A reminder in this era of lockdown "tweaking" to "easing", phases and Coronavirus. This nasty virus is incompatible with 'normal' human life; it transmits between people too quickly and kills too high a number of people (mainly >65 years old).
The true exit is via changing the biology of the virus (somewhere in its infection cycle) or biology of our response to the virus. In the meantime we have to adjust our everyday lives to limit the spread of the virus.
How do we change the biology? By drugs or by vaccines. We have numerous drug possibilities - one has shown some (but not game changing) efficacy (the most positive thing being one can get a drug to the virus via the IV drips as well as it change in hospitalisation)
Many more drugs are being looked at, and there is a host more to try. Furthermore people are quite a way along in making new targeted drugs to virus ("neutralising antibodies").
A particularly large class of drugs will be all the different ways we can modulate the immune system. We need to understand better how the virus causes an almost inappropriate response in the human body, and perhaps by tuning down that response reduce mortality.
Vaccine development is happening faster than ever thought was possible. Multiple vaccine approaches are being tried, and there is good preliminary data on them. Keep your fingers crossed.
Neither drugs nor vaccines are sure fire cures, but we have many many lines of attack being pursued now. It is hard to imagine that they will all fail; as we don't know what will work, we need all of them to be developed as fast as possible.
In the meantime we need to limit the spread of the virus. To do this we need to reduce the chance of transmission. There is much science here which would be great to know - what situations are the most prevalent for transmission?
Viral transmission is a complex subject; even more so a new virus. What I have gleaned from the reports/literature I've seen is that it is relatively prolonged indoor contact is the most transmission favourable.
More testing - insanely more testing - and more tracing - automated and manual can also help by finding infected individuals and getting maximal return in reducing transmission, in particular from asymptomatic carriers
There is plenty of headroom in sensing the virus; plenty of innovation in tracing, fusing automated and manual approaches and examples of this having an impact around the world.
Its not a long term solution, but it is a solution that makes the "buying time" easier on society, allowing us to explore more ways we can live in an uneasy truce with the virus potentially beside us.
