Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop
Delays Reported For Possible Covid-Inoculating Plasma Shot (register-herald.com) 79
But the idea exists only on paper. Federal officials have twice rejected requests to discuss the proposal, and pharmaceutical companies — even acknowledging the likely efficacy of the plan — have declined to design or manufacture the shots, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation… There is little disagreement that the idea holds promise; the dispute is over the timing. Federal health officials and industry groups say the development of plasma-based therapies should focus on treating people who are already sick, not on preventing infections in those who are still healthy…
But scientists who question the delay argue that the immunity shots are easy to scale up and should enter clinical trials immediately. They say that until there’s a vaccine, the shots offer the only plausible method for preventing potentially millions of infections at a critical moment in the pandemic. “Beyond being a lost opportunity, this is a real head-scratcher,” said Dr. Michael Joyner, a Mayo Clinic researcher who leads a program sponsored by the Food and Drug Administration to capitalize on coronavirus antibodies from COVID-19 survivors. “It seems obvious.” The use of so-called convalescent plasma has already become widespread. More than 28,000 patients have already received the IV treatment, and preliminary data suggest that the method is safe.
- by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @12:03PM (#60289850)
Autism autism autism autism autism autism autism.
Okay, we GET it — you have autism.
Ya know… one day there will be a vaccine for Autism, causing anti-vaxers’ brains to short-circuit in a Star Trek, “I, Mudd” (“logic is a wreath of pretty flowers which smell *bad*
Actually, no, I do not have autism. I wanted to get it out of the way, because autism keeps appearing repeatedly during discussions of vaccines. With a bit of luck will this be the thread where people can talk about it. Also, welcome to the autism thread. You have a nice idea there by the way.
But we can’t even do safe antibody testing yet? (Score:4, Interesting)
by shanen ( 462549 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @12:40PM (#60289972) Homepage JournalPlease don’t propagate BS FP Subjects.
The story itself is moderately interesting. But it keeps coming back to the problem that we still don’t know enough about Covid-19. We are flying in the dark, and unlike the bats, we don’t have sonar.
In terms of seeing where we are going, my Question-Of-The-Day is “Why don’t we have widespread antibody testing?” My tentative hypotheses are “Stupid priorities” or “Insane priorities”. One of the proper priorities should have been to develop cheap antibody tests and make them part of every routine blood examination, at least in so-called advanced countries like the US, the EU countries, and Japan. (I’m only certain about the US and Japan.) I believe that if anyone had developed such tests and started administering them on a large scale, then the cost/test should be approaching zero by now.
Of course that would tie into this story, too. If we had lots of test data for several antibodies we’d probably have some idea of WTH is going on. Do we currently even know which antibodies matter?
Time to rant in my pants again? Covid-19 is NOT an economic or political problem. It’s a medical problem. In particular the economic firehoses of money and the political denials of reality are NOT working or helping but are in most cases making things worse. MUCH worse. Why am I even repeating myself? (Possibly a side effect of This Is Not Propaganda by Pomerantsev (who also wrote Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible about lies in Russia)?)
I can get an antibody test if I go to Frankfurt. It is not that expensive, 20 euros for the test itself and another 25 for the nurse taking my blood. I just don’t see the point – herd immunity is far away and it looks like the immunity doesn’t last long.
- by shanen ( 462549 )
Thanks for the data about the situation in Germany.
However my point is that if we were testing a number of antibodies and collecting lots of data, then we could analyze it for answers to such questions as “Which antibodies were present in the people who did not develop Covid-19 after various periods of time?”, “Which antibodies persisted for how long?”, and “Which antibodies are associated with more and less serious cases?” For example, it would be extremely helpful if we actually knew that a particular ant
This kind of research already happens. But what does it have to do with testing everyone once every couple of years? General antibody test only makes sense for people who have been ill, but not very much so and are curious whether it has been a mere common cold or covid19 or for researchers who have selected a representative group of people and want to know how many of them had the coronavirus already. This kind of research also happens already.
