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German company CureVac has received a rather strange offer from the current White House.
On March 3, CureVac's CEO was invited to the White House, for a meeting with President Trump, Vice Pence and several members of the Coronavirus Task Force. Asked for when a vaccine could be ready, he estimated that a potential candidate could be ready within a few months. Apparently, that triggered the members of the meeting so much, that they've now offered to buy the company, at whatever price.
One condition though: production would be exclusively for the United States.
The move is not exactly one to gain popularity, and follows on the heels of the President's worrying statement that "a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe".
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 15 2020, @11:23PM (14 children)
(to continue with my last comment)
I would like to hear what the experts have to say about this. From what I was hearing before, as you all already know, the reason that it's going to take so long is because of the testing.
So some company comes up to Trump with a sales pitch and claims that they can do it faster. Obviously they want money but for all I know this could be a scam artist. Trump, not being an expert himself and being someone that doesn't really care what the experts say, just jumps on the opportunity without thinking. He ignores the experts regardless.
So it would be nice to hear what the experts have to say not what Trump believes. Did this company start on the testing earlier than everyone else? How much earlier (how much of a head start could they really have had?). If not how can they prove, with less testing time, that it works and is safe? They need not prove it to Trump (or whatever expert Trump selects since he will just fire any expert that disagrees with him) but the company needs to prove it to independent experts.
I'm not saying it's false. I'm just saying I want to hear what the experts have to say.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 15 2020, @11:44PM (1 child)
Trump against his own desire to protect the economy listened to his advisors and shut down travel to Europe. If Fauci's team said they wanted the research, Trump would make it happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 15 2020, @11:50PM
(same poster)
Agreed. Trump did some things right and some things wrong. Early on he did some things wrong (ie: he was slow on getting testing out and approving it) but later on he seemed to get better and actually listen to the experts more.
Reading the links a bit more this doesn't look as bad as I originally thought. But I'm no expert by a long shot FWIW.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 15 2020, @11:47PM (7 children)
(same poster)
OK so I'm going back to actually read the articles this time. It looks like
A: They aren't going to have the vaccine ready for the public in a few months. The vaccine will be ready for testing in humans by June or July. It will probably take longer for the testing to actually complete before the vaccine becomes mass produced and available. This makes more sense.
B: The vaccine has "showed promise in an early-stage rabies trial". So they're trying to use data from a rabies trial to apply to this vaccine?
(Score: 5, Funny) by barbara hudson on Monday March 16 2020, @12:01AM (4 children)
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @12:23AM (2 children)
See comment above by resident AC on the ineffectiveness of vaccine if the patient already has the disease. Trump is already rabid, so a vaccine would not help. Instead he needs a Postexposure prophylaxis, but since he is already symptomatic, and virally shedding madness across the world, the prognosis is not good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @02:48AM (1 child)
Did anyone mention vaccine?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 16 2020, @02:30PM
They cause autism! Avoid!
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Funny) by maxwell demon on Monday March 16 2020, @07:24AM
Why would you inject him with rabies? Don't you think he's already rabid enough?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Monday March 16 2020, @01:12AM (1 child)
From what Fauci has said. The vaccine would take a few weeks to months to produce, and that he has no reason to believe that it would not work, but the problem comes when they need to spend a year testing it to make sure its safe in humans. The testing is more to find whether it will kill the people who take it rather than how effective it is.
So if a drug has already been tested and shown to be safe in humans, and it has some cross applicibility for 2019-nCoV then it could be deployed and get some sort of net gain.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @08:07AM
Yes, but to show it is safe takes time. How can they possibly know the long term effects if they only test it for a month?
Honestly even if they just claim it "moderates the disease" and it is a placebo it may help though. A lot of what going on is hysteria.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @12:25AM (3 children)
From one of the articles, a vaccine candidate could be ready within a few months. That means human trials would begin in June or July. It's necessary to understand the safety of the vaccine. Some of the SARS candidate vaccines caused immune hypersensitivity, for example. A vaccine would need to produce an appropriate antibody response and have limited side effects. Assuming that the candidate vaccine is viable, delivery probably wouldn't begin until mid-2021. And that assumes it passes the clinical trails, which is not certain. For that matter, there are conflicting reports about the experimental antiviral remdesivir. Some express optimism while others raise concerns both about efficacy and side effects.
The best options we have now seem to be social distancing, good hygiene, widespread testing, managing symptoms and complications, and the use of supportive treatments like ventilators. There are treatments for managing complications like a cytokine storm. There is a glimmer of optimism in the data, in the rate of new infections in the US [wikipedia.org]. For several days, the rate of new infections was around 40-45% of the previous day's total. More recently, that seems to be closer to 30-35%. Because people tend to not develop serious symptoms for a week or so, that decline is probably the rest of prior measures to control the spread. We will probably see the effects of school closings and bans on mass gatherings lower that rate more in the next week or two. To be clear, 30-35% increases per day is still much too fast, but it's an indication that the control measures are starting to have an effect.
We can't expect a vaccine anytime soon and shouldn't count on existing antivirals to be effective. The good news is that the typical measures for controlling the spread of infectious diseases are effective against this virus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @01:22AM
It's crazy though, if you look at places like Costco you see huge crowds. Wouldn't that be a bad thing? I'm no expert but it looks to me that everyone's attempt to prepare for the problem could be making the problem worse?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @02:00AM
Thanks for your response. I was searching through stuff and I found this interesting (though somewhat off topic).
Basically various labs showed potentially promising results but ultimately
"As of December 2015, research related to DRACOs had ground to a halt due to a lack of funding."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRACO [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday March 16 2020, @03:19AM
The U.S. has no idea what the rate of infection is because there is virtually no testing at large in the country.
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