'We're Wasting Time Talking About Herd Immunity': 'Even w/o Covid Vaccine There's Reason For Hope'
"We're wasting time talking about herd immunity." Opinion by William Haseltine, Mon July 13, 2020, CNN.
(CNN) Debate over whether herd immunity will be our salvation to the escalating Covid crisis was recently fueled by two new reports. The first was the release of a new nationwide study from Spain, a former Covid hotspot, which suggested that too many lives would be lost while waiting to achieve the approximate 60% infection rate needed for herd immunity, whereby so many people become immune to the disease that it is effectively stamped out.
The second was a report from New York, which suggested that in some communities herd immunity may have already been achieved, with one health care clinic reporting that slightly more than 68% of Covid tests taken had come back positive. But we waste critical time with this pointless discussion, because the facts are already quite clear: herd immunity will likely never be achieved for Covid-19 or any other coronavirus. We know this thanks to new research on the development and decline of Covid antibodies and from a wealth of epidemiological evidence on coronaviruses as a whole.
While SARS and MERS are the coronaviruses that grab the headlines, there are four other mostly unknown coronaviruses that are much more common: 229E, HKU1, NL63 and OC43. What we know from 60 years of research into these viruses is that they come back year after year and reinfect the same people -- over and over again.
One New York City study, conducted between the fall of 2016 and the spring of 2018, showed that people could test positive multiple times for infection by the same strain of coronavirus, within the same year. Antibodies to the virus would increase sharply after infection and peak after about two weeks. But then their presence would decline, generally disappearing entirely somewhere between four months and one year. In one case, a person was reinfected with the same strain of coronavirus after just four weeks from first infection...
More, https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/13/opinions/herd-immunity-covid-19-uncomfortable-reality-haseltine/index.html
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*Related: "Even Without A Covid-19 Vaccine, There's Reason For Hope." Opinion by William Haseltine, CNN, July 8, 2020.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/08/opinions/covid-19-treatment-reason-for-hope-haseltine/index.html
[Editor's Note: William Haseltine, PhD, is chair and president of the global health think tank, ACCESS Health International. He is author of numerous books, including the recently released, "A Family Guide to COVID-19: Questions and Answers for Parents, Grandparents and Children." The views expressed in this commentary are his own.]
(CNN) A lot of hope has been placed on the possibility of a Covid-19 vaccine by the end of this year. However, overcoming the technical challenges of developing a vaccine -- and the safety issues inherent in making one that works for the populations most at risk -- is no easy feat. While it may be possible to deliver a vaccine by the end of this year, absolutely every step of its development would have to go perfectly. From experience, I can tell you how rare that is.
..Of the more than 100 vaccines currently in development, the ones tested on primates have not prevented nasal infections, though in one case the vaccine prevented the disease from spreading to the lungs where it is known to cause severe damage. However, since Covid-19 progresses somewhat differently in monkeys than in humans, it's hard to know how effective these vaccines will be in human trials. One thing we do know is that some of the vaccines currently being tested in humans are already causing serious side effects. The side effects are likely a result of the powerful ingredients added to the vaccine to help inflame the body's immune system.
These ingredients called adjuvants -- help vaccines work better, but if they can land the young and healthy patients in the clinical trial in the hospital because of high fevers and fainting, imagine what they might do to those already ill with secondary conditions or to those who are older. Indeed, the elderly may need repeated doses of the vaccine, given how resistance to some vaccinations becomes progressively more profound with time.
But even without a vaccine, there is reason for hope that a medical solution to the crisis will soon be at hand. It will likely take the form of anti-Covid drugs that will be able to treat patients newly infected and prevent others from becoming ill. These drugs can likely help us bridge the gap between where we are today -- with only masks, hand hygiene and physical distancing to protect us -- to where we hope to be tomorrow -- with a vaccine in hand. Recent studies have shown two types of drugs with particular promise. The first are antivirals --...
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