An electron microscope image of Coronavirus particles. NIAID.
President Trump announced today that the FDA has given approval for a plasma convalescent treatment for people with the Coronavirus. AP. The treatment involves taking plasma from the blood of patients who have recovered from the disease. The antibodies in the plasma may help fight the disease. The treatment has shown promise but more studies will be done to determine the best practice for using it. Currently the treatment is used for people who are in the hospital but not on a ventilator. President Trump had accused the FDA of "slow walking" the treatment for political reasons.
My Comment:
The news articles about this treatment are atrocious. There is very little about how this treatment works and why it's so promising but so very much about bashing President Trump. Just like previous treatments, like Hydroxychloroquine and the "bleach" hoax, the media cares more about attacking and discrediting the President then giving the people some actual good news for once. The AP article was slightly better then most but it's still a shameful display.
As for the treatment itself, I am surprised it took this long. I had heard for a long time now that blood plasma could be a decent treatment for the Coronavirus. Obviously the presence of antibodies will help destroy the virus and help the body produce it's own antibodies. It makes a lot of sense that the treatment would work.
It's also fairly easy and cheap to make. Almost anyone who has recovered from the virus can donate plasma. It's a well understood process and one that should be easy to do. Given how many people have been sick and recovered there should be a large source of people that can donate plasma.
Will people do it though? I'm not sure. Some people can't be bothered and others might distrust the medical community. Another problem is that a lot of people that have antibodies don't know that they have them because they either didn't know they got sick or didn't know they had the virus.
In my case I have no idea if I have had the virus or not. I've tested negative twice but I did suffer from a brief illness last spring, and given how many people tested positive at my job I'd be shocked if I hadn't been exposed. If I knew whether or not that I had the virus antibodies I'd be all for donating plasma in order to help with this treatment. But without that knowledge there isn't much I can do.
As for the outbreak itself I get the feeling that most people in my area or over it. I only really see masks at work and at the grocery store. People are sick and tired of the virus and want to stop thinking about it.
I do think that if the convalescence plasma does work then I think that we can finally roll back some of the worst restrictions. If we can reduce the death rate then we don't have to worry to much about new cases.
Indeed, I think this has largely happened at this point. The Coronavirus is not as deadly as it was before in my estimation. Not only do we now have multiple effective treatments, the virus itself has changed. Most viruses change over time to become less deadly as the more deadly variants kill too quickly to spread widely. The weaker forms spread easily and it seems to me that the current strains are a lot less dangerous than the form that spread in Wuhan.
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