- by shanen ( 462549 )
You make it sound like blood exams are quite rare in Germany? You said “every couple of years”, but I think I had at least two or three “routine” blood exams already this year. Or maybe it’s related to age?
I certainly acknowledge that the questions I offered are pretty obvious and that researchers are working hard to answer them, but they are the kinds of questions where the sheer quantity of data matters. If the scale of testing makes the tests cheap enough, then the amount and value of the data would actu
Blood exams are voluntary. Most people visit a doctor only when they need to, especially now.
- Just had one comment (I agree with everything in your post). Anyone in the United States can get a Covid-19 Antibody test from Quest Diagnostics. It is $119 (not chump change but not very expensive either). I had to get my blood drawn for some normal medical tests and I had it done just to know (since they are poking me once to get blood I figured might as well). Gordon
- by rworne ( 538610 )
It may depend on where you are or who you have for insurance. My employer got rid of the normal copay insurance and pretty much forced everyone onto high-deductible plans.
So for pretty much any medical issue, we are paying monthly premiums for “discounted” medical costs, because we would need to exceed $3400/year out of pocket before insurance will pick up *any* of the cost sharing (including prescription drugs) aside from yearly checkups.
Yet I get free Covid nose swab tests and antibody tests. No idea ho
- My apologies, I should have given more information. One can get the antibody test either by being referred by your Primary Care Physician (If one is in California, your insurance company is required to pay for it) or you can pay for the test yourself (which is what I did). The $119 (actually about $125 with some fee they tack on) is a direct price that Quest Diagnostics charges for the antibody test (It is through their “Quest Direct” website. One has to sign up of course. Here is the link: https://questdir [questdiagnostics.com]
Covid-19 is NOT an economic or political problem. It’s a medical problem.
And yet it is. Viruses will keep being a problem for everyone and it all needs to get addressed and resolved, because it requires all people to work together.
There is then little point in mass testing, because many people will dodge these tests, and others do not want to be tracked and traced. You end up with a fraction, know little more than you already did, and the money and man power is better used elsewhere.
We have to start accepting that viruses will keep coming and COVID19 is only a heads-up. To focus
Not really catching up. The amount of daily new cases has been between 200 and 400 per day for the last 6 weeks, about the same as the amount of daily closed cases. The average R rate for the past 6 weeks is also at about 1. There have been several local outbreaks, but other than that the epidemic in Germany is at a nice low level. I hope that stays this way until a vaccine is available.
No, Germany had less cases for a while, but daily life has caught up with them like it does everywhere. The mass testing sure was brilliant. It was done fast and early and had the necessary action to contain most cases. The same happened in Vietnam. But it only works well with countries where there is a strong sense of public obedience. The UK went in rough as was to be expected, Sweden stayed calm as always and I wonder how many in the Netherlands took any of it serious at all… Still, even with a vaccine
Why don’t we have widespread antibody testing?
There were 100 companies self-validating antibody tests back in March 2020. In April the FDA started requiring companies to submit Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) requests because so many of the tests were crap. Of course they were since we didn’t have enough data or time. But at this point there are several mass-produced EUA-authorized point-of-care tests available in the US. So we did not delay, nor is availability an issue today. Lots of those 100 companies never filed the EUA so those tests vanis
In terms of seeing where we are going, my Question-Of-The-Day is “Why don’t we have widespread antibody testing?”
Reliability. All tests have false positives and false negatives. The rates on antibody tests are currently high enough that the test is not super helpful, in that there’s going to be a lot of people who get a false positive and then go do dumb things.
For example, one of the recent tests that got pulled had a 30% false positive rate.
Covid-19 is NOT an economic or political problem. It’s a medical problem
The response to COVID19 is a political problem in the US, which leads to the economic problems. Economic responses can only do so much when people’s behavior is going to be go
- Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
- Developers, developers, developers, developers!
