It's trivial to get volunteers. I'll volunteer. In the US we're around SARS2 spreaders all the time. Every time you spend ~30 minutes walking around in a major retail store chain you're highly likely to be exposed to SARS2. Now do that N times per week like most Americans have been for the past year plus. What am I supposed to be afraid of compared to that?
I've had Covid; early into the pandemic. It was quite unpleasant. I'll take my chances at another round with it, especially if the science is quite useful and the experiment is reasonable.
There is enormous cowardice in the governmental sphere in much of the world today. Otherwise we would have immediately began pursuing challenge trials with the mRNA vaccines, which took a mere few days to create. It would have been trivial to get thousands of volunteers to rapidly begin testing the vaccines and it would have been trivial to work with the government to stage a large physical space to do so (the army could have provided a significant, isolated location easily), at whatever cost in money and resources were necessary.
In the meantime, instead, we probably had well over 100,000 people die just in the US that didn't need to, versus had we accelerated the vaccine testing and deployment. Older people have a high vaccination rate in the US, fortunately; we could have gotten vaccines to them sooner. A generation or two prior, we would have used challenge trials to move faster.
But then this is the same country that barely shrugs when 100,000 people die in a single year from overdoses. Of course that same cowardly country isn't going to do challenge trials.
I'm not sure how you're parsing out those 100k people that wouldn't have died had we had vaccines earlier since we can't get tens of millions of people to take the live-saving free vaccines that have been available for nearly a year now.
Challenge trials are fine but were hardly needed when we had unchecked spread of Covid for bog-standard RCTs. The historic speed that the vaccines made it through FDA approval were in large part due to the millions of active infections all over the country and world such that you could see the control vs. experimental groups very easily.
Imagine all those anti vaxxers' complaints about "It's being rushed out too quickly" and "It hasn't been studied yet" magnified with your proposed express schedule. Do you think there wouldn't have been vaccine hesitancy in those 100k?
There have been human challenge studies for covid, and people did volunteer. It would have likely been possible to get volunteers for the type of study the grandparent comment describes.
I would volunteer. It turns out that I have COVID right now, giving me a mild headache, nasal congestion, and a persistent cough---annoying, but not more than that. I would have gladly volunteered for this level of mild discomfort in order to advance the cause of science. Wouldn't even be hard.
If it’s very infectious one may get it anyways. But doing it in the study would be virtuous, and maybe pay too. If it was a serious study I could do it
Is there anyone who believes masks are "the final answer"? I'm very much in favor of mask wearing and would love to see some real enforcement of mask mandates, but while masks are important they are just an important factor that can help safe some lives. I've never talked to anyone who thought masks on their own are the answer.
adventured|4 years ago
I've had Covid; early into the pandemic. It was quite unpleasant. I'll take my chances at another round with it, especially if the science is quite useful and the experiment is reasonable.
There is enormous cowardice in the governmental sphere in much of the world today. Otherwise we would have immediately began pursuing challenge trials with the mRNA vaccines, which took a mere few days to create. It would have been trivial to get thousands of volunteers to rapidly begin testing the vaccines and it would have been trivial to work with the government to stage a large physical space to do so (the army could have provided a significant, isolated location easily), at whatever cost in money and resources were necessary.
In the meantime, instead, we probably had well over 100,000 people die just in the US that didn't need to, versus had we accelerated the vaccine testing and deployment. Older people have a high vaccination rate in the US, fortunately; we could have gotten vaccines to them sooner. A generation or two prior, we would have used challenge trials to move faster.
But then this is the same country that barely shrugs when 100,000 people die in a single year from overdoses. Of course that same cowardly country isn't going to do challenge trials.
mikeyouse|4 years ago
Challenge trials are fine but were hardly needed when we had unchecked spread of Covid for bog-standard RCTs. The historic speed that the vaccines made it through FDA approval were in large part due to the millions of active infections all over the country and world such that you could see the control vs. experimental groups very easily.
selimthegrim|4 years ago
Zak|4 years ago
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-04-19-human-challenge-trial-l...
jaspax|4 years ago
sjg007|4 years ago
jeofken|4 years ago
the-dude|4 years ago
shmel|4 years ago
ajmurmann|4 years ago