While many of the restrictions we have faced in the last two years have been lifted to reconstitute what we remember to be normal, we are far from the old normal. It’s impossible to undo what we have experienced from the basic conscious standpoint and the psychological impact it has had. Additionally, it is next to impossible to completely silence this virus and prevent variants from cycling back with varying levels of impact.
If we take a step back to consider our children, especially the young ones who are too young to remember the ‘old normal’ these last two years may have been formative years to establish their own ‘normal’. Imagine, their experience of life is centered on this pandemic crafting a way of life that is their normal; while for adults the pandemic is experienced as a period of time that intrudes on an otherwise ‘normal’ way of life. Regardless of the perspective, a repeat is likely to arise for many reasons that include the cycling of variants, new viruses jumping species due to our population density, and a likely jump to premature action due to our newly established sensitivity to the prospect of another pandemic.
We have heard talk about the endemic status of SarsCoV2 and its variants. This means we expect the virus to co-exist with us and other flu viruses that circulate and cycle in and out of awareness. Nevertheless, this ‘new normal’ is expected to be riddled with surges generated by potent variants of SarsCoV2; if not by the introduction of new pathogens. Regular booster vaccination might be an answer to this problem. However, we must consider other solutions that are just as powerful as alternatives or as adjuncts to the proven vaccine. At Oltre Biomedical we are investigating these additive or alternative solutions: less invasive oral treatments that mitigate the intensity of inflammatory response to infection to help preserve health in those predisposed to morbidity; and reduce the resource strain on the health care system.
Immune response to infection is a critical step toward natural immunity which includes adaptive immunity instilled by natural antibody generation. Therefore, the inflammatory process is important and managing it to help mitigate a morbid response is a delicate process. Nevertheless, the experience over the last few years has us believing that this type of treatment is a crucial pharmacology that can serve us in the future to help us achieve natural herd immunity from variants of SarsCoV2 or new pathogens with or without vaccination. Whether this less invasive oral treatment we are about to investigate in a clinical trial is to be accompanied by vaccination or not is yet to be established. However, it wouldn’t hurt to have both applied concurrently to take the edge off surges caused by variants, and alleviate the urgency for boosters that require expansive logistics and unknown long-term outcomes. We believe Oltre has answers that can change lives and positively impact humanity.
