Page 6 - Luce 2020

P oint of View

continued from page 4 Respiratory virus, the very bad one Did the pandemic change your thoughts
which kills about 30% of people, which on how we do research? And was there
along, we switch immediately. But many is still circulating, came via camels. The anything we could have done better or
people in the broader community are not SARS-CoV-2, the one that’s circulating differently?
accustomed to changing their mind at all. now, the closest virus that’s been
found outside bats is in pangolins. The Making drugs ahead of time would have
There was a book written years ago, the identical virus hasn’t been found. So, been really important. With vaccines,
title of which I truly loathed: Everything there are three bad viruses, but there are whatever product you make is very
I need to know I learnt in kindergarten. also two more common cold viruses that specific for the invading virus. And
I think there are a lot of people out have come over in the last twenty years. pandemics are going to be caused by
there who haven’t learnt anything since viruses. It’s unlikely we’ll get a pandemic
kindergarten, quite frankly. They go So, what has changed? Well what caused by bacteria because we have
through colleges and universities, they has changed is mass international air broad-spectrum antibiotics. Basically,
graduate and they learn nothing. They travel, particularly from Asia. We now anything that’s highly specific in terms
emerge totally unscathed. Not at Janet have a situation where you’ve got bats of immunity for a virus will take about a
Clarke Hall though, of course! interacting with other species that are year to get out, if you’re going to do all
sold in live animal markets in China, the proper trials.
Is there a role for community input into and we’ve also got live bird markets
the research agenda for COVID-19? which we know are a major source of But what we could have done is focus on
human influenza. Basically, this mass drug development. For example, we have
The community have to feel that they’re international air-travel has ramped up drugs for treating influenza. They work
invested in things. It’s very important to the level of threat enormously. We’re across all of the influenza viruses. All
have engagement. You can’t have the going to have more events like this if we of them. We have drugs to keep people
community telling the researchers what go back to that – and we will go back alive with HIV. You need a cocktail of
to do, because, in fact, very often even to it because the commercial pressures two or three so you don’t get multidrug
we can’t determine what we do because will be to do that. I think this virus is a resistance. They’re wonderful drugs,
we have to get it funded. trial run. they’re designer drugs. Most of them
have been made by knowing structure
Research has to go through ethics What do we do to protect the most and devising a small molecule that works
committees if it involves human vulnerable members of our society to block the virus from binding to the
or animal experimentation, and from a pandemic? human cell, or protease activity or some
their community involvement is other activity. And they work against all
great. We have people from the Well, for a start, we knew what would of that class of viruses.
broader community, we have animal have protected our most vulnerable
experimentation committees where members. We knew that people in What we should have been doing is
we have people who are hostile to aged care facilities were at massive risk. making drugs against coronaviruses
animal experimentation. That’s really We knew that from what happened that work against all coronaviruses.
important because first they provide in North America and in Europe, We could test them easily, because
the input to make sure that you don’t particularly in Italy. And yet we did you could test them against some of
take it in a direction which would be nothing. We continued to use casual the common cold coronaviruses. So
broadly unacceptable. Secondly, if you workers who were working between that’s where we fell down. When the
are attacked over these issues, you can different institutions and we continued original SARS virus burnt out, the drug
say ‘these are the people on our ethics to underfund them. What we’ve had is development was stopped. That’s what
committees who looked at this.’ No a totally obscene situation with people should have continued. If we’d had
other area of human existence works like making vast amounts of money out of a drug we knew worked against the
this. An ethics committee that reviews this industry and providing extremely common cold virus, we could have
a bank’s operations? Or a politician’s? If bad care. authorised it for immediate emergency
only… Science, particularly biological use. And that would have made a
science, is more closely scrutinised than All the tendencies in society towards a difference. We need drugs against the
anything else. casualised workforce, to people working coronaviruses, the paromyxoviruses like
multiple jobs and all the rest of it, are Hendra, the filoviruses like Ebola. These
How likely is it that we’ll see another dangerous. And it was the same with are all carried in bats, and the bats are
pandemic like this in our lifetime? the security guards. I mean, appointing sustaining these infections, and they’re
a security company which had so little big threats. So, we should be making
Prior to 2002 there were two human understanding of an infection that they drugs against them. I think if we don’t do
coronaviruses circulating among people. were letting their people work between that, we’re completely insane.
These had probably come across from quarantine hotels and aged care homes!
bats too, and we’d known about them What’s been revealed is massive Do you have any final reflections on the
since the 1960s. They cause common institutional incompetence. I don’t know year that you’d like to share?
colds. Now, since 2002, five new how we get around it because we work
coronaviruses have crossed over from by myth more than anything else. The It’s been an odd sort of year. I think it’s
human beings, all coming from bats, myth in Australia that’s predominant is taught us to value some things more than
likely via an intermediate species. We the one that’s been predominant in the we might have done otherwise. I hope
know that the original SARS one came last thirty years: cut public spending, people have got that message in general.
via a civet cat. The Middle Eastern privatise.

6 LUCE Number 19 2020