Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Health, Medicine & the healing Sciences An unexpected cure for COVID-19?

https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0092-8674(20)30610-3

Very interesting article. Still in process for final printing, but has already been peer reviewed and accepted. Some types of common cold (which are caused by similar coronaviruses) may possibly (not quite 100% sure yet) provide immunity against COVID-19. Reminds me that Louis Pasteur defeated smallpox by vaccinating people with cowpox, which was much, much less virulent. Could a vaccination against COVID-19 be this simple?

NOTE: Don't forget that, according to HG Wells, the common cold killed the Martians too. LOL.

That was actually British physician Edward Jenner who invented the smallpox/cowpox vaccine. In some earlier posts you probably didn't read, I speculated that the fact that SARS-COV2 antibody test makers warned their users that a "false" positive could be caused by previous exposure to any of four other corona viruses that circulated around the world as common colds, probably meant that having one of those other corona virus colds gave their victims some immunity to SARS-COV2 since it obviously shared some surface proteins with the other viruses.

The fact that their was some speculation that the children's Kawasaki Syndrome was triggered by a virus, made me hypothesize that the "unknown virus" was actually one of the other four corona viruses. This suggests that the current child cases of Kawasaki-like disease are actually Kawasaki inflammatory reaction to the SARS-COV2 virus. I heard about a case of a young woman who had all the serious symptoms but tested negative several times: Her immune system had already cleared the virus but her symptoms were her immune inflammatory response (which often kills people). This would explain why these kids have a mild or asymptomatic case and then a few weeks later have all these serious symptoms.

It also explains why so many kids have asymptomatic cases: They caught one of those four other strains earlier and still have some antibodies. Also why a few kids get very sick and even die: They never caught one of those four colds. There was a similar generational effect in 1918: Lots of young adults died, but not a lot of elderly folks who had some cross-immunity from a previous similar strain.

And the answer is yes: As I posted, we might already have four "cowpox" viruses we could use as vaccinations right now. These would probably not be quite as effective as a very specific SARS-COV2 spike protein vaccine.

I had a wicked super cold a few years back. Maybe I got some kick ass anti-bodies from it.

Looks like we've mostly got a handle on the covid thing and the experimentation with controlled crowds in dense city centers should wipe out thousands of Democratic voters.

It's probably going to take out just as many cops. Tackling or even touching a bunch of random strangers is a VERY bad idea these days.

This situation reminds me very much of the AIDS epidemic. When I was a gayboy high school Freshman - there was no such thing as AIDS. By the time high school graduation came around - AIDS talk was everywhere.

I've always had to be careful and adopted the thinking early on to assume that everyone is positive and to act accordingly. Now with PReP, everyone is going condomless again. Ain't no big thing.

I've adopted the same thinking about Covid: Assume everyone is a carrier.

This being cautious about closeness with strangers rodeo is not new to me.

I'm kind of curious about PReP. How much does it cost? Is it covered by insurance, or do they just tell customers to be celibate? Do people take it every day, or just when they are single or in non-monogamous relationships?

I'm in a very monogamous marriage, but lots of people, gay, straight, or whatever are not.

Yes daily dosage. Insurance pays...but still a few hundred in co-pay a month from what I hear.

...but it's been a game-changer for the better. And on the other side of the coin, guys with HIV are no longer detectable from their medicines.

And girls with HIV, too, I assume. So it's the same prescription for PReP as for an active infection?

I assume. I never really thought about it.