Covid Vaccine Possible by End of 2020

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The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which is funding nine different coronavirus vaccine projects, has previously suggested a shot could be ready within 12 to 18 months, an already ambitious target. That assessment didn’t account for the possibility of companies working closely together to accelerate the process, faster enrollment in human trials and other factors, according to Richard Hatchett, the head of the Oslo-based organization.

Several vaccines backed by CEPI may enter a second phase of testing as soon as late spring or this summer. That means the first could become available in 2020 if they prove to be safe and effective, probably on an emergency-use basis. In that scenario, they might be accessible only to certain at-risk populations before being deployed more widely.

CEPI has secured commitments for about half of the $2 billion it estimates will be needed to develop the vaccines, and it may invest in 15 or more programs

SOURCES- Bloomberg
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

35 thoughts on “Covid Vaccine Possible by End of 2020”

  1. Outside the human body. The virus suspended in the air would make an easy target. Inside the human body, EUV doesn’t go far.

  6. Your idea for swallowing an EUV emitter to transit the human body for killing virus targets is intriguing.

  8. Selective pressure pushes towards higher virus efficiency in exploiting the host resources: making more viruses, make them faster and damaging the host countermeasures and so on. The pressure is to deplete the host resources as every cell that remains unused translates in less viral particles that could spread. The fact that viruses become less lethal is a misconception: viruses become more and more lethal over time as the most virulent variants overtake the space of less virulent ones. Lethality is counter selected only if affects the spread rate, but is more than compensated by prolonged asymptomatic phases. Before the current treatments HIV was 100% fatal yet infected tens of millions.
    Viruses DO APPEAR to become less lethal over time in a population because they weed out the more susceptible subpopulations, however if a virus gets in contact with a new population it will manifest its full virulence (all the native population of the americas suffered significant casualties from pathogens that were considered mild in Europe and european were highly susceptible to syphilis strains endemic and quite tolerated by the native populations.
    Regards

  9. The virus has a very specific shape. The virus is between 70-90 nm in size. A pulse of EUV light around that wavelength size should be able to detect the virus and could destroy the virus particle.

  10. Now that’s taking it too far. If this Nate character is trying to predict US elections and isn’t already completely aware of the electoral college and how it operates then he should quit and take up a new job.

  11. Uh, in terms of actual votes, Hillary DID win, by almost 3m votes. We can thank the Electoral College for Trump’s victory, with its “bias” towards rural states.

  12. You are correct, all ways to boost an immune system are beneficial, Also, from what I am seeing its likely a 0.3-0.5% mortality in a half decent HC system then 1-2% in places with poor HC. Still too early, people are impatient. If it ends up 0.5-1% worldwide it would not surprise me.

    The key will be its immunity duration and how mutation impacts that. As I have said before, immunity has a time limit, that can be a mutation, that can be how fast your body forgets to fight it. Plenty of examples exist in both scenarios.

    The only examples of vaccines for life immunity I can think of is Polio, and some Hepatitis strains. Everything else has a time limit and only in the case of the flu is vaccine failure mutation driven, and the flu is a new vaccine a year. So really, there are very few vaccine for life examples where mutation is the main factor eliminating the vaccine. All the others wear off. Same can be said for antibody resistance from exposure.

  13. The characterization of what I am proposing as “Measles parties” is unwarranted. There are several differences. Measles actually presents sizable risk. 1 in 250 children either die or have brain damage. And these measles parties were done by ordinary people rather than medically trained people. Additionally, I am proposing immediate treatment to make the infection very short. I challenge you to find a death due to Covid-19 in 5-17 year old kids with no preexisting health conditions.
    “The vast majority of the patients — 40 children, including the two who died — had per-existing medical conditions. Nearly half of those patients had complex developmental disorders like cerebral palsy or lifelong technology-dependent treatments like tracheostomies or feeding tubes” (that is out of the 48 cases of severe Covid-19 infection they found in children). https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/11/health/coronavirus-children-icu.html
    That makes this about as safe as a common cold, for this age group.

  14. “Viruses that mutate become less deadly. Viruses that don’t mutate have long immunity periods.”

    This is this biggest load of BS.

    A virus that spreads easier typically has a longer incubation period where it is contagious and is airborne. Mutations in viruses don’t have a specific outcome, they are random but contained as part of the existing plan so to speak, like everything else.

