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Crazy self-spreading vaccine idea

5 points by carlosbaraza ↗ HN
New pandemics are a given. So I am thinking of potential defense mechanisms against new viruses.

If a new virus appears, how crazy would it be to quickly create a super spreading stable virus that produces no symptoms and has the same viral spike as a newly appeared virus?

Could that be a self-spreading vaccine that protects us from new viruses and solves the logistics of vaccines? Anti-vacs would not pose a general health risk because they'd get immunised without even noticing.

What are the ethical implications? How could a government even prevent other countries from developing such a protection and spreading around the world?

14 comments

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dusted
It's not a new idea, but the implications if it goes wrong are severe. Imagine it mutates (it happens, especially if it's super infectious and thus being exposed to MANY environments and gets to live millions of years per day (time * infected humans)). Imagine it works differently in a small percentage of people, it's a lot harder to control when it's distributing itself.. With vaccines, at least, administration can be stopped or paused, if cause for concern arose.
carlosbaraza
Interesting points. I guess the fact that it couldn't be stopped is really the deal breaker, unless there was a kill switch in the design of the virus (maybe some kind of antidote you could take?).

Regarding mutability, I am not an expert at all. However, some viruses mutate more than others, so I imagine there could be some way to control the mutability and maybe even prevent it from happening with self repair mechanisms?

Do you know what is this idea usually named? I tried searching for it, but I couldn't find much.

In any case, it feels like it is a field humans should research (and probably already are), because the risk for biological weapons is quite high; and currently our western society is not even prepared to unite and get a vaccine, so I'm not sure how we would react to a riskier pandemic.

dusted
Assuming it went out of control, it's not unreasonable to assume that the antidote can become ineffective, and even if it was effetive, it'd have the same problems as current vaccines (distribution chain, antivaxxers, testing and getting it approved for use in humans), but with even more difficult ethical implications.

I'm not sure if there is a widely used term is used for this (countervirus comes to mind, but that seems used for something else), since it is an unacceptable practice so far.

desktopninja
And then it becomes weaponized. Then it becomes targeted biological warfare. We humans love to find creative ways to kill ourselves.
high_byte
mass-infecting unassuming people with foreign engineered agent. yes that sounds cool and all but legally speaking...
carlosbaraza
Sounds like you are talking about SARS-CoV-2? Just kidding, I know the virus probably wasn't engineered.
[dead] juanani
Yep, with the pandemic terror campaign intensifying, more crazy ideas like yours will be considered, the public will be willing. Maybe some do-gooder doofus will make a bio-weapon to save us all. Won't put it past this reality.
desktopninja
I've often thought the mosquito would be a great delivery agent.
neximo64
For the virus to be spreadable it has to create symptoms.

With Covid for example you would have to make a virus that can compete and attach better to the ACE2 receptor. If it is better at attaching its more bio-competitive against normal use and more likely to make you sick. The key thing with covid is to prevent a cytokine storm, but the 'ideal' virus would still make you quite sick and some would die in the process.

Maybe viruses for bacteria. But viruses to compete against other viruses and win is a recipe for disaster.

carlosbaraza
Is that completely certain?

In the case of COVID-19, you can infect people before developing COVID-19 symptoms. Anecdotally, I believe that I contracted COVID-19 and infected some friends before I was even aware of the infection building up inside my body. You would only get symptoms when the body starts responding to the infection.

Now the question is: Can a virus exist that allows infection by close contact (e.g. talking to someone) but doesn't have severe symptoms? That is certainly the way I experienced COVID-19, but it is not a universal truth for the disease.

gus_massa
This has been proposed here a few times, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29368127

As NoPie comented there

> Our science is not that good.

> Basically you want a virus that really is a vaccine. The current vaccines are far from perfect because apparently we don't know how to make them better. Expressing such a vaccine as a contagious virus would not better but would only create more risks.

And I replied:

> Using "live" virus is a problem. For example there are two versions of the polio vaccine. The injectable uses inactivated ("dead") virus, and the oral uses weakened("live") virus.

> Both are safe, but in the oral one the virus can go to another person and cause no problems, and then to another and cause no problems, and after like a year jumping hosts it can mutate and become dangerous. Now most of the the polio cases are caused by virus that mutated from the version of the vaccine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Vaccine-induced_... .

> The number is much smaller that the number of cases before the vaccine, but it's concerning anyway. So they are trying to discontinue the use of the vaccine with the weakened virus, but the it's better when most of the population is not vaccinated. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Schedule .

carlosbaraza
Interesting points and resource. I guess we are far from getting there, but I'm not sure the current vaccination programs are the solution to pandemics.
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raxxorrax
How would you keep the virus from mutating into a deadly form? I don't think our medical expertise would allow that and it would be a pretty stupid idea. Covid is not a threat to overall health of humanity. Lab-grown super spreading viruses might become exactly that though.

I think any ethical debate would also be concluded very quickly.