
Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention? - danieltillett
I have what is possibly a very simple, cheap and quick solution to solving the COVID-19 pandemic. The problem is I am in Australia and only someone like with clout in the USA or Europe like Bill Gates can put it into practice. Any ideas how I can get their attention?
======
danieltillett
If anyone wants to know what this possible solution is I have written it up
here in non-technical language [0].

0\. [https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/05/a-solution-to-
covid-19/](https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/05/a-solution-to-covid-19/)

Edit. HN seems to have put me on the “posting too fast” treadmill so I will
have to edit this post.

While effectively the same as a vaccine, it is quite different. Any such
attenuated strain identified can be used outside of the regulatory system.
This is the real key to the idea.

Edit 2. I am not a crank - well at least I don’t think I am. I have a PhD in
microbiology and I have been a professor in microbiology and virology. I now
work in the biotech industry. Have a look at the about me section of my blog
to check into my background if you care about these things.

~~~
danieltillett
Here is the post for those who don’t want to follow the link.

Like nearly everyone on the planet I am worried about COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2
(the virus that causes COVID-19) appears to be killing between 1% to 3.5% of
the people it infects and has a R0 (i.e. how many new people each person
infected goes onto infect) of between 2.5 to 3.9. Left to run wild, the virus
will likely kill tens of millions of people worldwide.

The governments of the world have implemented strict population isolation
protocols to try and limit the spread of the virus, but the economic cost of
this is extremely high. A vaccine for COVID-19 is 12 to 18 months away (at
best).

We are stuck in a diabolic situation where the only way to prevent the economy
sliding into a slump deeper than the Great Depression is to consign many tens
of millions of people to an early grave. Is there a way out?

SARS-Cov-2 Viral Diversity

SARS-CoV-2 like all viruses mutates (changes) overtime. Many of these genetic
changes are small (single nucleotides) that are not important to the
replications or transmission of the virus from person to person, but they can
be used to identify the origin of the virus. DeCODE genetics has been testing
Icelanders for COVID-19 and genome sequencing the SARS-CoV-2 strains isolated.
They have found two very important pieces of information:

1\. More than 50% of the people infected with SARS-CoV-19 are asymptomatic
(i.e. they have no illness). 2\. They can identify the geographical origin of
the strains by the genetic differences (mutations) between the different
strains.

This data suggests a simple and testable hypothesis – _there are natural
strains of SARS-CoV-2 in the world that have mutated to be non-pathogenic
(asymptomatic), but are still infective and will provide immunity to the more
pathogenic (deadly) strains._

If we can find one of these non-pathogenic viral strains out in the wild we
could give it to everyone in the world and solve our diabolic problem. This
non-pathogenic strain would act much like the live attenuated (oral) polio
vaccine.

How do we find the attenuated SARS-CoV-2 strains?

This hypothesis is worthless if we have no way of finding any of these non-
pathogenic SARS-CoV-2 viral strains. Luckily there is a quick and cheap way to
find these strains if they exist – test asymptomatic people for COVID-19 and
then genome sequence the SARS-CoV-2 strain that has infected them with the aim
of identifying a virus with mutation(s) in an essential viral gene(s). This
approach is cheap (a couple of hundreds of dollars a virus strain) and quick
(a week or less). With almost no effort or cost we could sequence a few
thousand viral strains from asymptomatic people until we find a virus strain
with the right mutations to make it harmless and which is in effect an
attenuated vaccine. We would know that this strain can still reproduce in
people and lead to immunity, but not make people seriously ill.

What viral mutations are we looking for in a good non-pathogenic viral strain?

We would ideally be looking for a virus strain with a large(ish) deletion in
an essential viral gene. This sort of mutation is easy to spot in the SARS-
CoV-2 genome data, and because the genetic information has been removed, it
makes the virus very unlikely to be able to mutate back into a dangerous
strain. Ideally, the strain identified will have infected a number of other
people in the local area too so we can know it is safe.

Has this ever been done before?

Yes. The polio, measles, rubella, mumps, and chicken pox vaccines are all live
attenuated viruses. Even something as dangerous as smallpox was controlled in
the 18th century using a variation of this idea called Variolation. The idea
was the doctor would deliberately infect you with a less harmful strain of
smallpox to make you immune to the more deadly strains of smallpox. Of course,
