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Scientists have figured out that coronavirus family (or, they call it coronaviridae) have already existed since the dinosaurs era, or even before that. This means, some members of the coronavirus family were already exist during the dinosaurs extinction, some 65 million years ago. Other scientists even speculate that coronavirus were already present since 200 million years ago. Compared to this, human great ancestor started to diverge some 3.5 million years ago. Homo habilis, human ancestor started to exist some 2.8 million years ago, while 'modern human' (Homo sapiens) presence are detected since 200,000 years ago. From evolutionary biology perspective, coronaviruses are more successful compared to us, humans. However, since one of the coronaviruses' member, [H]CoV-SARS2 -- the culprit behind COVID-19 outbreak -- has been causing many destruction in several aspects of life, including economy, the humankind must declare a war against this 'invisible army of invaders'. The question is, HOW? Scientists from many backgrounds are working as best as they can to find a way to push the virus back to the bay.
There are many approaches that scientists have been working on, each with its own advantage and limitation. Here are some of the approaches :
Plasma Serum Method
Blood plasma is the liquid part of blood. The plasma serum method is considered as a passive immunity method, since the antibody from an organism is taken and injected to a sick patient. This can be thought as having a foreign legion or Gurkha soldiers to defend your country or territory. In the past, the serum was usually taken from horses that had developed their antibodies after purposely infected by an infectious agent, for example diphtheria, measles, smallpox, tetanus, etc. However, to cure COVID-19, the blood plasma is taken from someone who has survived and recovered from the virus. Of course the survivor had contracted the virus incidentally, because if he / she is purposely made infected, it will be a very cruel method. Blood from the survivor can be taken, then the plasma is purified, and can be donated to an infected patient.
The advantage of this method is the patient get antibody that can readily fight the invaders. However, since the basic of this method is to take some blood, then basically what applies to normal blood donation also applies here. For example, the blood type of the donor and recipient must match. Also, someone can only donor his / her blood no more than 500 mL, and then he / she must wait for 3 - 4 months until he / she can give his / her blood again. So, the number of patient that can be helped is limited. Also, this 'imported antibody' has a short life period, so if the infection prolongs, then the treatment must be switched to another approach, or finding another serum from another donor.
Vaccination
Even though many countries have involved in a race to develop vaccines against COVID-19 virus, as a 'standardized medical product' the vaccines must pass some stages of development that consumes a lot of time. In principle, vaccines are classified as an active immunity method, because the immune system is 'introduced' to a weaken version of pathogen to train the antibody. This concept was first discovered by Edward Jenner, who infected his own son with cowpox and then he found that he (the son) had developed immunity against smallpox that became a pandemic at that time. Vaccine can be developed by using a weakened version of the pathogen or can also be developed using different (but similar in some ways, such as in E. Jenner case) pathogen that has a lower virulence.
However, this method also has a weakness. Just like soldiers that get some trainings then facing a peace time and doing nothing, they will forget their training. So does our antibody. If there is no infection, the antibody will 'forget this training' and lose its immunity against the virus. Usually, antibody from vaccines will lose its 'memory' after 2 - 5 months, therefore a second vaccination must be repeated within that interval of time. Just like we tend to forget unnecessary things, so does our immune system. Human antibody can still recognize influenzavirus' antigen until around 2 months of post-infection. For MERS and SARS, scientists found that the viral antigen can still be recognized by the immune system 2 - 6 years after infection. For ebola virus (which is very life-threatening), the antibody in some survivors is still exist and capable to recognize the viral antigen even until 10 years or more. Sometimes, the virus can experience mutation, and this may cause some alteration to the virus' characteristics. As a consequence, the vaccines may become partially ineffective. We can imagine this as a group of soldiers who receive jungle warfare trainings, but then are deployed to a snowfield.
Of course, there are some categories of people who cannot receive a vaccine. Elder people, children, infants, people with serious disease (i.e. kidney, heart disease, they who have received organ transplants, etc.), and of course they who are suffering from the disease itself cannot receive a vaccine shot.