    Whether the “deadliness” of the virus would reduce due to an increase in its antibody resistance would have to trigger several of four factors: whether the gene for resistance to a specific antibody has a high number of loci, whether those loci overlap with the portions of the genetics that make it deadly, whether they overlap with loci for its contagious incubation period, and whether those loci contribute to its ability to spread. You need at least two, maybe three depending (the first and one to two others).

    On top of that, the mutations that allow the virus to survive and replicate are the ones that are selected for the strongest. That is the whole goal, to reproduce. It has to be much more deadly than this or have a quick asymptomatic contagious incubation period for it to burn out.

    Next, mutation quantity is dependent on the the number of hosts to help it propagate and spread. The more copies are made, the more mutations will occur.

    Do in need to give you a lecture in evolutionary theory? The modern synthesis. I have done it dozens of times.

  15. “separating the healthy children from the adults and infecting them.” I doubt very much you would get parents to agree with that. Even with relatively rare complications in children you can forget about this idea. I am all for vaccinations, but I certainly would not condone “measles parties”

  16. Another thing, you do know that immunity in the human body is not infinite right? Many pathogens do not need to mutate to reinfect you, your body just simply forgets after a time. Tetanus is a good example, the vaccine only lasts a few years, then you need a booster. It is not because of a new strain, the vaccine is the same as the one before, your body just forgets how to fight it.

  17. Also, Nate Silver gave Trump a 29% chance of winning, higher than any other poll, look it up. At one point in latye in the election his model was giving Trump a 35% chance. He was criticized heavily for it. All others had a 85-98% prediction for Hillary. FiveThirtyEight model was at 71% for Hillary just before the election. He doesn’t poll, he just aggregates the polls into a model based off their methodology and adds in demographic models. So he got it wrong but not as wrong as everyone else. He was first a sports statistician, he created PECOTA for baseball and CARMELO for the NBA and was a pioneer in sabermetrics. I wouldn’t call him biased. His models are sound, it’s just no model is perfect, all models are Golems.

  18. That is my recollection too.

    Wikipedia (not completely trustworthy when it comes to political stuff, but still) says

    In the week leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the FiveThirtyEight team predicted that Hillary Clinton had a 64.5% chance of winning the election. Their final prediction on November 8, 2016, gave Clinton a 71% chance to win the 2016 United States presidential election,[89] 

  19. ” It’s not like Nate Silver is a partisan hack who predicted Hillary would have a 98% chance of winning in 2016.”

    No, it’s not like that. He was actually down to about a 2/3rds chance of her winning by the election. Note, I’m not claiming he’s unbiased, his site has systematically purged its staff of everyone who wasn’t a reliable left-winger. But he wasn’t as far off as you suggest.

  21. No, things are being accelerated at great expense. We are manufacturing million and millions of doses of vaccines that we don’t yet know will work. I think there are very good chances that there will be multiple known effective vaccines ready to go at the end of the year. “Billions” of doses? Maybe not, but many millions? Yes.
    But with good testing, you can use that ammo more effectively. You can test if people have or have had the infection. In areas where that is most elevated give everyone else the vaccine. In areas where the infection rate is low, make every effort to isolate the positives to control the spread, until more doses are ready. And we can also concentrate on the most vulnerable…those over 65 and those with high blood pressure or diabetes.
    The most important thing we don’t seem to be doing is very heavy testing. Any town or city where someone has died of this in the US we need to test everyone. Isolate the positives found for 25 days. Then expand that testing to everyone in every city or town in the US.
    We also need to help Mexico and especially up to Colombia do the same. You can bet it came to them from the US. We should help. We will need to help if we hope to defeat this.

  22. Much of what you are saying is sound. However, we know this virus does not mutate quickly like other COVID viruses. Yes, there are mutations, but they are trivial…just enough to trace where they came from. None to little of the mutations seen affect how the virus behaves. Mostly it is inactive regions of the DNA that is affected rather than the functional stuff.

  23. I don’t think there is any selection pressure to make this more deadly. But I see no compelling reason it would go the other way either. There is some evidence that it has weaked a little, but I don’t find that evidence compelling. I think it is more likely that different populations are affected to a greater or lesser degree based on general health, age demographics, population density, general hygiene, nutrition, toxins, exposure to similar pathogens in the past, even possibly climate. And there is just no way to control for all these variables and say one strain is more deadly than another at this time.

