One thing I’m not sure about: how hard is it to get your hands on HCoV-OC43? With high confidence and in quantities suitable for pretty much guaranteeing to give someone a cold / some immunity? (Do excessive quantities lead to a more severe cold?)
This does really seem like something someone should be working on. Probably someone is, somewhere...
EDIT: Here is one paper on the consequences of HCoV-OC43 infection:
Among other things: “Recent studies have suggested [that human coronaviruses] can cause severe lower respiratory tract illnesses in children.” and “In our population, HCoV-OC43 infections generally caused upper respiratory tract infection, but can be associated with lower respiratory tract infection especially in those coinfected with other respiratory viruses.”
EDIT 3: I would really love for someone who knows things to take a look at this paper actually, and help interpret it. It is only studying children, and notes that “HCoV-OC43 infections tend to occur before 2 years of age” (does that mean adults can’t get it? or they aren’t exposed to it much? Does exposing them to it generate a useful immune response?), and also that, among the children selected for the study, children with HCoV-OC43 had better outcomes than controls (but I have no idea how to normalize this for statistical issues; the subjects were children who tested positive for HCoV-OC43, whereas the controls were children who were tested for respiratory viruses but were negative for HCoV-OC43.)
I would also like to know the answer to this.
One thing I’m not sure about: how hard is it to get your hands on HCoV-OC43? With high confidence and in quantities suitable for pretty much guaranteeing to give someone a cold / some immunity? (Do excessive quantities lead to a more severe cold?)
This does really seem like something someone should be working on. Probably someone is, somewhere...
EDIT: Here is one paper on the consequences of HCoV-OC43 infection:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23337903
Among other things: “Recent studies have suggested [that human coronaviruses] can cause severe lower respiratory tract illnesses in children.” and “In our population, HCoV-OC43 infections generally caused upper respiratory tract infection, but can be associated with lower respiratory tract infection especially in those coinfected with other respiratory viruses.”
So safety might be in question.
EDIT 2: Scihub link: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1097/INF.0b013e3182812787
EDIT 3: I would really love for someone who knows things to take a look at this paper actually, and help interpret it. It is only studying children, and notes that “HCoV-OC43 infections tend to occur before 2 years of age” (does that mean adults can’t get it? or they aren’t exposed to it much? Does exposing them to it generate a useful immune response?), and also that, among the children selected for the study, children with HCoV-OC43 had better outcomes than controls (but I have no idea how to normalize this for statistical issues; the subjects were children who tested positive for HCoV-OC43, whereas the controls were children who were tested for respiratory viruses but were negative for HCoV-OC43.)