Monoclonal Antibodies
Monoclonal antibodies are antibodies designed, engineered, and developed in a laboratory. These antibodies will be injected to a patient's body later on. These antibodies are designed in such ways to search, identify, and destroy a specific target which is called antigen. Antigen is a specific [part of] molecule at the outside part of a pathogen (sometimes also a cancer cell) that can be identified by the immune system as an 'intruder' ; hence will trigger the immune response by sending a specific antibody in order to destroy the pathogen. When injected to human body, monoclonal antibodies can 'teach' (provoke) the human immune system to produce extra antibodies to help them, in this case is called immunotherapy. In principle, there are two major groups of monoclonal antibody : the naked monoclonal antibody and the conjugated monoclonal antibody. The conjugated monoclonal antibody is usually attached to a certain drug, either chemical-based or radioactive-based ; while naked monoclonal antibody is not attached to any drug.
This method works very effectively, and selectively (only targeting a specific type of cell), and also works very fast. Monoclonal antibody injected to our body will attack the target by using the blitzkrieg strategy (the strategy used by the NAZI during the World War II) ; because the massive amount of antibody will be dispatched (sent) to a very specific target / location. However, the monoclonal antibody method also possesses some risks. First, remember that the monoclonal antibody is basically a foreign substance, so this may trigger an immune response of the injected person, causing a severe allergy reaction. Second, if a massive amount of antibody is sent to a target, it will be manifested by our body as fever. Fever rises the body temperature, and if the body temperature rises too fast and too high, this can be life-threatening. The third, designing an appropriate monoclonal antibody requires 'real' living antigen. Keeping an antigen alive is relatively easy for bacteria and cancerous cells, but for viruses is very difficult. Also, remember about the mutation factor. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals [not so] recently has just received US$ 450 millions for its research fund about monoclonal antibody against COVID-19 virus, and this is still not enough.
Antibiotics
Antibiotics cannot kill viruses, since antibiotics work by intervene or disrupt the cell metabolism of bacteria. Viruses are not perfect cell. They don't have ribosome, mitochondria, or even nucleus, so there is no target for antibiotics to attack.
Probiotics
There are several examples of probiotics, but yoghurt is the most famous example. Probiotics therapy works by colonizing our colon (large intestine), which is a part of digestive tract ; while coronavirus normally attack respiratory system. Coronavirus specifically attach themselves to cell receptors in respiratory organs and also throat. The word 'throat' is a little bit confusing, because consists of two different organs : trachea (part of respiratory system) and esophagus (part of digestive system). While it is still possible for coronavirus to attach themselves to esophagus (because ciliated cells in esophagus have similar cell receptors with those in respiratory system), but if the virus moves forward, they will end-up in stomach, and will die because of stomach acid. If the infection starts at the trachea, the virus will move down to bronchus, bronchioles, and finally alveoli. In either scenario, the probiotics residing in the large intestine can do nothing to the coronavirus, and hence practically cannot kill the virus nor alleviate the symptoms.
Using CADD
CADD stands for Computer-Aided Drugs Design. In this AI (artificial intelligence) era, almost all tasks can be done automatically. This includes the drugs engineering, or drugs design, precisely.
By inputting all data, the computer will give some 'advice' about the drug structure that might be effective in killing a pathogen. The advantage of this method is that the possible structure of the drug can be found relatively quick, and this is a nearly automated process. They just need to provide a very cold room, since the searching simulation process will involve supercomputers that generate a lot of heat. The disadvantage is, all information about COVID-19 virus must be correctly inputted. Also, there is a possibility that the devised drug structure cannot be synthesized in the laboratory.
Nano Technology
The implementation of nanotechnology to fight COVID-19 seems promising. The fact is, that virus itself is a naturally occurring nano-particle. So far, scientists have successfully made a nanorobot as small as 100 nm (0.1 μm) while the coronavirus' cell diameter is somewhere between 80 to 220 nm. Let's hope a good news from this story.
Traditional Herbs
Alternative Healing Methods (AHM) have existed for hundred of thousand of years, if not million of years. It was very common for our grand grand mother to treat diseases with herbs, especially in the Eastern world. Some of this knowledge is passed from generation to generation, even though the trust level to AHM is slowly fading away, especially since the Modern Medical Science claim it as 'scientifically unproven'. As someone who learn herbal plants as well as microbiology, biochemistry, organic chemistry, and those complicated stuffs, I can say that the 'AHM is scientifically unproven' statement has no scientific reason. The real truth is, Modern Medical Science has actually failed to reveal AHM's secret scientifically.
