Whole game has got to be on a knife edge already. Even localised lockdowns after the restart will utterly kill some clubs I'd imagine.

It's awful. Just an awful, horrible place everybody is in at the moment. I'm lucky, my job is safe but it's changed - I can't do any of the interesting bits because that involves travel and meeting people. That should come back and I am very thankful, no furlough, no pay cut.

This was coming though - there was warning after warning, lucky escape after lucky escape. We are now looking at radical changes to the development and validation processes for vaccines, we can't sit around for 10 years anymore. Thank Christ this is not like MERS which has a fatality rate of over 30%, or even Ebola. But it could be next time.

Hopefully vaccine by Autumn if all goes well.

Whilst agree with everything you say here, I will be amazed if we ever have a vaccine, never mind within the next year. And you are right warning after warning, but not sure they still will have learned.

Quote ="Gotcha"Whilst agree with everything you say here, I will be amazed if we ever have a vaccine, never mind within the next year. And you are right warning after warning, but not sure they still will have learned.'" I am wondering why you think there won't be a vaccine? There are half a dozen vaccines in advanced development and one that is undergoing efficacy studies right now in UK, Brazil and South Africa (that's phase 3 prior to launch). It's set to commence a very large scale study in the US in August - 30,000 participants. The vaccine is being bulk manufactured now by AstraZeneca. The first 20 minutes or so of this tells you where we are at the moment. https://youtu.be/o_6cM2EvXaI

Quote ="Gotcha"Whilst agree with everything you say here, I will be amazed if we ever have a vaccine, never mind within the next year. And you are right warning after warning, but not sure they still will have learned.'" I am wondering why you think there won't be a vaccine? There are half a dozen vaccines in advanced development and one that is undergoing efficacy studies right now in UK, Brazil and South Africa (that's phase 3 prior to launch). It's set to commence a very large scale study in the US in August - 30,000 participants. The vaccine is being bulk manufactured now by AstraZeneca. The first 20 minutes or so of this tells you where we are at the moment. https://youtu.be/o_6cM2EvXaI

Quote ="DHM"I am wondering why you think there won't be a vaccine? There are half a dozen vaccines in advanced development and one that is undergoing efficacy studies right now in UK, Brazil and South Africa (that's phase 3 prior to launch). It's set to commence a very large scale study in the US in August - 30,000 participants. The vaccine is being bulk manufactured now by AstraZeneca. The first 20 minutes or so of this tells you where we are at the moment. https://youtu.be/o_6cM2EvXaI'" Because of what you rightly put in the first place. We have been here before. How many years ago was Sars? we still have no vaccine. They can say whatever they want, until something is tangible it doesn't mean it is happening, and like I said would be amazed if it was different this time.

Quote ="DHM"I am wondering why you think there won't be a vaccine? There are half a dozen vaccines in advanced development and one that is undergoing efficacy studies right now in UK, Brazil and South Africa (that's phase 3 prior to launch). It's set to commence a very large scale study in the US in August - 30,000 participants. The vaccine is being bulk manufactured now by AstraZeneca. The first 20 minutes or so of this tells you where we are at the moment. https://youtu.be/o_6cM2EvXaI'" Because of what you rightly put in the first place. We have been here before. How many years ago was Sars? we still have no vaccine. They can say whatever they want, until something is tangible it doesn't mean it is happening, and like I said would be amazed if it was different this time.

Normally it takes 3 years for a vaccine to hit the market, not sure I would be willing to use one that's been pushed through in months. Who knows what the long term effects are!

You need to study history in a little more detail. Anthony Fauci was asked this exact question during one televised briefing. I'll paraphrase: There is no Sars vaccine because we don't need one. Several were developed but by the time they were going to pass through regulatory approval the virus had disappeared. Nobody has been working on a Sars vaccine for well over a decade. Sars Cov-1 displayed different pathology to Covid 19. It presented severe symptoms very quickly - 2-3 days - so track and trace of immediate contacts was highly effective. That's why it was easier to control and eradicate. Also, well worth remembering that the disease never reached the West and was never declared a pandemic.

