thinks this is a great idea.
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djanogo 6y ago
If you get the vaccine then get infected I wonder for how long you will be spreading it to others while you don't show any signs of virus.
- gus_massa 6y ago
  I'm not sure about this vaccine, but it is a real possibility with other vaccines. The injectable vaccine for polio stops the symptoms, but it doesn't stop the propagation of the virus from person to person. The oral vaccine for polio also stops the propagation (that is better) but it is a live virus that can escape and produce polio in other unvaccinated persons (that is bad). [So the current recommendation is to use oral version when polio is endemic, the injectable version when there has been no cases for a few years, and a mix of them in between.]
- Moghammed 6y ago
  That's not how vaccines and viruses work. Normally when you get infected you get small number of viral particles in your system. Those then hijack your system to create more, and those new particles spread to other people through sneezing etc. In time your immune system learns how to recognise and kill the virus and eventually removes it from your system. Now let's say you get vaccinated and you get that same small number of viral particles in your system. Your immune system will already know how to recognise and kill the virus, and immediately starts doing this. It doesn't multiply in your body, so it can't spread to others either.
rich_sasha 6y ago
Measles et al never died out, despite very aggressive, and for years successful vaccination programmes (thank you anti-vaccesrs for messing that up). But even if we all need to get vaccinated once a year, for a 90% immunity, that sounds manageable. So good news, if it all holds up.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  Measles is also famously contagious, with R values on the order of 3-6x higher than COVID-19.
- wbl 6y ago
  Measles was eradicated in the Americas. Wasn't until an antivaxer brought it back from Europe we had an outbreak.
  - rich_sasha 6y ago
    Which is another way of saying, it wasn't eradicated.
gizmo 6y ago
Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere. It's a nice idea conceptually, but the problem is psychological. People stop caring about tracing when 98% of all trace connections are false positives. If a person is infectious for a week and the r0 is around 1 then only 1 person of all the people they've been in contact with will actually contract the virus on average. The other 50+ people, assuming they can even be traced, get a false positive. Or to put it differently, people have to be called 50 times and get tested and self-isolate 50 times before they actually test positive. And for younger people 80% of cases are completely inconsequential. You might think 50 contacts is unrealistically high, but most people still go to work, to school, see friends, use public transportation, etc. Covid19 would also be over if people with symptoms would just stay home. But that's clearly not happening either. We've got to be realistic about how people behave in the real world. Mutations aren't a serious concern. Because when viruses mutate it's the strains that are more infectious and less lethal that win out.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  There's also participation on the contact side. In Western countries, surveys indicate we can't convince even half of people to install a contact tracing smartphone app. According to my state's department of health, practical experience indicates we can't convince even half of people to pick up the phone and respond to a contact tracing interview. > Covid19 would also be over if people with symptoms would just stay home. No it wouldn't. One of the things that makes SARS-CoV-2 such a problem is that people get contagious long before they show symptoms. Similarly to for influenza and the common cold, many people get contagious without ever developing symptoms.
  - mjmahone17 6y ago
    > According to my state's department of health, practical experience indicates we can't convince even half of people to pick up the phone and respond to a contact tracing interview. More than anything I suspect this is a result of allowing so much unfiltered spam calls. If you only get one unexpected, unknown call a month you will almost always answer it. If you get three a day you will almost never answer it. We are allowing private businesses and scammers to steal the “commons” of our societal attention. We are doing a very poor job of keeping useful communications channels open: almost every communication medium people rely on for important information gets cluttered with must-ignore spam, making it decreasingly likely an important message is actually received.
remote_phone 6y ago
It can’t die out on its own. Animals are getting infected by it, meaning it will be around forever. But as long as we can tolerate it, that’s all that matters.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  IIRC there have been infections that had animal reservoirs and still were eradicated.
- legulere 6y ago
  Animal reservoirs make it harder but not all animal reservoirs have as big of an effect. Birds don’t seem to be able to get infected which already is a very good sign.
abeppu 6y ago
I think we can control it well with a vaccine and contact tracing. But though this is not my area, I've heard experts say that "eradication" is unlikely, in that we've still only actually eradicated one human viral disease. But if covid-19 was well enough controlled that most of us wouldn't come across an infected person in normal life, or need to think about it for months or years at a time ... I think that's good enough for most of us to think of it as "gone".
- throwaway2245 6y ago
  >we've still only actually eradicated one human viral disease SARS-CoV-1 was eradicated.
  - abeppu 6y ago
    It seems that this is a subject of debate among experts. From what I understand, the disagreement is over when we can say that a reduction in cases to zero is "permanent" if animal reservoirs still exist. > To date, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared only 2 diseases officially eradicated: smallpox caused by variola virus (VARV) and rinderpest caused by the rinderpest virus (RPV). > Although successful containment strategies eliminated transmission of SARS among people, the continued presence of an animal reservoir means that SARS is not yet an eradicated disease. https://asm.org/Articles/2020/March/Disease-Eradication-What-Does-It-Take-to-Wipe-out https://asm.org/Articles/2020/March/Disease-Eradication-What... > ... the 2003 SARS epidemic was permanently reduced to zero as a result of deliberate efforts, requiring no further intervention methods. This is precisely the definition of eradication. https://biomedgrid.com/pdf/AJBSR.MS.ID.001017.pdf https://biomedgrid.com/pdf/AJBSR.MS.ID.001017.pdf
EamonnMR 6y ago
Flu has a unique capability to recombine that allows it to mutate more readily than other viruses. Hoping that the more simple coronavirus will be less fortunate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_shift https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_shift
- f38zf5vdt 6y ago