Autism from vaccines: ambulance-chasing fraud. (Score:5, Insightful)
by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @12:17PM (#60289908) JournalAutism autism autism autism autism autism autism.
Which appears to be a complete myth or deliberate fraud.
The research purporting to show increased autism among the immunized was funded by a consortium of trial lawyers, apparently hoping for another multi-billion set of lawsuit awards against the medical industry, on the model of tobacco and asbestos.
The thought was the traces of a mercury-based preservative in some vaccine formulations might harm some childrens’ nervous systems, and that the observed increases in autism diagnoses might be the result of the deployment of more vaccines in the same time frame.
Many research projects by major medical institutions, have failed to confirm any connection – and it’s been hunted for very carefully, by many with nothing to gain by denying it and plenty to gain (including academic reputation and influence in driving future immunization design) by finding it and pinning it down. (Nevertheless, modern vaccine formulations try to avoid the suspect preservative.)
The rise in autism diagnosis is more than adequately explained by changes in diagnostic behavior at the time (along with financial advantages to diagnose autism vs. other behavior issues).
So it looks like a lucrative medical fraud that failed to pan out – but which is still propagated as rumor.
Well, at least you didn’t propagate the troll’s Subject, though you have still chosen to play the troll’s game. Do you think you are going to persuade the troll with any dose of reality? There ain’t no vaccine for that.
The main thing I want on Slashdot is less visibility for such garbage, but FP abuse is the easiest source of visibility. It seems obvious that the insane motivations include visibility. Now we have reached such levels of insanity that I am contemplating a Make Slashdot Great Again campaign. O
Do you think you are going to persuade the troll with any dose of reality? There ain’t no vaccine for that.
Such discussions aren’t about trying to convince the troll. They’re for the benefit of third parties who observe them.
If the myth is not answered it spreads. (The “big lie” propaganda technique is based on this.) If it’s immediately answered with a reasoned and testable debunking, some of the observers who might have accepted it will no do so. (This can even “immunize” enough people to cause the my
- by shanen ( 462549 )
Okay, I think your motives are pure, but I still think the trolls’ objectives are being served when they can divert the discussions away from the REAL topics. Anything the trolls want to talk about is a waste of my time and I have to confess that I’m not sufficiently concerned about the innocents, notwithstanding the Subject.
My favored solution approach would be to make increased visibility contingent upon good behavior. A fresh identity would start with low reputation and low visibility, and troll-like beh
Okay, I think your motives are pure, but I still think the trolls’ objectives are being served when they can divert the discussions away from the REAL topics. Anything the trolls want to talk about is a waste of my time
I can see that. You are trying hard to avoid spending your time here and and not further support the topic by talking about it.
It’s like the meme that baby powder causes cancer. It doesn’t (https://www.nhs.uk/news/cancer/no-evidence-talcum-powder-causes-ovarian-cancer-new-review-finds/) but as soon as one hicksville jury finds a deep-pocket Big Company liable for it, that becomes a legal precedent, and baby powder becomes another product we can no longer have.
Think of this as the Cancel Culture of Things.
Before dismissing it as a conspiracy, there ARE people and/or corporations that would benefit short term if effective preventions are delayed. Who are these players and are they in the power of delaying things?
Democrats want to keep the pandemic going so they can evict Trump.
What evidence do you have of this? From what I’ve seen they’ve been doing what scientists suggest in order to contain the virus.
Republicans want to keep the pandemic going so they can cancel the 2020 elections out of fears of fraud and safety as they pull a Putin and place Trump in power for not just another 4 years…but longer.
Only Trump (and maybe his loyalists) seem to have this plan. The rank-and-file Republican politicians seem to be aimed toward winning/minimizing losses via voter suppression.
The planet and everyone on it is a piece of shit.
