Quote Sal Paradise="Sal Paradise"Thanks for clearing that up - have we ever found a cure for a virus? Or is building up immunity the only way of combatting them. If so why didn't we simply let herd immunity happen?'"
Absolutely we have eradicated virus's. Smallpox is gone - the vaccination program eliminated it. The vaccinations we now have protect us from severe cases of common virus's. Herd immunity is a genuine thing, but the ideal way to achieve it is though vaccination. For example, the MMR jab can't be given to babies, so you vaccinate everyone above the age of 2 and eliminate those diseases from the population (or close to eliminate). That way you protect babies - that's herd immunity. But with MMR it only works when very high levels of the population are vaccinated and immune - well over 80%. So basically almost everyone would have had to catch Covid 19 to create herd immunity - which sort of defeats the purpose. The chief epidemiologist who advised the govt was quizzed on this and it seems he may have been quoted out of context (a bit like what happens when people on here start arguing).
HIV is a tricky bugger. The protein it uses to attach to cells and infect them is called GP120 and it changes it's shape - hiding the critical bits that antibodies need to bind to to stop it infecting a cell. It also infects what are called CD4 T-Cells. These are called T Helper Cells and they are critical to the correct functioning of key parts of the immune system - including production of antibodies by B cells.
There are people who develop neutralizing antibodies (that stop the virus binding to the CD4 cells) to HIV but we haven't been able to recreate that with a vaccine. HIV has several other even more cunning ways of avoiding our immune system. But I believe we are making progress to a vaccine. In the meantime we have effective drugs to stop the virus multiplying. A lot of the work we are involved with in HIV studies (it's not extensive) is now looking at the long term biology of patients on drug therapies for HIV, these guys can be on drugs for 30 years plus now and live pretty much normal length lives.
(I know that's a daisy but you get the idea).