  Ability to recombine is not unique to the flu. SARS-CoV-2 is suspected to have been formed through a recombination event in vivo. [1] Mutation rates can also be manipulated through selective pressure e.g. vaccine-based herd immunity. For example, a vaccine-resistant polio virus has recently emerged. [2] [1] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/27/eabb9153 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/27/eabb9153 [2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141104111408.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141104111408.h...
  - hcknwscommenter 6y ago
    The comment you respond to states "more readily." This is undoubtedly true. Influenza virus is designed to recombine at every single replication cycle. Coronaviruses as a whole do not do that. We have a lot of data on coronavirus mutation rates and they are dramatically lower (1000x) than influenza. The point is not that mutation/recombination can't happen (it can and will happen), it is just that this mutation/recombination is relatively rare and we will not get the standard twice-yearly seasonal flu effect where we have to tweak the vaccine every year.
    - f38zf5vdt 6y ago
      Influenza undergoes recombination seemingly exclusively through reassortment whereas betacoronaviridae undergoes homologous recombination -- but to think of the latter as much less effective at producing genetic diversity may be incorrect. > In fact, there is evidence of at least seven potential regions of recombination in the SARS-CoV genome in the replicase- and Spike-coding regions, with possible recombination partners that include porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), bovine coronavirus (BCoV), HCoV-229E, MHV, and IBV [1] > Unlike other viruses that have emerged in the past two decades, coronaviruses are highly recombinogenic. ... For coronaviruses, however, recombination means that small genomic subregions can have independent origins, identifiable if sufficient sampling has been done in the animal reservoirs that support the endemic circulation, co-infection and recombination that appear to be common. [2] > Recombination seems to be rampant in HCoV-OC43 viruses and contributed to originate the A to E viral genotypes, as well as viruses that do not belong to these major genotypes. [3] Unfortunately, nature doesn't "design" anything, it's just the consequence of natural selection and fitness of new generations. While the mutation rate might low compared to influenza, the mutation rate is very high compared to something like a prokaryote, enough so that there's an article entitled "Why are RNA virus mutation rates so damn high?" We've already seen a gain of function mutation creating enhanced infectivity and a recombination event involving ferrets, so it's not a stretch that we might see a new more of this in the future. Whether or not it will impact the toxicity of the virus or whether or not its susceptible to a vaccine is up in the air, but once an effective vaccine exists strong selective pressure will be placed on versions of the viruses that evade it. [1] https://jvi.asm.org/content/84/7/3134 https://jvi.asm.org/content/84/7/3134 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4 [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7111218/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7111218/
DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
This is 90% protection against disease, not necessarily 90% protection against infection. There's an important distinction: * Protection against disease means that you don't get sick. You may still contract the virus and spread it to others (the Salk vaccine against Polio works this way). * Sterilizing immunity means that you can't even get infected, so that you can't pass the virus on to other people. It does not look like there's any information about sterilizing immunity in this press release. Importantly, this means that even with this vaccine, the virus may still be able to spread, and only vaccinated people will be protected (i.e., no herd immunity).
- deleted 6y ago
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- estomagordo 6y ago
  Without sterilizing immunity, will the amount of virus a vaccinated individual carries match that of a non vaccinated individual, though? I guess what I (a layman) is asking is, even if the vaccinated individual contracts the virus, won't they spread less of it than someone truly sick?
  - DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
    It depends on the virus and the vaccine. We'll have to wait for further data on this vaccine candidate. The Salk polio vaccine does not prevent infection in the digestive tract, so you can still spread the virus, but it does prevent the virus from spreading beyond the digestive tract and causing paralysis. You could imagine something similar happening with a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine: that it would block infection in the lower respiratory tract but not the upper respiratory tract, allowing you to spread it by coughing and sneezing while never getting severe respiratory issues.
  - in_cahoots 6y ago
    Someone truly sick is likely to isolate at home, due to the social stigma if nothing else. Someone who is asymptomatic may continue as normal, spreading the disease more easily.
jwineinger 6y ago
I haven't seen much chatter about it, but this will only be prescribed for adults (18+) correct?
- OJFord 6y ago
  Yes, and only/primarily/first at-risk groups, incl. at risk to themselves or others because of workplace in healthcare/residential home/etc. - but nothing firm I don't think. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-for-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccination-advice-from-the-jcvi-25-september-2020/jcvi-updated-interim-advice-on-priority-groups-for-covid-19-vaccination https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-f... We're still months away from all 20M (of a >60M population) people that vaccines have been ordered for being administered with them, (BBC reports 'up to' 10M doses 'may' be 'delivered' this year, i.e. 5M people max) so I suppose they still have plenty of time to decide the most effective pecking order.
- bluGill 6y ago
  I would assume the trials in kids will start soon. Though today I haven't heard of them so far. (kids are hard to test because each age reacts differently)
eric_b 6y ago
This disease will never be "eradicated" and it is not helpful to use that word to discuss policy decisions. Sars CoV-2 has numerous animal reservoirs and an incredible transmission rate. It will never be gone from this Earth. We will get vaccines and we will come up with better treatments negating its effects, but this coronavirus is here to stay. It will be a fifth endemic human coronavirus.
- coryfklein 6y ago
  Can't believe I had to scroll down this far to find this - but this is exactly true. Since the virus has a non-human animal reservoir that means that even if every human receives the vaccine, all it takes is re-transmission from the animal reservoir back into the human population after the immunity period expires. This means we'll probably have to receive Covid vaccination on a regular basis along with the flu vaccine in order to maintain a permanent broad-scale immunity. At least until we have a radical new treatment for this family of viruses that can confer a "permanent" immunity - something that for now is in the realm of science fiction.
- prox 6y ago
