A simple solution for the virus?

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UPI reports,

A commercially available nasal antiseptic solution “inactivates” COVID-19 just 15 seconds after the coronavirus is exposed to it, effectively preventing the infection from developing, according to a study published Thursday by JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery.

It works in test tubes, but needs to be proven to work on humans. In theory, it could make my outlandish prediction that we will give up on a vaccine come true. But have we already invested too much financial, political, and cultural capital into “wait for a vaccine” to adopt an alternative?

29 thoughts on “A simple solution for the virus?”

  1. Thanks for the reference, Arnold. I can read in

    https://halodine.com

    some additional information and a lot of propaganda. Also, press TRY NOW to get free samples within the U.S. To buy larger quantities you have to contact the company.

    I hope you are right. And I hope I’m wrong that it’d be better to wait until Wednesday, November 4, to start a serious review of Halodine to avoid politicization.

  2. COVID has been thoroughly politicized and the results have been predictably malign. By now, we should expect that politics will overrule science and economics in every phase, nook, and cranny of the pandemic,

  3. “But have we already invested too much financial, political, and cultural capital into ‘wait for a vaccine’ to adopt an alternative?”

    This might be the wrong question. I’m thinking that the more right question is: how do we convince people that the virus was mostly overrated and that the reaction to it was somewhat irrational? And, how do we convince them that it’s OK to resume their lives? Does this antiseptic get them there? The vaccine? Does it matter which solution is best if the end result doesn’t get us back to something resembling normal?

    Separately, public support for a vaccine has dropped significantly.

    https://morningconsult.com/2020/09/11/vaccine-acceptance-public-poll/

    • I’m less sanguine than you about the virus. Many viruses have significant long-term effects; my mother has fairly debilitating post-polio syndrome though she recovered from the initial infection 70 years ago. COVID-19 is thought to cause long-term damage to the lungs, heart, and possibly brain (although of course we won’t actually know what the long-term effects are for decades).

      My brother-in-law is a pediatrician, and he had a young patient that suffered peripheral vascular damage from COVID to the point that gangrene set it. He had to order the amputation of an arm and a leg for a toddler. This virus can be nasty.

      • “I’m less sanguine than you about the virus. Many viruses have significant long-term effects.”

        But, this is the only virus that we chose to freak out about and lockdown over. At this point, is there anything unusual about the long-term effects of this particular virus vs. all of the others that are out there?

        • This one is extremely contagious and has potentially lasting serious effects. That’s a bad combination, and I’m not aware of any other virus that’s like it (except maybe smallpox, which we’ve eradicated).

        • I should probably say, rather than “extremely contagious”, “extremely hard to contain”. The long incubation period and significant percentage of asymptomatic-but-contagious people are key parts of the problem.

          • Thanks for clarifying.

            It looks like we may agree that the debate is as follows:

            Lift the lockdowns and encourage folks to return to something approximating normal vs. maintain the lockdowns due to the “potentially” serious long-term effects of the virus.

            I’m going with the former option. The health, psychological and economic effects of lockdowns far outweighs any potential gains from mitigating a potential and heretofore unquantified risk of long term virus impacts. As of today, the lockdowns are totally unprecedented and unnecessary for a virus that doesn’t pose a significant risk to the vast majority of the population. Reasonable people can of course disagree as I’m sure you do.

            Separately, I love living in Texas where we took a much more reasonable approach than the rest of the country. Our 6 yo daughter just finished her fourth week of first grade, IN PERSON. She loves it and we do too! She also enjoyed her recent trip via airplane to Disney World in Florida.

  5. The question is not whether we will produce a vaccine. The question is when officialdom will be forced to accept the facts that make the search for one both futile and likely fruitless, namely:
    (1) Covid is just a common cold or flu, no more serious. (Thus only matters at all to people who are sick in other ways.)
    (2) As time passes, it weakens, just as other cold/flu viruses do. This is partly masked by new strains appearing.
    And of course (3) neither masks nor shutdowns accomplish anything worthwhile beyond the short term which ended about April.

    I’m more worried about how to make the state elections office open its doors again, so I can file petitions to recall the governor for doing this to us, and to repeal his emergency powers so it doesn’t happen again. As long as the office stays closed we are in a catch-22 that protects the bad guy and bad laws from correction.

    • For people under 40 you can compare Covid to the flu and the flu may look worse, at least in IFR. But for older people, this is much worse than the flu.