What is the scientific evidence of my statement? You might be wandering. Well, we'll see.... The stages of modern drug production is started with confirmation test. If I have a mixture of herbal solution to treat a certain disease, they will first need to make sure that the herbal solution works. If it works, the next step is separation and purification. Let's say that there are 30 different chemical compounds in the herbal solution, that needs to be separated... and purified. After the compounds are separated, and purified, they need to test each pure component one by one. 30 components means there will be 60 or 90 trials, since each trial needs to be repeated. Oftentimes, during the confirmation test, a herbal solution shows a good result, but the result turns disappointing during component test. Why? Because the component oftentimes does not work individually. Instead, several compounds (components) from the herbal solution usually work together synergycally. The problem is, how many compounds that work synergically? And how to find that combination?
If (for example) there are two active components that work synergically to cure a disease, then scientists must do extra 435 trials to find those 2 combinations, and this 435 trials is without repetition. What if there are actually 6 components that works sinergically, from 30 components? An A-level Mathematics student would answer that there will be more than 590,000 trials needed (without repetition) to find those 6 out of 30 components. But, how do they know that the 'key components' required to heal a disease is actually 6? What if actually there are only 3 components, or 21 components? Then they have to evaluate all those possible outcomes ; in this case the scientists have to do 1,073,741,823 (2^30 minus 1) trials only to find the 'desired key components' from a herbal solution. And this trials need to be replicate, right? Oh, the good news is, a herbal mixture can contain as many as 80 to 200 (sometimes even more) different compounds. Mathematically speaking, it's really fun to play with numbers, but from the Chemistry perspective, this identification process literally takes forever. And don't forget, in drugs development, they still need to do pre-clinical stage, clinical stages 0 to IV, etc. I believe no one will stupid enough (or generous enough?) to fund the expenses related to do this kind of research activities. And you still believe that herbal plants (or AHM in general) is not scientifically proven, NOT because they successfully prove that AHM is not scientific ; but because it is impossible for them to prove instead? This sounds ridiculous to me.
The fact is, during the COVID-19 outbreak, when doctors didn't know what to do, Chinese herbal experts were the first one to put their skills at the first line. They successfully got 85% of compliance from the patients. As Modern Medical Science is puzzled with the COVID-19 mysteries, AHM practitioners already know what to do. And this is including me, who has treated several COVID-19 patients with my herbal supplements. If you interested to know more about our product, please visit this. While actually, of course herbal medicine also has some disadvantage as well. The main thing that herbal medicine doesn't have in consistency. The concentration of active components in one herb from one place with the same herb from different place can be different. Also, in some cases, 'unwanted components' can make liver and kidneys work harder. But, with a better understanding (modern approach), we can make a safer version of the herbal extract. And that's what we are doing in producing supplements that we believe can fight coronavirus.
If you are interested to order our product, feel free to reach us through Twitter, CNC Herbal.
Please visit about us for more information about the products and how to order.
References :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_coronavirus
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/24/what-is-blood-plasma-therapy-covid-coronavirus-trump
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/2020/08/10/coronavirus-vaccine-gone-wrong/#71d503947ae4
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/31/covid-19-vaccine-amazingly-close-why-am-i-so-worried/
https://www.thenational.ae/world/europe/coronavirus-world-must-be-prepared-for-ineffective-vaccine-or-stronger-virus-1.1061836
https://www.devex.com/news/devexplains-monoclonal-antibody-treatment-for-covid-19-97708
https://www.cancer.org/treatment/treatments-and-side-effects/treatment-types/immunotherapy/monoclonal-antibodies.html
https://www.drugtargetreview.com/article/61581/can-a-computer-help-us-find-a-treatment-for-covid-19/
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-020-0757-7
https://news.northeastern.edu/2020/03/04/heres-how-nanoparticles-could-help-us-get-closer-to-a-treatment-for-covid-19/
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3052763/coronavirus-80-cent-patients-china-benefiting-traditional
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