  24. Because there are billions of viruses in any infection, if there were thousands or millions of mutations, only those that have a selection advantage would proliferate and spread more effectively than others in the individual or the community of infected people.
    I don’t necessarily buy every evolution story, but with bacteria and viruses, you can do these sorts of things right before your eyes.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=plVk4NVIUh8&feature=emb_logo

  26. “Perfect” vaccines do not kill people…or very few. And I disagree, that you can’t get a full immune reaction without the true bug. There are a lot of approaches in the works. Anything that produces or introduces the T-cells should be as good as the real deal.
    That said, I am not against separating the healthy children from the adults and infecting them. Though at the same time giving them the best treatments we have to make the infection as short as possible. Education is vital. We need them back in school. And they are also the most likely to infect people if they caught it in a normal context.
    You wouldn’t infect them all at once. Maybe 15% each week.
    They could be put in large centers with lots of games and such, and well supervised by adults that have already gotten it.

  27. COVID viruses have short immunity periods because they mutate quickly, it’s the reason why we have never had a successful long term vaccine for the common cold.

    You are making a jump in saying an virus that has already evolved to have a certain negative impact will lose that impact if a mutation occurs that allows it to survive antibodies. The virus already is expressing the variation that leads to it’s negative impact/immune response. Selection will favor mutations that allow it to survive and spread and those mutations will not necessarily reduce its negative effects.

  28. There are certainly positive things: treatments are coming, vaccines are very likely coming. Yes, mutation rates are slow for this. Recently I read that significant numbers of T-cells are made in the body suggesting a lasting immunity. Hopefully, that means this is a “one hit wonder”, and won’t be back after it leaves. Or it will be infrequent.

    But Thermodynamics does not apply to natural selection. Pathogens only become less deadly if it enhances the chance for spread…or if we weaken them…and intentionally give the weakened version to lots of people.
    The virus benefits from prolonging the disease and extending the time of contagion. This virus seems to have this down. Long contagion, and if the person is dying that is spread out over a couple weeks to get everyone trying to help, sick.
    If the dying/dead victim phase works to spread the disease that will be conserved…like it is in Ebola.
    To some extent in the US, that dying phase is being less successful at spreading the disease. The protective equipment is working, and health workers are actually less likely to contract Coronavirus than the general public. However, that is not likely to be true all over the world and there is nothing stopping this from reentering the US. Also, with people dying at home, there will still be spread in that phase.
    You getting over it or you dying make no difference to it. In both cases, the infection ends.

  30. Great.

    But I don’t believe a vaccine will be strictly necessary to end the quarantines and distancing.

    The meds under test are showing they work as antivirals (remdesivir and Avigan in particular), and it seems they should be administered early on the disease onset to finish it early, that is, before it damages the organs too much. Because when you’re in ICU, with your lungs and organs damaged, the best antiviral won’t help you that much.

    Remdesivir is too expensive to function as a true universally accessible over-the-counter antiviral like Tamiflu, and it is injected not taken as pills, thus it will be given to high priority patients (very sick) and healthcare workers.

    But Avigan is a generic med now, and could be mass produced as pills as soon as it is approved. The only problem is that in animal studies, it had some teratogenic effects in fetuses at high doses. But for the rest of cases, it seems to be a viable remedy. It has been tested for quite some time in Japan, and it has shown not to have any long lasting effects, leaving the body in a few days, so it could be used with warning of not being administered to pregnant women. They could get remdesivir instead.

  31. The greatest value of this is ‘public morale boost’ and ‘virus threat normalization optics’ that this will provide throughout more panicked societies. When this becomes considered as just another flu and ends up killing only half next year (just less than regular flu), but without any social measures/ disruptions – normality will once again be restored. Though there might be a whole other level of ‘get your shot’ shaming than the current levels with normal flu.

  32. Watch for an announcement tomorrow out of Stanford, the US Army Medical Center, and Galveston National Laboratory about a monoclonal antibody treatment that has already proved successful in in-vitro and animal trials.

  33. As with the flu the virus mutates and a vaccine will be partial and temporal. I bet on air sniffer that will evolve from the solution developed by Swiss Empa, ETH Zurich and Zurich University Hospital to defeat the Coovid 19 . It will locate concentrations of the virus and identify those who emits them anywhere, even from a drone criss crossing a community and locating an emitter inside an apartment. 

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200421112520.htm

  34. I’m thinking that it’s a long long way from the start of a stage II trial to the deployment of billions of doses. This also assumes that one of the current vaccines under development will be safe and effective (typically in the past only a small percentage of vaccines were.) Finally, to get downright bleak vaccines don’t seem to be able to be created for some viruses.

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