Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

One hope I have is that our scientists have learned a lot about coronavirus vaccine approaches.  The Pfizer approach is "simply" a specific RNA fragment.  I think that's pretty cool, presuming it works.  It does have some side effects apparently, folks can feel "down" for a day or three.  I presume that is your immune system recognizing "foreign" and responding.  (I had a rather severe but short lived response to the second Shingrix vaccine.)

Perhaps with all the money thrown at this effort some broader good will accrue. 

My worry is that the next pandemic may be more lethal than this one.  We've talked about something as contagious with a latency period but a 10% mortality rate.

Not good.

Yes that would be far worse.

Well, I guess.

You know what I miss?  I miss "pandemic traffic" from April/May.  I could get all the way across town in maybe 10-15 minutes.  Now all of those annoying a-holes are back on my roads clogging them up unnecessarily.

I don't think it will be around forever. Once the vaccine is in place and gains a strong hold, this thing could be eradicated.

Much depends on the rest of the world here. We need to share whatever we come up with.

That's what they said about the measles, too. Then some dumbass got the chiropractors to tell their patients to stop vaccinating their kids, and it's back with a damn vengeance. 

I don't get why people don't vaccinate their kids.

Because Bill Gates.

As I've said, we have two options. A vaccine, or natural herd immunity.

A vaccine might not be perfect, or permanent, but it's a way to provide immunity and at least get this under control, and perhaps if the virus is with us "forever" to mitigate the effects of future outbreaks.

Natural herd immunity, I'm convinced, is the way to another 1M plus deaths in the US. So it's our plan Q at this point. Plans A-P are all the vaccines being worked on.

I don't consider it a "plan" at all, simply an inevitable outcome. 

We should probably start some other plans though, that don't rely on the hope of a vaccine, and don't expect people to live in isolation indefinitely-- because that bit is already not working.  It was never a long term solution.  It could never have been.

We have significant technological resources we could bring to bear. We just haven't done so.

Back in March/April, we had a huge number of American (and global) manufacturing and engineering firms committing tremendous energy and significant finances toward developing and manufacturing more, better, less costly ventilators.  We now have scores of thousands of those things lying around unused, because as it turns out, in the case of this disease, they're not particularly good at keeping sick people alive.

But imagine if we had instead focused all of those resources on developing more and better and cheaper indoor ventilation/filtration systems?

Or brought to bear our knowledge of process flow, and improved the ways we move people through buildings.

And likely a thousand other ideas that smart people could have come up with, but simply haven't, because the only two levers anyone seems willing to pull are distancing, and pursuit of a vaccine.

I know you've talked about indoor air filtration, but I doubt that will even do much to reduce R0 if you have people congregating without masks.

Other than that, I don't see any plans that don't involve continued distancing until we get to a vaccine, or failing a vaccine, get to natural herd immunity.

I don't even understand what those plans could look like.

Which is to say, I have to think this is one of those situations where alternate plans existed, someone would be saying something. But they're not, and with as many people in the world looking at this as there are, makes me think alternate plans won't exist.

We've seen detailed, reconstructed diagrams of the way this thing spread in a couple of different restaurants, based on where Patient Zero was seated next to an air return, and the way the ensuing outflow from vents cascaded across table after table of Patients 1 through X.  Just imagine if a submicron air filter had been in place, imagine the limit to the spread in that one restaurant, and then all the people infected at second touch, and third touch, etc.

I've also read numerous accounts of how airplanes are considered largely safe, due to their filtration systems.

So no, I'm not going to agree that there's simply nothing we can do to help, regarding air filtration and improved ventilation for indoor buildings.

Like a mask-- in fact EXACTLY like a mask-- it's not a guaranteed solution.  But it can certainly be helpful.

I don't think we're getting an effective vaccine.  It would be nice, for sure.  But that's not the basket where we can afford to place our eggs.

We're smart people.  We need to start doing smart things.

Living in isolation indefinitely isn't smart, and it's already failing miserably.