Today a friend of mine sent me a link to an op-ed piece in the New York Time.
Here’s the link:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/opinion/coronavirus-vaccine-polio.html
And here’s my response to my friend:
I’m not sure, however, that the polio virus is a good parallel. There are, after all, vaccines in clinical trials right now. Maybe they won’t pass the tests, but there are lots of groups working on it.
But, if you want an even more pessimistic comparison, use AIDS. When AIDS started to be a problem, people were waiting for an AIDS vaccine. We’re still waiting. I don’t think anyone’s even working on it any more.
What I’m waiting for is a reliable (and available) test for antibodies. I know, I know: they say there’s no guarantee that having antibodies is a guarantee of immunity. But there’s no evidence that it isn’t either. The problem right now is that the antibody tests seem to be very unreliable. Making the test available will help answer the question of whether the presence of antibodies reduces re-infection, It will also help answer the subtler one of how long the immunity lasts. A year like the flu? (Although that’s a bad analogy since “flu” is really a cluster of diseases.) A lifetime like measles? (Although I’ve heard we should be getting a measles booster–same for polio.) 10 years like tetanus? Time will tell. And it seems likely that we’ll have the antibody tests that can help answer those questions sooner than we have a vaccine.
The more practical question that you and I will be faced with pretty soon is: as the government starts opening businesses (I’m thinking of restaurants here) are we going to resume going out to lunch? Too soon to tell–don’t know the details. Don’t need to decide yet anyway. But the question will arise sooner than any of these medical solutions, I believe. (Whether they *should* open is another question–one that I consider more philosophical than practical). But just because they open doesn’t mean I have to go.
Knowing whether I have antibodies would at least help me decide how to respond to the re-opening of businesses.
Well, we’re still waiting for a vaccination. Our health-care provider, Kaiser, send my wife an email last Thursday, January 4, 20201, with a phone number to call. (Funny,somehow I didn’t get such an email.)
We called the next day (Friday). We were on hold for over four hours. At the end of that time we told that there were no appointments available. They told us to call back in a week. I have also read (on the Kaiser web site) that by next week we will be able to make an appointment on the web. That should be much less trouble. But will it be any more effective? I’m guessing not for several months.