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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/health/coronavirus-bcg-vaccine.html
A vaccine that was developed a hundred years ago to fight the tuberculosis scourge in Europe is now being tested against the coronavirus by scientists eager to find a quick way to protect health care workers, among others.
The Bacillus Calmette-Guerin vaccine is still widely used in the developing world, where scientists have found that it does more than prevent TB. The vaccine prevents infant deaths from a variety of causes, and sharply reduces the incidence of respiratory infections.
The vaccine seems to “train” the immune system to recognize and respond to a variety of infections, including viruses, bacteria and parasites, experts say. There is little evidence yet that the vaccine will blunt infection with the coronavirus, but a series of clinical trials may answer the question in just months.
On Monday, scientists in Melbourne, Australia, started administering the B.C.G. vaccine or a placebo to thousands of physicians, nurses, respiratory therapists and other health care workers — the first of several randomized controlled trials intended to test the vaccine’s effectiveness against the coronavirus.
“Nobody is saying this is a panacea,” said Dr. Nigel Curtis, head of infectious diseases at Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, who planned the trial. “What we want to do is reduce the time an infected health care worker is unwell, so they recover and can come back to work faster.”
A clinical trial of 1,000 health care workers began 10 days ago in the Netherlands, said Dr. Mihai G. Netea, an infectious disease specialist at Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen. Eight hundred health care workers have already signed up. (As in Australia, half of the participants will receive a placebo.)
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A recent analysis of the disparate toll the new coronavirus has taken on middle- and high-income countries found a correlation with B.C.G. policies, concluding that countries that did not implement or had abandoned universal B.C.G. vaccination have had more coronavirus infections per capita and higher death rates. (Low-income countries were excluded from the analysis because of unreliable Covid-19 reporting data and generally poor medical systems.)
“You can make a new vaccine,” Dr. Faustman said. “We’re really smart, and we can do that. But it’s two years off, and two years is going to be two years too late.”
“If we’ve got something generic globally at hand that we can use to make the human host stronger, this is a win-win for the public right away.”
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Now there’s some good news
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Jolly, you wouldn't be picking this apart if it weren't me posting it. I just posted some facts.
Can't you just let it go?
Actually, I'd pick it apart whomever posted it.
Furthermore, it's not picking it apart. I'm looking at the basic facts for any medical supply chain, and why, or why not, medical companies choose to make anything.
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"Sorry to hear about your husband" would have been nice as a preface.
But as they say, whatever.
Whatever.
- I either don't know or do not remember your husband has bladder cancer.
- I do know Larry has bladder cancer.
- My grandmother died from bladder cancer.
I wouldn't have changed one word of what I said. Healthcare is always about supply and demand, and trying to deliver the best care to the most people we can. Sometimes, that means some very hard choices...I've told the story before of standing in the middle of a quick conversation between two docs who were trying to handle three simultaneous codes with only enough staff and equipment for two.
That's life. That's real.
And if having a treatment that will spare thousands or millions of lives, at the expense of older people with cancer, that's going to be a tough choice we'll have to make. Hopefully, if BCG has some effectiveness, we can ramp up production quickly and no more need die than absolutely have to.
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@wtg Whoa! I missed this along the way. I'm very sorry to hear this about your husband. If the drug is promising at all, it's time for production to ramp up, especially if there are users already in place. If it turns out to not be the great thing for the virus, it can still get used by others.
