Not a bad way to approach this outbreak, it seems.
As for vaccine, there are no good answers as to when.
Now SARS is a good analogy. MERS and common cold are not.
I mean this as educational not critical.
The rate of variants or outright mutation production is the first factor.
How fast is this changing? Here we fall into lines like Influenza.
Meaning there is good hope that a safe vaccine is in our future.
Key word: Future. Ok now for some education and info dump.
This is long. Get a drink and a stretch first.
SARS, is tricky. As is SARS-CoV-2. That’s it’s name.
So Think HIV —> AIDS. Now you have
SARS-CoV-2 —> CoviD-19
(Co) Corona type (vi) virus. Disease (D) noted in - 20(19)
Before you ask 
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - CoronaVirus
Second variant (the 2) of the genus Betacoronavirus
Ok. Great. But what does that mean to you?
We have only seen two variants. The first mutated one is SARS Cov-2,
and the first with human to human transfer is CoviD-19.
SARS had no vaccine because it would be a bird or civet vaccine,
not a human one. It was acquired through a vector transfer, not
as a same species contagion. It was still scary and deadly enough
to get the response it did. Rightfully so.
So that’s the complex history oversimplified there.
But you get the idea. We are ignorant. This is just starting.
Next up. Antibodies. We simply do not know if humans retain them
long term to the -L and -N variants. This is a very early stage, and people
are acting both impatient or frightened without the benefit of wisdom.
While people are making strong advances towards isolating this,
motivated by the survival of our race and a mix of greed. If we cannot
retain the antibodies, things will get strange and different. That’s a whole
three beer discussion for a different day.
Safety. Vaccines are tricky. They can do more harm than good
if administered wrong. No. I am faaaar from anti-vax this is just
a statement of fact. The whole Resident Evil storyline was
based on a real Disaster Preparedness scenario. Fictionalized
to the extreme, but the concept is sound. What if we find the children
of people given the vaccine are sterile, after the whole population is
vaccinated? A real danger since the mRNA design of some anti-viral
vaccines does mess with such things.
Again not a scare tactic to stockup on shotguns and zombie repentant.
Not a pro-anti-vax statement. Real dangers exist so testing is through.
Politics plays a role here because some folks want a cure yesterday
so they can claim it was them (what scientists and doctors?)
who solved the problem.
Can i get a high-5 cynical bro. Ok, perhaps a respectful bow 6.5’ apart.
Bottom line?
Cutting restrictions and testing creates weird false positives.
Creates real possibility for dangers. Testing is lengthy
Lastly we have herd immunity, population density (not how dense
the population is mentally, though that is a factor too), and exposed
intermingling.
Start with the last. You hear of avian swine civet pangolin whatever
transfer or ‘gene hop.’ we have found dog foot pads and domestic
felines can act as active vectors. The main vector though is people,
with this outbreak. Why? Most people are not symptomatic yet have
been not only exposed but are on track to be quite unwell (or in some
cases barely unwell). During this period they transmit.
This allows a lot of intermingling, transmission, and possible retention
of multiple variants to create mutations within the actively affected
species. You know. Us. So opening things up too early not only creates
a second wave, but increases the chances of mutations or a whole new
even more dangerous strain. Vaccines are only useful if mutation and
transmission can be controlled (forgot this was about vaccines eh?).
That ties in with population density. You need other humans to
transmit this variant in it’s current form. Other critters can carry it
but we’re the main vector species transferring it to them. You then
need proximity. Remove or limit these and you limit the R0 or rate of
infection, in simple terms. Look to historical plagues for when R0
is not controlled or understood. Right now we have a mixed bag of
understanding this particular virus.
In most of our lifetimes(being old timers) the entire of population
that took to get to it’s number. Global population when we were young.
Has more than doubled. Woah. Thousands of years vs a few decades.
We are a disease playground waiting to happen and we’ve been slow
to appreciate this. To be honest this is a gentle first lesson. A reminder,
that Polio, Black Death, and Influenza '18 was real.
Herd Immunity. Ok this is math and my wheelhouse. So to not
get crazy in what i forget is not common parlance. I link.
before you clicky said link , i shall give the Tl;DR
When enough of the effected species becomes resistant to
a contagion the transmission stops because not enough
living population are able to transfer it.
I hope this helped with understanding.
Yes this did oversimplify a lot but tried to not be misleading.
This should be enough data to get the right searches up for
your own answers from experts that have posted credible
and peer reviewed documents.
Questions must be accompanied with a cookie/biscuit.
Because I’m all out and want one with my tea.
