COVID Chat: Carrie Ponders the Coronavirus Pandemic

One approach to ending the coronavirus pandemic is to deploy a safe and effective vaccine or other prophylactic treatment against SARS-CoV-2.

I’ll begin with a review of the range of prevention and treatment research areas for COVID-19. Then I’ll discuss prophylactic approaches, including binding blockers, antibody-based approaches, and vaccines. We’ll also talk about the process of vaccine development and compare diverse vaccine technologies (whole virus, frankenvirus, proteins, and genetics-based solutions).

I’ll conclude by sharing my updated opinion on this series (started a month ago!). Today, if I answer the answer question, “When will this really be over?” I add a fourth approach, treatment. Also, of the four strategies, I now have two favorites. Only testing and tracing, combined with treatment, can help us immediately. Herd immunity and vaccine deployment will take time, possibly too much time. The virus might fizzle out or change before these strategies can help us.

What is the difference between viral and antibody testing? How much testing are we doing? How much should we be doing? 

Eventually, regardless of what we do, new COVID-19 cases will decline after we surpass the global mega peak. In this episode, I’ll elaborate on this wait it out approach, the concept of a global mega peak, and herd immunity. We'll answer these 5 questions:

When will this terrible coronavirus pandemic situation REALLY be over? I’ll share a summary of what most experts agree is probably the answer. We'll talk about three approaches: 1) wait it out until humans have herd immunity, 2) hunt and catch all cases using testing and tracing, and 3) an armor and shields approach involving developing vaccines or other drugs. 

The mindset and strategies for preventing and controlling these two problems share some similarities.

I’ll use non-pandemic examples to explain why coronavirus pandemic curves and death predictions are inherently challenging to predict.

Ask yourself these five questions to learn how you can burst news bubbles and gain a wiser perspective on the coronavirus pandemic.

COVID Carrie introduces herself and shares why she's starting this new podcast.