> During the 2018 eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo outbreak, four investigational treatments were initially available to treat patients with confirmed Ebola. For two of those treatments, called regeneron (REGN-EB3) and mAb114, overall survival was much higher. These two antiviral drugs currently remain in use for patients with confirmed Ebola.
How is this not a cure? If you mean that the cure doesn't save 100% of those who take it, than we have no cure for bacteria as well.
Ebola fatality rate ranges between 25-100%. The only thing that we have as the data is that with these two drugs the fatality rate might be less than 100%. Because Ebola is extremely aggressive and is largely contained to isolated areas its carriers tend to die and everything those people were in contact with is destroyed. Same goes for patients that contract Ebola and recover. That was the protocol for EVD outbreak in West Africa 2014-2016. That's what allowed us to "handle" the issue.
It certainly does not appear that COVID-19 has a similar protocol, at which point we are in herpes territory of managing disease rather than curing it. I find it very strange that this is not being addressed.
> mAb114 and REGN-EB3 have shown success with lowering the mortality rate from ~70% to about 34%;
That's a claim in NYT. The papers are far more cautious because there is not enough data.
ZMapp, for example, showed around 40-50% decrease, was well tolerated during the West Africa outbreak but was still canceled because after more data was crunched it was not possible to attribute that decrease in mortality to ZMapp in a statistically significant way.
> they are cures.
Not as of now. They are promising regiments that might be developed into cures but as of now there are no cures for Ebola.
> Sure, we don't have a cure for COVID, but this has nothing to do we the fact that we have cures for totally unrelated virus-caused diseases.
That has been a long promised but it is not the case as of now. I believe the last cure was supposed to come out of DRACO but it even though the studies were initially promising (2011 press was ga-ga over the coming cure for nearly all viral diseases based on DRACO derived therapy) it failed to demonstrate enough viability to secure funding for further studies).
It is why the vaccinations are super-important. It is vaccinations and prevention that controls nasty viral diseases, not treatment. Ebola will be controlled and eradicated via vaccine, not cured.
We have been extremely lucky the most of diseases caused by the common viruses are relatively banal ( even if unpleasant ) i.e. the likes of common flu, herpes and HPV or extremely nasty i.e. polio and Ebola because at the present time we do not have a way to significantly affect the outcomes.
You objecting to arguments I didn't make... Of course vaccines are important! But we still have cures for several virus diseases. And I forgot to mention HCV! What once was an lifelong disease (once it got chronic) can now be cured in 3 months. How's that for a cure?
How is this not a cure? If you mean that the cure doesn't save 100% of those who take it, than we have no cure for bacteria as well.