I would say the people in general are very selfish but there are some actually trying to turn things around. I’ve done everything I can to reduce my environmental “footprint”, I got an EV and everything. Ha
Re:Who would benefit? (Score:4, Informative)
by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @02:15PM (#60290324)The obvious answer is anyone on the left.
Yeah. It’s those on the “left” who keep saying the government can’t make them wear masks [tampabay.com]. It’s those on the “left” who blocked hospitals [foxnews.com] so patients, of all types, couldn’t get in and threatened hospital workers [independent.co.uk]. It’s those on the “left” who say people should stop getting tested [businessinsider.com].
For that to work, they HAVE to keep case counts high straight through the election
Which is why those on the “left” keep saying they’re going to ignore whatever the government says because it’s all fake. There is no covid-19 pandemic and people aren’t dying and if there is anything going on, it’s not as bad as the doctors are reporting [localnews8.com].
Already did it to hydroxychloroquine, now they’re doing it again.
Yes, yes. Those evil doctors on the “left” are suppressing this miracle drug. All those studies showing the drug having no effect and in some cases killing patients are all lies. They’re just killing people to stick it to the con artist.
We’re watching the deep state in action.
No, we’re watching the complete and total abdication of anything resembling leadership from this corrupt so-called president who only wants people to praise him [imgur.com] and who has also said we should stop doing testing because these high numbers make us look bad as well as directed his staff to slow testing [cnn.com] to keep the numbers low. It doesn’t matter that over 140,000 people have died in this country [imgur.com] because of his incompetent ineptitude. It’s that “deep state” at play making him look bad.
The only thing the left needs for the GOP to flub handling of COVID is the GOP.
It’s more likely that the paperwork required to approve the treatment is way the Hell more complicated than was planned for by the people who came up with the treatment.
Because, in fact, the paper trail required to get a new treatment past the Feds is mind-numbingly long. Which is as it should be, what with people suing right and left if they happen to get an allergic reaction, or other unpleasant side-effect.
And no, signing a release saying you won’t sue if you have unpleasant results from the drug you’
I’d suspect trying to avoid a thalidomide disaster (Score:5, Informative)
by Ungrounded Lightning ( 62228 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @12:51PM (#60290004) JournalBefore dismissing it as a [bogus] conspiracy [theory], [who might benefit?]
I’d be more inclined to suspect the regulators of fearing a thalidomide disaster being blamed on them.
Convalescent serum innoculations are risky:
They use plasma from people who just got over the disease – and so may also contain some live virus from the pathogen in question, or any other disease the serum donor may have (hepatitis, HIV, shingles, cytomeglavirus, spongiform encephalopathies, transmissable cancers,
SARS-CoV-2 is a particular problem for the live virus issue. It has been shown to hang out for a long time in several “privileged” tissues (and is suspected to do it in others), then come out weeks later – only to be beaten down again if the immune response is still strong, but to cause a relapse if not. For a recovered/recovering patient, still producing antibodies, that’s OK. But transfer his serum into an uninfected victim – who is NOT producing his OWN antibodies – and you’ve just given him the disease.
They serum can’t be treated to kill pathogens without denaturing the antibodies which are the whole point of the treatment. Not all of these things can be screened for, and screening can have false negatives. So they risk giving the recipient the disease in question or another.
This makes it suitable for a treatment if a patient already has the pathogen or a very high risk of it, especially if they have preexisting conditions that make their risk of death high.
But for a temporary immunization? They might easily do more harm than good.
That’s why some of the pharma companies are working on coctail-of-monoclonal-antibodies immunizations/treatments based on antibodies harvested from survivors’ plasma. There you get what you were after – the immune serum directed at the disease – but the pure quill: Just the antibodies (made by gene-engineered bacteria). Just the ones you want. No dangerous pathogens from the random survivors.
Pricey (and profitable, of course). But far less dangerous.
- Mod parent UP!
