You're debating with yourself at this point. You started by claiming that vaccine research was futile. I pointed out a specific example that was promising, and you're attempting to refute it by pointing to other research that you claim is even more promising.ATL Bear said:Sam Lowry said:What you're saying isn't according to the laboratory's position. It's directly contrary to it:ATL Bear said:Yes, they're promoting their prior work so they can get funding. No one's biting. That's the tell tale, not that scientists who spent years on something no one is jumping on, even now when everyone's looking to find a vaccine, and is all you need to know.Sam Lowry said:From your link:ATL Bear said:https://www.utmb.edu/gnl/news/2020/05/05/texas-monthly-inside-the-frantic-and-frustrating-race-to-develop-a-covid-19-vaccine-in-texasSam Lowry said:Source?ATL Bear said:According to the Galveston National laboratory who hasn't moved forward or gotten any funding for it, but has and is working on other vaccine and research advances for Covid 19.Sam Lowry said:According to whom?ATL Bear said:If it had efficacy as a SARS vaccine they would have spun it up now. It did not.Sam Lowry said:There's absolutely no basis for this claim, except that it happens to serve the burn-through agenda. The vaccine was never tested because there was no funding. The SARS scare was over, and investors lost interest. They can't flip a switch and produce immediate results just because we're ready for them now.ATL Bear said:The vaccine from SARS1 was only claimed to be effective. It never got to trials. If it were that close and/or effective, it would already be spun up now. But it isn't.Sam Lowry said:Scientists know we're looking for the least bad of many bad outcomes. There's no magical thinking involved. Flu vaccines are effective. We were close to a vaccine for SARS-1 when the epidemic died down and people lost interest. We're paying the price for it now. If we pay a higher price next time (and there will be a next time), it will be because of attitudes like this. What's overdue is a little longer attention span and a little more concern for something besides the next football season.ATL Bear said:
We're in full on burn through, so embrace it. No magic science is around the corner to save us. There has never been a coronavirus vaccine for any strain. We will continue to get better at symptom treatment, but that's it, and is why deaths have decoupled from case growth.
I'm sure someone will come up with some half measure immune booster that shows limited prevention, sort of like the flu vaccine, but our best weapon will be our own natural boosting of our defense through T cell immune responses. A little courage and less fear is way over due.Quote:
"As soon as we knew this was a coronavirus, we felt we had to jump at it," McLellan told UT News, "because we could be one of the first ones to get this structure. We knew exactly what mutations to put into this, because we've already shown these mutations work for a bunch of other coronaviruses."
His comments parallel those of Hotez and Bottazzi. As COVID-19 was racing through China in January, a research contact in that country confirmed to the team in Houston that the virus was more closely related to SARS than to MERS. As soon as scientists were able to identify the new coronavirus's genetic code, Bottazzi and Hotez began to explore the similarities between it and the SARS virus in closer detail. What they've discovered, they said, is promising.
Not only do the two viruses exhibit similar genetic codes and bind to the same receptors on human cells, new lab experiments appear to show that the blood of patients infected by SARS in 2003 can neutralize the virus that causes COVID-19, meaning some people may have an inherent immunity.
"That's when the little light bulb turned on," Bottazzi said. "We realized that they're so similar that maybe our vaccine is something that can be repurposed for this new outbreak. Even though it may not be the perfect vaccine, it's certainly sufficiently similar that it will provide some added value in reducing the severity of the disease.
For all the good work being done, researchers like Bottazzi and Weaver caution that there is no quick fix for the new coronavirus. Even the most sanguine forecasts - those that assume unpredictable human trials will proceed without a hitch - do not predict a widely used vaccine for the public until well into 2021, at the earliest.
That's simply how long it takes to develop and test a vaccine, to ensure that it's not only effective but safe, in the general population and for groups of patients with specific characteristics. But it's also a reminder of the importance of funding research with uncertain tangible results in times when there's no imminent crisis. The neglect of Hotez and Bottazzi's SARS vaccine is an example of what can happen when research funding freezes up. When funding continues, so can progress. Three years ago, using a technology developed by microbiologist John Schoggins, of UT - Southwestern Medical Center, in Dallas, researchers began a study that identified a protein produced by the human immune system that can inhibit coronaviruses, including SARS and MERS. With the benefit of multiple grants, Schoggins and his international partners continued their work and determined this February that the same protein inhibits the COVID-19 virus. Any potential for developing this knowledge into a treatment remains years off - but it's years closer than it would have been without continued funding.
