Covid-19 News

Quote from JedRothwell

American people were not fat and unhealthy in the 1960s. Look at any photo of a crowd, and you will see they were as healthy and thin as Europeans are today. There has been no genetic change. What happened is obvious to any public health expert or anthropologist. Our "foodways" (diet and eating habits) changed. We stopped teaching children how to eat a healthy diet. Those children grew up to be ignorant, fat and unhealthy, and they raised a generation of children who are even worse. So now we have 40% of the adult population overweight or obese. Hundreds of authoritative books and studies describing this have been published. The problem is obvious to any public health expert. So are the solutions, since we did not have this problem in the past, and they do not have it in Italy, Japan or other first-world countries. Political leaders do not wish to do anything about it, just as they did not wish to fix air pollution in the 1950s, or cigarette smoking in the 1960s.

Greatings from Orwell still running the pigs farm.

Quote from RobertBryant

NY is underestimating the Covid deaths by the least , at 23%

Jakarta the worst at 91%..

NY is reporting also the suspects without having a positive test - read woldometers data source references.

UK (according BBC report based on official total mortality statistics) officially has 70% more death from covid-19 than reported in the statistics. Wuhan had 3-6x more than reported ....

Quote from seven_of_twenty

We all know and accept the risk that comes with this job. I am cognizant that I will likely get COVID-19 during the next few months.

People doing corona work here do take Quercetin as a preventive add-on. And as said earlier Sutherlandia (herb not extract!) /Sceletium upon first Symptoms works great.

Please do go on!

Quote from seven_of_twenty

I am cognizant that I will likely get COVID-19 during the next few months. I also know that my mortality risk is relatively low. This is a risk I fully accept.

For those in a position of relatively higher risk and likely to get C-19 over a period of months, rather than days, one excellent prophylatic measure (if above correct but alas no longer for most populations normal body weight) would be to get much thinner. I guess this is not 100% certain good advice, maybe there are transient somatic effects related to reducing weight that would be negative. But otherwise there seems good evidence (biochemical pathways as well as clinical) that extra body fat is a strong risk factor, and one that can be changed over 2 months relatively easily.

DR Zelenko gets good results.

Quote from THHuxleynew

I guess this is not 100% certain good advice, maybe there are transient somatic effects related to reducing weight that would be negative.

Weight loss of 3 to 5 pounds per week is probably safe. That is what YMCA gym trainers and others have told me. More than that may be hazardous. It is done by eating less, but you must also exercise to improve overall fitness. You don't want to only lose weight. That's unhealthy.

There are two kinds of exercise: aerobic (cardiovascular; running), and anaerobic (weight lifting). You need to do both. Stretching is also recommended. Do not overdo it or you may sprain yourself. Expect some muscle pain the next morning. After a week or two it will go away.

Like in the Brazilian study, why wait until the patients are half-dead on ventilators before giving them anti-viral therapy. Generally in Europe and specifically Zelenko's trials involve treatment at a very early stage in the illness before significant disease pathology has occurred. More about that other scoundrel Didier Raoult, and at last somebody else on the planet has made the correlation between anti-malarial drug use of mefloquine and chloroquine and very few numbers of COVID-19 cases and fatalities!

QUEST FOR CHLOROQUINECoronavirus: Didier Raoult the African and chloroquine, from Dakar to Brazzaville

IN DEPTH This article is part of the dossier:Corona Chronicles: 13 April – 17 April

By Marième Soumaré, Rémy Darras

Born in Senegal, where he spent his childhood, the French doctor and researcher has maintained strong professional and emotional ties with the continent. And many African countries are already using chloroquine to treat people infected with Covid-19.

On 24 March, Professor Didier Raoult slammed the door on the circle of researchers who were supposed to advise the French president on the pandemic.

Disagreeing with the containment policy adopted by France, which favours mass screening, the iconoclastic infectiologist has just been disavowed by his peers, who are reluctant to endorse the use of hydroxychloroquine against coronavirus.

