The other way to hit back at Covid-19 – CNN

Yes, it's true, the supposed miracle cure for Covid-19 that is really no cure at all, is all over the news again, thanks to President Donald Trump and a group of true believers, who are re-upping their endorsement of its all-around wonderfulness.

Though distracting, the attention hydroxychloroquine is drawing raises a different but very important issue: whatever happened to the relentless US search for a Covid-19 cure?

The third entry, convalescent plasma, has been around even longer. A version of it was given during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. It is cheap and available but requires a human source and must be given intravenously. Optimal use of these three therapies, including administering two or even all three together, has not been determined.

It turns out that while we have all been buzzing about hydroxychloroquine and the tantalizing race for a someday vaccine, too often we have been dismissive of the actual, not hypothetical, good thing in front of us -- direct treatment of the infection -- like an old high school friend you wish had never called.

Sure, the vaccine race is a great story, full of high-tech science, international intrigue and lots of money. Naked DNA and viral vectors and spike proteins are all very cool sounding for sure -- but this doesn't mean vaccines will solve the Covid-19 pandemic any time soon.

Maybe, with luck, in a few months we will have a probably-not-unsafe vaccine that shows some evidence of benefit for an uncertain duration in some patients. Maybe it will be made in China or Russia or some other country with which we have relationship issues.

The smallest group under development is antivirals, which happen to be the one proven effective way to treat viral infections. We have effective antivirals for many diseases including herpes (simplex and zoster), HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C.

Certainly, the time required to develop drugs is famously long and expensive. But then, so is development of a vaccine.

So why the slow roll? Granted, few of the deaths in Covid-19 infection are directly from viral invasion. Covid-19 kills by provoking overwhelming inflammation that damages heart, lung, brain and blood vessels. Inflamed blood vessels promote clotting.

One might argue that treatment to blunt the downstream effect of the virus, rather than the virus itself, may be appropriate.

I imagine this approach is less due to scientists' views on the cause of death and more due to the notion that one drug for one disease really doesn't cut the mustard anymore, at least from a commercial perspective.

The larger interest is to develop "platforms" for broader discovery, such as playing with the immune system, where insights from Covid-19 may have applicability to additional diseases, including cancer or arthritis.

This is a great long-term business strategy but wrong-headed in the midst of a crisis. When the house is burning down, you want the best firehose, not a disruptive technology that promises a new way to separate water into component molecules that can to be sent to a repository 600 miles away at the speed of light, reconstituted and dispersed over the flames.

The latter approach, if successful, may change society as we know it; but the former will keep people from burning to death.

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The other way to hit back at Covid-19 - CNN