[jimmyswimmy]

He's an economist, sure, and is proposing an idea that others can consider and, perhaps, study. I am not looking to this blog post as a source of treatment ideas but instead as a source of ideas.

I've been reading about the importance of the viral load in survival against this disease. His proposed variolation approach is one I've personally considered. Much like families of old had chicken pox parties for their kids, the idea of just getting this over with as safely as possible has some appeal.

Yet it is an approach out of favor for good reason. For most diseases the risk can be significant and historically we've been able to improve survival via quarantine and treatment. This disease is apparently harder to quarantine due to a long latency period and asymptomatic cases. And we have no effective treatment for the worst cases.

It is interesting however to consider that for patients inoculated with preliminary vaccine, it is considered unethical to give a "challenge dose" of virus, while this guy proposes doing so for those with no protection whatsoever. I can't get past that, and am too risk averse to try his idea even in a carefully controlled setting. I'll keep wearing my mask, washing hands and wait it out for now.

There is hope that we will discover a variant of this disease which is less dangerous. In that case I think the approach he recommends is more reasonable.

[vikramkr]

As you said, Pox parties and all weren't exactly a brilliant solution - now your kid would be carrying the chickenpox virus amd have a risk of shingles later, and using things like saliva from lollipops means that your kids are also now at risk if getting all sorts of fun diseases like hepatitis. There's a reason we use vaccines. We dont know the long term risks of covid (case in point, recently it's become clear that it can trigger blood clots and strokes in otherwise low risk individuals, and the inflammatory syndrome in children is highly concerning). That's why we dont do challenge doses.

There are companies deliberately breeding strains that are less dangerous (attenuated strains) for use as a vaccine, so people are working on that actively. It's not one of the approaches further along in trials though.