For any pandemic (especially bioengineered pandemics), the worst case scenario should be assumed:
1) Any treatment or prophylactic will either not work or not be able to be scaled up quickly enough. 2) Some viruses will spread completely asymptomatically and have very long incubation periods. 3) Some viruses will kill effectively regardless of age or health status.
The strategy that has the best chance of successfully dealing with this threat is to develop 1) a global pathogen surveillance system and 2) cheap and effective personal aerosol filtration systems. The surveillance system should ideally be decentralized for data collection and data access. An example of this kind of system is the demonpore platform. The filtration system would be (or similar to) an elastomeric respirator or PAPR. Everyone will need to possess and know how to correctly use the filtration system before a pandemic hit.
First, you don’t want to assume the worst case and then plan for only that, or you won’t have prepared for the less bad cases. You are advising not bothering to develop treatments and prophylactics because in the worst case they won’t work. That seems obviously wrong, and not worth discussing.
Second, yes, we need surveillance and PPE, but these don’t relate to my questions. And if we’re concerned about bioengineered pandemics, the bioengineering will explicitly attempt to build around the known countermeasures, so I’m not sure why the first and second paragraphs are combined into a single comment.
Actually, I didn’t mean to advise against developing treatments and prophylactics, but in the context of a zero sum game or in a fund-only-the-best-approaches game, I would advise pursuing the surveillance/PPE strategy rather than treatments and prophylactics. To be clear, I should have wrote something like this: “While treatments and prophylactics might work for some pandemics, we should assume that they won’t work for others, especially the bioengineered kind. Since we won’t know ahead of time which pandemic we’ll have to deal with next, we should assume that it will be the worst-case kind and plan accordingly.” In a mild pandemic (like this one), a lot of people won’t want to wear PPE, and that’s why treatments and prophylactics should still be developed.
I don’t see how any kind of virus (bioengineered or otherwise) could evade a surveillance system that could detect the presence of any unknown viruses and cause a pandemic even if nearly everyone wore PAPRs. That seems physically impossible.
If you’re only concerned about how limited funding should be allocated between antivirals and vaccines, most of the funding should go to vaccines, because we already know that they can work well. However, with more development, antivirals have the potential to overtake vaccines in performance (e.g., DRACO), so a smaller but substantial amount of funding should be allocated for this research.
I think we agree—I’m certainly in favor of massive investments in surveillance and in PPE. The key question was whether I was missing something in the push for vaccines and antivirals, as if both were similarly promising.
For any pandemic (especially bioengineered pandemics), the worst case scenario should be assumed:
1) Any treatment or prophylactic will either not work or not be able to be scaled up quickly enough.
2) Some viruses will spread completely asymptomatically and have very long incubation periods.
3) Some viruses will kill effectively regardless of age or health status.
The strategy that has the best chance of successfully dealing with this threat is to develop 1) a global pathogen surveillance system and 2) cheap and effective personal aerosol filtration systems. The surveillance system should ideally be decentralized for data collection and data access. An example of this kind of system is the demonpore platform. The filtration system would be (or similar to) an elastomeric respirator or PAPR. Everyone will need to possess and know how to correctly use the filtration system before a pandemic hit.
https://www.demonpore.com
https://wefunder.com/demonpore
First, you don’t want to assume the worst case and then plan for only that, or you won’t have prepared for the less bad cases. You are advising not bothering to develop treatments and prophylactics because in the worst case they won’t work. That seems obviously wrong, and not worth discussing.
Second, yes, we need surveillance and PPE, but these don’t relate to my questions. And if we’re concerned about bioengineered pandemics, the bioengineering will explicitly attempt to build around the known countermeasures, so I’m not sure why the first and second paragraphs are combined into a single comment.
Actually, I didn’t mean to advise against developing treatments and prophylactics, but in the context of a zero sum game or in a fund-only-the-best-approaches game, I would advise pursuing the surveillance/PPE strategy rather than treatments and prophylactics. To be clear, I should have wrote something like this: “While treatments and prophylactics might work for some pandemics, we should assume that they won’t work for others, especially the bioengineered kind. Since we won’t know ahead of time which pandemic we’ll have to deal with next, we should assume that it will be the worst-case kind and plan accordingly.” In a mild pandemic (like this one), a lot of people won’t want to wear PPE, and that’s why treatments and prophylactics should still be developed.
I don’t see how any kind of virus (bioengineered or otherwise) could evade a surveillance system that could detect the presence of any unknown viruses and cause a pandemic even if nearly everyone wore PAPRs. That seems physically impossible.
If you’re only concerned about how limited funding should be allocated between antivirals and vaccines, most of the funding should go to vaccines, because we already know that they can work well. However, with more development, antivirals have the potential to overtake vaccines in performance (e.g., DRACO), so a smaller but substantial amount of funding should be allocated for this research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2020/09/kimer-med-founded-to-develop-the-draco-antiviral-strategy/
I think we agree—I’m certainly in favor of massive investments in surveillance and in PPE. The key question was whether I was missing something in the push for vaccines and antivirals, as if both were similarly promising.