Covid-19 News

Quote from Shane D.

As we all know, the old and sick are targets of the virus, but the rest of the population has little to worry about.

That is completely wrong. The rest of the population, especially young people, will suffer lifelong harm, strokes, brain damage and amputations on a scale not seen since WWII. Hundreds of thousands or millions of lives will be permanently disrupted. Many of the victims will die young. Taking care of them will end up costing society trillions of dollars. All of this can be avoided for the cost of hiring 300,000 people (paid, already on the payroll, and volunteer) for a year.

If you knew that about 100,000 young people were going to suffer from strokes and brain damage over the next year, you would never say "we have little to worry about." Even if it was a sure thing they would not die, this alone would be one of the worst diseases in U.S. history. The fact that 2 to 4 million other people are bound to die before herd immunity is achieved makes it far worse.

Quote from JedRothwell

40% of the U.S. adult population is obese, which is a risk factor about as high being 65 years old. Are we going to isolate them? Are they all going to get thin in the next 6 months, while they stay isolated at home? I don't think so.

I am not making fun of obese people here. I do not think it is possible for most obese people to lose enough weight in 6 months to reach a safe level. Except with starvation diets equivalent to being put in a concentration camp. Such diets are very dangerous, needless to say. I have heard that healthy loss is 3 to 5 lb per week. That would be 120 lb in 6 months of vigorous exercise and strictly controlled diets. Even that would not be enough to put many obese people into a safe state of health. A year would be enough, I think. They would have to be isolated stay-at-home for 6 months, which is not possible for most of them. They have to make a living.

Here is the CDC latest coronavirus info:

Groups at Higher Risk for Severe Illness

https://www.cdc.gov/coronaviru…roups-at-higher-risk.html

JedRothwell

I don't want to go too far OT here but reducing obesity is currently impossible. Most medications and commercial diets (like where they supply your food) don't and can't work for most people. And there is a very simple, mostly ignored reason although several papers and books document it. The only way to reduce someone's obesity for the long run is to modify appetite. When you say to a fat person to reduce their food intake, it's like asking someone to breathe less or sleep less. It usually can't be sustained. And that is because hunger is driven by complex mechanisms and nobody has yet found a safe and effective way to reduce appetite for everyone. There are exceptions and partial exceptions but that is another discussion.

A paper just published in Nature examines anti-Covid targets that appear promising

for drug repurposing. It includes several cell culture tests including effectiveness at

preventing viral replication and toxicity. My first impression is that HCQ looks quite

good, and that there may be a couple of repurposed drugs that may be even better.

Figures 6 (page 13) and 8 (page 25) appear to indicate HCQ has a good anti-viral/toxicity

profile - and that the drug designated PB28 may be the best.

The paper and URL(pdf) --

(Accelerated Article Preview)

A SARS-CoV-2 protein interaction map reveals targets for drug repurposing

https://www.nature.com/article…-020-2286-9_reference.pdf

An interesting excerpt (page 4) --

"PB28, zotatifin, and hydroxychloroquine all decreased the detection of the

viral NP protein even in this single cycle assay, indicating the antiviral

effect occurs before viral egress from the cell (Fig. 6e). Furthermore, all

three molecules inhibited NP expression when added up to 4 hours post-infection,

after viral entry has occurred. Thus, these molecules seem to exert their

antiviral effect during viral replication."

Also - an excellent presentation on Covid-19 published today which includes

biochemistry, diagnosis, and (present and proposed) treatments --

"Live Webcast: Key COVID-19 Clinical Updates and Lessons Learned So Far"

Quote from THHuxleynew

So the direct forcing - the power heating up the earth due to co2 - can be precisely estimated. The actual forcing includes feedback effects from clouds etc that can change, so is less clear, and is all bundled into climate sensitivity. But we have a very large amt of data of different sorts now. When people talk about climate sensitivity they talk about how much warming happens in a few decades. Over a much longer time it is expected that more warming will happen due to the inertia.

The energy content of a gas is proportional to the inner degrees of freedom. Standard gas equation works for 2 atom gases their energy is proportional to 3/2 kT with three atoms (CO₂) its 5/2kT If torsion (depends on temperature) starts to work then its 7/2kT. Typically the added degrees of freedom are lower energy oscillation. This means that 3 atom gases do down convert the higher/atom kinetic/oscillation energy of 2 atoms gases to longer wave length (IR) radiation. Further this energy is stored longer than the higher energy radiation. As THH said the situation is complex and the most simple equation system I dealt with had ten equations. But there is nature too, that forms clouds, what can have a much bigger effect than the composition of the atmospheric gases. There is (missing) dust that lets water condense etc..

LENR is similar complex. That's why simple explanations usually don't work.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Tucker Carlson? Seriously? Now, I am wondering if it even happened. That commentator/talking head has, in the past, had a notoriously low regard for the truth. Having said that, I disapprove of unnecessary censorship unless it's the comedy gig of that name on the Jimmy Kimmel show.

