New Covid-19 Thread

[Woodsman]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

Positive data for prophylactic use of chloroquine (CQ) or hydroxychloroquine (HCQ):

https://aapsonline.org/aaps-letter-a...e-in-covid-19/

So here's how this will go. This will be deemed illegitimate because:

1. The AAPS is labeled a politically conservative or ultra-conservative front for right-wing doctors like the Pauls.
2. It is alleged to take positions contrary to the AMA-policed orthodoxy.

There will be other objections, but these should be enough to warn off most "thoughtful" people.

That the AMA is leans politically leftist and serves the interests of the medical and pharma cartels apparently doesn't raise similar concerns.

And neither does the dismissal of Hydroxychloroquine by the medical/pharma cartels as a dangerous and untested drug (despite its decades of safe use) versus their seemingly unanimous consent on the Remdesivir's safety and efficacy despite it being brand new and its fast-tracked approval. We're not supposed to notice that HCQ seems to work well in every country that's tried it, except the United States.

That HCQ sells for about a buck a dose versus an expected $1000 a dose for Remdesivir isn't something we proles should concern ourselves with, either. Neither does the financial relationships between Remdesivir manufacturer Gilead Sciences and the NIH panel charged with setting its treatment guidelines. Because conspiracy theory.

[jk]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

good, understandable article on antibodies

https://www.vox.com/science-and-heal...id-19-immunity

[Mega]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

At what point would you say we should come out of lockdown?
Just wondering...
Mike

[jk]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

At what point would you say we should come out of lockdown?
Just wondering...
Mike

i don't have a clue myself. sensible looking plans i've seen propose a phased opening of the economy. e.g. first people under 50 with no significant health issues, then under 60. then with minor health issues. then under 70, etc. meanwhile maintaining social distancing, masks and so on.

you want a really geared up testing system to do this, though, with a lot of regular testing of even asymptomatic individuals. [everyone? a random sample? i don't know enough to hazard a guess] the problem is the incubation period being as long as 2 weeks. what that means is that you could open up for a population, and everything looks great for 2-3 weeks and then you're swamped by a flood of sickness.

if we learn that you do acquire immunity, and if we have a good serological test [2 "if"s] then you could also release people who have evidence of immunity.

having good treatment would allow us to move more quickly. i just read today of a lab at mt. sinai in nyc which is developing synthetic antibodies [based on computer designed molecules complementary to the 3 dimensional structure of the ace receptor binding site which the virus uses to enter cells.] also gilead's drug seems promising, not impressive, but a start.

[Mega]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

My reading is the kids are going back to school in Sept, I might be longer as I am over 50 & I care for my mum, 87 & has had a letter from the NHS saying she is "At risk group".

Mike

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

I just got off the phone with a co-worker up on the Navajo reservation in Tuba City, AZ. He's a property manager for a nice little manufactured home community owned by the company I work for. Really sweet tenants there. "B" called to tell me that the situation up in northern Arizona is bad and deteriorating rapidly.

The Navajo reservation is a perfect storm of poverty, malnutrition, obesity, diabetes, heart disease, smoking, alcoholism, and inadequate health care resources. Consequently it's been hit especially hard by Covid-19.

Last week he and his tenants heard a woman screaming for help (not in our community but nearby). She was being beaten. They called 911. The dispatcher said that police are not responding to calls like that anymore.

But they are on the road, pulling people over and fining them $1000 for being out of their home. There is an 8pm curfew. As of 8pm tonight no one can leave their house until Monday morning. Our manager carries a letter from the company attesting to the fact that he has an "essential job", which he does. He's been buying food for our elderly residents who don't have family to help them.

A lot of the area doesn't have trash pick-up; people must to drive their garbage to the local dump. The dump reduced their hours. The line of cars of people trying to dump their garbage is about two miles long. So people have taken dumping their trash in our dumpsters, piling it up on the ground when the dumpsters got full. Mountains of garbage. This made a health hazard for our residents and staff. We had to have the dumpsters removed (fortunately our residents also have curbside trash carts). The dump will be closed this weekend, too.

There is only one small, overpriced grocery store in Tuba City, so most residents drive to Gallup, NM to do their shopping at Walmart. The first of the month is the big shopping day. It's when everybody gets their Social Security and Food Stamp money. By the first of the month people are out of everything. Food, formula, diapers... Today something like half the population of Tuba City was heading over to Gallup, when Gallup put up roadblocks at noon. They sealed off the whole town. No one is allowed in. "B" told me there was a line of stuck cars 15 miles long on the the highway, of people trying to go to Gallup for their essential shopping.

They've been turning around and going over to Flagstaff. "B" estimates that about 80% of the town population went to Flagstaff for groceries today.

Very worried for those folks.

[bpr]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

That northeastern part of AZ right into NM sticks out like a sore thumb on the map of cases/100k.

[Southernguy]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coron...g-bde85b64072e

From Thomas Pueyo on testing, contact tracing and privacy issues.

[Mega]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

may be we should HUNT the virus?

[Mega]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

[Mega]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

China talks!

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitic...-virus-program

[Mega]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...ial-files.html

[Woodsman]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

On Remdesivir, from Dr. Mark Hoofnagle, MD/PhD. UVa/UMD/UPenn. Asst Professor of Surgery at Wash U. Trauma/Critical Care/Acute Care Surgeon, Barnes-Jewish Hospital:

"I am truly sorry to say, Remdesivir is probably worthless, and we are seeing some fascinating drug company shenanigans, a thread.