Hotez and Bottazzi are hopeful that their vaccine will be tested in clinical trials soon. Once they get funding in place, they said, they could begin testing their vaccine in clinical trials on Texans infected with COVID-19 in as little as six weeks, possibly sooner. The idea that just $3 million - a sum of money amounting to a modest NBA contract - is all that stands in the way is simply too absurd for them to consider it insurmountable. "I'm upbeat because, you know, if I focused on my frustration, I could just sit down and cry," said Bottazzi, forcing a smile twelve hours into a day that began, like so many recently, with buzzing text messages from researchers around the world at 3 a.m. "I mean, the frustration is invigorating us to do a hundred thousand things at the same time."
As we spoke, Hotez's iPhone began buzzing. On the line: a reporter from 60 Minutes. Normally a great opportunity, as far as interviews spotlighting academic work are concerned, but not the audience the researchers were truly seeking. Who they really wanted to talk to, they said, was somebody in the federal government with the power to fast-track the testing of their vaccine.
Even now, when everything is going crazy and we should have all the resources at our command to move this forward, we're still getting these emails that say, 'Here's a request for applications,'" Hotez said, referring to government agencies that have asked his team to apply for grant money, a process that would take months at best.
Navigating America's sprawling, regulation-clogged public health infrastructure is a familiar challenge to researchers, of course. Hotez has recently become more strident in his public remarks. When he testified before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on March 5, he said that by failing to fund vaccine development when the private sector wouldn't, the government had missed a major opportunity to avoid a health crisis. "It's tragic that we won't have a vaccine ready for this epidemic," Hotez said then. "Practically speaking, we'll be fighting these outbreaks with one hand tied behind our backs."
In the meantime, he and Bottazzi have pivoted to soliciting the investment they need from regional philanthropists. Bottazzi, who was born in Italy but has spent thirty years in Texas, has shaped her appeal around a theme that Texans are uniquely receptive to: bragging rights. "It would be fantastic to say that Houston has one of the first vaccines [for COVID19] being evaluated," she said. "How could that not resonate?"Quote:
Dr. James LeDuc, director of the Galveston National Laboratory, said work has resumed on the SARS vaccine that his researchers helped develop with Hotez's team. The laboratory, a high-security biocontainment facility on Texas' Gulf Coast, received a live sample of the new coronavirus last month and will use it to test the vaccine in mice.
But first the lab must breed a colony of mice genetically engineered to replicate the human disease, a process that LeDuc said will take months.
"I think we as a nation and as a society need to be more agile in recognizing that new diseases do occur, and once they've cropped up, they very well may come again, maybe not the same but very similar," said LeDuc, who formerly directed influenza response efforts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "So it was a shame that we had to stop that work and now are having to try and restart it."
For weeks, Hotez has been reaching out to pharmaceutical companies and federal scientific agencies and even the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom asking them to provide the roughly $3 million needed to begin testing the vaccine's safety in humans, but so far none have done so.
"We've had some conversations with big pharma companies in recent weeks about our vaccine, and literally one said, 'Well, we're holding back to see if this thing comes back year after year,'" Hotez said.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/scientists-were-close-coronavirus-vaccine-years-ago-then-money-dried-n1150091
You aren't grasping what's actually happening. Billions are being thrown around to find a vaccine. This lab is griping because they can't get $3 million to start up what they say has promise from work done years ago. If it had promise it would get the funding. In fact I don't even know what we're debating at this point. If this particular vaccine had any promise it would be being worked on. It's not. There is other science out of this lab that is getting funding and being worked on to see if it can be a potential Covid vaccine.
In any case, there is ongoing work based on the old SARS-1 research. They are having trouble getting sufficient funding, for which they blame recalcitrant pharmaceutical companies and politicians. They're far from being the only ones. Perhaps most notoriously, back in April the NIH canceled funding for research on bat coronaviruses in China, a program of long standing that received stellar reviews from peers.