  There are a lot of coronaviruses and all tend to become mild overtime. In 1800, Influenza killed thousands of people daily. This endured through the 19th century, Coronaviruses also have plagued humanity in the same way, for instance look up “bovine coronavirus”
- Bluestein 6y ago
  Case in point, these poor things ... "Denmark to cull millions of minks after mutated coronavirus spreads to people" - https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/05/denmark-to-cull-millions-of-minks-after-mutated-coronavirus-spreads-to-people https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/05/denmark-to-cull-millions...
- legulere 6y ago
  Only time will tell. At the beginning of the pandemic the strategy was to simple hold out until a vaccine is found (Which is the strategy developed for influenza). Doing lockdowns reducing the infection rates to almost nothing or even eradicating it in some countries was seen as impossible. Yet that’s exactly what we did. I think eradication is possible.
nradov 6y ago
It's not possible to totally eradicate a virus that has animal reservoirs. The virus apparently jumped from bats to humans once before so it will probably happen again. We can't vaccinate all the bats.
- hackerfromthefu 6y ago
  Why not? What if we can? How would we do that?
  - bluGill 6y ago
    There have been efforts to put vaccines into treats that various animals would eat. However not all vaccines can be delivered in this way, and even of those that can, getting the right animals to eat them is tricky.
    - inglor_cz 6y ago
      It is fairly efficient with rabies. Aside from bats, most European wildlife is now rabies-free. But to pull this off worldwide is not realistic.
  - coryfklein 6y ago
    Because it's cost prohibitive to find every animal on the earth that has the virus and medicate or eliminate them.
    - dorgo 6y ago
      Humans already eradicated a disease (I think it was a virus). It was done with a vacine of an altered version of the virus. The vacine itself was a virus which could infect others and spread among the population. So, you don't really have to find every animal. Most should be enough.
- vmurthy 6y ago
  > We can't vaccinate all the bats. It is possible. It isn't "vaccination" as we traditionally know it but there are gels that take advantage of bats' grooming behaviour. Put gels that kill virii on some bats. Other bats groom these bats and the gel(s) get(s) into these bats [0] [0]https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_streicker_what_vaccinating_vampire_bats_can_teach_us_about_pandemics?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_streicker_what_vaccinating_...
mancerayder 6y ago
> I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. People (rightly, or wrongly) don't trust technology enough, after the reputation Silicon Valley has built and can't shed, around privacy. I'm on an Android phone, and sure, Citizen and a local State app can do the contact tracing. But what's Citizen doing with that data? It also requires interactivity (another Silicon Valley favorite thing to do - call out for people to perform actions via alerts and notifications). It's a lower bar for people to wear masks than to accept to use an app for contact tracing, if you were to compare the policy actions. Now, you can have the contact tracers call people, but how many spam calls do you get that you ignore? And phishing attempts? I received numerous texts from "the Democrats" with a person's name, urging me to vote, from all sorts of US numbers, and asking for a reply. To this day I don't know how real that is. There are too many people to blame for this state of affairs, but the greed and competition for eyeballs are the definite drivers.
- loeg 6y ago
  Some of the contact tracing apps collect full GPS history; some just use the BLE token exchange mechanism. Unfortunately, the former is the mechanism my state has chosen to roll out in their app.
- feanaro 6y ago
  Luckily, contact tracing can be done efficiently the traditional way, by gathering the contacts of an infected person that tested positive and contacting them manually.
  - mancerayder 6y ago
    But in a world of telephone scams and texts, how do you trust who's calling you and why?
    - throwaway2245 6y ago
      The emergency alert system (which plays its own alarm tone) seems pretty trustworthy.
ramblerman 6y ago
> 90% efficiency reduces R so much You’re assuming 100pct of the population takes the vaccine. I’d be surprised if it’s more than 50% the first year
- gonzo 6y ago
  Can only make 1.5b doses in 2021, and 2 does/individual required, which is 750m individuals out of a world population of 7.8b. Less than 10% can get it I the first year.
forgot_user1234 6y ago
it's a mRNA vaccine and a lot easier to change in case of a mutation
weaksauce 6y ago
To continue this... I don't think the flu vaccine is nearly 90% effective. I am pretty sure the flu vaccines hover around 60-70% effective. A 90% effective vaccine would stop the spread drastically to the point where it might just stop it wholesale. in addition the virus envelope is so fragile that it won't stay in the environment for more than a few days compared to something like the norovirus that can last for a long time on surfaces(iirc) because of a lack of a fragile lipid enclosure.
logifail 6y ago
> With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread Aren't you assuming 100% coverage at 90% effectiveness? What if it's - say - only 50% coverage, at 90% effectiveness. That's not looking so good. I'm still trying to understand why an otherwise young and healthy person would want to get take one, or more likely multiple, shots of a C19 vaccine, given the risk from C19 is so low. What's the benefit to them? In HN-speak: how well does a C19 vaccine deployment scale?
- dvsfish 6y ago
  To return to a less paranoid culture is reason enough. The possibility of international travel. To prevent the spread to the vulnerable.
- DobryMorozov 6y ago
  There are long term complications from contracting the virus
feanaro 6y ago
> If it mutates as efficiently as flu, it will be a challenge. It doesn't. Coronaviruses have a proofreading protein which prevents significant RNA changes: https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(20)30518-9 https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(20)3...
dkdk8283 6y ago
Except people like me refuse to participate in contact tracing and will actively evade it.
- bufferoverflow 6y ago
  What are your fears exactly?
frogpelt 6y ago
Contact tracing might work really well with a submissive populace. We don't have one. Said another way: I don't think voluntary contact tracing will work in the U.S. And I don't think you can implement involuntary contact tracing in the U.S.
stjohnswarts 6y ago
That will work in Europe, it will never go over in the USA people are very averse to being tracked or giving up privacy or health information.
CrazyCatDog 6y ago
Contact tracing: must be required. I work someplace where we have been grappling with the legality of telling coworkers about infected colleagues (when exposed)—the government needs to create liability for failure to inform others as opposed to threatening liability for over sharing! If I’m wrong, PLEASE provide a .gov link and I will personally make sure that our large academic org pulls out of reverse, and into first gear!

