Well, currently we see how European governments struggle to contain their failures to react faster. Austria is just going into Lockdown on Tuesday (why wait???), France is in Lockdown, Germany as well, Spain e.t.c. and I read the UK will do the same. Hopefully we will next week too, before hospitals collapse (the first are now overfilled).
Personally I have heard different expectations by docs I know and I do take them with a grain of salt. One thing is sure, it is not easy to find a vaccine which works and my informaiton was that for SARS and MERS they actually FAILED and stopped developing because of that, only that by the time those viruses had begun to subside thanks to the massive measures in Asia and because it was not that infective. So far, NO vaccine against any Corona Virus has been found which works as required. So I am not holding my breath for this one.
IMHO, the only thing which could get it eradicated by massive and world wide lockdowns over 2-3 months. It will take longer now, but in Spring that would have been possible.
My info is that SARS development stopped because the first phase of the trials failed due to a load of test animals having died, and the demand vapourised anyway.
One has to throw quite a lot of money at these things. With CV19 we have the massive economic impact, which no other modern disease has brought. So the incentive is there.
Well, there are diseases which are much bigger e.g. obesity, diabetes, cancers and other things which largely result from obesity, etc, but since ~half the population has got these (by eating crap fast food, mostly) and they are mostly self inflicted (a lifestyle choice, which everyone is entitled to) it is not discussed because the discussion is non-PC. Boris was going to have a go at this but I suspect he was advised to shut up…
News coming up in 3 mins…
Mooney_Driver wrote:
IMHO, the only thing which could get it eradicated by massive and world wide lockdowns over 2-3 months.
What do you think would have been the shape of the world economy after that? Good health care is dependent on the economy. There is a strong (inverse) correlation between GNP and infant mortality.
Just heard the govt briefing. Lockdown from Thursday next week, for about a month.
Some things are better than last time, and hopefully flying will not be banned so may be possible discreetly (it was never actually banned last time; only the journey to the airport was questionable). It was fairly obvious that the people on the ground would not be happy seeing planes flying, so to minimise hassle for the airport I used to fly only on cloudy days.
They are talking about rolling out much more testing, using the “instant” tests. This should have been done in the summer – testing everybody getting off a plane from Spain or Greece, for example, but it wasn’t, and wasn’t done by any other country in Europe either, and now everybody is paying the price for that.
I have as strange theory that if the impact of measures is roughly equal for every country then economically it matters little. In other words everyone’s GDP, currency, balance of payments etc suffers about equally. When it is done you re-inflate the economies by printing money (which today it is PC to call quantatively ease), and off it all goes again.
The problem is when there are national inequalities. China will become more wealthy for example because their lockdowns have been (apparently) very limited. America compared with Europe will be a net gainer. In fact i suspect economically China stands to gain very substantially to the net detriment of most of the rest of the world.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
There is NO vaccine for SARS and MERS, none for AIDS and only a very limited effectiveness even for the flu.
The flu vaccine is good enough.
SARS1 and MERS faded away, so the need went away.
There are many very effective treatments for HIV, including a prophylactic which will prevent it if a person takes it reasonably soon after they think they may have been infected. HIV is basically managed now (I know someone who’s been HIV+ since the 1980s but the treatments mean it will never turn into AIDS and that person is likely to die of old age).
Unlike SARS1 and MERS, there are dozens of vaccine programmes in the works for COVID19. Even if no vaccine comes about, there are also people working on treatments. If, like HIV, there is an effective treatment, then it’s essentially just as good as having a vaccine, especially as unlike HIV, the virus will be gone in a treated person within a couple of weeks.
The various govts are borrowing the money to support their economies.
Who are the lenders?
I would think the Middle East and China.
Who are the lenders?
Errr the Central banks? Am not sure the OPEC block are getting investable surpluses these days!
An interesting video explaining the likelihood of the longevity of immunity to SARS COV2.
Dp great video thank you
