For christ sake dude. HIV/AIDS is a lifelong/life ending sexually transmitted disease. It is a completely different type of bug. What about HIV/AIDS makes you think it’s a useful comparison? They’re both epidemics well covered by the media?
Worth mentioning for HIV. HIV infection itself won’t usually kill you. AIDS is the result of the HIV infection over time, and that leads to greater chances of infection or other issues (such as cancers) that will kill you. That makes HIV a very different problem to manage. It is an outlier in disease management. Treating HIV means getting the impost it makes on your immune system back to levels where you are no longer at risk of developing AIDS, and thus not as much at risk of being attacked by things that will kill you.
Covid-19 is simply something that can kill you.
You don’t manage Covid-19 infection like you manage HIV infection.
The extraordinary asymptomatic period from HIV infection to AIDS is also an outlier, but serves as a warning about the impact of any such delay. As we find with Covid-19, even a few days is enough to totally transform the nature of the disease spread.
the immunoglobulin transfer system should work.
You get the blood from a person who has recently recovered,filter out desired antibodies, and put them into the patient.
I think boris johnson needed his fever controlled and the oxygen therapy to keep his lungs healthy. maybe some other conditions treated, eg blood pressure ? He’s comparing staying at home to hospital treatment, not saying he had a a treatment specific to the SARS2 virus (or immunoglobulin ) treatment.
There is good hope for an innoculation in the form of weakened COV …
HCOV NL63 has less accessory genes. There’s a few other HCOV beta family viruses to try as well…
and they can be put through recombination to attenuate them… to get rid of the pesky asccessory genes that seem to emplow SARS and SARS2 to be terrible as compared to Nl63 and the ones which just cause rhinorea (common cold sniffles)
What I mean is that NL63 isn’t even a serious disease in adults, but is in children only, and I think that means the accessory gene in NL63 is affecting some children, while SARS2 has different accessory genes, and 2 or 3 times more than NL63, that allow it to sicken many adults ,but not many children ? (maybe it has the same. but the idea is that the recombination will leave it without the genes to cause symptoms in humans. )
In the short term, the NL63 virus could be used immediately to give every not at risk adult COVID beta antibodies ?? It seems to be rather non-contagious …
and this isn’t new thought… remember cowpox innoculating against small pox…
Ok, I dont understand much of that but are you saying the blood transfusion could work as a kind of mini vaccine? Maybe not a full vaccination but at least strengthen the body so when they do get covid 19 their body will handle it better?
No. It is a therapy for someone already infected. Injecting antibodies doesn’t train the recipient’s immune system to make them.
I am concerned that there are reports that strings of HIV have been found in the virus. Another few reports that the lab in Wuhan may have been using manipulated corona virus in a search for a HIV vaccine. If an unfinished virus combination of Corona and HIV has escaped. I hope that the resulting virus does not contain the ability to impair the human immune system as HIV does.
Worst case scenario, a highly contagious virus that impairs the immune system after catching it. Some instances of reinfection may have happened. Due to a now impaired immune system? Can’t even fight off what you just had?
Hopefully not. Just a terrible thought I have.
Now I’ve got a mental picture of rows of recovered people tied to beds, with tubes stuck in them, harvesting their antibodies…
Best case scenario, it makes everyone immune to HIV. That would be pretty cool.
Is there a way to replicate antibodies? Do they replicate themselves? Or do they have to be manufactured by the immune system? Could you devise a virus that feeds on a particular virus? It infects cells that are infected with the original virus. Uses that cell like a virus, to replicate itself. Till it has used up all the viral cells and cannot then replicate further. Both viruses die out.
I wonder if the current procedures to avoid Covid 19, will also put a big dent in a lot of other communicable diseases for some period of time after this. If the procedures continue long enough it could make quite a difference I think.
Down here in Oz we are at the start of our 'flu season. So it will be very interesting to see. OTOH, if all goes well, we will probably be out of the most severe lockdown restrictions before the season really gets under way. There is a big campaign encouraging everyone to get immunised. It may be hard to disentangle the various factors.
The lockdown could have a very interesting effect on other social diseases. I’m sure there will be some wryly amusing papers written in the future.
Scenario: The British prime minister is in row five, bed seven, giving his all. That image might prompt many prominent and other people to never admit they’ve recovered, just so they don’t become involuntary donors.
I read a few days ago (sorry, no cite) that the dramatic decrease of Chinese air pollution means tens of thousands of infants and elders there will NOT die of respiratory ailments. Yes, protection from COVID likely protects against other contagions. But we won’t know the balancing effects till we have the excess mortality statistics.