On Thursday 9 April, Raoult could measure the progress made when President Emmanuel Macron travelled especially to Marseilles to talk to him in order to “take stock of the question of treatment.”

This was a strong political gesture in favour of Raoult’s theses, whose promotion of the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients has been the subject of much controversy for several weeks.

READ MORE: Coronavirus: 9 things to know about chloroquine

Pre-COVID-19 era

A specialist in emerging tropical infectious diseases at Marseille’s Faculty of Medical and Paramedical Sciences and at the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire (IHU) Méditerranée Infection, the long-haired professor with the pepper and salt beard was still largely unknown to the general public at the end of February when his views on a chloroquine-based coronavirus treatment began to be heard.

Since then, the Frenchman has seen his media and digital fame take off. And in the ranks of its most fervent supporters, the African continent is not to be outdone.

Is it because the chemical compound he uses to treat his patients, hydroxychloroquine, is well known on the continent, where it has long been used to treat malaria? In two publications exposing tests carried out on some 20 patients, then on 80, the researcher and his teams conclude that “hydroxychloroquine combined with azithromycin is effective in the treatment of COVID-19”.

This quinine derivative is currently the subject of several studies. Those carried out by Professor Raoult have indeed aroused reservations among many experts, who reproach him for not having respected standard scientific protocols. At the end of March in France, the High Council of Public Health considered that chloroquine could be administered to patients suffering from “serious forms” of the coronavirus.”

READ MORE: To fight coronavirus, Burkina Faso is tempted by chloroquine

Those African countries that opt for chloroquine

At Fann Hospital in Dakar, Professor Moussa Seydi, head of the department of infectious and tropical diseases, has already administered chloroquine alone to the first 100 patients who tested positive for COVID-19. “In Marseille, Dr Didier Raoult published encouraging preliminary results. The combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin should make it possible to shorten the carrying time [of the virus], in order to accelerate the healing of the sick,” Seydi told Jeune Afrique on 19 March. To use this drug, he says he relied on the study co-signed by his French counterpart.

Like Senegal, Burkina Faso, Algeria and Morocco have also opted for chloroquine.

On 23 March, the Ministry of Health of the Cherifian Kingdom thus requisitioned the national stocks and distributed to the directors of CHU the protocol for the prescription of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for confirmed cases of COVID-19. A decision inspired by Chinese research on the subject, and studies conducted by the French researcher, according to a member of the Moroccan committee in charge of the fight against the pandemic.

Born and raised in Senegal

If Professor Raoult is well known on the continent, it is also because this specialist in tropical and infectious diseases, in addition to having grown up there, has worked a lot there. It was in Dakar that the Frenchman is said to have caught the research virus.

Born in 1952 in the Senegalese capital, he lives there, in the building of the Research Office for Food and African Nutrition (Orana), created by his father.

This building sits opposite the Pasteur Institute in Dakar which houses the frontline laboratory in the fight against the epidemic in Senegal, and is where this son of a nurse and a military doctor stationed at the capital’s main hospital, took his first steps.

A childhood marked by happy memories of playing on the beach at Anse Bernard, made the move “complicated” when the young Didier Raoult arrived in Marseille at the age of 9. “Being partly Senegalese, I can’t help but feel concerned by what’s happening in Africa,” he says in a video addressed to the Senegalese group eMédia on 7 April.

Research on all fronts

Sokhna, also a Senegalese, is director of research at the Institut de recherche pour le développement (IRD), and regularly exchanges with Professor Raoult. This week, IHU’s Senegalese team of about thirty people was due to submit a research project to the Senegalese Ministry of Health on the protocol of the chloroquine-azithromycin combination.An encouraging sign, according to Sokhna, is that the prevalence of coronavirus seems to be lower in areas where the use of antimalarial drugs such as chloroquine or mefloquine is frequent.“This can be seen very crudely. But other factors will have to be taken into account before any definitive conclusions can be drawn,” adds the enthusiastic and cautious researcher, who is usually based in Marseille but is currently on a long-term mission in Dakar.This mixed research unit is far from being the only innovation driven by Didier Raoult in Africa. In 2012, the French researcher installed a MALDI-TOF at the main hospital in Dakar: a mass spectrometer that can detect bacteria in a few hours, compared to the usual two to three days with traditional methods.