garethrowlands 6y ago

Corona viruses cannot mutate as efficiently as flu. They are very different beasts.

thelittleone 6y ago
17 million mink culled in Denmark for mutated Covid which was passed on to humans. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-denmark-mink-factb-idUSKBN27M2L4 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-denmar...
- dboreham 6y ago
  "as efficiently"
- lbeltrame 6y ago
  This vaccine targets the entire spike protein. It is very difficult, from an evolutionary point of view (very high affinity for the ACE2 receptor), that the spike protein would change so much that the vaccine would be completely ineffective.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    So why are they slaughtering millions of animals, on the basis that any mutation might reduce the effectiveness of a vaccine? If you're right then Denmark is engaging in mass cruelty to animals on an epic scale.
    - ragged 6y ago
      As if their life in small cages wouldn't be cruelty enough.
    - deeeeplearning 6y ago
      I believe the mass cruelty was farming minks on a massive scale. Culling them is likely merciful in comparison. Never mind the fact that I'd happily trade 10 million minks to save a few human lives.
      - meddlepal 6y ago
        This is a useless response that contributes nothing nor answers the question. You basically danced around the question and justified the plan based on some sort of appeal to emotion.
        Falling3 6y ago
        No. It's addressing a nonsensical claim in the parent comment. It is relevant in the context of that comment. And it's no more an appeal to emotion that the original comment was - which is to say not at all.
      - mkolodny 6y ago
        I think both are mass cruelty. The way we treat animals is the slavery of our time, if not much worse. We keep using words like "cull" instead of "kill" or "mass murder", as though it's not killing if the animal doesn't look like us. Just because you're more intelligent or more capable than a different kind of animal, that doesn't mean that your life is worth more than theirs. And it definitely doesn't mean your life is worth millions of times more than theirs.
        deeeeplearning 6y ago
        >The way we treat animals is the slavery of our time, if not much worse The woke police would like a word with you lmao... >Just because you're more intelligent or more capable than a different kind of animal, that doesn't mean that your life is worth more than theirs What kind of rinky dink PETA argument is this? If you have kids I hope you explain to them that in an emergency you are likely going to save the dog and not your child because "your life isn't worth more than the dog's."
- easytiger 6y ago
  That doesn't make it a rational act. Welcome to the zero risk society.

