COVID-19 & US healthcare system - thread relapse

[robkelk]

While SARS-COV-2 is new, SARS as a family of virii is not. I suspect the "it's new so we can't do animal testing" excuse doesn't hold water, but I'm not a biologist of any sort.

The problem is that just because we know the family doesn't mean that we automatically know which species are good test subjects. It's not so much 'it's new so we can't do animal testing' as it's 'it's so new we don't know which animals are cost effective to test or give a response to this virus and anything we can use to treat the disease it creates that we can accurately translate to humans. Never you mind both'.

What you are basically saying is 'dogs are canine, wolves are canine, hyenas are canine, dingoes are canine and coyote are canine, so the way I treat my well trained and domesticated lap dog will work exactly the same for all those other canines'. And that's presuming SARS-COV-2 is that closely related, because in microbiotics, like bacteria and virus', figuring out how closely related two different subjects are can be quite difficult. The problem with the common cold is that it's actually a massive range of different pathogens, not all of which are closely related to other pathogens that are none the less dropped under the title of 'common cold'.

Please don't put words in my mouth. I never said anything of the sort. And please put the goalposts back where they were.

I said "animal testing", not "cost-effective animal testing". Considering how many billions of dollars are being thrown around during the pandemic response, financial concerns are - or at least should be - nonexistent.