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Biotech / Medical : Coronavirus / COVID-19 Pandemic -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Triffin who wrote (9378)	10/10/2020 12:56:48 AM
From: Anchan	4 Recommendations Recommended By marcher Moonray Savant Triffin Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 22884

Re: "There must be other factors in play..." One of the promising hypotheses of present research is the correlation between global COVID-19 rates on the one hand and differing tuberculosis vaccination policies and/or using various strains of the anti-TB BCG vaccine on the other hand. For example, statistically significant differences in COVID numbers of different age groups between eastern and western Germany - Eastern Germany, before reunification in 1989, historically used the BCG "S4-Jena" strain of the vaccine whereas Western Germany used the BCG "Denmark" strain. Or the differences between Spain and Portugal (adjacent countries with similar economic conditions, present-day health systems, social habits etc. but Spain has 3.5 times more deaths/1M population): historically very different policies in TB vaccination. Or here in Japan (merely my own observation) where - in stark contrast to almost COVID-free Taiwan - the government policies re: COVID-19 appear vague and contradictory and where, in our densely-populated cities, you'd expect high rates of infection (even if discounting the widespread use of masks) - but Japan's rate of deaths/1M population is 50 times less than the U.S.A. In Japan, everybody is vaccinated against tuberculosis (using the "Tokyo" strain). Still, so far, this remains in the number-crunching state. There are at present a reported 30+ clinical trials looking into the correlation of COVID-19 and anti-tuberculosis vaccination. It will be many months until the data show clear results. And there would still be the question: now what? Some references: - Jun Sato blog (the guy who in March started looking into the likely correlation) - medium.com@rkirkov/update-on-bcg-covid-19-challenge-how-data-scientists-can-help-with-the-research-d82f80c82a1e (recent efforts with further links to bring the various pieces of research together) - COVID countries comparison