Why scientists cannot create drug or vaccine to heal coronavirus immediately?
- Thread starter Saint
- Start date
They did create a vaccine. Just down the road from me, in fact.
https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/h...iego/509-e18e37f6-347c-4b08-ad33-910968abb04f
You can't see a genetic code under a microscope. You can't even see a virus under a light microscope.
Vaccines don't heal diseases.
Why can't scientists immediately create a phone battery that lasts longer than 1 month without needing a recharge?
Why can't scientists immediately create a technological solution to global heating?
Why can't scientists immediately create a bionic eye?
Why is it so difficult to heal the common cold, or the flu?
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
A little different approach to immunology is the development of new methods of controlling bacterial virulence itself.
When someone becomes infected, antibiotics kill most of the bacteria, but the ones that survive become drug resistant.
New science has discovered that bacteria in dilute numbers are not virulent, but communicate with each other by a chemical language, which has been named "quorum sensing". This language tells the bacteria when there are sufficient numbers and when a threshold number has been achieved, quorum sensing triggers virulence in all the bacteria simultaneously and attack the host.
Science is currently studying this chemical language to see if they can confuse the chemistry and render the bacteria "deaf" to quorum sensing and thereby avoid the triggering of virulence without creating drug resistance. The bacteria simply remain latent.
This is truly remarkable and apparently holds great promise for future immunology methods. This excellent and clear presentation by Bonnie Bassler is well worth watching.
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Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Or it's said to have been sequenced at any rate.
In the case of a vaccine, they need to figure out how to culture the virus in some organism's cells. They need to figure out how to render it non-infectious, while still allowing it to generate effective antibodies in innoculated individuals. A fine balance there.
If it's a different kind of drug that's intended to denature the virus' protein coat or something, they need to find a way to keep the drug from attacking similar proteins in healthy cells, ways of delivering the drug into cells across cell membranes, how to keep it from breaking down in the blood stream, and all kinds of challenges.
The same reasons why many viral diseases lack effective treatments. It isn't easy.
I expect them to eventually create a vaccine, in six months or a year maybe. Laboratories all around the world are working on it.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
The Wuhan coronavirus isn't a bacterium, it's a virus.
Write4U
Valued Senior Member
Yes, I understand. I wonder if viruses communicate. I do really like this idea of rendering the pathogen unable to do what it normally does without having to kill it and playing artificial selection for immunity.
Vaccines for other viruses don't work for coronavirus. Vaccines work by boosting the person's own immune response against inactivated viral antigens that we introduce in his body through the vaccines. These antigens are highly specific. Newly formed viruses carry new antigens that the body does not recognize that we need to identify and isolate first in order to develop a vaccine for this new virus. Then we will need some time to test the vaccines. These testings will get a fast-track designation, but still they will need some months to develop.
During the years we have developed several novel anti-viral drugs (to combat diseases like AIDS, hepatitis C, influenza, etc). Some of them are irrelevant for coronavirus, such as Tamiflu, which is directed against an enzyme uniquely found in influenza viruses but not in coronaviruses. Some others theoretically could be useful against coronavirus. However, we cannot do medicine with anecdotes of 1 or 2 people being healed or improved after the use of some antivirals. Especially when we deal with diseases like viral diseases, where most people will improve without treatment anyway (Its funny how some people still think that one or two pills of antibiotics was the reason why a flu they once had, quickly subsided). We need to test all these drugs in credible and controlled studies before we claim that they trully carry activity against coronavirus.
A person that has been infected by a virus, carries antibodies and memory cells in his blood plasma, able to recognize and fight a reinfection. This is not something new or unexpected. This is how vaccines were discovered in the first place. However, the general application of this method to the entire population in the case of a pandemy is highly controversial at best and the challenges are huge.
During the years we have developed several novel anti-viral drugs (to combat diseases like AIDS, hepatitis C, influenza, etc). Some of them are irrelevant for coronavirus, such as Tamiflu, which is directed against an enzyme uniquely found in influenza viruses but not in coronaviruses. Some others theoretically could be useful against coronavirus. However, we cannot do medicine with anecdotes of 1 or 2 people being healed or improved after the use of some antivirals. Especially when we deal with diseases like viral diseases, where most people will improve without treatment anyway (Its funny how some people still think that one or two pills of antibiotics was the reason why a flu they once had, quickly subsided). We need to test all these drugs in credible and controlled studies before we claim that they trully carry activity against coronavirus.
A person that has been infected by a virus, carries antibodies and memory cells in his blood plasma, able to recognize and fight a reinfection. This is not something new or unexpected. This is how vaccines were discovered in the first place. However, the general application of this method to the entire population in the case of a pandemy is highly controversial at best and the challenges are huge.
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just me
Registered Senior Member
the same reason they can't do all of the other things they can't do,
they're clever sounding idiots.
At least they have an advantage!!
They can actually test if their hypotheses work.
If not, they move forward to the next idea. They don't stick to the same speculation for years. They just follow where data lead them....
Almost 9 out of 10 of hypotheses don't actually work. Often, this come to a surprise to the scientists.
But this is how science advances and we understand more on the complexities of nature...
They DID do it.
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San Diego lab discovers COVID-19 vaccine in 3 hours
Inovio Pharmaceuticals created a vaccine that is going through pre-clinical trials.
https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/h...iego/509-e18e37f6-347c-4b08-ad33-910968abb04f
Vmedvil
Registered Member
Basically it is because of this, they already have the Vaccine for the virus however they must get things like animal testing and FDA approval done which requires time and money. They cannot release the vaccine to the public until FDA approval is accepted for the drug, which usually takes 6 months to 1 year.