they didn’t know how this approach worked in the 18th century, but it was
still very effective and millions of people were saved from dying from
smallpox by it.

What are the risks?

The major risk is the virus we think is safe is not 100% safe. While we can
use community spread of the identified strain to estimate how safe it will be
(i.e. if it has infected 1000 people and none have got seriously ill then we
should have a pretty good idea that it is safe), but our knowledge will be
incomplete. We can of course spend the next few years testing and trialling,
but if we do this by the time any strain is shown to be 99.999% safe (not even
the polio vaccine is 100% safe) we will have all got COVID-19 and the world’s
economy will be a smoking ruin.

We have a choice of taking some small risk now, or face the certainty of a
much worse problem later. Time to accept some risk and do something.

Q & A

I have been getting a few questions on this post so I thought I would address
them here.

How do you know there is an attenuated viral strain out there?

I don’t. I am hypothesising that there is one (or more) based on the known
mutation rate of coronaviruses and the number of cases. Coronaviruses mutate
continuously (this is why companies like deCODE can tell the geographical
origin of different strains) as the molecular machinery for replicating their
RNA genome is not very accurate. When you combine this with the millions of
mild cases out in the world, the odds are on our side that there is at least
one person infected with a strain that has a mutation that makes the virus
less dangerous (attenuated). We just need to look for this strain – luckily
the tools we need to use (genome sequencing) are now cheap and quick. What
would have been impossible 20 years ago can now be done in a week.

Aren’t most people who have mild/asymptomatic cases infected with the
dangerous strain?

Yes. Almost all (>99.9%) of people who are infected (and have a mild case) are
infected with a dangerous strain of the virus, they just happen to have an
immune system that can control the virus well. With COVID-19 a mild case does
not mean you are infected with an attenuated strain – for most people with a
mild case if they happen to infect a person with preexisting conditions or who
is old, that person will be at a high risk of dying. A mild case does not
equal a harmless strain.

My argument is coming from the other direction. While almost all mild cases of
COVID-19 are caused by a dangerous strain of SARS-CoV-2, an attenuated strain
of SARS-CoV-2 will only cause mild disease. If you want to find an attenuated
strain you need to look at mild cases even though >99.9% of the people you
check will be infected with a dangerous strain. What we want to find is one of
the rare natural viral mutants that is attenuated. Where you will find such a
mutant is in people with a mild form of the disease.

Can’t we just wait for the vaccine?

No. Apart from the time it will take to develop, trial, and mass produce a
vaccine (12-18 months), it is unlikely that any vaccine will be practicable.
The reason why is immunity to respiratory viruses (like corona) doesn’t last
long – 6 months to 2 years. We would have to keep vaccinating everyone in the
world every year (or maybe every 6 months if we are unlucky). This just isn’t
going to work in the real world (especially poor countries) and is one of the
reasons we don’t have a vaccine for the coronavirus strains that cause the
common cold. Unless we can drive the current dangerous SARS-CoV-2 strains to
extinction we are going to have a problem with this disease indefinitely.

Isn’t social distancing and quarantining solving the problem?

Yes and no. Yes countries like South Korea and Australia have shown that
through mass screening and social distancing you can keep a lid on the
disease, but this leaves the population susceptible to a new outbreak.
Singapore and Japan have recently seen this in action where they eased
restrictions and found the disease came back and they had to reintroduce
restrictions. I don’t think many people want to live for years with cycles of
restrictions, easings and further outbreaks.

Wouldn’t the use of such an attenuated strain just be a vaccine?

Yes in one way, but it is a little more subtle. Assuming we can find an
attenuated strain, then how to best use it a separate question. Giving it
deliberately to lots of people would change the ecosystem for the dangerous
strains of the virus. The dangerous strains would find it dificult to spread
through the community as many (most) people would have already been infected
(and hence immune) with the attenuated strain. Overtime the dangerous strains
would become rarer, and the attenuated strains more common, until eventually
the dangerous strains would go extinct and we would just be left with the mild
version. While we would not be able to get rid of this mild strain, it would
just be another of the hundreds of viruses out there causing common colds. The
idea is at its base is really to replace the dangerous strains with a less
dangerous strain that we can live with.

~~~
aruggirello
> The major risk is the virus we think is safe is not 100% safe.

