Dear Reader (May 10):

China‘s curve has already flattened, it is as flat as can be for the last two months (14,108 new cases at the peak on Feb 12, less than a 100 new cases per day since March 6, and only 14 new cases today). South Korea‘s curve is almost as flat as China’s (851 new cases at the peak March 3, less than 100 new cases since April 2, and only 34 new cases today).

Italy‘s curve is flattening nicely (6,557 new cases at the peak on March 21, 802 new cases today, today is the first day with less than  1,000 new cases since March 11).  Spain‘s curve has been flattening not as nicely as Italy’s (8,195 new cases at the peak on March 26, over a 1,000 new cases per day ever since March,  1,880 new cases today.

On the other hand, The United Kingdom‘s graph, if it started to flatten, then it started to flatten May 8, only two days ago, too early to tell if the graph is flattening because it had ups and downs for a while. (8,681 new cases at the peak on April 10, over 3,000 new cases every day since March 31, and 3,923 new cases today. Sweden‘s graph did not start to flatten yet, many ups and downs (812 new cases at the peak on April 24, 401 new cases today. The USA‘s graph didn’t start to flattening, many ups and downs, (38,958 new cases at the peak on April 24, more than 25,00 new cases every day since March 31, and 25,524 new cases yesterday.

My personal thoughts:

– If miraculously a vaccine was made ready for the world populations tomorrow, herd immunity would have been created soon enough (no new infections)  in every country and the pandemic would ne contained. But a vaccine may not be not be developed at all. There are plenty of viruses for which decades of research did not yield vaccines. And if a vaccine will be developed and approved, it will take a couple of years or so to develop it, and once developed it will take time to make it available to the billions of people all over the world, before the pandemic can be contained.

– Specific antiviral drugs do not yet exist but may be developed; or existing antiviral drugs for other diseases may be used successfully to treat Covid-19, but this is about lessening the severity and the duration of the symptoms, it is not about curing the disease nor is it about preventing new infections. So, o hope in antiviral drugs when it comes to containing the pandemic.

– Passive immunization, aka passive antibody therapy, or convalescent plasma therapy, is about the treating the very sick; passive immunization does not prevent new infections. No hope here either as far as containing the pandemic.

– Regarding non specific vaccines, particularly the existing BCG vaccine against tuberculosis: a team of researchers in the US (see May 7 article in www. ibtimes. com/ coronavirus- treatment-tb-vaccine-may-prevent-covid-19-deaths-study-analyzes) are working on it, with the most immediate goal being to protect health care workers against the Covid-19 virus, and to treat Covid-19 patients.

But if I understand correctly, a farther goal could be to use an improved version of the BCG vaccine to vaccinate the world population. So, there is some hope- I hope- that a non-specific vaccine will create that herd immunity that will lead to containing this pandemic (???)

– The Miracle I hope, hope for: that the virus behind Covid-19, aka SARS-Cov-2, will spontaneously mutate to a strain or strains that are significantly less infectious, with a transmission rate aka Reproductive Number (Ro) of lesser than 1. As worldometer states: “An outbreak with a reproductive number of below 1 will gradually disappear“. If I understand correctly, this is exactly what happened to SARS-Cov responsible to the 2002-3 SARS epidemic- it spontaneously mutated to a strain or strains of an Ro that is lesser than 1, and the WHO indeed declared that epidemic contained in July 5, 2003.

anita