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medpundit |
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Sunday, May 11, 2003If you have had SARS once, are you immune after? I suppose that there is no evidence... so what about animal and analogy-to-colds prediction? I've not seen anything about this anywhere. If one does not become immune, then a population could be really reduced in a few years. No one knows yet if immunity develops and lasts. We don’t become immune to colds because: 1) They’re caused by many different viruses, and 2) the viruses involved are capable of changing so much. Influenza mutates a lot, too, but we’ve gotten around that by making new vaccines each year to correspond with the flu strain of the year. The strains of influenza making people sick around the world are tracked, and those most likely to cause problems in each hemisphere are selected for vaccine production. (warning: pdf file) It isn’t clear if the same sort of thing could be done for SARS, because much about its mechanism of action and mutability remains unclear. Another reader points out, rightly, the economics behind the lack of cold vaccines: It's true that we don't have a vaccine or treatment for the cold yet, and part of that is because coronaviruses (coronavirii?) are tricky beasts, which is bad news for a potential SARS vaccine, but a lot if the reason is that colds just aren't that big of a deal. There's no point in taking a drug to stop sniffling and sneezing one day sooner if it gives you violent nausea, irritability, and a disgusting rash over 50% of your body while you're on it. As a hypothetical example, of course. Such a drug would probably be acceptable if it cut your chance of dying in the next month from 20% down to 1%. On a more mercenary note, no one is going to spend $100 for a pill that's only marginally better than a 40 cent over the counter symptom-treater, and drug companies know this and so aren't spending billions on cold remedies. Of course, you also aren't going to spend $100 on a pill if you live in the god-forsaken backwaters of communist China, which appears to be the main place you get SARS these days, so this might be a bit of a wash. posted by Sydney on 5/11/2003 11:27:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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