Quote from Dr Richard

Like in the Brazilian study, why wait until the patients are half-dead on ventilators before giving them anti-viral therapy. Generally in Europe and specifically Zelenko's trials involve treatment at a very early stage in the illness before significant disease pathology has occurred. More about that other scoundrel Didier Raoult, and at last somebody else on the planet has made the correlation between anti-malarial drug use of mefloquine and chloroquine and very few numbers of COVID-19 cases and fatalities!

I’m sorry Dr. Richard I can’t hang with you on the chloroquine as a treatment anymore. This hydroxychloriquine study below is a brutal one in terms of its viability. Perhaps chloroquine is better than hydroxy, but at this point I don’t know why either should be considered as part of antiviral remedy any more than anything else. Remdesivir is the one that has shown some benefit so far. There are lots of other antivirals being looked at. I thought HIV antivirals would show some benefit. But the only one so far is remdesivir - a failed antiviral for Ebola. And it’s still too early to know if it truly works, although I would have no reservations taking it (or recommending a family member take it) under compassionate use. The only other thing I would consider is plasma from someone who already had it. But that’s not easy to get at the moment.

I also just don’t buy into the concept that the antiviral only works if administered earlier. Antivirals typically show some benefit even when a person has severe symptoms. Perhaps they will not fully recover, but there should be some benefit to using it at all stages of infection.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/c…enefit-drug-touted-trump/

Quote from Deleo

I also just don’t buy into the concept that the antiviral only works if administered earlier.

It's all about damage and replication. If the virus passes a critical threshold then potentially all organs will be affected just because to many virus are there. Corona may damage all organs most known virus have a restricted first target only. Most tragic are people that think they just got a flue and passed it. Next day they need intubation...

I you want to survive without much damage then you need medication latest 36 hours after first clear symptoms. If you get a high initial, dose e.g. after 5 hours party with infected people, then may be your time to react is a few hours only!

If you take Remdesivir then in average it will take you one more day to die... I would prefer that they first test it with animals + corona.

Check out the original paper and you'll find that one of the authors has links to Gilead who make remdesivir and others are linked to other Pharma companies. They've skewed the data to look a lot less promising, even quoting EC90 values for HCQ as being EC50's (anybody else spot the deliberate misquoting to make it look less effective in vitro?). I think Wyttenbach did. Let's face it they still want to make a killing out of their own patented big Pharma drugs and when a cheap remedy comes along vested interests dictate they squash the opposition. Another war going on against the cheaper favipiravir (Avigan) no doubt since it originated in Japan and was since mass produced in China. Fortunately for the Germans (and Indonesians) Merkel saw through the BS used her own scientific judgement and is now stockpiling Avigan & distributing to hospitals and universities using the military. Been using HCQ successfully too as are the French Spanish and Italians, all of which are showing improvements in daily death rates and reductions in active cases since 25 March - 2 April. But not the UK as a control. Then look at what happened to the Chinese stats showing dramatic recovery after Bayer shipped them a free load of CQ on Feb 20! It's not just the effect of lock down after the first publication of the Wang in vitro report on Feb 2 pharmacists the world over realized it's potential ! - resulting in an embargo in the UK (idiotic), Zelenko treating people in NY and Didier Raoult's flawed studies in France. How much more of a mess could idiotic humans make out of a very simple biochemical observation that CQ or HCQ blocks CV entry, replication etc. It works, forget the anti Trump and Macron BS propaganda built up around it. All because a guy in Arizona drank some fish tank cleaner or some poor two year old died of an overdose 37 yrs ago (very very sad but surely the parents should know not to leave drugs lying around like smarties)

