61
votes
Accepted
Why will there be vaccines first before a cure for COVID-19?
Your question contains a lot of misconceptions.
A cure is definitely possible
A cure could be found, proved, and proved safe, more quickly than a vaccine
People and firms that could be working on ...
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50
votes
Accepted
Is SM-102 a safe ingredient in the Moderna vaccine, despite these safety warnings?
The MSDS linked to is for a product sold as a solution of 10% SM-102 in 90% chloroform. It's listed as "SM-102" because that's the interesting/useful thing that the company is selling. It's ...
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47
votes
Accepted
Does COVID-19 have a case fatality rate of 41%? Is this formula correct?
The definition of mortality rate that you've given does not match any practical definition I'm familiar with.*
When people talk about the mortality rate of a disease, what they usually mean is the ...
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45
votes
Accepted
Are Covid-19 vaccines much more deadly than people (and scientists) think?
https://vaers.hhs.gov/data/dataguide.html provides a useful guide for interpreting these data.
VAERS deaths are not causal reports, they're just a report where someone (doctor, family member) decided ...
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35
votes
Accepted
Why use a placebo in some potential COVID-19 vaccine trials?
People could develop antibodies from natural exposure to the virus. The vaccine is trying to cause antibodies to exist in more people (and/or more strongly) than would express them naturally, ...
- 14.3k
34
votes
Accepted
Would the human seasonal coronaviruses be just as deadly as COVID-19 in a population with no prior immunity?
The seasonal coronaviruses attach exclusively to cells with a ciliated epithelium.
Coronaviruses invade the respiratory tract via the nose. After an incubation period of about 3 days, they cause the ...
- 13.3k
30
votes
Why does the World Health Organization still treat COVID-19 as a pandemic, when it is now reportedly causing fewer deaths than influenza?
In general, a pandemic is a disease that is spread across a large area. It is not based on case rates or anything similar, but rather on its global spread and potential threat to people. For example, ...
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23
votes
Why will there be vaccines first before a cure for COVID-19?
Drugs are typically small molecules that interfere with some chemical process in the disease causing microbe, and therein lies the rub. Bacteria, fungi, protozoa, worms, etc. are sustained by their ...
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21
votes
Accepted
Why hasn't Russia's daily COVID-19 cases decreased as a result of its vaccine?
The initial Russian announcement was bluster. From the NYT's vaccine tracker:
On Aug. 11, President Vladimir V. Putin announced that a Russian health care regulator had approved the vaccine, renamed ...
- 14.3k
20
votes
Does COVID-19 have a case fatality rate of 41%? Is this formula correct?
The equation you use for mortality is only really useful in the very long term for a known disease, when most cases have resolved.
It's not very informative in the short-term, when the vast majority ...
- 14.3k
20
votes
Accepted
Why do corticosteroids harm COVID-19 patients?
One of the primary purposes of corticosteroids is to suppress immune activity and inflammation: that's exactly why they are used in asthma.
Of course the immune system has an actual job besides ...
- 14.3k
20
votes
Why does the World Health Organization still treat COVID-19 as a pandemic, when it is now reportedly causing fewer deaths than influenza?
Whether an outbreak of a disease is classed as a pandemic or not has absolutely nothing to do with the number of deaths or any other measure of the virulence or danger presented by the disease. It is ...
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19
votes
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A cheap and easy inactivated vaccine for COVID-19
The only approved inhaled vaccine is the flu vaccine delivered intra-nasally. It uses a live attenuated virus. There are a whole list of people who should not receive it because it's a live virus, ...
- 13.3k
18
votes
Is there any identified policy Australia is doing to successfully control the covid-19 pandemic and have no deaths, other countries aren't using?
From an Australian perspective
Policy
Restrictions
The governemnt, especially at a state level, is willing to halt the entire functions of the area, in the hope that restrictions don't have to be ...
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17
votes
Accepted
Is there any identified policy Australia is doing to successfully control the covid-19 pandemic and have no deaths, other countries aren't using?
