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Medicine

70 Coronavirus Vaccines in Development, 3 Candidates Already Undergoing Human Trials (theprint.in) 121

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
There are 70 coronavirus vaccines in development globally, with three candidates already being tested in human trials, according to the World Health Organization, as drugmakers race to find a cure for the deadly pathogen. From a report: The furthest along in the clinical process is an experimental vaccine developed by Hong Kong-listed CanSino Biologics and the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, which is in phase 2. The other two being tested in humans are treatments developed separately by U.S. drugmakers Moderna and Inovio Pharmaceuticals, according to a WHO document. Progress is occurring at unprecedented speed in developing vaccines as the infectious pathogen looks unlikely to be stamped out through containment measures alone. The drug industry is hoping to compress the time it takes to get a vaccine to market -- usually about 10 to 15 years -- to within the next year.
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70 Coronavirus Vaccines in Development, 3 Candidates Already Undergoing Human Trials More

70 Coronavirus Vaccines in Development, 3 Candidates Already Undergoing Human Trials

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  • “ The drug industry is hoping to compress the time it takes to get a vaccine to market -- usually about 10 to 15 years -- to within the next year.”

    I’m guessing there were reasons that it took so long.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by 110010001000 ( 697113 )

      Errrrrrrrr....what vaccine takes 10-15 years to go to market? H1N1 took 4 months. You guys are such shitheads.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jma05 ( 897351 )

        Slashdot is fine for arguing over Java vs. .Net, C++ vs. Rust, significant whitespace vs. braces, GPL vs. BSD, but when it comes to biology? LOL; ideas come from Video Game and Netflix Drama plots.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Well, it's reasonable to argue over whether a vaccine for a new strain of the flu counts as a new vaccine. I guess it is.

    • Safety, a concern for longlasting side effects, and being results duplicatable (as in not just nonsense) being 3... but hell, we don't need no job killing regulations....,

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      At least we'll be living zombies ... or is there such a thing?

      (ApocalTip: I hear bacon bits make brains taste better.)

    • Indeed. The risk vs benefit equation for not have any vaccine at all and having one with potential side effects and circumstances that make it not work, or just not be as effective in the real world. Also the resource allocation of selecting what to develop in what time period with finite resources for competing interests. With a pandemic of this scale and severity, they've rightly concluded that long term analysis can wait and it can be rolled out right after preliminary safety and efficacy trials show a b

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Well, we *hope* rightly. There have been a few instances where mistakes were made about that. So far nothing really major, unless you consider thalidomide major.

        • It only did a little bit of arm.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            Many of these things were serious to you if they affected you, but they didn't affect that many people, so most people didn't consider it serious. Thalidomide affected more people than, say, the Dengue fever vaccine problem.

    • OK, but I'm tired of this game. Zombie Apocalypse sounds like a lot more fun than sitting at home and washing any boxes that are delivered.

  • Far better would it be for everyone to work together instead of competing at this point.

    • Not a matter of competing (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WalrusSlayer ( 883300 ) on Monday April 13, 2020 @03:38PM (#59942102)

      We only need one working one. We won't know which of the 70 works at all, works the most effectively, doesn't have showstopper side effects, etc until the trials are over.

      Better to have 70 trials at once than go one-at-a-time.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jma05 ( 897351 )

        I assure you, the people who develop these and the agencies that fund and regulate them are smart enough to figure out these things :-).
        They are not politicians.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          But don't underestimate the ability of politicians to stick their fingers into pies.

        • Unfortunately no, biology is hard and for every working vaccine there are hundreds that failed and never made it no matter how "promising" they were. This is science, with each new vaccine or medication you are doing something that has never been done before, there are no guarantees of success, neat little timelines of "we start the project here and end here by that date", doesn't work like that.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by jma05 ( 897351 )

            Exactly. So experts definitely understand that there is need for several parallel efforts.

