Be Prepared! Sars-COV-3
The federal government was unprepared for the pandemic, despite multiple, loud and clear warnings. State and local governments were unprepared for vaccines, despite multiple, loud and clear warnings. The Capitol Police were unprepared for rioters, despite multiple, loud and clear warnings.
The record isn’t good but as a Queen’s Scout I persist. We now have multiple, loud and clear warnings that new variants of the SARS-COV II virus are more transmissible and thus much more dangerous. But we can do something. As wrote in The New Strain and the Need for Speed
One of the big virtues of mRNA vaccines is that much like switching a bottling plant from Sprite to 7-Up we could tweak the formula and produce a new vaccine using exactly the same manufacturing plants. Moreover, Marks and Hahn at the FDA have said that the FDA would not require new clinical trials for safety and efficacy just smaller, shorter trials for immune response (similarly we don’t do new large-scale clinical trials for every iteration of the flu vaccine.) Thus, if we needed it, we could modify mRNA vaccines (not other types) for a new variant in say 8-12 weeks.
Thus, let’s start doing much more sequencing to discover new strains–and also think about potential new strains–and start phase I and phase II trials of new vaccines. Florian Krammer suggested an even more ambitious plan to do the same thing for all potential pandemic viruses:
From each of the identified virus families, which should certainly include the Paramyxoviridae, Orthomyxoviridae, and Coronaviridae families, a handful of representative strains with the highest pandemic potential should be selected for vaccine production. Up to 50–100 different viruses could be selected and this would broadly cover all phylogenies that may give rise to pandemic strains….It should be possible to choose candidates that are close to viruses that might emerge in the human population. The idea is that once viruses are selected, vaccines can be produced in different platforms and tested in phase 1 and phase 2 trials with some of the produced vaccine being stockpiled. This would likely cost 20–30 million US dollars per vaccine candidate resulting in a cost of 1–3 billion US dollars.
What I am suggesting is less ambitious–just do this for Sars-COV-3, 4, 5 and 6. But do it now!
Hat tip: Daniel Bier.
Broken Record Addendum: We should make better use of our limited vaccine supply by moving to First Doses First and/or fractional dosing and approve the AstraZeneca vaccine immediately and spend billions to increase the rate of vaccinations and to speed new vaccines (such as those from J&J and Novavax) to market.