Interesting, it implies that unvaccinated young people will be exposed to the virus in order to establish minimum levels of exposure required for infection. The BBC article is very poorly written, and based on it I assumed they were vaccinated (and also, I couldn't really see the point).
I was a huge proponent of challenge studies in April-September 2020.
Now I don't really see the point except to build some sort of institutional process to try and make them more feasible in the next pandemic.
Moderna's vaccine was developed in Jan 2020 and in human trials in March 2020. Most of this death could have been avoided if we only could figure out how to un-ban vaccines faster. We need new approaches.
COVID was a regulatory disaster more than a biological one. Incorporating human challenge trials into the mix of things is a good thing.
I'm hoping this can answer some questions regarding how covid infection works. For example, are you less likely to have severe illness if the infection starts somewhere other than the lungs? How does the infection spread in the body, and is there any way to help prevent the neurological infection and cognitive side effects that have been reported? (loss of smell, loss of balance, reduced cognition and memory).
If there's a way to consistently cause an infection that doesn't come with severe primary or secondary effects (cytokine storm in the lungs or organ/nerve damage) could that be used as a way to inoculate the younger part of the population while vaccine supplies are still scarce?
And, does the severity of your case depend strongly on your dose?
This could have been extremely interesting early on. If it turned out that (say) severe cases in young people required a huge does, then it might have been possible to "vaccinate" everyone under 40 by only-just infecting them.
[+] [-] BellLabradors|5 years ago|reply
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/worlds-first-coronavirus-...
[+] [-] twoslide|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iguy|5 years ago|reply
Seems crazy this took so long. Why didn't this happen last summer?
[+] [-] cameronh90|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twoslide|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mchusma|5 years ago|reply
Now I don't really see the point except to build some sort of institutional process to try and make them more feasible in the next pandemic.
Moderna's vaccine was developed in Jan 2020 and in human trials in March 2020. Most of this death could have been avoided if we only could figure out how to un-ban vaccines faster. We need new approaches.
COVID was a regulatory disaster more than a biological one. Incorporating human challenge trials into the mix of things is a good thing.
[+] [-] m12k|5 years ago|reply
If there's a way to consistently cause an infection that doesn't come with severe primary or secondary effects (cytokine storm in the lungs or organ/nerve damage) could that be used as a way to inoculate the younger part of the population while vaccine supplies are still scarce?
[+] [-] iguy|5 years ago|reply
This could have been extremely interesting early on. If it turned out that (say) severe cases in young people required a huge does, then it might have been possible to "vaccinate" everyone under 40 by only-just infecting them.