            In any case, it was "We only need one!" post that was silly.
            My post came off as if I was disagreeing with OP, when I intended it more along the lines of: we don't have any advice to offer to the experts, they are quite reasonable.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          You would be surprised how dumb funding agencies can be. They are effectively run by politicians.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by jma05 ( 897351 )

            Medical research funding agencies typically invite outside experts to form committees to serve and select eligible research.
            Politicians don't micromanage usually, they just set broad outlines of funding.
            The experts don't answer to the politicians.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

              Funding agencies decide what the priorities are, issue a call for applications that satisfy those priorities, and pick among the ones that are scored highly by peer reviewers. A peer reviewer typically gets an application and is asked to score it on things like novelty, practicality, budget, etc. Decisions about what kind of research to fund, how many projects to fund, and specifically to this discussion, whether or not to fund multiple projects investigating the same thing, are made by non-experts who are

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by jma05 ( 897351 )

                Fair enough.
                In my field, the high-ranking bureaucrats within the agencies were well-respected experts in their own right.
                My field is not political; so I did not see any unpopular decisions.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

                  Medicine is certainly very political. For better or worse, the public actually sets a lot of research priorities. Sometimes that helps keep the scientists focused on things that matter, sometimes it results in spending zillions chasing pseudoscientific crap every knows isn't going to work.

        • If that were the case then why don't we get working vaccines or medications for other conditions any faster under normal circumstances. You act as though we have a good oracle to predict which treatments will work. The case is just the opposite with most medications failing in the early stages. Doing a full set of human trials is hideously expensive and no one would choose to develop a drug that won't pan out.

          Far better to have more people working on it and to share information about each others failures

          • If that were the case then why don't we get working vaccines or medications for other conditions any faster under normal circumstances. You act as though we have a good oracle to predict which treatments will work. The case is just the opposite with most medications failing in the early stages. Doing a full set of human trials is hideously expensive and no one would choose to develop a drug that won't pan out. Far better to have more people working on it and to share information about each others failures.

            Well yeah, precisely. We don't know which treatments will work. The more variations being examined in parallel, the better.

            And what failures are you referring to? Perhaps failures from the other 60+ vaccine trials going on at the same time? :-)

        • I assure you, the people who develop these and the agencies that fund and regulate them are smart enough to figure out these things :-).

          There's no "figuring out". There's just identifying successes and failures. You hear about the successes so you think the smart people just figure these things out. But if you think about all the things you haven't heard of us developing vaccines for yet (pretty much everything) it'll start to make sense.

        • They are smart enough to figure it out. Their process involves going through trials. Which is what they're doing.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by kbahey ( 102895 )

        We only need one working one. We won't know which of the 70 works at all, works the most effectively, doesn't have showstopper side effects, etc until the trials are over.

        And don't forget the production of the vaccine: is it hard or easy? How much time for turnaround? How much capacity can be built?

      • There should be some kind of review, though, that looks at the progress of all 70 and decides which 5 look the least promising and dump their resources into the other 65. I mean there's probably some chance that some of these efforts overlap significantly, too. This could be an iterative process that does a significant review of progress every 2 months and cuts out another 5 or so and diverts their resources into whatever most promising vaccine is most aligned with the efforts being dropped.

        I definitely s

        • There should be some kind of review, though, that looks at the progress of all 70 and decides which 5 look the least promising and dump their resources into the other 65.

          Are the 65 most promising being limited by a shortage of resources though, or are you assuming that with 9 women pregnant you can get a baby in a month?

          • My guess is that all 70 programs aren't backed by equivalent resources in terms of lab space, equipment, chemistry, or even localized access to other additional resources like researchers or ancillary technology and supplies. Plus some areas may be taxed in terms of community resources -- food, security, delivery, etc, because they are hot spots.

            A vaccine in development effort in Omaha may be more handicapped than one done at the University of Minnesota, for example. U of MN has a high level of medical re

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fintux ( 798480 )

          The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation has been funding the creation of factories for seven of the most promising vaccines. If everything goes according to the plan, only two of those vaccines will continue to actually produce vaccines that will be used. I think this is probably the best strategy. It will not slow down the other vaccine studies in case none of those seven actually work. But if one or two seem to be working, then it will have accelerated the vaccines ending up to production.

          Also if those fa

      • The fact that the biomedical research people are taking this seriously is encouraging and will pay off, yes.
      • We, already have 70 covid vaccines. Just testing means it is not yet an approved vaccine. WHO has three of the best, using three methodoligies, and unlike before, computer simulation has eliminated most of the feared risks. At this point an injection of a vaccine, even if only 50% effective is better than none- relative to 50% out of a job. The ferrets and mice have not 'turned' and promising is the word. The side effects are known : same as other vaccines, and costs money. But 3 weeks to wait until the vac
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Far better would it be for everyone to work together instead of competing at this point.