And at long last another virologist has recognised the correlation between anti malarial drugs use and almost complete absence of COVID-19 cases, the correlation I posted here with detailed mapping etc. No other epidemiologists like Ferguson's group interested? Too preoccupied with mathematical modelling, promoting testing, shutting down the economy without even considering possible treatments. The Chinese have come out of their quarantine, their economy will thrive, downplaying all along their widespread mass distribution of CQ, HCQ and Avigan playing a role in their recovery. Quote 'HCQ no more effective than other normal therapy (ritonavir/lopinavir!). Politics both East and West!

Competing interests?

Competing Interest Statement

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the NEJM. JA is a co-founder of iVeena Holdings, iVeena Delivery Systems and Inflammasome Therapeutics, and has received consultancy fees from Allergan, Biogen, Boehringer Ingelheim, Immunovant, Janssen, Olix Pharmaceuticals, Retinal Solutions, and Saksin LifeSciences, all unrelated to this work. JA is named as an inventor on a patent application filed by the University of Virginia relating to Covid-19 but unrelated to this work. SSS has received research grants from Boehringer Ingelheim, Gilead Sciences, Portola Pharmaceuticals, and United Therapeutics, all unrelated to this work. The other authors declare no competing interests.

.....and

Hydroxychloroquine has been reported to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication in vitro with a 50%
maximal effective concentration (EC50) ranging from 4.5 μM to 17 μM.17 However, the approved
dosing regimens for hydroxychloroquine in patients with rheumatoid arthritis or lupus generate
substantially lower peak serum drug concentrations (~1 μM).18,19 A

Confusing because HCQ EC50 was 0.37 uM. CQ was 1.1 uM, Corresponding EC90's were as quoted HCQ 4.5 and CQ 17 uM. Then Lupus patients taking 400 mg HCQ daily would have a serum level of nearer 10 uM not 1 uM.

An interesting new preprint that proposes a way to induce herd immunity by staged, voluntary exposure to Covid-19 in low-risk groups. (I wonder whether this approach could be improved by providing one of the proposed prophylactics before voluntary exposure. It seems like a reasonable countermeasure to avoid an economic collapse.)

Controlled Avalanche – A Regulated Voluntary Exposure Approach for Addressing Covid-19

https://www.medrxiv.org/conten…04.12.20062687v1.full.pdf

We will all eventually be infected so better to get it over with now rather than later - we just have to take the anti virals at the right time as in Mass Fever Treatment as recommended by the WHO for malaria. So allow the antibody response to occur then kill off the virus with our ANTI-Bat Combo. Just like vaccination without having to spend two years developing one.

Quote from Dr Richard

to get it over with now rather than later

Being "at risk" I disagree. I prefer to be infected later AFTER, when treatments have be established and understood better. I do not mean that others should isolate because of me, just that I will delay exposure for awhile.

and..... If I am to be exposed, I want to know where the least virulent strains are and go there.

Quote from Dr Richard

Check out the original paper and you'll find that one of the authors has links to Gilead who make remdesivir and others are linked to other Pharma companies.

I posted this since 2 months. Gillead &CDC must be stoped as their top guys dine & golf at the same place. Press articles meant to influence the public based on a useless study wildly selecting post mortem cases is a criminal act not science. I completely understand the motivation as the e.g. SWISS exports did increase despite corona as SWISS big pharma seems to have the better deals.

But .. now its the wrong time to do business as usual. Some may hope that a future US president will prosecute the most wild excesses .. (but I know they all are from the same club...). But what rights to working slaves have in the US? Watching Matrix on Netflix?? Now even get the same medication we will send (possibly free..) to Africa...

Fact is that China uses HCQ since two months the same does Korea. All companies producing HCQ, Bayer, Sanofi, Novartis did rump up production. I repeat it once more. Azithromycin is not primarily added as antibiotics its given to block the second pathway of corona infections. And if any study does not mention zinc 50mg/day is need, you can simply stop to read. The Swiss reference lab not only checked for corona, they also checked for zinc and found none in patients blood with corona.