First, the pretest probability that an infused, small-molecule inhibitor of a virus would improve mortality in symptomatic patients was already pretty low. Unfortunately, antivirals work poorly in acute disease. This has to do with their mechanism@of action, and host response. Antivirals usually target some aspect of viral replication/assembly/transmission. Remdesivir is a clever pharmacologic prodrug that inhibits a key piece of RNA viruses that mammals don’t have - the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, and inhibits viral replication.

Unfortunately, by the time you are symptomatic with a virus, you are usually already high/peak viral load. So, when you give an antiviral to someone who is already ill, the damage from the virus is largely done. It’s there in big numbers and in the cells...Pick your metaphor. The cat is out of the bag. The damage is done. At this point the host response to virus is activated, and your body is suppressing replication through a variety of mechanisms (which also make you feel terrible).

So how could inhibiting RDRP after the fact help? The answer is, it probably doesnt. It certainly didn’t in this trial - no difference, not even a trend in mortality, but in subgroup analysis maybe shortened disease duration in early/mild disease...Pick your metaphor. The cat is out of the bag. The damage is done. At this point the host response to virus is activated, and your body is suppressing replication through a variety of mechanisms (which also make you feel terrible). So how could inhibiting RDRP after the fact help? The answer is, it probably doesnt. It certainly didn’t in this trial - no difference, not even a trend in mortality, but in subgroup analysis maybe shortened disease duration in early/mild disease.

This is like declaring a race and then when you realize you’re not going to win, declaring the destination was actually wherever you are standing at the moment. Then, even more fishy, *the same day* as this Lancet trial is release, Gilead and NIAID claim a “positive trial” and they’ve “shortened the course of the disease significantly”. Notably, the mortality benefit did not reach significance. By the end of the day, reports that FDA is going to emergently approve remdesivir for treatment of COVID.

Gilead gets what they want. No one will want to be in a control arm in further trials and they will argue all future trials must be noninferiority. Before we have the answer whether this drug actually changes anyone’s destiny, it’s going to become the gold standard therapy. We will likely now never know if (the unlikely possibility) it changes mortality.

Absolute genius. You have to salute them. On the day a negative trial of their drug is reported, based on a press release they took over the news cycle, and with some midstream edits to their endpoints their now “positive” trial wins them FDA approval and a halted trial..."

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...015063042.html

...And neither does the dismissal of Hydroxychloroquine by the medical/pharma cartels as a dangerous and untested drug (despite its decades of safe use) versus their seemingly unanimous consent on the Remdesivir's safety and efficacy despite it being brand new and its fast-tracked approval. We're not supposed to notice that HCQ seems to work well in every country that's tried it, except the United States. That HCQ sells for about a buck a dose versus an expected $1000 a dose for Remdesivir isn't something we proles should concern ourselves with, either. Neither does the financial relationships between Remdesivir manufacturer Gilead Sciences and the NIH panel charged with setting its treatment guidelines. Because conspiracy theory.

[shiny!]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

On Remdesivir, from Dr. Mark Hoofnagle, MD/PhD. UVa/UMD/UPenn. Asst Professor of Surgery at Wash U. Trauma/Critical Care/Acute Care Surgeon, Barnes-Jewish Hospital:

"I am truly sorry to say, Remdesivir is probably worthless, and we are seeing some fascinating drug company shenanigans, a thread.

First, the pretest probability that an infused, small-molecule inhibitor of a virus would improve mortality in symptomatic patients was already pretty low. Unfortunately, antivirals work poorly in acute disease. This has to do with their mechanism@of action, and host response. Antivirals usually target some aspect of viral replication/assembly/transmission. Remdesivir is a clever pharmacologic prodrug that inhibits a key piece of RNA viruses that mammals don’t have - the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, and inhibits viral replication.

Unfortunately, by the time you are symptomatic with a virus, you are usually already high/peak viral load. So, when you give an antiviral to someone who is already ill, the damage from the virus is largely done. It’s there in big numbers and in the cells...Pick your metaphor. The cat is out of the bag. The damage is done. At this point the host response to virus is activated, and your body is suppressing replication through a variety of mechanisms (which also make you feel terrible).

So how could inhibiting RDRP after the fact help? The answer is, it probably doesnt. It certainly didn’t in this trial - no difference, not even a trend in mortality, but in subgroup analysis maybe shortened disease duration in early/mild disease...Pick your metaphor. The cat is out of the bag. The damage is done. At this point the host response to virus is activated, and your body is suppressing replication through a variety of mechanisms (which also make you feel terrible). So how could inhibiting RDRP after the fact help? The answer is, it probably doesnt. It certainly didn’t in this trial - no difference, not even a trend in mortality, but in subgroup analysis maybe shortened disease duration in early/mild disease.

This is like declaring a race and then when you realize you’re not going to win, declaring the destination was actually wherever you are standing at the moment. Then, even more fishy, *the same day* as this Lancet trial is release, Gilead and NIAID claim a “positive trial” and they’ve “shortened the course of the disease significantly”. Notably, the mortality benefit did not reach significance. By the end of the day, reports that FDA is going to emergently approve remdesivir for treatment of COVID.

Gilead gets what they want. No one will want to be in a control arm in further trials and they will argue all future trials must be noninferiority. Before we have the answer whether this drug actually changes anyone’s destiny, it’s going to become the gold standard therapy. We will likely now never know if (the unlikely possibility) it changes mortality.

Absolute genius. You have to salute them. On the day a negative trial of their drug is reported, based on a press release they took over the news cycle, and with some midstream edits to their endpoints their now “positive” trial wins them FDA approval and a halted trial..."

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...015063042.html

Absolutely sickening. I honestly think the depth and breadth of corruption and regulatory capture has reached such saturation levels that there is no coming back from it. At this point our country is in a coma on a respirator.

[Mega]

Re: New Covid-19 Thread

There are no words........just what people are willing to do
Oxycontin anyone?