      Indeed! That's why the orange person being a jerk to China irks me. Sure, China did some stupid things, but wait until after the emergency and pose sanctions or something. That's the adult way to dole out punishment. Two wrongs don't make a right.

      You don't pick a fight with your neighbor during a military invasion; same with a pandemic. The orange person has fewer people skills than even us nerds. (I realize I'm too blu

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kokuyo ( 549451 )

        Oh give him two weeks and China will be the US' best buddy according to him.

        I'm just hoping he does cut funding for the WHO, lying sucking up scumbag pieces of shit that they are.

      • That's the adult way to dole out punishment. Two wrongs don't make a right.

        You don't pick a fight with your neighbor during a military invasion; same with a pandemic. The orange person has fewer people skills than even us nerds. (I realize I'm too blunt to make a good President.)

        ~Taiblizer

        lying sucking up scumbag pieces of shit that they are.

        ~Kokuyo

        Wise up...

        _reports from Wuhan_

        2019-mid-December, Numerous cases of illness emerge from an open-air slaughter and seafood market.

        2019-December 26, One of its workers, a man, is admitted to a hospital with symptoms of fever, tight chest, and week-long persistent cough. Doctors from Shanghai’s Fudan University genetically screen a sample of his lung tissue and report an “appearance” to SARS. Concurrently, a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan analyze five patients and confidently conclude a viral infection similar to SARS.

        *2019-December 30, Dr. Li Wenliang posts to WeChat** a warning to fellow med school grads to wear protective clothing to avoid infection when inspecting the suspected market for which he is forced to submit to signed admissions of disturbing society’s harmony and professionally isolated from further speculation conducive to wider panic.

        March 3), Dr. Li’s caution was likely suspicious of an increasing number of cases explained by direct contact with an environmental hazard alone or cases attributable to a concurrent flu compounding contact with a hazard. Dr. Li is not a lone voice, but one of several doctors sharing deductive speculation to exercise caution and likely frustrated with an investigative pace constrained by deliberation to avoid reaction(s) or seek to prepare for them. Dr. Li’s advisory to younger colleagues in the field who actively inspect the market is a “crossed line” of alarm to investigative audit.

        In other words, an evolving medical consensus around a virus sharing genomic signature with previous coronaviruses challenges the simplest explanation of a crowded market with spoiled meat or produce poisoning the weakest through direct contact. In effect, investigators assert, “More than a mystery virus may cause pneumonia-like symptoms and may disappear with increased inspections for sanitation or changing inventory.”

        Local investigators witness far fewer cases of younger women and men, and children not at all. The exception of the very young is as confounding today as then. Children with only developing immune response would be as likely poisoned by spoiled food stuffs parents prepare and this fact alone may have alerted Dr. Li to defy non-conclusion maintained by investigators. However fewer cases of older women than older men, especially men who smoke, falsely supports investigative audit.

        The principal source of confusion is Covid-19’s character to infect as many as 50% asymptomatically*** determined much later. Covid-19’s unknown profile of transmission vectors results in further mixed messages and profound, harmful dissonance to align expectations to populations in the path of Covid-19 as it advances via international airline routes remaining open. Reports until XXXXXXX of Covid-19’s transmission are wrongly attributed to close contact and “droplet emissions” from sneeze, cough, speech, and shaking hands to eventually include aerial suspension and fomites and a significant challenge to determining any timely and accurate R0.

        2019-December 31, A man viciously stabs to death emergency room Dr. Yang Wen after she attempts to explain to him for 20 minutes the weeks-long deteriorating condition of his 95-year old mother and draws attention to an increasing crisis of China’s seven million medical workers providing the health care of 1.4billion people.

        2019-December 31, Chinese government reports to W.H.O. a “cluster” of patients with symptoms of pneumonia and substantiated evidence of a virus, but without rigorous confirmation of its etiology (the cause, set of causes, or manner of causation of a disease or condition). *As reported by the New York Post https://nypost.com/2020/03/03/... [nypost.com]

        **WeChat is China’s predominant social platform (replacing QQ). A “public facing” utility designed to mitigate commercial exploitation by “invite-only” permissions. Users’ profiles can be a “real ID” and any number of pseudonymous accounts to create “public interest groups” akin to Al Gore’s concepts of an infrastructure. WeChat’s functions include a chat client that supports text, emoji, audio, image, and video files, audio and video conference, file and location sharing.