Indeed. That’s why there is still some hope for this place; posts like these. You can’t just shoot raw plasma into someone without taking the above-mentioned risks.
- by shanen ( 462549 )
Short answer seems to be yes. However it’s easier to find them playing the stock market, where they are enthusiastically gambling on and profiting from other people’s deaths.
And by the way, the underlying premise of their gambling is that all the politicians will work together to continue insuring and defending the imaginary share prices in the stock markets around the world. One stock you should definitely not invest in is “Swamp Cleaning, Inc.”
Rational response to Covid-19 would have been different from t
If I were a pharma exec I wouldn’t go anywhere near this.
You’re talking about harvesting material from a person and injecting it into another person, on a massive scale. We do that all the time, but for critically ill patients, using systems that have been carefully developed over decades, and still shit happens (https://www.bbc.com/news/health-48596605; https://www.cbc.ca/strombo/new… [www.cbc.ca]; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… [wikipedia.org]).
Blood products for healthy people, massive scale, emergency deployment? No thanks.
Can we dismiss it as a conspiracy when we don’t know if it will actually work?
From TFA:
scientists should first demonstrate that the coronavirus antibodies that are currently delivered to patients intravenously in hospital wards across the country actually work. “Once you show the efficacy, then the obvious next step is to convert it into an intramuscular” shot
But sure, someone’s holding back mass production to protect the illuminati. [eye roll]
Except this isn’t a cure or a vaccine. It only provides at best short term immunity. Maybe. So a vaccine would still make just as much money IF we ever get one.
I know Orange Man Bad and all that but please at least read the summary.
Not at all; many vaccines (think Polio, Smallpox..) provide lifelong protection. For COVID there are legitimate doubts about long-term vaccine efficacy, based on reports on people becoming reinfected, but more research is required.
No. Not like a vaccine. If you had bothered to read anything this is only a few months protection, at best, if it works at all.
Real vaccines last years and some for life.
If I was you, I’d have posted AC, too.
Federal health officials and industry groups say the development of plasma-based therapies should focus on treating people who are already sick, not on preventing infections in those who are still healthy…
Translation: “Trump made a large investment in a company that’s developing a vaccine and was told by the CEO, (a fine man, very smart) that it’s almost ready.”
No.
Translation: “Convalescent serum transplants can carry the original pathogen or any others the donors happened to have. For a treatment for t
and will their system create more antibodies to protect them or will this just drain their supply to nothing so they can get sick again.
Might work as an emergency treatment but I cannot see it as putting us in a position of saying we have enough people immunized to have herd immunity.
I read a few other articles on this. My understanding is it would not be a cure or vaccine. It may not even do anything. They only know at this point that similar treatments for other viruses has helped in those cases and this one doesn’t seem to cause any harm.
Hypothetical: you pump out a few hundred million shots to everyone in a short period of time. If it actually provided immunity or even reduced odds of catching covid then it could provide sufficient short term herd immunity to kill covid at large
Or you could just wear a mask for a few months
Nuh uh. No way. Not gonna do it. In fact, we’re going to deliberately not wear a mask even if it might kill us [imgur.com] just to stick it liberals. And don’t forget, when you wear a mask you’re breathing your own CO2 [mediaite.com] which is bad for you which is why surgeons never wear masks when they have patients on the operating table. Can you imagine if they had to wear a mask for four, six, eight hours? They’d die from all that CO2!
Yes like in my state of California where masks are mandatory and yet our rates continue to increase.
This is about as blue as a state can get. Yeah, Trump’s fault. *eye roll*. Stay AC. It’s less embarrassing for,you.
- by jon3k ( 691256 )From the article:
Joyner told the Times that 600 COVID-19 survivors donating their plasma each day could, depending on donation volumes and concentrations, generate up to 5,000 Ig shots.
I don’t know how long it’s effective for, weeks? Months? But certainly doesn’t seem like there would be any problem generating a sufficient supply for widespread use in prevention. We have a couple million COVID survivors at this point. We would just need some small fraction to donate on a regular basis.