IANAD, but IMHO you cannot just sequence the virus in asymptomatic people -
you have to sequence a randomized, sizable % of the whole positive population,
including mild or severe cases, and the dead too. Only then you'll be able to
"paint a picture" of the different strains' effects on humans and slap some
confidence data to each identified strain. Your idea definitely looks
promising though.

~~~
tsenkov
That was my thought as well - basically, how do you know if the strain doesn't
kill if you don't check for severe and lethal cases linked to the same strain?
I understand the part about looking for specific mutations, and assuming they
would indicate the "usual" complications with the deadlier strains would not
be present, but mutations are not exactly predictable, right? If they don't
cause the sympthoms of the current deadly strain - they may be causing
something else completely, which could be as deadly a little bit later down
the line - isn't this a reasonble concern, @danieltillett?

------
integrii
First get this validated by a medical authority. Find the best one you can.

Next, send your idea and medical validation to the Bill and Melinda Gates
foundation. You're not contacting Bill, you're contacting his foundation.
Their doctors will look at your idea and can present it to Bill on the next
scheduled call.

~~~
Ascetik
No one should contact that terrorist eugenics organization. They're
diabolical.

------
lasgsf
I sent this to someone at the Bill & Melinda foundation. If they contact you
let us all know.

------
m33k44
I read somewhere that Bill Gates is very active on social media e.g. Reddit
and Twitter. Here is one of the AMAs he did on Reddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/im_bill_gates_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates)

A recent AMA related to covid-19. There are references to his team and
adviser:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates)

His Reddit handle is:
[https://www.reddit.com/user/thisisbillgates](https://www.reddit.com/user/thisisbillgates)
His Twitter handle is:
[https://twitter.com/BillGates](https://twitter.com/BillGates) His blog is:
[http://www.gatesletter.com](http://www.gatesletter.com)

If you search, you will also easily find his email address online. He has
multiple email addresses as per online searches.

HTH

~~~
danieltillett
Yes in an ideal world I should just be able to write to Bill and he will have
the time to consider my proposal seriously. In the real world the only way to
get the attention of someone like Bill is to have someone he takes seriously
bring it to his attention. Hence the post here.

~~~
m33k44
In the last AMA on Reddit he did provide information about the people to whom
he listens. I am posting the link to the AMA again here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates)

Dr. Trevor Mundel[0], who leads the Gates Foundation’s global health work, and
Dr. Niranjan Bose[1], Bill Gates' chief scientific adviser.

[0] [https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-
Informati...](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General-
Information/Leadership/Executive-Leadership-Team/Trevor-Mundel)

[1] [https://www.linkedin.com/in/niranjan-
bose-014b00](https://www.linkedin.com/in/niranjan-bose-014b00)

~~~
93po
Sounds like these people would be much more likely to see a message and would
be plenty capable of passing it on to Bill if they see merit in it.

~~~
danieltillett
Yes to get to someone like Bill will be a two jump exercise.

~~~
m33k44
I have heard of a healthtech startup in Cambridge, UK that is supported by
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The company is
simprints([https://www.simprints.com](https://www.simprints.com)). Contact the
founders of that company. One of them is Alexandra Grigore
([https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-
grigore-8aa20186](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-grigore-8aa20186))

------
toxot
Chinese researchers on findings of a less deadly strain, preprint March 10:

[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.20033944v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.20033944v2)

We found, in our 788 confirmed COVID-19 patients, the decreased rate of
severe/critical type, increased liver/kidney damage and prolonged period of
nuclear acid positivity during virus dissemination, when compared with Wuhan.
To investigate the underlining mechanism, we isolated one strain of SARS-
CoV-2 (ZJ01) in mild COVID-19 patient and found the existence of 35 specific
gene mutation by gene alignment. Further phylogenetic analysis and RSCU heat
map results suggested that ZJ01 may be a potential evolutionary branch of
SARS-CoV-2. We classified 54 strains of viruses worldwide (C/T type) based on
the base (C or T) at positions 8824 and 28247. ZJ01 were both T at these two
sites, becoming the only TT type currently identified in the world. The
prediction of Furin cleavage site (FCS) and the sequence alignment of virus
family indicated that FCS may be an important site of coronavirus evolution.
ZJ01 had mutations near FCS (F1-2), which caused changes in the structure and
the electrostatic distribution of the S protein surface, further affecting the
binding capacity of Furin. Single cell sequencing and ACE2-Furin co-expression
results confirmed that Furin level was higher in the whole body, especially in
glands, liver, kidney and colon while FCS may help SARS-CoV-2 infect these
organs. The evolutionary pattern of SARS-CoV-2 towards FCS formation may
result in its clinical symptom becoming closer to HKU-1 and OC43 (the source
of FCS sequence-PRRA) caused influenza, further showing potential in
differentiating into mild COVID-19 subtypes.

