Perhaps I’ve missed something in your argument then. I’d need to understand exactly how you are planning to promote the spread of the attenuated form. If you’re talking about a “sequencing driven” Pox party [1] then I suspect you will run into issues. Particularly if you were to say that the Pox party will infect you with an attenuated form of the virus and vaccinate.
Both the diagnostic (sequencing or otherwise) and claim that you are vaccinating individuals would seem like they’d require regulatory approval. But I’d be interested in evidence that suggests this is not the case in a modern context.
Overall, it seems like the idea is as dangerous as deploying an untested mRNA vaccine. Because of this, I’d suspect that regulatory or other authorities would get involved.
I am not planning on doing anything other than trying to look for the attenuated strain. How it is used is for others - what I am suggesting is once such a strain is found is it will be impossible to stop people spreading it around on their own.
But you do seem to be suggesting that "people spreading it around on their own" is a "solution to Covid-19"?
Otherwise, what is your plan for this attenuated strain? Don't get me wrong, I think large scale sequencing or COVID19 is interesting. But think that attempting to spread a attenuated strain without regulatory approval is probably a very bad idea.
Unregulated spread by individuals is a solution, just not the one I think would be implemented if such a strain were found.
I think it much more likely that the regulatory agency would quickly approve the use of the strain on the basis of the epidemiological data gathered in the process of finding it.
> I think it much more likely that the regulatory agency would quickly approve the use of the strain on the basis of the epidemiological data gathered in the process of finding it.
Have you had experience with dealing with said regulatory agencies?
Unfortunately yes and they normally move at a glacial pace and demand 100% certainty about everything. I do have faith that they are capable of moving faster when the need is as urgent as the need right now.
Daniel, can you please elaborate on this: "Unregulated spread by individuals is a solution" ? How do you envision it ? Virus is not an open source software, you cannot just "make your own copy" without a physical contact. :)
It is ‘a’ solution, but in my opinion not a good one. There are a number of ways this could happen, the easiest is just to send people to the area where it was first found and look for people infected. It is technically very easy to test any sample to make sure it is the right strain.
Even if you can’t get the strain it would not be technically very complex to recreate the virus from scratch once you know what deletion you need.
A modification of the standard RT-PCR tests can be used to identify if someone has the correct strain. This really is just a matter of making a different set of primers.
Both the diagnostic (sequencing or otherwise) and claim that you are vaccinating individuals would seem like they’d require regulatory approval. But I’d be interested in evidence that suggests this is not the case in a modern context.
Overall, it seems like the idea is as dangerous as deploying an untested mRNA vaccine. Because of this, I’d suspect that regulatory or other authorities would get involved.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pox_party