- For some reason, the “people farm” from Daybreakers [imdb.com] comes to mind. Luckily for “Daybreakers.Covid-19” we could recycle the red blood cells back into them, feed them and strengthen people back up for awhile, before putting them back into the “plasma gathering room”. Fun for everyone!
It’s not meant to immunize, just to provide a short term resistance. It would likely be recommended for someone who was exposed to the virus to reduce their chances of actually getting the disease. For example, if you go to a party and then the host tests positive.
- This therapy has been known for months. Maybe this is why Trump doesn’t wear a mask. He knows he’s been treated already.
- Your not the only one to think this; I first read about this “conspiracy theory” a couple of weeks ago.
- The reason this is not interesting to pharma companies is because this can’t be patented. It is an extract from machines that expect a salary…
Why do you think you can’t patent antibody treatments?
Because it’s not a “non-obvious invention” or discovery leading to something you will produce – it’s just sticking a needle in a guy and drawing some blood.
- by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @01:05PM (#60290046) Homepage
You can’t make $billions by selling people’s plasma. You need something patentable. No one is going to fix this unless they can make loads of cash doing so.
You can’t make $billions by selling people’s plasma.
Err sure you can. The transfusion and use for medical purposes of plasma is a multi-billion dollar industry making profit of the backs of blood donations.
Please wake me in December (Score:4, Insightful)
by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @01:43PM (#60290202)When the bullshit election is done, one of the two goofballs has won, America has lost and we can get back to having a sensible discussion online.
Won’t help. Panic mode is permanent now. The bogeyman will either be here or lurking in the shadows ready to pounce any second — regardless of whether the bogeyman exists or not.
Popular insanity is in fashion. Not sure how it ends. Maybe the insane political people commit some sort of horrific mass murder and everyone suddenly grows up like they did after 9/11 — for a couple years at least.
That’s ok. But could we have panic mode on the side? While talking about something interesting for a change?
Let’s say we all agree that Trump is a clown, Biden is senile, the GOP is going to kill everyone and the DNC is trying to censor everyone. Insert whatever else you want here and we agree to take that into account too. Mostly because it’s fully inconsequential what we believe or not because it doesn’t make a lick of a difference whether we do or not. We only have the choice between the clown and the ge
People would have to grow up and start acting like regular, grown-up people act in regular, non-insane, non-frenzy times. Do sober, serious people get likes? Do they get retweets? Do regular people without some dramatic story get followed on Insta? Or on YouTube? Do they get modded up? What’s going to get them to behave better then?
If 25% of the country are in cult A and 15% are in cult B, how do the rest of us tell cults A and B to fuck off with their cult bullshit?
If I was still working at the offic
Probably I’ve been reading too much Laird Barron (thank you, whatever motherfucker recommended him), but lately I’ve been thinking, why bother? This is life.
I’m not suggesting we should do nothing, certainly let’s exhaust our scientific resources in an attempt to attenuate this thing (not sarcasm), but let’s also keep in mind that this is how it goes. The universe is big, bad, and impersonal, and nothing cares, except us.
Yeah, I have no idea where I was going with that. Science marches on, and so does life,
These antibodies won’t survive long and the donors are limited. Do they just want to make bank with some risky prophylactic for a handful of rich geriatrics while pretending to do something for the common good?
The risks are large with a prophylactic, a side effect doesn’t have to impact a big percentage to quickly be worse than the disease being prevented. Treating seriously ill people has far more leeway for serious side effects than a prophylactic. Having had a parent with bloodshock with after effects wh
These antibodies won’t survive long and the donors are limited. Do they just want to make bank with some risky prophylactic for a handful of rich geriatrics while pretending to do something for the common good?