        ***Asymptomatic transmission is commonly understood as infection from a “carrier” of illness who exhibits mild symptoms or none at all. COVID-19’s character of “invisible” transmission is a novel development in the history of potentially pandemic viruses but unsurprising as coronaviruses are categorized as RNA-viruses and highly mutable.

  • This is World War III, and this time all humanity is on the same side. Medical development and medical regulation will never be the same again.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Nuke the Virus! Works on hurricanes.

    • Biochemistry was always going to go through a revolution, an inevitable consequence of bringing IT and computation into the game. Regulations and public attitudes towards infectious diseases though, oh yeah, that is going to change big time.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
      Until a viable cure/treatment is found and whatever country it comes from refuses to give it to other countries and/or will only do so by charging an obscene amount.

    • Not sure about World War III, but this time THE ECONOMY is at stake. So you know every possible resource will go toward snuffing this issue out.

  • This is crucial (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Monday April 13, 2020 @03:53PM (#59942182)
    The OECD nations got hit by this virus early because of the large amount of international travel between those countries and China. They mostly have or are beginning to peak. But the virus has only just begun to hit the developing world in the last month or so. Unlike the OECD nations, many of these countries lack medical infrastructure, equipment, trained personnel, and even general infrastructure (it's hard to wash your hands frequently if your water source is buckets carried back from the river a half mile away) to deal with the huge number of simultaneous cases as the U.S. and Europe have been struggling with. So the fatality numbers are going to balloon as the virus spreads to and runs rampant through the developing world.

    Finding a vaccine or drug effective against this virus is essential to preventing that huge spike in fatalities in the coming months. And despite the OECD nations already spending trillions to salvage their economies, they're gonna have to be the ones paying to get treatment to the developing world on humanitarian grounds (and to prevent more waves of the virus returning to their shores).

    The only saving grace may be that the virus' death rate per million in equatorial nations and the southern hemisphere (which is just got off summer) remains curiously low. Suggesting the virus may have trouble surviving in warmer weather.
    • The vaccine will be too late for that. If we have a vaccine that works by the end of the year, then that will be a miracle.
    • It's a counting thing not a weather thing, poorer countries just take a bit longer to have noticeable effect. For example Ecuador https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    • Unlike the OECD nations, many of these countries lack medical infrastructure, equipment, trained personnel, and even general infrastructure

      They also happen to be societies where people tend to walk far more and eat less unprocessed food. There are no third world countries with obesity problems and no, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana - and Wisconsin - don't count.

  • Hopeful, but ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Monday April 13, 2020 @04:02PM (#59942242) Homepage

    We have to be hopeful that a vaccine will eventually be developed.

    However, there are other scenarios that can play out, for example:

    - A definitive vaccine is found. Then the challenge is deploying it world wide, fight pockets of anti-vaxxers, and so on. Herd immunity will protect communities, mostly.
    - A vaccine is effective but only for a short time. In that case booster shots are needed, e.g. Tetanus. Not too bad.
    - The virus keeps mutating, and the vaccine is a moving target, just like the seasonal Influenza vaccine. Don't know how this will play out.
    - No vaccine is possible. Just like HIV and Hepatitis C viruses have no vaccine. Even though some vaccines in the same family have a vaccine e.g. Flaviviridae Yellow Fever has a vaccines, yet Hepatitis C does not. Let us hope this is not the case.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      [what if] no vaccine is possible. Just like HIV and Hepatitis C viruses have no vaccine.

      At least we have multi-med "cocktails" to keep HIV patients alive. Lack of a vaccine doesn't mean other mitigation techniques won't be found.

      • It did take 30 years to figure out those cocktails.

        However HIV and COVID-19 are completely different beasts.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          It did take 30 years to figure out those cocktails.

          I remember it more like 15, at least for semi-successes. Anyhow, the total effort spent may be comparable, although some tests do take time to confirm. The resources being poured into CV is huuuge.

        • For one thing, you have to get a bit closer than 2m from someone to catch HIV.

