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To: SeekAndFind
Vaccines have gotten all the attention in the race to fight COVID-19, but there is a major push in the United States to develop antibody therapies to treat coronavirus. There's so much of a push that some scientists think these treatments may be available this year, even before a vaccine.

Vaccines typically take years to develop. The only reason influenza vaccines can be cranked out within a few months is that the vaccine itself has decades of research and use so that changing it up for a new strain of influenza is a (relatively) minor effort. Coronaviruses, however, are not related to influenza and any vaccine effort has to start at step one. So, no matter how urgently we could use a vaccine, I wouldn't count on one being available any time soon (if at all).

Antibodies, on the other hand, only have to be shown to be effective--that they neutralize the virus. Methods for extracting antibodies from serum and preserving their activity have existed for decades. I think that antibodies probably have the potential to reach the clinic faster than any other treatment.

2 posted on 06/27/2020 8:26:54 AM PDT by exDemMom (Current visual of the hole the US continues to dig itself into: http://www.usdebtclock.org)
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To: exDemMom

costa rica has been using plasma from recovered patients for almost a month. they are working on using horse serum to help manufacture larg quantities.. they also have been using hydroxychloroquine since march and have one of the lowest death rates..they were doing great until last ten days number of cases have increased dramatically many from foreigners from nicaragua..over 25% of their cases are foreigners, no breakdown of country where they are from.

0.43 percent fatality rate..
https://delfino.cr/2020/06/costa-rica-registra-143-nuevos-casos-de-covid-19-y-45-nuevos-recuperados

https://www.larepublica.net/noticia/plasma-equino-contra-covid-19-podria-abrirle-un-negocio-al-pais


11 posted on 06/27/2020 4:26:51 PM PDT by rolling_stone (tshf)
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