~~~
danieltillett
Yep this is exactly the sort of mutant we want to look for, but ideally we
want a strain with a gene deletion not just point mutations to lessen the
chance of back mutations. It does prove that there are less pathogenic strains
out there, there just needs to be an effort put into finding them.

------
Jugurtha
Can you put the desired action and the solution in the first sentence, then
back it up in the rest of the post?

The post has an academic style, and academia optimizes for _writing_ articles,
not for the articles to be _read_ or impact the world.

If you rub a lamp and a genie appears, better get to the point.

------
saadalem
You're most likely not going to get a response from an email or a tweet. To
get his attention, put in some legwork.

1- Create a website:
[http://IhaveaCOVIDsolution.com](http://IhaveaCOVIDsolution.com) , On the
website, outline your idea, why it would work, put a personal video of a story
etc.. 2-Email the website to everyone who knows Bill. Track if he opens it for
free with Email Tracking, Scheduling, Templates & Attachment Tracking. 3-If he
doesn't open it, tweet it to him. 4-A week later, follow up on your email
5-Find where many of his followers (on Twitter) hang out, which hashtags do
many use. Post your website and use that hashtag. Or, tweet each of them
individually. 6-Find posts on Quora about Covid-19 solutions, post your idea
(for free) and post your website. 7-A week later follow up again with Bill.
Also, reach out to other Gates foundation Execs. Reach out to Melinda or
Microsoft execs(ex-Msft friends also) and get ignored (will toughen you up).
Maybe 1 of them will want a phone call. Find Bill's address, write him a hand-
written letter and send the website URL as well.

At some point, he will either:

Answer, quick email from him. Best case a phone call. His publicist will say
"Thanks, Bill will look at your ideas." You'll never hear from them again

Maybe he won't answer, but at some point you'll get someone to respond and
perhaps become a client to your solution.

------
JauntTrooper
Check out the Mercatus Center's 'Fast Grants' program:
[https://fastgrants.org/](https://fastgrants.org/)

They're giving $10k - $500k grants to fight covid-19, and decisions are made
within 48 hours.

Press Release: [https://www.mercatus.org/features/mercatus-emergent-
ventures...](https://www.mercatus.org/features/mercatus-emergent-ventures-
launches-fast-grants-fight-covid-19)

~~~
danieltillett
I have already applied there. I don’t actually want any money just
collaborators to make this happen.

------
peppery
While possible, the notion that asymptomatic[†] cases are due to a separate
less-pathogenic strain is both indeed a possibility researchers are thinking
about, and yet also _not_ (a priori) the only or perhaps most probable
explanation for the wide variance in clinical outcomes we see. Other
important, perhaps dominant, factors include heterogeneity in people's immune
responses to virus--common in other conditions--and (possibly) a dose-
dependence (e.g. if you are exposed to a high viral load e.g. by intense or
prolonged exposure, some reports (but far too few for definiteness yet) are
that clinical outcomes may be poorer). Though there are different COVID
strains in circulation (see the amazing data tracking of
[https://nextstrain.org/ncov](https://nextstrain.org/ncov)), with regards to
the proposed hypothesis: there is no evidence that these strains show any
difference in virulence (see e.g. the perspective of Francois Balloux at UCL:
[https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/12395362423558225...](https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1239536242355822592)).
Many groups are attempting to scale up environmental genomic testing for COVID
(see again the nextstrain site).

[†] Note that currently, researchers are rather vigorously debating the true
proportion of asymptomatic cases (or distinguishing them from pre-symptomatic
cases)--we need more widespread e.g. antibody-based testing to answer this
more confidently than we can by indirectly fitting coarse time-series to
simplified models.

------
DoreenMichele
This is likely to run into some hiccups.

When we exterminate species of animals, microbes that inhabit them jump
species. It's how they survive.

One of the things that fosters antibiotic resistance is that bacteria mutate
at a higher rate in hostile environments.

Different people with different genetics react differently to the same things.

I am not trying to rain on your parade. I'm trying to take you seriously and
share my thoughts. I'm sure we all want a solution.

I think we need to up our game on other things. I don't know how to get
traction on that. We already know a lot of things that help and we are just
not doing a very good job of getting everyone to understand and comply.

If we did, people might dismiss the success as "luck" anyway. Humans have a
terrible track record of not knowing how to count the disasters that didn't
happen but should have.

Best of luck. I see in comments someone forwarded it to the Gates Foundation.
I would be happy to learn I'm wrong and this works.

------
_Microft
Summary of the idea from the link in the sibling comment, partially in the
words of the author (edited by me):

 _[There might be] natural strains of SARS-CoV-2 in the world that have
mutated to be non-pathogenic (asymptomatic), but are still infective and will
provide immunity to the more pathogenic (deadly) strains.

[If there are and] we can find one of these non-pathogenic viral strains out
in the wild we could [use it] much like the live attenuated (oral) polio
vaccine._

The submitter seeks help to test this hypothesis.

