4 ms·

And how long will that last? There’s no herd immunity for flu, why would we achieve one for COVID?

ineedasername 6y ago
Yes, my comment may be on the optimistic side. Although I'm not sure if there are significant signs of mutations right now: AFAIK, the virus from 10 months ago is the pretty much the same virus the vaccine targets today.
wahern 6y ago
You're comparing apples and oranges. SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, is a particular strain of the coronavirus, specifically of the SARSr-CoV species. There can also be herd immunity for any particular strain of one of the four main species of the influenza virus.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  I wonder how applicable the current vaccine research will be to SARSr-CoV as a whole. It would be nice if one of the outcomes of all of this has a silver lining in the form of a rapid ability to develop further vaccines against other strains.
  - wahern 6y ago
    Here's a recent article that describes how Moderna's vaccine had already "been designed by January 13... just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public." https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-design.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vac... Attempts at creating vaccines for SARS-CoV-1 (previously known as just SARS) and MERS apparently made significant headway, more than what I was lead to believe by the literature I read in the Spring. What I read in the Spring was that research money and interest had dwindled not long after MERS, and that the few labs still hammering away at the problem weren't making much progress. Unless it was just sheer luck, it seems what SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 provided was a proving ground for already well developed methodologies.
- zamalek 6y ago
  Yes, but keep in mind that people are not retaining immunity as long as we'd like. I can remember the exact durations involved, but there was a post on HN a few months ago indicating that some early patients had already lost immunity. The vaccines don't suffer from this limitation. Flu immunity, including natural immunity, tends to last a very long time.
  - wang_li 6y ago
    They have “lost” antibodies. Which is normal. Those types of cells don’t last long. B & T cells on the other hand last a very long time. In the case of MERs, a coronavirus from the same family, immunity is still present for more than a decade.

Yes, my comment may be on the optimistic side. Although I'm not sure if there are significant signs of mutations right now: AFAIK, the virus from 10 months ago is the pretty much the same virus the vaccine targets today.

wahern 6y ago

You're comparing apples and oranges. SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, is a particular strain of the coronavirus, specifically of the SARSr-CoV species. There can also be herd immunity for any particular strain of one of the four main species of the influenza virus.

ineedasername 6y ago
I wonder how applicable the current vaccine research will be to SARSr-CoV as a whole. It would be nice if one of the outcomes of all of this has a silver lining in the form of a rapid ability to develop further vaccines against other strains.
- wahern 6y ago
  Here's a recent article that describes how Moderna's vaccine had already "been designed by January 13... just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public." https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-design.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vac... Attempts at creating vaccines for SARS-CoV-1 (previously known as just SARS) and MERS apparently made significant headway, more than what I was lead to believe by the literature I read in the Spring. What I read in the Spring was that research money and interest had dwindled not long after MERS, and that the few labs still hammering away at the problem weren't making much progress. Unless it was just sheer luck, it seems what SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 provided was a proving ground for already well developed methodologies.
zamalek 6y ago
Yes, but keep in mind that people are not retaining immunity as long as we'd like. I can remember the exact durations involved, but there was a post on HN a few months ago indicating that some early patients had already lost immunity. The vaccines don't suffer from this limitation. Flu immunity, including natural immunity, tends to last a very long time.
- wang_li 6y ago
  They have “lost” antibodies. Which is normal. Those types of cells don’t last long. B & T cells on the other hand last a very long time. In the case of MERs, a coronavirus from the same family, immunity is still present for more than a decade.