Covid 19 is actually pretty straightforward as a virus, 4 proteins all showing none or very slow mutation. The proteins are relatively easy to clone and produce. The Oxford vaccine uses a tried and tested vector - a simian virus with the Covid 19 spike protein added (and to answer LeedsLurch) this has been used safely for other vaccines. Monitoring of the immune response to the vaccine is what we supply tools to do - we already do it for pneumonia vaccines. I work on this stuff and I'll be happy to be first in line for a jab - especially at my age. There will also be more than one vaccine in the next 12 months and beyond. Covid 19 is not going away. Even a strong protective response from a vaccine is only predicted to last a few short years, natural immunity form having the disease is predicted to last only months (how many we don't know yet).

The timelines have been shortened for one simple reason - the economic impact of a global pandemic. We (and I say "we" because myself and my company are heavily involved) have seen unprecedented co-operation between researchers, regulators and big pharma. Nobody wants to be seen to be "obstructive" when so many lives are being lost. When you have so much resource available and you combine that with a team at Oxford who were already a long way towards the goal because of the work being done with their MERS vaccine, things can happen quickly.
This is how we are going to have to do things in the future because this is not the last global pandemic we will see. China and other underdeveloped countries need to rethink their entire social attitude towards animal husbandry because global travel being the way it is it is going to happen again and again.

Lets just see. I am not so naive with that. Sars vaccine would never have happened, regardless of dissapearing naturally. These things are never learned from. If it happens, then great all good, I just doubt it.

It did happen. Sorry, that's just a fact. Vaccines had already been developed when the virus disappeared in 2005.

By the way, I have no issue with skepticism. "I'll believe it when I see it" is practically the (good) scientists mantra. But evidence has to be legitimate for a negative as well as a positive opinion. I have seen enough evidence to be confident (not 100% sure) that we will have a vaccine, if not this year then early in 2021 and I have seen no evidence to suggest that this virus is uniquely difficult in terms of developing a vaccine against.

Good read that.

Thanks for posting that. It’s a great read.
Fingers crossed

Mine too.

Great insight Mr Tache. Thanks

You're very welcome, but I genuinely would much rather be talking total b******ks about RL.

So would I...

To paraphrase Elvis “you’re in the right place”.

All the years I've been coming to this site and today I actually learnt something! Good work DHM.

What a very articulate post

Is Aids not a corona virus?

I don't think so. The common cold is though.

AIDS isn't a virus.

HIV is a virus, a retrovirus (Lentivirus to be specific).

Corona virus's get their name because of what they look like - the sun with a corona. The spike protein on its surface looks like how a kid would draw the sun.

(I know that's a daisy but you get the idea).

Yes it is.

Thanks for clearing that up - have we ever found a cure for a virus? Or is building up immunity the only way of combatting them. If so why didn't we simply let herd immunity happen?

Absolutely we have eradicated virus's. Smallpox is gone - the vaccination program eliminated it. The vaccinations we now have protect us from severe cases of common virus's. Herd immunity is a genuine thing, but the ideal way to achieve it is though vaccination. For example, the MMR jab can't be given to babies, so you vaccinate everyone above the age of 2 and eliminate those diseases from the population (or close to eliminate). That way you protect babies - that's herd immunity. But with MMR it only works when very high levels of the population are vaccinated and immune - well over 80%. So basically almost everyone would have had to catch Covid 19 to create herd immunity - which sort of defeats the purpose. The chief epidemiologist who advised the govt was quizzed on this and it seems he may have been quoted out of context (a bit like what happens when people on here start arguing).

HIV is a tricky bugger. The protein it uses to attach to cells and infect them is called GP120 and it changes it's shape - hiding the critical bits that antibodies need to bind to to stop it infecting a cell. It also infects what are called CD4 T-Cells. These are called T Helper Cells and they are critical to the correct functioning of key parts of the immune system - including production of antibodies by B cells.
There are people who develop neutralizing antibodies (that stop the virus binding to the CD4 cells) to HIV but we haven't been able to recreate that with a vaccine. HIV has several other even more cunning ways of avoiding our immune system. But I believe we are making progress to a vaccine. In the meantime we have effective drugs to stop the virus multiplying. A lot of the work we are involved with in HIV studies (it's not extensive) is now looking at the long term biology of patients on drug therapies for HIV, these guys can be on drugs for 30 years plus now and live pretty much normal length lives.