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It remains early days for host-targeted antiviral therapy, as this approach is known. Indeed, many experts are sceptical about the entire notion. "People in infectious disease are comfortable with targeting the pathogen. They're not comfortable with targeting the host," says Goldblatt. One reason is the higher risk of side effects, especially with infections that require lengthy treatment.

"Until we can get these things into humans and test them, it's a little bit of a crapshoot as to whether they will work," says Michael Kurilla, who coordinates biodefence research at the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland.

McCracken (1988) identifies four different kinds of consumer rituals which help us to adapt acquired goods into symbolic resources:

  
• Exchange Rituals -- McCracken suggests that when we select a gift for someone else, we do so with an awareness of what makes this gift meaningful. A lover giving a gift seeks to symbolize something of their emotional investment in the relationship -- think about the difference between white and red roses, for example. A parent giving a gift to a child seeks to express and embody some of their hopes for the kind of person that the child will become -- think of the whole line of "Baby Einstein" products for example.
• Possession Rituals -- McCracken argues that consumers spend a great deal of time asserting their claim on goods which enter their lives from the outside. We like to "perform" our ownership of those goods through "cleaning, discussing, comparing, reflecting, showing off and even photographing many...possessions." At a higher level, he describes a process of "personalization" where goods are altered to better express the personality of their owners.
• Grooming Rituals -- McCracken claims that for some goods, meaning is perishable and certain practices need to be repeated in order to extract value and meaning from them. These practices often center around either practices of personal grooming or the grooming of the goods themselves.
• Divestment Rituals -- For McCracken, these rituals need to be performed when goods change hands -- first, to exorcise the imprint of the previous owner so that they may be more fully one's own and then later, to strip aside any emotional investments we have made into goods which we now must dispose or "regift" to others.