They're an island that tests and quarantines visitors from outside the island, traces contacts when infections occur, and implements mandatory public health measures like social distancing and ...
- 14.3k
15
votes
Accepted
How accurate are coronavirus tests?
Short answer: Sophie Trudeau's positive test may still mean 3 : 1 odds of not having contracted Covid-19, but the odds could also be far more towards having Covid-19.
Justin Trudeau's negative test ...
- 1,185
15
votes
Accepted
Rapid Response COVID-19 Antigen Test: What can be assumed by the control bar?
Your explanation numbered 1 is correct.
The control line indicates that the antibodies required to detect the SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) particles have reached that location on the ...
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14
votes
Does COVID-19 have a case fatality rate of 41%? Is this formula correct?
I'd like to chime in with an explanation of what exactly is wrong with the calculation offered in the question, rather than just saying "it's a wrong formula". Understanding the "whys" of the fallacy ...
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14
votes
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If a SARS-CoV-2 asymptomatic infected individual is exposed to a high viral load, could they develop COVID-19 disease?
What your government is proposing is a lot less than what was actually done in China. There, and perhaps that is still the case, large numbers of asymptomatic infected people were housed together in ...
- 13.3k
14
votes
Accepted
Why isn't COVID-19 just called SARS-2? Isn't it a second SARS?
Disease are officially named by the WHO, while viruses are by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV).
The WHO has stated
From a risk communications perspective, using the name SARS ...
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14
votes
Accepted
Can mRNAs modify our DNA (publication misunderstanding)?
The short answer is maybe, but rarely, and the whole Covid virus has never been seen to integrate into the cell's DNA intact. Any integration requires "helper" molecules not found in the ...
- 992
13
votes
Why use a placebo in some potential COVID-19 vaccine trials?
People in the control group will behave differently if they know they're in the control group.
For example, it's not unreasonable to expect people will do less social distancing once they're ...
12
votes
Accepted
What is the main way COVID-19 spreads?
The confusion exists because there are conflicting pronouncements from various authoritative sources but also conflicting pronouncements from the same authority.
Covid-19 is a respiratory infection ...
- 13.3k
12
votes
Why hasn't Russia's daily COVID-19 cases decreased as a result of its vaccine?
Answering my own question since I believe I've found the answer.
According to this source,
The senior minister at the department, Mikhail Murashko, announced last week that a nationwide mass ...
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11
votes
Accepted
Transmission of COVID-19 through domesticated animals
Covid-19 is the result of a zoonotic outbreak from bats to an intermediate ( and unidentified host ) thence to humans. It is thought that bats don't suffer the disease themselves as they carry low ...
- 13.3k
11
votes
Why use a placebo in some potential COVID-19 vaccine trials?
Good question. A phase I trial normally has small numbers, is purely sized to test safety, and it would have no placebo arm.
With side effects and antibodies are end points, and a placebo group, this ...
- 345
11
votes
Accepted
What is the difference between mutation and variant?
A mutation is just a genetic change. Mutations include point changes that are simply changes of one base to another (e.g., an "A" to a C, G, or T/U), insertions or deletions of single bases, ...
- 14.3k
11
votes
Accepted
Why should males use contraception for longer after taking molnupiravir for COVID?
The mechanism of action of molnupiravir is "lethal mutagenesis" (see Malone and Campbell, 2021) - it interferes with the viral RNA polymerase by introducing copying errors severe enough that ...
- 14.3k
10
votes
Accepted
What protects Chinese provinces other than Hubei from COVID-19 outbreak?
I live in Guangdong, and this is what I've been seeing & reading about.
Wuhan (city in Hubei) is where the outbreak supposedly began. And it went unnoticed for a while, which mean it was ...
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10
votes
Accepted
Why handwash should last for 20 seconds or more?
This is something people have been studying since 1847 when Ignaz Semmelweis hypothesized that childbed fever was caused by physicians assisting at deliveries without cleaning their hands (sometimes ...
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