I see a lot of discussion and news articles about drug treatments and vaccines, but almost only passing mention about blood serum. That is odd because it seems to me that almost anyone who has survived an infection could become a serum donor.
Contrast this statement about vaccines from Dr Francis Collins, director of the National Institute of Health, as reported on CNN “Collins says if one of the vaccine trials is successful, there will be ‘tens of millions of doses ready to go by the end of 2020, the end of the calendar year’”. So that is, um, doses available for 1 person out of 25 IF it were limited to persons in the United States?
Could the learned ones please weigh in on serum as a treatment?
I don’t think we have the infrastructure to deliver tens of millions of doses of serum on that time scale, if you were thinking serum is somehow more plentiful.
But yeah, they work based on similar mechanisms. Serum from someone who has recently recovered can be full of those same antibodies that a vaccine is supposed to prompt your body to make. And sometimes one or two doses of convalescent serum is enough to make the difference in fighting a disease.
Usually, convalescent serum is used for people who either can’t take a vaccine (it would be dangerous for them) or who are immune compromised and can’t effectively mount their own immune response. Or for people who are already sick, for whom the effect of a vaccine would come too late. But sometimes they are used in cases like this, where there is no vaccine.
I think I read something, months ago now, when Covid was still just an Asian thing. It was def in an Asian news source. Maybe it was South Korea?, they were effectively trying what I think you’re speaking of. But it proved to have no effect and was quickly dropped, I believe.
(You could try searching Channel News Asia, or South China Morning Post, maybe!)
Thank you for the responses. So if I understand, blood serum just “imports” the antibodies. It is not like a vaccine that kicks off one’s own immune system start producing them.
By the way, someone mentioned, in another topic, that the anti-vaccine crowd has seized on serum as a cure - anything to avoid vaccination. ARGH. I do not wish to be associated with that crowd. I get the flu vaccine every year. I will be following my Doctor’s recommendations as I approach age thresholds.