Posted on 03/31/2020 6:03:07 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Researchers this week planned to start testing a century-old vaccine to see if it would be useful in fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Tests are to be conducted in four countries, beginning in Netherlands, to see if bacillus Calmette-Guerin, or BCG, can train the immune system to fight the virus, which has claimed more than 35,000 victims worldwide.
BCG has been used to fight tuberculosis and early stage bladder cancer. Some 1,000 doctors and nurses in Netherlands are to receive either the vaccine or a placebo this week. In Australia, 4,000 healthcare workers in Melbourne have volunteered to take part in the trial, which began Monday and is expected to last six months.
“There is a lot of enthusiasm to participate,” Marc Bonten of University Medical Center Utrecht, Netherlands, told Science.
A specific COVID-19 vaccine is at least 12- to 18 months away, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said.
BCG contains a live weakened strain of the bacterium that causes TB. It is given to 130 million children less than a year old around the world annually and prevents an average 60% of TB cases although the efficacy varies among countries. The vaccine also is inexpensive.
Unlike other vaccines that target specific pathogens, BCG appears to improve the immune system’s ability to fight off a variety of ailments, preventing about 30% of infections by any known pathogens.
“It can boost the immune system so that it defends better against a whole range of different infections, a whole range of different viruses and bacteria in a lot more generalized way,” by Nigel Curtis, head of infectious diseases research at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, told Bloomberg. He said the study could be expanded to other Australian cities as well as Boston.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibtimes.com ...
Fauci will probably allow it to be tested in the US, with results due only after Nov. 4...
I received the vaccine. About 59 1/2 years ago.
Perhaps the testing will be scientifically rigorous enough to satisfy the FDA.
Me, about 50 years ago.
Were you in the military? Or as a child?
I had about 30 BCG treatments for bladder cancer about 3 years ago. It was effective. It is in short supply however. One of the suppliers stopped making it.
I know someone else who had that treatment.
Lived to be in his 80’s and nearly 30 years after his treatments ended.
“Fauci will probably allow it to be tested in the US, with results due only after Nov. 4...”
35,000 victims worldwide. Yet Dr. Doom insists there is going to be 100,000 to 200,000 deaths in the US in the next two weeks. Which is what forced the President’s hand to keep the country shut down another month. Their little chart showed deaths well into May. I think late April we are going to see the Dr. Doom and Barbara hit the news shows like they did a week ago and start pushing for a may extension. If Trump does it his numbers will crater.
If they really wanted to jump-start vaccine research, they’d promise a $10b prize for the first vaccine to attain 99.9% effectiveness within certain cost parameters that also guarantees the winner a 40% gross profit margin on top of the prize. Peanuts for an economy-wrecking bug like this one.
Infant.
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