sanp 6y ago

Yup. But we do need the government to step in and do this (contact tracing etc.). Hopefully, with the new administration...

freebasenic 6y ago
Our rate of transmission is too high to do a nationwide contact tracing effort I think. We need to reduce the daily number of cases before we properly implement a contact tracing program.
- standardUser 6y ago
  Perhaps a better way to say this: we need to implement a national contact tracing program immediately so that when the transmission rate declines to manageable levels it is operational.
smt88 6y ago
I assume you're talking about the US. My belief is that contact tracing is a cultural non-starter here. There are people who protest with large, semi-automatic rifles because they don't want to wear masks inside private businesses. There's absolutely no way they're going to trust a contact-tracing process championed by the government, even if there's no way for the government to access the data. I suspect much of the population will continue to ignore the virus and winter weather will cause a spike that will cripple hospitals.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  They don't mean make sure everyone is comfortable with it. They mean by force via executive order and penalty of fines or imprisonment. If people don't want to obey they will make you obey and a large part of the country thinks this is a great idea.
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djanogo 6y ago

If you get the vaccine then get infected I wonder for how long you will be spreading it to others while you don't show any signs of virus.

gus_massa 6y ago
I'm not sure about this vaccine, but it is a real possibility with other vaccines. The injectable vaccine for polio stops the symptoms, but it doesn't stop the propagation of the virus from person to person. The oral vaccine for polio also stops the propagation (that is better) but it is a live virus that can escape and produce polio in other unvaccinated persons (that is bad). [So the current recommendation is to use oral version when polio is endemic, the injectable version when there has been no cases for a few years, and a mix of them in between.]
Moghammed 6y ago
That's not how vaccines and viruses work. Normally when you get infected you get small number of viral particles in your system. Those then hijack your system to create more, and those new particles spread to other people through sneezing etc. In time your immune system learns how to recognise and kill the virus and eventually removes it from your system. Now let's say you get vaccinated and you get that same small number of viral particles in your system. Your immune system will already know how to recognise and kill the virus, and immediately starts doing this. It doesn't multiply in your body, so it can't spread to others either.

rich_sasha 6y ago

Measles et al never died out, despite very aggressive, and for years successful vaccination programmes (thank you anti-vaccesrs for messing that up). But even if we all need to get vaccinated once a year, for a 90% immunity, that sounds manageable. So good news, if it all holds up.

howlgarnish 6y ago
Measles is also famously contagious, with R values on the order of 3-6x higher than COVID-19.
wbl 6y ago
Measles was eradicated in the Americas. Wasn't until an antivaxer brought it back from Europe we had an outbreak.
- rich_sasha 6y ago
  Which is another way of saying, it wasn't eradicated.

gizmo 6y ago

Contract tracing hasn't worked at scale anywhere. It's a nice idea conceptually, but the problem is psychological. People stop caring about tracing when 98% of all trace connections are false positives. If a person is infectious for a week and the r0 is around 1 then only 1 person of all the people they've been in contact with will actually contract the virus on average. The other 50+ people, assuming they can even be traced, get a false positive. Or to put it differently, people have to be called 50 times and get tested and self-isolate 50 times before they actually test positive. And for younger people 80% of cases are completely inconsequential. You might think 50 contacts is unrealistically high, but most people still go to work, to school, see friends, use public transportation, etc. Covid19 would also be over if people with symptoms would just stay home. But that's clearly not happening either. We've got to be realistic about how people behave in the real world. Mutations aren't a serious concern. Because when viruses mutate it's the strains that are more infectious and less lethal that win out.

mumblemumble 6y ago
There's also participation on the contact side. In Western countries, surveys indicate we can't convince even half of people to install a contact tracing smartphone app. According to my state's department of health, practical experience indicates we can't convince even half of people to pick up the phone and respond to a contact tracing interview. > Covid19 would also be over if people with symptoms would just stay home. No it wouldn't. One of the things that makes SARS-CoV-2 such a problem is that people get contagious long before they show symptoms. Similarly to for influenza and the common cold, many people get contagious without ever developing symptoms.
- mjmahone17 6y ago
  > According to my state's department of health, practical experience indicates we can't convince even half of people to pick up the phone and respond to a contact tracing interview. More than anything I suspect this is a result of allowing so much unfiltered spam calls. If you only get one unexpected, unknown call a month you will almost always answer it. If you get three a day you will almost never answer it. We are allowing private businesses and scammers to steal the “commons” of our societal attention. We are doing a very poor job of keeping useful communications channels open: almost every communication medium people rely on for important information gets cluttered with must-ignore spam, making it decreasingly likely an important message is actually received.

