All very interesting, thank you for writing this up. Don’t know enough to evaluate this, but it sounds plausible, and not very encouraging. Vaccines do not look promising, but perhaps further understanding of the disease will lead to other treatments that head off some of these complications.
Vaccines are still our best shot in the long-term.
I wouldn’t phrase it as “vaccines do not look promising,” but more as “SARS is relatively hard to vaccinate well.” I do think we’ll have a vaccine that works reliably, eventually. No other antiviral method has their price-to-effectiveness ratio.
We were able to find fixes to the problems with some SARS-1vaccines, and I think we’ll be able to route around these problems for SARS-2 as well.
This just means that I don’t expect vaccine development to be quite as fast as it would be for viruses without these known problems. Additionally, I suspect animal-testing could be crucial to the development of a safe vaccine, unless we’re willing to risk a few human lives in their stead (which, maybe we are).
And speaking personally, until the clinical trial results are in, I’m inclined to be cautious about taking vaccines that use large swathes of the viral S-protein, although I suspect some with smaller fragments will turn out to be fine.
Very delayed response, sorry. I suspect that by the time we have a vaccine ready to go on a mass scale, it won’t make a huge difference. People will return to life before then, for the most part. Not sure if the most vulnerable are able to get vaccines or if that is dangerous—if they can, it will make a difference for them. I don’t think it will eradicate the disease because not everyone will choose to get it (especially as it seems dangerous side effects could be a thing with this vaccine, due to the autoimmune response, and being comfortable about this will take years, and it isn’t clear how dangerous it is for most people), it would be a huge and imperfect effort even if we mandated it, and presumably the disease will change over time, requiring new vaccinations. So I don’t think a vaccine is going to be what changes things here. Obviously, it is still playing out, and the data about risks that comes out regarding both the disease and the vaccine, along with other practical issues, will affect the final outcome.
I did specify long-term, which for me meant time-frames of around a year to a decade out. Honestly, I suspect you’re largely right about the short-term.
Well, except I might be more optimistic about vaccination efforts. Effective vaccination pushes in the past give me some hope.
Also, the mutation rate is a good bit lower than the seasonal flu. SARS-CoV-2′s point-mutations per year is around 28 substitutions, which is about 1⁄2 as many as the flu. Or around 1⁄3 the rate, at ~1.1e-3 subs per site per year, compared to flu’s 3.3 subs per site per year. (Different genome lengths, hence the different answers.)
I’m inclined to be cautious about taking vaccines that use large swathes of the viral S-protein, although I suspect some with smaller fragments will turn out to be fine.
What would be the difference between a large swathe and smaller fragments here?
All very interesting, thank you for writing this up. Don’t know enough to evaluate this, but it sounds plausible, and not very encouraging. Vaccines do not look promising, but perhaps further understanding of the disease will lead to other treatments that head off some of these complications.
Vaccines are still our best shot in the long-term.
I wouldn’t phrase it as “vaccines do not look promising,” but more as “SARS is relatively hard to vaccinate well.” I do think we’ll have a vaccine that works reliably, eventually. No other antiviral method has their price-to-effectiveness ratio.
We were able to find fixes to the problems with some SARS-1vaccines, and I think we’ll be able to route around these problems for SARS-2 as well.
This just means that I don’t expect vaccine development to be quite as fast as it would be for viruses without these known problems. Additionally, I suspect animal-testing could be crucial to the development of a safe vaccine, unless we’re willing to risk a few human lives in their stead (which, maybe we are).
And speaking personally, until the clinical trial results are in, I’m inclined to be cautious about taking vaccines that use large swathes of the viral S-protein, although I suspect some with smaller fragments will turn out to be fine.
Very delayed response, sorry. I suspect that by the time we have a vaccine ready to go on a mass scale, it won’t make a huge difference. People will return to life before then, for the most part. Not sure if the most vulnerable are able to get vaccines or if that is dangerous—if they can, it will make a difference for them. I don’t think it will eradicate the disease because not everyone will choose to get it (especially as it seems dangerous side effects could be a thing with this vaccine, due to the autoimmune response, and being comfortable about this will take years, and it isn’t clear how dangerous it is for most people), it would be a huge and imperfect effort even if we mandated it, and presumably the disease will change over time, requiring new vaccinations. So I don’t think a vaccine is going to be what changes things here. Obviously, it is still playing out, and the data about risks that comes out regarding both the disease and the vaccine, along with other practical issues, will affect the final outcome.
I did specify long-term, which for me meant time-frames of around a year to a decade out. Honestly, I suspect you’re largely right about the short-term.
Well, except I might be more optimistic about vaccination efforts. Effective vaccination pushes in the past give me some hope.
Also, the mutation rate is a good bit lower than the seasonal flu. SARS-CoV-2′s point-mutations per year is around 28 substitutions, which is about 1⁄2 as many as the flu. Or around 1⁄3 the rate, at ~1.1e-3 subs per site per year, compared to flu’s 3.3 subs per site per year. (Different genome lengths, hence the different answers.)
What would be the difference between a large swathe and smaller fragments here?