joemcdokes
Striker
I though there was some very interesting stuff in this interview :-
Former WHO director Anthony Costello: 'Opening pubs before schools says something about our priorities'
The paediatrician and member of Independent Sage on Matt Hancock, the likelihood of a vaccine and why 50,000 deaths were preventablewww.theguardian.com
Particularly this bit, hopefully correct
How do you see the virus playing out from here?
I invited a modeller on to Indie Sage who is one of the top neuroscientists in the world, a UCL professor called Karl Friston. He does modelling of brain waves. A total genius. He has come up with a totally different approach to modelling to Neil Ferguson and Adam Kucharski, who are very good epidemiologists. He thinks the herd immunity level to stop this epidemic is probably a lot lower than 60%. He thinks it’s around 25-30%. What he says is that around half your population is either sequestered or shielded, so are not exposed. Up to a half of the rest are not susceptible, like kids, because they’ve got good mucosal immunity. And others may get symptoms but not transmit it very easily. We’ve just sent a letter off to the Lancet about this. If our assumptions are right it may mean that this crisis ends earlier than we expect. But coronavirus won’t be eradicated without a vaccine.
Prevention and treatment
There are no vaccines or antiviral drugs to prevent or treat human coronavirus infections. Treatment is only supportive. A number of antivirial targets have been identified such as viral proteases, polymerases, and entry proteins. Drugs are in development which target these proteins and the different steps of viral replication. A number of vaccines using different methods are also under development for different human coronaviruses.[43]
There are no antiviral drugs to treat animal coronaviruses.[citation needed] Vaccines are available for IBV, TGEV, and Canine CoV, although their effectiveness is limited. In the case of outbreaks of highly contagious animal coronaviruses, such as PEDV, measures such as destruction of entire herds of pigs may be used to prevent transmission to other herds.[43]