remote_phone 6y ago

It can’t die out on its own. Animals are getting infected by it, meaning it will be around forever. But as long as we can tolerate it, that’s all that matters.

m4rtink 6y ago
IIRC there have been infections that had animal reservoirs and still were eradicated.
legulere 6y ago
Animal reservoirs make it harder but not all animal reservoirs have as big of an effect. Birds don’t seem to be able to get infected which already is a very good sign.

abeppu 6y ago

I think we can control it well with a vaccine and contact tracing. But though this is not my area, I've heard experts say that "eradication" is unlikely, in that we've still only actually eradicated one human viral disease. But if covid-19 was well enough controlled that most of us wouldn't come across an infected person in normal life, or need to think about it for months or years at a time ... I think that's good enough for most of us to think of it as "gone".

throwaway2245 6y ago
>we've still only actually eradicated one human viral disease SARS-CoV-1 was eradicated.
- abeppu 6y ago
  It seems that this is a subject of debate among experts. From what I understand, the disagreement is over when we can say that a reduction in cases to zero is "permanent" if animal reservoirs still exist. > To date, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared only 2 diseases officially eradicated: smallpox caused by variola virus (VARV) and rinderpest caused by the rinderpest virus (RPV). > Although successful containment strategies eliminated transmission of SARS among people, the continued presence of an animal reservoir means that SARS is not yet an eradicated disease. https://asm.org/Articles/2020/March/Disease-Eradication-What-Does-It-Take-to-Wipe-out https://asm.org/Articles/2020/March/Disease-Eradication-What... > ... the 2003 SARS epidemic was permanently reduced to zero as a result of deliberate efforts, requiring no further intervention methods. This is precisely the definition of eradication. https://biomedgrid.com/pdf/AJBSR.MS.ID.001017.pdf https://biomedgrid.com/pdf/AJBSR.MS.ID.001017.pdf

EamonnMR 6y ago

Flu has a unique capability to recombine that allows it to mutate more readily than other viruses. Hoping that the more simple coronavirus will be less fortunate. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_shift https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antigenic_shift

f38zf5vdt 6y ago
Ability to recombine is not unique to the flu. SARS-CoV-2 is suspected to have been formed through a recombination event in vivo. [1] Mutation rates can also be manipulated through selective pressure e.g. vaccine-based herd immunity. For example, a vaccine-resistant polio virus has recently emerged. [2] [1] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/27/eabb9153 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/27/eabb9153 [2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141104111408.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141104111408.h...
- hcknwscommenter 6y ago
  The comment you respond to states "more readily." This is undoubtedly true. Influenza virus is designed to recombine at every single replication cycle. Coronaviruses as a whole do not do that. We have a lot of data on coronavirus mutation rates and they are dramatically lower (1000x) than influenza. The point is not that mutation/recombination can't happen (it can and will happen), it is just that this mutation/recombination is relatively rare and we will not get the standard twice-yearly seasonal flu effect where we have to tweak the vaccine every year.
  - f38zf5vdt 6y ago
    Influenza undergoes recombination seemingly exclusively through reassortment whereas betacoronaviridae undergoes homologous recombination -- but to think of the latter as much less effective at producing genetic diversity may be incorrect. > In fact, there is evidence of at least seven potential regions of recombination in the SARS-CoV genome in the replicase- and Spike-coding regions, with possible recombination partners that include porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV), transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV), bovine coronavirus (BCoV), HCoV-229E, MHV, and IBV [1] > Unlike other viruses that have emerged in the past two decades, coronaviruses are highly recombinogenic. ... For coronaviruses, however, recombination means that small genomic subregions can have independent origins, identifiable if sufficient sampling has been done in the animal reservoirs that support the endemic circulation, co-infection and recombination that appear to be common. [2] > Recombination seems to be rampant in HCoV-OC43 viruses and contributed to originate the A to E viral genotypes, as well as viruses that do not belong to these major genotypes. [3] Unfortunately, nature doesn't "design" anything, it's just the consequence of natural selection and fitness of new generations. While the mutation rate might low compared to influenza, the mutation rate is very high compared to something like a prokaryote, enough so that there's an article entitled "Why are RNA virus mutation rates so damn high?" We've already seen a gain of function mutation creating enhanced infectivity and a recombination event involving ferrets, so it's not a stretch that we might see a new more of this in the future. Whether or not it will impact the toxicity of the virus or whether or not its susceptible to a vaccine is up in the air, but once an effective vaccine exists strong selective pressure will be placed on versions of the viruses that evade it. [1] https://jvi.asm.org/content/84/7/3134 https://jvi.asm.org/content/84/7/3134 [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0771-4 [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7111218/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7111218/