Some people like myself enjoy discerning truth from whatever source.

For others like yourself, maybe this will suit you better.

https://www.prnewswire.com/new…dia-giants-301050290.html

Quote from Wyttenbach

The energy content of a gas is proportional to the inner degrees of freedom. Standard gas equation works for 2 atom gases their energy is proportional to 3/2 kT with three atoms (CO₂) its 5/2kT If torsion (depends on temperature) starts to work then its 7/2kT. Typically the added degrees of freedom are lower energy oscillation. This means that 3 atom gases do down convert the higher/atom kinetic/oscillation energy of 2 atoms gases to longer wave length (IR) radiation. Further this energy is stored longer than the higher energy radiation. As THH said the situation is complex and the most simple equation system I dealt with had ten equations. But there is nature too, that forms clouds, what can have a much bigger effect than the composition of the atmospheric gases. There is (missing) dust that lets water condense etc..

LENR is similar complex. That's why simple explanations usually don't work.

Yes the effect of clouds alone should effectively put a brake on any pretence of predictive power.

It should be known that by itself, CO2 capture of the IR back radiation from earth's surface is not that significant.

What is significant is the modelled (hypothesized, guessed) positive feedback loops from this small energy capture by CO2.

Wyttenbach, I hope your SO4 physics is better than your predicted 4m sea level rise in 80 years.

Quote from Mark U

Some people like myself enjoy discerning truth from whatever source.

Every media has a live cycle. As soon as money is the driving factor all ideals will be sold!

The same holds for Wikipedia that in all hot political and business themes is controlled by Agents. E.g. people like Randell Mills are shown as clowns.

What the establishment want's to avoid any time is the development of momentum = force that can threaten the established business. We see this with the already famous business case of Remsdesivir that certainly soon will also be hyped by WHO albeit it will to save your live...

We are the cattle and the only thing these folks interests is the money they can generate with us. Big pharma doesn't want to cure you an if it cannot be avoided, then it must cost at least 40'000$ like for Hepatitis C.

Here in Switzerland they charge between 220 and 640$ for a corona test that effectively costs 20$ for the lab, the rest is for the golden chair of the doctor taking the probe and the retailer that delivers the casket and the stub. And last do not forget the profit of the organization and the income of the landlord...

Thus a single dose of Ivermectin is 100x less $$ and you don't need the test.

Looking at the numbers I’m thinking about what kind of progress has been made here in the U.S. over the past couple of weeks. There is more testing occurring, and anecdotally we hear that hospitalizations are down. But on the face of it, today we had over 30k new cases, and over 2k people died. Based on those numbers we are essentially in the same place.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

And this article states that China, Spain and Germany are fighting off second waves and spikes in local areas. So they are not out of the woods yet.

https://www.the-sun.com/news/7…any-japan-china-lockdown/

South Korea is one Country that’s knocking it out of the park. They need to give the rest of the world a tutorial on exactly what they are doing, step by step. And every Country needs to replicate it, even if it as great costs. Fortunately the South Koreans are attempting to write an instruction manual. They just published a study that’s now on the CDC website below about how they contained a single Covid outbreak at one office building in Seoul. It’s an intense process that they undertake to do it. But every Country should work on replicating what they have done because it works.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/8/20-1274_article

Quote from JedRothwell

More to the point, we do not know who the vulnerable population is. It is widely known that young adults in their 20s and 30s seldom die from the coronavirus, but there is more to it than that. 20% of young people have to be hospitalized. They have a very serious illness that sometimes damages many organs.

yes may of the young "recover" but I understand that most end up with damaged lungs. I makes me wonder what will happen to them in the future. Will they have a shortened life expectancy do to the damage and any future stresses on their lung/heart?

https://theconversation.com/we…-to-fight-covid-19-136789

This is related to the paper linked by Lou Pagnucco above. It is a highly speculative look at approaches to pharmacological therapy for COVID-19 by testing some of the theoretically beneficial drugs in monkey cell tissue cultures. No idea why not human cells. Anyway, in this paper, HCQ does not give favorable results consistently. That's unfortunate but like I said, this study is very speculative and tentative.

ETA from the article: "... Interestingly, a seventh compound – an ingredient commonly found in cough suppressants, called dextromethorphan – does the opposite: Its presence helps the virus. When our partners tested infected cells with this compound, the virus was able to replicate more easily, and more cells died. This is potentially a very important finding, but, and I cannot stress this enough, more tests are needed to determine if cough syrup with this ingredient should be avoided by someone who has COVID-19."

Since it's not that useful anyway, I would suggest avoiding dextromethorphan. That suggestion is also found in Lou Pagnucco linked "Nature" article. I do not know how many authors if any are in common between the two, Some author lists are amazingly long.