    • Why bother to "fight pockets of anti-vaxers" at all? Just leave them to their own consequences.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        The problem is that there are vulnerable people with medical conditions that can't be given vaccines. Normally they'd be protected by herd immunity, but anti-vaxers create a hole in that that puts those vulnerable people at risk.

        Doesn't mean there aren't other solution of course, like charge anti-vaxers with manslaughter if anyone in contact with them who couldn't be vaccinated dies, because, well, manslaughter is exactly what they'd have committed.

      • Because those stupid fuckers walk among us. It wouldn't be a problem if we could just ship them off to some island.

    • - No vaccine is possible. Just like HIV and Hepatitis C viruses have no vaccine.

      Wouldn't the fact that the immune system can evidently fight off the SARS-CoV2 virus without treatment in most cases (as opposed to HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C) suggest that a vaccine should be possible?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by HiThere ( 15173 )

        Well, no.

        The immune system is composed of lots of different pieces, and vaccines normally work by priming antibodies to recognize the invader. However there are some signs that COVID isn't being fought off by antibodies. I.e., abnormally low antibody counts of antibodies sensitive to COVID are found in recovered people. Sometime no sensitive antibodies. This may have other interpretations, but it may mean that a vaccine isn't possible. Perhaps it's being fought off by the innate immune system. But tha

        • OK thanks. That doesn't sound good :( Would that mean we're all screwed in the long run? If everybody can get infected an arbitrary number of times, eventually everyone would have an infection with severe symptoms and die, right? If this is a possibility, this can hardly be the first time in human history that such a virus has occurred. How would it have run out of targets to infect in the past? Via human evolution, ie some humans being born with innate immunity?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            Even if a vaccine isn't possible, it's extremely likely that some drugs will treat the infection. We don't know which yet, but there are lots of them under investigation. (And I'm not really including the quinine family, which is only being seriously investigated because of overwhelming PR.) Getting one that you could take like an aspirin may take some time, but ones that can be used under medical supervision, possibly as an outpatient, might show up within months.

    • We have to be hopeful that a vaccine will eventually be developed.

      However, there are other scenarios that can play out, for example:

      - A definitive vaccine is found. Then the challenge is deploying it world wide, fight pockets of anti-vaxxers, and so on. Herd immunity will protect communities, mostly. - A vaccine is effective but only for a short time. In that case booster shots are needed, e.g. Tetanus. Not too bad. - The virus keeps mutating, and the vaccine is a moving target, just like the seasonal Influenza vaccine. Don't know how this will play out. - No vaccine is possible. Just like HIV and Hepatitis C viruses have no vaccine. Even though some vaccines in the same family have a vaccine e.g. Flaviviridae Yellow Fever has a vaccines, yet Hepatitis C does not. Let us hope this is not the case.

      Being "anti-vax" and being opposed to an individual vaccine that hasn't been through a long term study are different things and if we lump them together we risk giving the anti-vaxxers credibility.

  • Until we get a vaccine, we need new social rules and economic practices to ease economy back open. Possible examples:
    - Seniors (retirees) stay social distanced. Only they are allowed out for exercise 9-11am and 9-11pm. One day a week is seniors-only shopping. A different day is seniors-only doctors.
    - Sidewalks are made one-way (opposite of vehicular traffic for safety where there are no sidewalks).
    - Office workers do 3 shifts of 3 days work at home, 2 days in office - MonThu, TueFri, WedSat. [Separated

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Re "Masks for in-person"... most nations are still working out how to make masks domestically.
      Taiwan, South Korea are fine with that due to production skills.
      Other advanced nations are still working out what to import, how to test imported masks and if the mask they import actually work.

    • - Seniors (retirees) stay social distanced. Only they are allowed out for exercise 9-11am and 9-11pm. One day a week is seniors-only shopping. A different day is seniors-only doctors.

      I was actually surprised that one of the mid-sized grocery chains in my area decided against [wegmans.com] seniors-only shopping hours. Some other chains in my area did the exact opposite. Arguments for and against both make sense.

  • Economically Bad Idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Retired ICS ( 6159680 ) on Monday April 13, 2020 @04:11PM (#59942288)

    A working vaccine is such an economically bad idea. You get to sell it once, and then you are done. Much better would be some sort of "treatment" that you can sell over and over again for a very high price. Something that only works once you catch the thing and does nothing more than prevent death. We have that for Influenza and it is called TAMIFLU. Look forward to TAMICORONA being on the market rather shortly.

