Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

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> how would they know someone is asymptomatic? afaik they are mostly testing people who have symptoms

There was literally a paper published yesterday (or the day before) on a blanket screen done on a population in germany to get some data on the undercount of asymptomatic cases. It was front page news on all the mainstream news sites...

I gotta be honest. This whole discussion has an "amateur hour" vibe. I have a hard time believing that professional academics in a long-established and very competetive field really failed to remember how the measles vaccine worked.

It's not that I think this is a bad idea, just that (1) it's almost certainly someone else's idea already, (2) is therefore probably harder to do than presented and (3) is thus not the magic bullet people are looking for.

To wit: stay the fuck home. Maybe someone will save us. They probably won't. We beat this with isolation or we wait for a vaccine.

I think what you are missing here is what is the novel part of my idea and what is the conventional. It is not novel to think of an attenuated vaccine, what is novel is to look for an attenuated strain in a pandemic using genome sequencing. I hope someone else has thought of this, but so far I haven’t seen any evidence of this.

Waiting for vaccine is not a good option. This is a situation with only hard choices.

Why else are hundreds of different labs around the world genome sequencing?

To assess the diversity and spread of the virus it appears. To the best of my knowledge nobody is systematically looking for a natural attenuated strain by genome sequencing. If you are then please get in contact with me.

"Waiting for a vaccine" is mostly a strawman. We're being asked to wait 2-3 months for the outbreaks to reach a size where they can be contained by testing, tracing and quarantine. But that only works if people take this seriously and honor the lockdowns.

We’re also likely to see convalescent sera available shortly, and neutralizing antibodies available in several months. Those, along with more widely available testing, will help us tread water until we develop a good drug or vaccine.

Even if this would work in rich countries, this is not a realistic option for people in poor countries. They do not have the money to wait in isolation for the next 3 months.

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