ETA2: "Another interesting thing to note is that hydroxychloroquine – the controversial drug that has shown mixed results in treating COVID-19 – also binds to the SigmaR1 and SigmaR2 receptors. But based on our experiments in both labs, we do not think hydroxychloroquine binds to them efficiently.

Researchers have long known that hydroxychloroquine easily binds to receptors in the heart and can cause damage. Because of these differences in binding tendencies, we don’t think hydroxychloroquine is a reliable treatment. Ongoing clinical trials should soon clarify these unknowns."

Quote from oldguy

yes may of the young "recover" but I understand that most end up with damaged lungs.

I am pretty sure that is inaccurate. Some do but I think it is far from "many" and "most." I've seen many reports of individual cases which patients' recover, in which the clinical course includes terrible lung CT's or X-rays but these clear when the condition improves. Have you read that patients with mild or asymptomatic disease get lung damage? I haven't but this is such a large and complex and new set of data, it's easy to miss stuff.

this is a good read on the state of vaccine development. Not sure why it was written as an opinion piece. It’s pretty straightforward:

https://www.nytimes.com/intera…e=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Quote from Deleo

It’s pretty straightforward:

"These biotechs are putting out all these press announcements,” said Dr. Hotez.

“You just need to recognize they’re writing this for their shareholders, not for the purposes of public health.”

Not one Bigpharma will have anything positive to say about HCQ, famotidine, Zn , ivermectin or for that matter Vitamin D.

These are competitors to their potential business,

This new preprint that indicates that Covid-19 mutations may be more common than

we first thought. If so, will this make pursuing a vaccine more difficult?

"Spike mutation pipeline reveals the emergence of a more transmissible form of SARS-CoV-2"

Abstract

We have developed an analysis pipeline to facilitate real-time mutation tracking in SARS-CoV-2, focusing initially on the Spike (S) protein because it mediates infection of human cells and is the target of most vaccine strategies and antibody-based therapeutics. To date we have identified fourteen mutations in Spike that are accumulating. Mutations are considered in a broader phylogenetic context, geographically, and over time, to provide an early warning system to reveal mutations that may confer selective advantages in transmission or resistance to interventions. Each one is evaluated for evidence of positive selection, and the implications of the mutation are explored through structural modeling. The mutation Spike D614G is of urgent concern; after beginning to spread in Europe in early February, when introduced to new regions it repeatedly and rapidly becomes the dominant form. Also, we present evidence of recombination between locally circulating strains, indicative of multiple strain infections. These finding have important implications for SARS-CoV-2 transmission, pathogenesis and immune interventions.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.29.069054v1

"Indonesian study: Low Vitamin D patients ten times more likely to die of Coronavirus

"If this is confirmed, Coronavirus is almost a disease of Vitamin D deficiency

preprint via http://joannenova.com.au/

http://joannenova.com.au/2020/…to-help-beat-coronavirus/

"After controlling for known risk like being old, or male or having high blood pressure, a Vitamin D level described as deficient (less than 20ng/ml) was associated with a 10 fold greater risk of death. These are quite extraordinary numbers. In most medical studies an OR (odds ratio) as low as 1.3 is notable enough to get published. But these are OR’s of 10."

@sot This new Brazilian study is basically rolling out mass fever treatment in a controlled and sensitive way. It should be employed worldwide, not just with HCQ and AZM but with the whole regimen of Anti Bat. While inconclusive as to the efficacy of HCQ + AZM, their results are very encouraging and support our scoundrel Zelenko's wild eccentric claims! So what if half of the patients had H1N1 (remember CQ was effective in vitro vs H1N1 but suppressed by pharma 's tamiflu) flu, pneumococci, or COVID? This treatment does seem appropriate in the face of this pandemic and would therefore save many lives, rather than treating patients who are desperately ill already on ventilators. Progressive well thought out treatment plan which we should all adopt as we head into lifting the lockdown. Could prevent thousands of deaths, just being pragmatic.

The vitamin D study is remarkable (we already included in in Anti Bat). We have regularly taken a 500 mg Ca + Vit D because very soft water in Cornwall contains no Ca. Sunshine doesn't give you enough Vit D.

Quote from Deleo

this is a good read on the state of vaccine development. Not sure why it was written as an opinion piece. It’s pretty straightforward:

https://www.nytimes.com/intera…e=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

It is an opinion piece because it ignores:

(a) What everyone has said (18 months)

(b) The ground reality (e.g. Oxford group 80% confident, with timeline of 20M doses by October, and widespread vaccination v early next year)

Instead it gives weird 3/5/10 year timescales.

I think this is based on ignoring the incredible advances in research on genomics and vaccine-related tech in the last few years, and the enormous stried made by the international Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) funded of course by Gates

Without that we would be lost. Although if governments had taken a bit more of Gates' advice we would have been properly prepared and not now be locking down countries.

THH