
One Day Sooner – Covid-19 Human Challenge Trials - Leary
https://1daysooner.org/
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noodlesUK
It’s my understanding that these sorts of challenge trials are only compatible
with medical ethics where the participants are unlikely to come to long term
harm. This doesn’t seem to be the case with covid. The death rate for this
disease amongst young and healthy people is somewhere between 1/1000 and
1/25\. If they run a trial with n~=1000 people, they will be likely condemning
between 1 and 40 young and healthy people to death, and potentially many more
to long term disability. Of course many hundreds of thousands will likely die
during this crisis, and the utilitarian view of any benefits this might have
will be a net positive, there are _serious_ ethical concerns.

I’m not sure if I’d personally feel comfortable being involved in such a
trial, especially with the messaging appearing as though it’s low risk.

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ageitgey
How did you calculate the "between 1/1000 and 1/25" death rate for young and
healthy people? Are you talking about infection fatality rate or death rate of
people being treated in hospital?

According to the UK ONS [1] for the week ending April 10, there had been 74
COVID deaths of people aged 44 and younger and 6,139 deaths of people aged 45
and older in the UK. So for that period, people under 45 account for ~1.1% of
all COVID deaths despite making up 56% of the total population.

If you assume an overall infection fatality rate of about 0.5% (which seems
like a pretty good guess from the recent antibody tests in NYC and other
studies), 1% of half a percent is a pretty small number. And that's not even
factoring in that a lot of the under 44 deaths probably involve co-morbidities
and aren't otherwise healthy people.

This is back-of-the-napkin math and the IFR is inter-related with the
population demographics, so I could be wrong. But it seemed to me like the
death rate for people under 45 is quite low.

[1]
[https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending10april2020)

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guscost
Anyone nearer to the “virus less bad” side of an argument should consider
signing up for this (if you’re healthy, of course). It’s a win-win because you
get to gamble on quicker immunity.

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sandworm101
>> It’s a win-win because you get to gamble on quicker immunity.

Yes. I am very worried that countries are leaning towards "immunity
passports". If we tell people that in order to work you must have gotten and
recovered from this disease, everyone will suddenly _seek_ to be infected. How
many people will sign up for this simply because they feel they need to get
this disease in order to return to work? The disease could become a valuable
commodity to be sought, even purchased. If the choice is between getting the
virus or remaining unemployed for the foreseeable future, I'll roll the dice.

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xcavier
The WHO is warning there is no proof that having recovered from an infection
actually makes you immune

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guscost
Well it’s not going to make your _more_ susceptible, that’s for sure.