    Just the big ticket item needed to maximize pharma revenue!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sebby ( 238625 )

      A working vaccine is such an economically bad idea. You get to sell it once, and then you are done. Much better would be some sort of "treatment" that you can sell over and over again for a very high price.

      Just the big ticket item needed to maximize pharma revenue!

      Sadly I'm sure this is actually being actively thought of/pursued by pharma CxOs everywhere.

      • A working vaccine is such an economically bad idea. You get to sell it once, and then you are done. Much better would be some sort of "treatment" that you can sell over and over again for a very high price.

        Just the big ticket item needed to maximize pharma revenue!

        Sadly I'm sure this is actually being actively thought of/pursued by pharma CxOs everywhere.

        I'm picking up a vibe among the super wealthy that they are more concerned with ensuring they aren't first against the wall. I think corona is going to give economists a way to tax the rich with out them just shifting their assets.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by quenda ( 644621 )

        A working vaccine is such an economically bad idea. You get to sell it once, and then you are done.

        Sadly I'm sure this is actually being actively thought of/pursued by pharma CxOs everywhere.

        No, you don't need a cigar-smoking comic-book capitalist villain for this to happen.
        Reality is more subtle: the company working on the treatment has an easier time securing more funding, based on revenue projections, than another company who are working on a promising cure. The pharma people all feel they are doing the right thing, but the financial system creates a bad distribution of resources.

  • It would have been much faster to get a vaccine approved if we had an existing coronavirus vaccine to modify. That's how we get new flu vaccines approved every year. Unfortunately previous efforts to create vaccines for SARS and MERS got the funding rug pulled out from under them when outbreaks for those viruses were controlled. If one of those vaccines had been taken all the way through the approval process we would probably only be looking at months to get a SARS-coV-2 vaccine to market instead of pote

  • Finding an effective vaccine is not certain (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hawguy ( 1600213 ) on Monday April 13, 2020 @04:40PM (#59942428)

    There's still some question about immunity retained after recovering from COVID-19, so there's no guarantee that a vaccine will confer long-term immunity. There are other mitigation strategies if that's the case (requiring periodic boosters, anti-viral drugs as treatment, etc), but it's too early to count on a vaccine as a magic bullet that will stop this disease in its tracks.

    While it's likely that medical science will find a cure, the question is how long that will take -- it's been 40 years and hundreds of billions of dollars spent since the HIV crisis started and we still don't have a cure -- only treatments that keep the disease in check.

    • HIV is a special case and really shouldn't be used for comparison here.
      I think that within a year we'll have a working vaccine and it'll be mass-produced like flu vaccine is, and we'll all be getting anti-coronavirus shots annually like we do for the flu.
      I also think that the current crisis will be over before 2020 is over. We all just have to stay calm, calm people who are panicking, and above all stop hoarding everything. Everyone being so upset all the time over this is just making it that much worse f

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawguy ( 1600213 )

        HIV is a special case and really shouldn't be used for comparison here.

        I wasn't aware that we fully understand the immune response to this coronavirus -- while it's likely that a vaccine (or having the illness) gives immunity, it seems far from certain at this point.

        I think that within a year we'll have a working vaccine and it'll be mass-produced like flu vaccine is, and we'll all be getting anti-coronavirus shots annually like we do for the flu.

        That's what we're all hoping for (except for the annual coronavirus shot - I hope it doesn't mutate enough to require an annual shot like the flu)

        I also think that the current crisis will be over before 2020 is over. We all just have to stay calm, calm people who are panicking, and above all stop hoarding everything. Everyone being so upset all the time over this is just making it that much worse for everyone.

        I see very little hoarding, at least after the initial outbreak when the CDC suggested that people should keep 2 week of food on-hand, and people did just that so stores

      • Exactly, people don't recover from HIV. People recover from this virus which means our body can fight it off, which makes a vaccine possible.

  • Open source vaccine (Score:5, Interesting)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday April 13, 2020 @04:50PM (#59942454)

    Here's an open source vaccine design:

    https://github.com/feraliscatu... [github.com]

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