Or in other words about this negative anecdotal veteran's study from comments:

It was not a randomized clinical trial in any sense of the word. It was a collection of anecdotes with some statistical manipulations used to try to reverse engineer some randomness into the cohort selections. It used a method called PSM for randomization and this method is no longer recommended for use as it can introduce bias. There are better ways. Zinc was never once mentioned in the study but zinc is a crucial element in the HCQ "cocktail". At the very least they should have randomized on patient zinc status. Zinc deficiency is extremely common among the elderly. Not even one doctor was interviewed to get a sense of what the decision criteria was for using or not using HCQ. This has a massive potential for introducing invisible bias into the results that PSM cannot remove. Dosages used are not discussed. And lastly, the HCQ was administered too late in the disease progression at the point where cytokine storm was the dominant factor determining outcome, not viral replication. In this case the Z-pack which combats the CS apparently showed some efficacy. A good study would have more patients and the treatment protocols need to be well defined. This study is actually much worse in that regard than the much criticized French study.

Quote from sam12

DR Zelenko gets good results.

According to you, so does Andrea Rossi. Zelenko's claims are completely unsubstantiated and the data are of extremely poor quality. Anyone can get good results with anything provided that they treat people who are not going to become very sick anyway.

Quote from Lou Pagnucco

An interesting new preprint that proposes a way to induce herd immunity by staged, voluntary exposure to Covid-19 in low-risk groups. (I wonder whether this approach could be improved by providing one of the proposed prophylactics before voluntary exposure. It seems like a reasonable countermeasure to avoid an economic collapse.)

A terrible idea. Young people get horribly ill and while they have a higher survival chance, many die. The solutions, as has been said many times, are widespread testing, and a vaccine. Reopening society can be done gradually and cautiously if people "behave" but many in the US won't. The results may be a second spike of cases and deaths.

Quote from Alan Smith

135 million people are acutely food-insecure and facing crisis levels of hunger or worse, according to a report published this week called the 2020 Global Report on Food Crisis. Now, the coronavirus could push an additional 130 million people "to the brink of starvation" by the end of the year, said Beasley.

That is terrible, but unlike the virus, it is a problem we can easily solve. We have to send those people food. There is plenty of food in the world, but these people cannot work, so they can't buy it. So, we need to give it to them. Along the same lines, in the U.S., there is tons of money, but many people have become unemployed because of the virus. So we need to give them money. It isn't complicated. Give unemployed people money now. In the coming years, tax everyone to pay for that. Especially tax rich people. Everything will be fine, as long as we pay for it eventually.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

The solutions, as has been said many times, are widespread testing, and a vaccine.

A vaccine is just a dream. Not here for any corona type since more than 50 years now. But lets hope dreams come true one day without long term side effects.

Mass full anti body testing (Roche) starts early may with 300 tests/hour and machine. If cases, solvents etc. are ready...

I too believe that low grade infections with in time treatment may work best. 50% is immune anyway even people older than 80 with preconditions. Results from a tested Swiss care home.

Of course for a hospital this looks quite different. On your table the victims are delivered. Not a pleasant job to do. But we will discuss it again, when the death toll passes the 3 Mio. silently opioid killed US people. Before I would argue like big pharma...

But this - high death toll - will not happen, at least not for Europe. People now start to understand that kids do not transmit corona and closing schools only protects the older teachers. The true problem are small rooms with highly infective people sitting close together for hours. Here already a mask reduces the risk by 99%.

Live is - always was - a risk. Who no longer has the strength to master it or is not willing to take it on, can stay home as long as he is able to finance it... This is the most painful path to die a much cruder death!

(Germany - Hamburg - today presented the section results of 100 covid-19 victims. All had multiple most undetected preconditions they didn't know before!!)

Study finds no benefit, higher death rate in patients taking hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/21…veterans-study/index.html