DiogenesKynikos 6y ago

This is 90% protection against disease, not necessarily 90% protection against infection. There's an important distinction: * Protection against disease means that you don't get sick. You may still contract the virus and spread it to others (the Salk vaccine against Polio works this way). * Sterilizing immunity means that you can't even get infected, so that you can't pass the virus on to other people. It does not look like there's any information about sterilizing immunity in this press release. Importantly, this means that even with this vaccine, the virus may still be able to spread, and only vaccinated people will be protected (i.e., no herd immunity).

deleted 6y ago
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estomagordo 6y ago
Without sterilizing immunity, will the amount of virus a vaccinated individual carries match that of a non vaccinated individual, though? I guess what I (a layman) is asking is, even if the vaccinated individual contracts the virus, won't they spread less of it than someone truly sick?
- DiogenesKynikos 6y ago
  It depends on the virus and the vaccine. We'll have to wait for further data on this vaccine candidate. The Salk polio vaccine does not prevent infection in the digestive tract, so you can still spread the virus, but it does prevent the virus from spreading beyond the digestive tract and causing paralysis. You could imagine something similar happening with a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine: that it would block infection in the lower respiratory tract but not the upper respiratory tract, allowing you to spread it by coughing and sneezing while never getting severe respiratory issues.
- in_cahoots 6y ago
  Someone truly sick is likely to isolate at home, due to the social stigma if nothing else. Someone who is asymptomatic may continue as normal, spreading the disease more easily.

jwineinger 6y ago

I haven't seen much chatter about it, but this will only be prescribed for adults (18+) correct?

OJFord 6y ago
Yes, and only/primarily/first at-risk groups, incl. at risk to themselves or others because of workplace in healthcare/residential home/etc. - but nothing firm I don't think. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-for-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccination-advice-from-the-jcvi-25-september-2020/jcvi-updated-interim-advice-on-priority-groups-for-covid-19-vaccination https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/priority-groups-f... We're still months away from all 20M (of a >60M population) people that vaccines have been ordered for being administered with them, (BBC reports 'up to' 10M doses 'may' be 'delivered' this year, i.e. 5M people max) so I suppose they still have plenty of time to decide the most effective pecking order.
bluGill 6y ago
I would assume the trials in kids will start soon. Though today I haven't heard of them so far. (kids are hard to test because each age reacts differently)

eric_b 6y ago

This disease will never be "eradicated" and it is not helpful to use that word to discuss policy decisions. Sars CoV-2 has numerous animal reservoirs and an incredible transmission rate. It will never be gone from this Earth. We will get vaccines and we will come up with better treatments negating its effects, but this coronavirus is here to stay. It will be a fifth endemic human coronavirus.

coryfklein 6y ago
Can't believe I had to scroll down this far to find this - but this is exactly true. Since the virus has a non-human animal reservoir that means that even if every human receives the vaccine, all it takes is re-transmission from the animal reservoir back into the human population after the immunity period expires. This means we'll probably have to receive Covid vaccination on a regular basis along with the flu vaccine in order to maintain a permanent broad-scale immunity. At least until we have a radical new treatment for this family of viruses that can confer a "permanent" immunity - something that for now is in the realm of science fiction.
prox 6y ago
There are a lot of coronaviruses and all tend to become mild overtime. In 1800, Influenza killed thousands of people daily. This endured through the 19th century, Coronaviruses also have plagued humanity in the same way, for instance look up “bovine coronavirus”
Bluestein 6y ago
Case in point, these poor things ... "Denmark to cull millions of minks after mutated coronavirus spreads to people" - https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/05/denmark-to-cull-millions-of-minks-after-mutated-coronavirus-spreads-to-people https://www.euronews.com/2020/11/05/denmark-to-cull-millions...
legulere 6y ago
Only time will tell. At the beginning of the pandemic the strategy was to simple hold out until a vaccine is found (Which is the strategy developed for influenza). Doing lockdowns reducing the infection rates to almost nothing or even eradicating it in some countries was seen as impossible. Yet that’s exactly what we did. I think eradication is possible.

nradov 6y ago

It's not possible to totally eradicate a virus that has animal reservoirs. The virus apparently jumped from bats to humans once before so it will probably happen again. We can't vaccinate all the bats.