This is the big issue, as long as the material is harvested from humans, the volume doesn’t scale up. Even if replaced by recombinant antibodies, cost and limited manufacturing capacity will prevent widespread usage. This is already a problem with the current therapeutic usage of convalescent serum, which is targeted at a much population of sick individuals (and which will have to compete with a new prophylactic injection for limited manufacturing capacity).
FTA: “scientists should first demonstrate that the coronavirus antibodies that are currently delivered to patients intravenously in hospital wards across the country actually work. “Once you show the efficacy, then the obvious next step is to convert it into an intramuscular” shot.”
This group doesn’t have any proof that this method would work, they haven’t shown that the antibodies they are using do anything against Covid-19. This is a group that is stating that it might work, but they should not wait for t
But they DO have evidence. Convalescent plasma has already shown results. This is a refinement on convalescent plasma and should work in much the same way with reduced risks.
- >Federal officials have twice rejected requests to discuss the proposal
They can squander vast sums on hydrochloroquine, but an old proven approach?
No way, there no way to make a pile of corrupt money from it. - by hAckz0r ( 989977 ) on Sunday July 12, 2020 @04:43PM (#60290756)
Giving convalescent plasma to an otherwise healthy person could also be transferring some of the latent virus particles, thus actually infecting the healthy person. To date only people with bad cases of the virus have received this treatment, so we don’t know if any latent virus comes along for the ride with that treatment.
If the virus is still present, the healthy person will slowly develop COVID-19 over the next 5 days or so, but they will also have the antibodies to beat the virus down, so this raises a number of interesting questions. Is it a good idea to intentionally infect someone while giving them the immune system tools they need to fight that infection? Will that infection therefor be mild enough to be worth the few days of sickness? Does this combination then shorten the total number of days of infection?
Keep in mind that many of the previous vaccines were done using a live virus that had been deliberately weakened/attenuated as to allow the individual to develop full immunity against the more potent form of the same virus. Developing that weakened strain of the same virus is both very time consuming and extremely expensive to test, which is why almost every horse in the race is now betting on the RNA needed to produce spike protiens to initiate antibody production. That person’s immune system still has to figure out how to build their own antibodies. But what if that patient were to receive the working “antibody design” needed to fight the unattenuated virus at the same time as the real virus? Would that person’s immune system then be able to somehow clone the working antibody design and immediately and begin producing more of the same antibodies?
To answer this we need to understand what factors in the blood are necessary to trigger the production of the same antibodies in the new patient. Maybe we need to also include some B-cells that know how to pass that “working antibody formula” on to the rest of the immune system? When the patient’s own immune system sees that it works that B-cell should be promoted to start dividing wildly in response. If the foreign B-cell isn’t rejected outright then the patient’s naive immune system will then remember that formula and start producing it from day 1 whereas the COVID-19 virus will need 5 days of replication before symptoms even begin.
- This Medication made from plasma, is already in such short supply it is costs 7000 per dose. No insurance covers it. So even if you have insurance you still pay out of pocket, or just stack medical debt if your doctor fills out the paperwork to show that it is critically needed to force them to give you the medicine anyway and just bill you. It’s not a feasible solution. We already can’t keep up with the existing demand previous to covid 19. If they start using it as a preventative for society’s elite th
There may be more comments in this discussion. Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to turn on Classic Discussion System in your preferences instead.
Related Links Top of the: day, week, month.
- 548 comments‘No Clear Evidence’ Hydroxychloroquine Works Against COVID-19
- 533 commentsTrump Declares National Emergency To Speed Coronavirus Response
- 526 commentsCoronavirus: Trump Suspends Travel From Europe To US
- 510 commentsCDC: Coronavirus May Have Infected 10 Times More Americans Than Known
- 481 commentsNational Mask Mandate Could Save 5 Percent of GDP, Economists Say
Slashdot Top Deals
- Get more comments
- 78 of 78 loaded
It’s currently a problem of access to gigabits through punybaud. — J. C. R. Licklider