~~~
danieltillett
I would add that the hypothesis can be checked very quickly and cheaply by
genomic sequencing.

I can afford the cost of all the sequencing, what I need is access to a large
number of samples from people infected with mild cases of COVID-19. My best
estimate is you would need to look at north of 5000 samples to find a strain
with the right sort of gene deletion.

~~~
newsbinator
What about reaching out to the mods of
[https://Reddit.com/r/Covid19Positive](https://Reddit.com/r/Covid19Positive) ?

------
dwarkesh
For all our sakes, I wish you the best of luck with this idea. I'm sorry I
don't know how to help you but your idea sounds promising and it's super
invigorating to see high agency people try to implement their solutions to our
problems! :)

------
lifeisstillgood
Presumably you are asking for

\- Website where people who fit criteria can register

\- some form of triage (symptoms checking, contact tracing)

\- Then _collection_. Presumably people will need to supply mucus samples,
_and have those samples collected safely_. This sounds difficult and seems
like the expensive and hard to scale part. But I can imagine a fleet of
drivers with some training being able to collect and store samples in "proper"
equipment. This is well out of my expertise.

\- testing / sequencing (lab based). This you seem confident on.

Is this a good idea - I don't know. Is it possible - yes it seems quite
doable. Does it need billg? I doubt it. Plenty of people have cash and now
have motivation.

Good luck.

------
BtM909
You could reach out to companies like
[https://lifeomic.com/](https://lifeomic.com/) ? If they can't help directly,
they might be able to steer you in the right direction?

Good luck

------
hannob
So I'm no expert in medical sciences, but have some basic knowledge. Here's
what I think:

You're basically proposing a form of vaccination. Essentially everyone knows
that a vaccine would be the way out of this mess. There's loads of research on
Vaccines for Covid-19 right now. Your idea isn't exceptionally surprising, as
you write yourself it's close to how some of the early vaccines worked.

I am reasonably convinced researchers into vaccines right now turn every stone
to look for possible ways to make a vaccine as fast as possible. They probably
got the idea already and if it's a feasible path someone is working on it.

That said making a vaccine still faces some basic challenges that every
medicine faces: You want to be pretty sure that a) it works and b) it has no
massive surprising sideeffects. Given that you want to give it to potentially
almost everyone on the planet, you want to be really sure.

~~~
IMTDb
> Given that you want to give it to potentially almost everyone on the planet,
> you want to be really sure.

This is why I have a hard time with the current crisis. We are in what is now
universally called a "global health crisis".

Measures are being taken to help prevent the virus that are incredibly costly
for the economy, which will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, and that will
indirectly kill thousands of people.

Yet when it comes to vaccines and treatment tests, we use the usual approach,
tests on a very very small number of patients, regulator validation that takes
months to process, x phase trials where each phase needs to be tested x times.
All these are very fine in a normal situation and help prevent mistakes, but
extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.

You don't need to be "really sure" that your vaccine is good, you just need it
to be better than the status quo. If we can identify one strain that is indeed
less deadly than the average of the virus, it's good enough. You sure are
going to kill people, but in a crisis mode, if that allows you to save more,
it should be a tradeoff we are willing to make.

~~~
mrfusion
I hear you. I hope we overhaul the fda when this is over.

------
hirundo
Variolation is a good idea with or without attenuated virus. That just
improves on it.

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/03/variolation-may-cut-
co...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/03/variolation-may-cut-
covid19-deaths-3-30x.html)

I'd like to sign up for it either way, assuming medical supervision.

~~~
danieltillett
This suggestion is not really variolation. Real variolation involved infecting
a person with an attenuated strain of smallpox, not just a low dose. While the
idea by Robin might help to build herd immunity relatively safely those
infected will still be a hazard to the vulnerable around them and it won’t
lead to a long term solution.