hackerfromthefu 6y ago
Why not? What if we can? How would we do that?
- bluGill 6y ago
  There have been efforts to put vaccines into treats that various animals would eat. However not all vaccines can be delivered in this way, and even of those that can, getting the right animals to eat them is tricky.
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    It is fairly efficient with rabies. Aside from bats, most European wildlife is now rabies-free. But to pull this off worldwide is not realistic.
- coryfklein 6y ago
  Because it's cost prohibitive to find every animal on the earth that has the virus and medicate or eliminate them.
  - dorgo 6y ago
    Humans already eradicated a disease (I think it was a virus). It was done with a vacine of an altered version of the virus. The vacine itself was a virus which could infect others and spread among the population. So, you don't really have to find every animal. Most should be enough.
vmurthy 6y ago
> We can't vaccinate all the bats. It is possible. It isn't "vaccination" as we traditionally know it but there are gels that take advantage of bats' grooming behaviour. Put gels that kill virii on some bats. Other bats groom these bats and the gel(s) get(s) into these bats [0] [0]https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_streicker_what_vaccinating_vampire_bats_can_teach_us_about_pandemics?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_streicker_what_vaccinating_...

mancerayder 6y ago

> I think we can eradicate it by contact tracing. People (rightly, or wrongly) don't trust technology enough, after the reputation Silicon Valley has built and can't shed, around privacy. I'm on an Android phone, and sure, Citizen and a local State app can do the contact tracing. But what's Citizen doing with that data? It also requires interactivity (another Silicon Valley favorite thing to do - call out for people to perform actions via alerts and notifications). It's a lower bar for people to wear masks than to accept to use an app for contact tracing, if you were to compare the policy actions. Now, you can have the contact tracers call people, but how many spam calls do you get that you ignore? And phishing attempts? I received numerous texts from "the Democrats" with a person's name, urging me to vote, from all sorts of US numbers, and asking for a reply. To this day I don't know how real that is. There are too many people to blame for this state of affairs, but the greed and competition for eyeballs are the definite drivers.

loeg 6y ago
Some of the contact tracing apps collect full GPS history; some just use the BLE token exchange mechanism. Unfortunately, the former is the mechanism my state has chosen to roll out in their app.
feanaro 6y ago
Luckily, contact tracing can be done efficiently the traditional way, by gathering the contacts of an infected person that tested positive and contacting them manually.
- mancerayder 6y ago
  But in a world of telephone scams and texts, how do you trust who's calling you and why?
  - throwaway2245 6y ago
    The emergency alert system (which plays its own alarm tone) seems pretty trustworthy.

ramblerman 6y ago

> 90% efficiency reduces R so much You’re assuming 100pct of the population takes the vaccine. I’d be surprised if it’s more than 50% the first year

gonzo 6y ago
Can only make 1.5b doses in 2021, and 2 does/individual required, which is 750m individuals out of a world population of 7.8b. Less than 10% can get it I the first year.

forgot_user1234 6y ago

it's a mRNA vaccine and a lot easier to change in case of a mutation

weaksauce 6y ago

To continue this... I don't think the flu vaccine is nearly 90% effective. I am pretty sure the flu vaccines hover around 60-70% effective. A 90% effective vaccine would stop the spread drastically to the point where it might just stop it wholesale. in addition the virus envelope is so fragile that it won't stay in the environment for more than a few days compared to something like the norovirus that can last for a long time on surfaces(iirc) because of a lack of a fragile lipid enclosure.

logifail 6y ago

> With 90% efficiency it will be extremely tough for the virus to spread Aren't you assuming 100% coverage at 90% effectiveness? What if it's - say - only 50% coverage, at 90% effectiveness. That's not looking so good. I'm still trying to understand why an otherwise young and healthy person would want to get take one, or more likely multiple, shots of a C19 vaccine, given the risk from C19 is so low. What's the benefit to them? In HN-speak: how well does a C19 vaccine deployment scale?

dvsfish 6y ago
To return to a less paranoid culture is reason enough. The possibility of international travel. To prevent the spread to the vulnerable.
DobryMorozov 6y ago
There are long term complications from contracting the virus

feanaro 6y ago

> If it mutates as efficiently as flu, it will be a challenge. It doesn't. Coronaviruses have a proofreading protein which prevents significant RNA changes: https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(20)30518-9 https://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(20)3...

dkdk8283 6y ago

Except people like me refuse to participate in contact tracing and will actively evade it.

bufferoverflow 6y ago
What are your fears exactly?

frogpelt 6y ago

Contact tracing might work really well with a submissive populace. We don't have one. Said another way: I don't think voluntary contact tracing will work in the U.S. And I don't think you can implement involuntary contact tracing in the U.S.

stjohnswarts 6y ago

That will work in Europe, it will never go over in the USA people are very averse to being tracked or giving up privacy or health information.

CrazyCatDog 6y ago

Contact tracing: must be required. I work someplace where we have been grappling with the legality of telling coworkers about infected colleagues (when exposed)—the government needs to create liability for failure to inform others as opposed to threatening liability for over sharing! If I’m wrong, PLEASE provide a .gov link and I will personally make sure that our large academic org pulls out of reverse, and into first gear!