Antibody treatments will help slow the spread

A growing number of antibody treatments have shown success at either preventing or mitigating the effects of Covid-19. And with the prospect of a vaccine treatment still a few months out, antibody treatments could help stop the spread of the virus—and keep some patients alive. Jacob Glanville, CEO of the drug manufacturer Centifax, said that an antibody treatment could actually be more effective than a vaccine because of the risk that a Covid-19 vaccine would not be effective on everyone.^[1] According to Glanville, getting antibody treatments into hospitals would be like giving a patient an antiviral. They can take the medication, recover quickly, and go home, and it makes the virus much less deadly and significantly less scary to the population as a whole. Famed infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci has also embraced antibodies, saying that they could act as a stopgap until we can have a widely distributed vaccine.^[2] The drug manufacturer Eli Lilly said that one of the antibodies they have tested—in a phase 2 trial of nearly 500 people—reduced hospitalization by 72 percent.^[3] Further, some antibodies tests are prioritizing treatment in patients most likely to have severe effects from the virus.^[4] The success of these tests alludes to a steep drop in the death rate, if the drugs were to be administered widely. Unlike vaccines, some of which have yet to be tested on humans, a number of antibody treatments are being used in select hospitals in the U.S. to combat coronavirus right now.^[5] The prospect that antibody treatments could be widely distributed by governments and drug manufacturers by January is incredibly high. If antibody treatments can be made widely available and continue to produce the results currently being posted, the pandemic—at least the deaths, fear, and steep social constraints—will be over.