------
samwestdev
Post your solution on or blog or github with a permissive license. If your
solutions is worth anything Bill Gates will come to you.

~~~
BerislavLopac
He did:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22810925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22810925)

------
kbr2000
By reading 'The art of computer programming' (Knuth) from cover to cover :)
He'd be more than willing to listen to you then (according to his own words,
ironically printed on the backcover of my copy of TAOCP).

------
sjg007
Seems overly complex. Why not just inject live virus into people's glutes? At
dose low enough to trigger a response hopefully not enough to cause
pathogenesis.

~~~
danieltillett
It is actually extreme simple. You suggestion of injecting virus into people’s
gluts is a vaccine, just one that is unlikely to work well and be dangerous as
well. I have explained why vaccines are not the answer.

~~~
sjg007
It might be a lower risk to innoculate in the the glute then getting a primary
infection in the lung first. We do not know yet and that's what vaccine trials
are for. We know that the spike protein is probably the target though. That
protein and fragments can be amplified and expressed and tested as vaccines.

Your search for a live attenuated strain would probably take 18 months minimum
and probably longer. You need widespread testing and sequencing which are both
in short supply. You also need outcome data. You would also need a sufficient
sample size and then hope that your predicted attentuated cohort is say not
just all young people.

Sars-Cov2 mutation rate is <26bp per year.
[https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?l=clock](https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?l=clock)

~~~
danieltillett
No it won’t take long. We already have the samples (they are what has been
sent in to labs) and with modern genomic tools you could sequence 100,000
samples for under a million dollars in a couple of weeks at most.

The mutation rate is just an average - anyway we are looking for one specific
mutation and in the 6 months SARS-CoV-2 has been around there has been plenty
of time for the right mutant strain to have arisen.

It doesn’t matter who the cohort is - all that matters is the strain has the
right mutation.

------
brownbat
Robin Hanson and other public intellectuals are engaged in ongoing debates
about variolation, with several variations on that theme.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFnP5TK61aI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFnP5TK61aI)

[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/wh...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/why-
i-do-not-favor-variolation-for-covid-19.html)

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/04/reply-to-cowen-on-
vari...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/04/reply-to-cowen-on-
variolation.html)

I know your proposal is not exactly that, but it has some overlap with those
ideas. I'd recommend joining those discussions on those blogs.

If yours significantly improved the safety of their proposals, it would be a
welcome addition to those discussions.

Note though that it shares some obstacles with widespread vaccinations, in
that safety and efficacy testing is the major delay, not the chemistry.

We could alternatively do low dose variolation on the young with technology
today, with infectious strains administered through a cut on the shin to
encourage lower severity progression. We might lack implementation capacity
and social will to try very experimental approaches. If so, "found strain"
vaccination will face similar capacity issues while also introducing new
questions about safety and effectiveness and requiring significantly more
research.

So I'm not sure it's a silver bullet, or how it fares against existing
proposals, but seems an avenue worth exploring in parallel, and raising first
with others generating policy ideas in this space.

N.b.- Tyler Cowen has a foundation that is actively providing grants or prizes
for work on COVID-19, he's not Gates, but not just some random blogger either.

------
mrfusion
This is a great idea! But why it would be any faster than a vaccine. We
already have vaccines, the slowness is testing them. Wouldn’t this method need
just as much testing?

~~~
danieltillett
Because it is a natural virus. You don’t need approval from the FDA to be
infected with a natural virus.

~~~
16bytes
But to deploy this at scale, you need to

1\. Prove it works (is there data that provides lasting immunity to all other
strains?) 2\. Prove it is safe (e.g. is it mild/asymptomatic across all
populations?)

Both of those things take time to fully vet. What's the difference between
rolling the dice with a live strain vs. one of the half dozen vaccines already
in development?

~~~
buboard
or people could just start infecting each other

~~~
danieltillett
Well spotted ;)

------
dang
Did you get the email we sent you? It contained a repost invite for
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22798626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22798626).
I worry that it might have gone into a spam hole.

(I apologize for hijacking the thread. By the way, invited reposts are related
to the re-upping system described here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380))

~~~
danieltillett
Hi Dan I have only just got up (it is early morning here in Australia) so I
haven’t had a chance to check my work emails yet.

Do you happen to know someone who knows someone that someone like Bill will
take seriously? I did apply to the fast grant program, but I suspect it got
thrown in the bin as I am industry not academia these days.

Edit. Just checked and no email even in my junk mail folder :(

