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Comment by chvid | Hacker News Reader

“Let’s be clear: Without a coronavirus vaccine, we will never be able to live normally again. The only real exit strategy from this crisis is a vaccine that can be rolled out worldwide.”

Worldwide? It is fair to expect this will take years.

In the mean time what does normalcy look like? Sweden?

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Yes, unless something important changes. Many places have published their pre-vaccine plan, and the restrictions have been pretty similar to what Sweden has.

This is interesting and I wonder if we could use it on our most vulnerable until a vaccine is ready (part of focusing on cutting the mortality rate further):

"Sorrento Therapeutics and Mount Sinai Health System in New York City have joined forces to develop an antibody cocktail they hope will shield against Covid-19 infection for up to two months. The treatment, called COVI-SHIELD, is designed to be administered as often as necessary, with each dose expected to provide antiviral protection for health care and other essential workers."

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/08/sorrento-therapeutics-mount-...

Theres a risk of antibody dependent enhancement (antibodies backfire and lead to worse disease) with coronavirus antibody cocktails based on what we know about SARS. There are efforts to develop monoclonal antibodies that are selected to avoid ADE if that turns out to be a problem, so maybe a passive vaccine like that could be viable

Here in new Zealand we are embarked on a total eradication path. Just yesterday a friend was espousing that even if we succeed, sooner or later we'll have to join Sweden anyway (unless a vaccine arrives) as the only alternative is to keep our borders entirely shut. Personally I don't have a problem with that, as I have several elderly relatives, but it's amazing to contemplate the decisions that await us all in these strange times.

For an isolated country like New Zealand it's possible to secure the borders, and institute a mandatory 2 week quarantine and testing of visitors. They may be able to relax that quarantine for travelers from countries with very low infection rates.

NZ could quarantine travelers who come in and use extensive testing, temperature checks, etc. to keep it from coming back. Or yes, it could give up on the amazing progress already made in eradicating the virus, open everything up, and not give it a second thought like Sweden. Can't imagine the people in charge would be that stupid, however, to give up all they achieved and let people die unnecessarily.

What about fast, easy-to-administer, inexpensive and accurate tests becoming available, allowing procedures to be set up to test people at airports before departing?

What about them? Do they exist yet? How long until we know they're accurate?

That is one path. You'd probably need to require daily covid tests afterward though for a few days. PCR has a 100% false negative rate the day of infection.

With the death rate is so slow for large portions of the population, the vaccine will have basically no margin for error. How do you convince parents to vaccinate kids for a disease that has say a .001% fatality rate for those under 17 unless the vaccine is even safer?

The same way you convince them to get a flu or chickenpox vaccine. Most people won't mind, and "most people" is enough for effective containment of diseases less contagious than measles.

Their kids likely have grandparents.

I think it's safe to say that most people won't need to be convinced.

The complete details on the pathophysiology of the disease are far from known yet. For instance "The death of a five-year-old boy in New York of inflammatory complications possibly linked to Covid-19 has prompted Andrew Cuomo, the state’s governor, to warn of “an entirely different chapter” of a disease that had been believed to cause only mild symptoms in children."

"Cuomo later tweeted that there have been 73 reported cases in New York of children falling severely ill with a toxic shock-like reaction that displays symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease."

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/09/children-coron...

In the same hospital?

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