With smallpox, it was found that infection with cowpox led to antibodies that could fight the more severe smallpox disease.
My understanding is that other viruses in the coronavirus family can just cause a mild cold. Has there been research on intentionally infecting people with a milder version of coronavirus to see if it creates immunity from the stronger SARS-Cov-2 strain going around?
What about (as a thought experiment) mutating the SARS-Cov-2 strain to creating a virus that is less lethal, but has a higher R0. Wouldn’t that eventually push the COVID virus out and create herd immunity? Create a highly contagious mild cold coronavirus that infectsw people before they get infected by the stronger SARS-Cov2 virus.
In theory, sure. Creating a virus with tremendous communicability but that does little harm, and which creates immunicty to SARS-CoV-2, would be awesome. It’s not easy to do, though
It’s still way too early to tell if it works. There are many viruses that provide immunity because they are closely related. However this certainly isn’t always the case.
For example Marburg virus and Ebola virus are all closely related. Originally the only way to tell them apart was that they produced significantly different antibodies.
