The Soviet vaccination strategy that could be a coronavirus weapon


Photo Credit: Bettmann - Getty Images
Photo Credit: Bettmann – Getty Images

Of Popular Mechanics

  • Medical researchers from around the world are testing the polio vaccine in vivo to detect a secondary ability to prevent COVID-19 (coronavirus) for a short time.

  • Proponents say this could stop humanity until a true vaccine is developed.

  • Scientists don’t understand why live vaccines have this effect, but they speculate that it is a broad immune response.

Medical researchers suggest there could be a provisional way to reduce the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus). They cautiously discuss and begin testing a side effect of the “live virus” polio vaccine as a way to prevent transmission.

This effect is not a true vaccine, nor effective for almost the same duration as a vaccine, or even treatment of any kind. But when someone is vaccinated with the “live virus” polio vaccine, they almost always have extended immunity to many other viruses for about a month. That could include COVID-19, and researchers are testing this theory now, even on themselves.

the New York Times reports about the descendants of Dr. Jonas Salk, who created the first polio vaccine from dead viruses. But Live The vaccine, made in a specially treated form of the virus, could be administered more easily and in a wider variety of places where it was not safe to prepare hygienic injections.

Tests for a live vaccine went underground, and doctors in the Soviet Union administered the vaccine to their own children as evidence. (The first vaccines they were “tested” in the same way, with doctors who vaccinated themselves, their families, and local children.)

Dr. Marina Voroshilova became an advocate for the live vaccine, and in a study conducted in the Soviet Union for 7 years, she found that people who received the live vaccine were less likely to die of the flu. Her theory was that the live vaccine boosted the immune system in a more robust overall response for that critical month.

Today, children in the United States receive a killed virus vaccine for polio.That means that the mixture includes particles of a totally dead virus, for example, or other trace amounts that are dead and inactive. (Almost all Americans receive dead virus vaccines whenever possible, including the flu shot, which, either in dead or live form)I can’t give you the flu.)

Live vaccines are not appropriate for some people, including those who are immunocompromised. In rare cases, such as, much less likely than be struck by lightning—Live attenuated virus can mutate and become a disease. But for the vast majority of healthy adults, the live polio vaccine is a safe and established medical technology that could induce one month of immunity to COVID-19 from this observed side effect.

The mechanism for this is not yet understood, and this is strictly a way to overcome the hump of COVID-19’s most damaging spread, said virologist researcher Dr. Robert Gallo. New York Times. Trials are already underway in Russia, where the live polio vaccine began. This is in addition to the more than 100 simultaneous projects to develop a specific COVID-19 vaccine at some point in the next two or more years.

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