The way you've presented it, variolation seems like a no-brainer. Aside from profitability (and lack thereof), are there other reasons to avoid it as an intervention? I can't think of anyone else having discussed this vis-a-vis covid.
It follows the same abysmal trend of the general failure to study. It's like panic destroyed curiosity. We still don't have a robust RCT for masking, for example. Endless money to supersize viruses, but none to study interventions.
The truth is, because we never explored this option, we don't know how much potential variolation actually has. Given that more than half of those who get get COVID normally have no symptoms, all you're really doing is artificially increasing the number of people who get a low dose of the virus by accident. If all COVID cases have some long-term consequence we don't know about, then you'd be exposing more people to that consequence earlier, but given that almost everyone has now had COVID, the extent of any bad possible outcome would be limited to when that bad outcome came. And you're absolutely right, it's part of the overall trend of constantly talking about "the science" without actually doing any science!
Another great post, Bruce.
The way you've presented it, variolation seems like a no-brainer. Aside from profitability (and lack thereof), are there other reasons to avoid it as an intervention? I can't think of anyone else having discussed this vis-a-vis covid.
It follows the same abysmal trend of the general failure to study. It's like panic destroyed curiosity. We still don't have a robust RCT for masking, for example. Endless money to supersize viruses, but none to study interventions.
The truth is, because we never explored this option, we don't know how much potential variolation actually has. Given that more than half of those who get get COVID normally have no symptoms, all you're really doing is artificially increasing the number of people who get a low dose of the virus by accident. If all COVID cases have some long-term consequence we don't know about, then you'd be exposing more people to that consequence earlier, but given that almost everyone has now had COVID, the extent of any bad possible outcome would be limited to when that bad outcome came. And you're absolutely right, it's part of the overall trend of constantly talking about "the science" without actually doing any science!
Thank you reposted
You're welcome!