      • Good point, but others have suggested that the relevant age is 50, while others still claim is 60. Have you seen strong evidence for one of the three alternatives? Are criteria to argue for the three ages?

        I think 50 is a good compromise because of the severity for older people and the benefit of soon contagion among younger people.

  6. I wrote it months ago at this point, but by the time we get vaccine (assuming we do), it won’t actually be needed for anything other than psychological support.

    Our response to this virus has been the biggest governmental policy blunder of my lifetime.

    • +1

      It’s not as contagious as we though, provided you follow very basic procedure.

      It’s not as deadly as we thought, especially for non-senior citizens.

      It’s incredible obvious that locking down a society to protect sick and old people from maybe dying is EVIL, full stop.

  8. Are you a virus “kook”? So are these Harvard folks.

    https://jacobinmag.com/2020/09/covid-19-pandemic-economy-us-response-inequality

    But I have been struck by how this emphasis on keeping the numbers down at all costs has not evolved with time. There is a kind of simplistic goal of keeping people from getting infected, period. Now this may seem like a worthy goal, but with a highly contagious respiratory virus to which most of the world’s population is probably still not immune, people are going to get infected. The virus will spread, quickly or less so, until herd immunity is reached.

    Somehow, herd immunity has become a toxic phrase, which is strange, since it is a scientifically proven phenomenon just like gravity. Except for the occasional skier, people do not argue for or against gravity. Whatever strategy we use for COVID-19, we will eventually reach herd immunity, either with a vaccine, through natural infections, or a combination of the two.

    So, the question is not whether we get to herd immunity or not. The issue is how to get there with the minimum number of casualties. We do not know what percent immunity to the coronavirus is needed to achieve herd immunity, but we do know that if there are many older people in the group that is infected, there will be many deaths. On the other hand, if mostly young people are infected, there will be very few deaths.

    Efforts to quell the virus have brought additional pain. As of late August, roughly nineteen million Americans were out of work as a result of the pandemic, and food and housing insecurity has increased dramatically. But the pain caused by lockdowns has not been shared equally.

    Elites have seen their stock portfolios balloon in value, and many professionals have been able to keep their jobs by working from home. It is the country’s poor and working-class households, particularly those with children, who have borne a disproportionate share of the burden. Lower-income Americans were much more likely to be forced to work in unsafe conditions, to have lost their livelihoods due to business and school shutdowns, or to be unable to learn remotely.

    • I hope that the great and the good reverse course on lockdown tyranny after Trump loses, but its no guarantee. They could insist on it forever, who knows.

      • I think you described the lockdowns as “EVIL” a few days ago. At this point, that’s probably the best way to sum it up in one word.

        I’m in North Texas and thankfully we took a different course despite being dismissed as “immoral” and “backwards.” F*ck all of the intellectual elites that totally got it wrong.

  9. I’m surprised that the folks that were so willing to put our 18-25 year olds in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan are so unwilling to put the 60+ cohort in any risk whatsoever.

      • “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

        On the upside, all of the best firearm instructors here in North Texas are Iraq or Afghanistan veterans. Thank you U.S. military for training so many excellent teachers! Obligatory note to always follow the four rules of firearms safety.

        • Few people account for military pedagogical positive externalities, but they are massive. I’m not talking about GI Bill, I’m talking about the kinds of things people learn on the job while in the military, the least of which is martial skills, which are still important.

          The old apprentice system was characterized by what a modern person would probably deem to be a combination of child labor and indentured-servitude. Some mistakenly believe that parents must have sold their kids into this bondage, but actually, they sometimes also paid what they could to the master for the privilege. It takes a lot of distracting time, patience, and effort to educate a young person into high levels of skill in a trade.

          You must provide room and board, and you need all the authorit-y of a parent to discipline them. It isn’t always going to ‘take’ – they may not have enough talent, determination, or conscientiousness to succeed – and, if it does take, as soon as they are fully trained, they can start out on their own, either by setting up shop somewhere else, or even as your new local competitor.

          So, without the ability to capture some gains in the form of a term of legally enforcement mandatory service for many years, the whole arrangement would be uneconomical for most masters, and there would be no other way for most students to afford to get an education.

          The military, however, being a subsidized entity of the state, can just throw countless billions at this matter with an expectation of very high turnover and personnel attrition. My guess is that it gets an order of magnitude more bang for the buck in terms of the ‘social return’ on that investment, in the enhanced skill and productivity of the people who leave the service.

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