Cold vaccine tests show promise

boing
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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/26/cold-vaccine-tests-show-promis.html

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With something as prevalent and contagious as the common cold, I’d worry that a vaccine would just lead to the strongest bugs surviving. Also is there a fear that we are breeding an army of super-mice?

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This article is from October 2017.

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Don’t worry. As there is no “common” cold, there is no “strongest” virus. Immune systems are a fiddly tiddly bit complicated, to say the least, so there can be no “strongest” virus.

If there would be, it would already be outcompeting the others.

This is both a philosophical as an evolutionary biology comment, BTW.

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From what I gathered it can’t be done cause the virus mutates so quickly. Like it is possible to get a cold again from it transferring through 3 other people.

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  • Orange juice
  • Chicken soup
  • Lots of sleep

I know it’s not technically a vaccine.

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If you don’t take something for your cold, you’ll have it an entire week. If you take drugs, get lots of sleep, and take vitamins, you can beat it in seven days.

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“about 80% of drugs that make it into clinical trials because they worked in mice do not go on to work in humans.”

which leads one to question - would 80% of the drugs that work in humans not work in mice - so we never get them?

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Whiskey. Whiskey makes the colds better.

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Alternatively a bottle of whiskey and a pot of honey. You drink the whiskey and then find the a pile of pots of honey at the back of a cupboard when tidying up years later.

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I dunno. If this really becomes a thing, I’m gonna have to get some scientific input from Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey.

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I’m not sure if anyone can talk about percentages, but certainly some, and probably a lot. That’s why we are trying to make mice that respond more like humans – either by genetically modifying them or more interestingly (from my own research perspective) modifying their microbiome.

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I would totally get a cold vaccine each year, along with the influenza vaccine, if there was one that was even halfway reliable.

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Adenovirus, echovirus, rhinovirus, RSV, parainfluenza, and a couple dozen more. All these cause “colds” and are largely unrelated. They also, because they are viruses, mutate incredibly fast. Any hope for a vaccine that will cover all these is probably in vain at our current level of understanding. Some day, maybe, but not anytime soon. Sorry, guys.

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