You probably won't find that... You might find a strain where 99.9% of people get a mild case.
Who is going to be the person to recommend deliberately spreading that strain to the world population, knowing that 0.1% of the world, 7 million people, will end up in a hospital and die?
Sure, overall, fewer people might die, but the reality is whichever world leader makes that call has effectively just signed a death warrant for 7 million people. That isn't the way to get re-elected.
I think we can do better than 0.1% death rate. In principle there is no reason we can’t find a strain that is no more dangerous than the coronaviruses that cause the common cold.
One thing is certain and that is unless we go out and look we won’t find anything.
I could quickly put together a team focused on southern Nigeria and Ghana to find through word of mouth, medical records, contact tracing lists and social media, people who have experienced covid-19 symptoms and are likely to have had the disease. My team would also collect samples from people in the worst affected areas who are asymptomatic. In this way, we could collect data and enough samples to isolate a(?the) virus if any.
Do you know any organisations that could provide funding and support for this ?
0.1% would be great. That's the mortality of the regular flu and we have ramped up the hospitals to cope already so the 0.1% severe cases would be better handled. That would be much better than we manage the flu. It would also make it actually possible to take risk groups and isolate only those for a longer time without crashing the economy. It would be the opposite of the flu where vaccination is focused on risk groups.
Agreed. But for the heard immunity one does not have to go and vaccinate/expose to an attenuated strain of virus the whole population. Even getting a majority of say under 50yo immunized should have a big effect.
These are special times. In reality it does not matter if this 0.1% +70yo will die after vaccination since the mortality rates in this age group infected with the wild type are bigger by about two orders of magnitude.
But out of concern to human rights it will make sense not only to exclude any immunocompromised people but also make it voluntary to the groups where mortality rates are at certain level.
Who is going to be the person to recommend deliberately spreading that strain to the world population, knowing that 0.1% of the world, 7 million people, will end up in a hospital and die?
Sure, overall, fewer people might die, but the reality is whichever world leader makes that call has effectively just signed a death warrant for 7 million people. That isn't the way to get re-elected.