Quote from Bruce__H

What is the official advice of the Japanese health authorities? Gloves and mask?

I do not know, but many people there are wearing gloves.

Quote from Bruce__H

I'm sure you will be well protected by your countermeasures. But why did you stop at gloves and mask? Wouldn't the full suite of personal protection gear used by healthcare professionals be better?

This is a "slippery slope" logical fallacy. Furthermore --

Adding gloves costs practically nothing. It takes only a few seconds longer to put them on. It greatly improves safety. It is cost effective.

There are other cost effective and time-effective steps that anyone can take, far short of your extreme example. Such as cleaning counters and doorknobs often, or even changing your clothes and showering as soon as you come home.

It is not possible to wear a full suite of protection gear. You cannot purchase it -- it is only available to authorized medical personnel. You cannot drive a car, or go to the grocery store with it.

Even if you could get a suite, they are in short supply, so this would hurt the overall effort to fight the pandemic. It would be irresponsible. Whereas gloves are not in short supply, and you can always wash and reuse them. Masks are in short supply, but the do-it-yourself mask is almost as good, and available in unlimited supplies.

Why are these people being allowed to die when we now have cheap effective treatments? ACE receptor inhibitors, chloroquine and monolaurin? Oh, I forgot there's no profit to be made out of these treatments. Medics seem to be unwilling to try anything new even with known, relatively safe drugs used for other conditions. So how many deaths before WHO approval?Possibly

Quote from Max Nozin

The median age in India was 26.8 years

Was? Or is now? Worldmeters says it is 28.4 years (close).

Quote from Max Nozin

Since 1970, the median age of China's population has continued to increase from around 20 years to around 37 years in 2015.

In 2020, the average age of the population in Italy was estimated to be 45.7 years.

What is this in reference to? How does it relate to the coronavirus?

Some people have suggested that Italy has a high death rate because the population is old. It isn't that simple. Worldmeters says that the median age in Japan is 48.4, and in Italy it is 47.3, but the death rate in Japan is low. A Japanese epidemiologist on the national TV news yesterday said they are getting reports from Italy that nursing homes for old people are being hard hit. That is not the case in Japan.

Here is another example of the inept U.S. Federal response to the pandemic. Federal officials are actively working to prevent research, and to stop researchers from finding out how many people are infected.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0…virus-testing-delays.html

Quotes:

It’s Just Everywhere Already’: How Delays in Testing Set Back the U.S. Coronavirus Response

A series of missed chances by the federal government to ensure more widespread testing came during the early days of the outbreak, when containment would have been easier.

Dr. Helen Y. Chu, an infectious disease expert in Seattle, knew that the United States did not have much time.

In late January, the first confirmed American case of the coronavirus had landed in her area. Critical questions needed answers: Had the man infected anyone else? Was the deadly virus already lurking in other communities and spreading?

As luck would have it, Dr. Chu had a way to monitor the region. For months, as part of a research project into the flu, she and a team of researchers had been collecting nasal swabs from residents experiencing symptoms throughout the Puget Sound region.

To repurpose the tests for monitoring the coronavirus, they would need the support of state and federal officials. But nearly everywhere Dr. Chu turned, officials repeatedly rejected the idea, interviews and emails show, even as weeks crawled by and outbreaks emerged in countries outside of China, where the infection began.

By Feb. 25, Dr. Chu and her colleagues could not bear to wait any longer. They began performing coronavirus tests, without government approval.

What came back confirmed their worst fear. They quickly had a positive test from a local teenager with no recent travel history. The coronavirus had already established itself on American soil without anybody realizing it.

“It must have been here this entire time,” Dr. Chu recalled thinking with dread. “It’s just everywhere already.” . . .

Federal and state officials said the flu study could not be repurposed because it did not have explicit permission from research subjects; the labs were also not certified for clinical work. While acknowledging the ethical questions, Dr. Chu and others argued there should be more flexibility in an emergency during which so many lives could be lost. On Monday night, state regulators told them to stop testing altogether. . . .

Quote from JedRothwell

That is not the case in Japan.

The Japanese were restricting visits to nursing homes.two weeks ago.there are also less foreign workers than in Italy..

there are a many other variables at play affecting the spread/lethality of infection apart from median age..

Quote from Dr Richard

Oh, I forgot there's no profit to be made out of these treatments. Medics seem to be unwilling to try anything new even with known, relatively safe drugs used for other conditions. So how many deaths before WHO approval

The W.H.O. does not approve drugs. It has no such authority. National governments do that.

Profit has nothing to do with public health. Vaccines are by far the cheapest way to reduce disease. They are orders of magnitude cheaper than any other method. Vaccine manufacturers make little profit, for various reasons. Yet no government is discouraging vaccination, and after one is developed for this disease, you can be sure it will be mass produced and deployed worldwide as soon as possible.

You claim there are effective treatments: ACE receptor inhibitors, chloroquine and monolauri. Perhaps you are right. If so, I expect the experts will agree with you and these will be used. On the other hand, if the experts disagree, you are probably wrong. Not necessarily wrong, but probably. That's how science usually works. That is one of the most important lessons of cold fusion: the experts are right. People outside the field, including scientists from other fields who not experts are wrong. People who do not know the detailed history of cold fusion sometimes think this history shows you cannot trust experts. Or that science, replication and peer-review do not work. That is the opposite of the real lessons. Cold fusion was rejected by people such as Robert Park because they abandoned the scientific method. They replaced it with emotion, academic politics, and lies. If only the scientists had remained true to their own discipline, we would have cold fusion powered automobiles by now.

As Martin Fleischmann said, "we are painfully conventional people." We are the conservatives who stick to the scientific method, to the facts, and to rock solid established theory such as the laws of thermodynamics. Robert Park and the other major scientists who attack cold fusion are from the lunatic fringe. They are the wild radicals who would overturn traditions. There are some strange people associated with cold fusion. New science always attracts such people. But all the major researchers I know, and have known, such as Fleischmann, Bockris, Miles and Srinivasan were very conservative, traditional scientists.

Quote from Dr Richard

Why are these people being allowed to die when we now have cheap effective treatments? ACE receptor inhibitors, chloroquine and monolaurin? Oh, I forgot there's no profit to be made out of these treatments. Medics seem to be unwilling to try anything new even with known, relatively safe drugs used for other conditions. So how many deaths before WHO approval?Possibly

There was a good interview this morning with the head of the Seattle hospital. He spoke about what it was like to treat patient zero here in the U.S. He said that it was a 35 year old and he was in really bad shape but that they gave him Remdesivir (which I think is made by Gilead), and he got better. It sounds like the NIH is testing it now and will have some early results within the next week. But I wonder if people who are not going to make it can ask for this drug as a last resort. It was developed for Ebola.

Agreed about public health but pharmaceutical companies will only act if there is some financial incentive. A vaccine may be impossible because of rapid changes in viral capsule proteins which is why there is no universal vaccine for the common cold. Which is why alternative therapies may turn out to be the only effective treatment. Look, we know 1) this virus bonds to specific sites which can be blocked by ACEII receptor blockers like losartin 2) Chloroquine is an effective transcription blocker at 1 uM 3) monolaurin inhibits viral capsule membrane formation - so wouldn't a combination of all three therapies potentially save lives? If you were dying in the final stages of coronavirus respiratory failure, wouldn't you give it a try?

It's pretty eye-opening to see the new daily cases today in France +497 and Spain +527. These are similar to the increases that Italy saw 5 days ago. So this could all get much more impactful in the next week.

Agreed, remdesivir is another potential candidate for universal coronavirus treatment revealed by the Chinese study - and since this drug is expensive would give pharmaceutical companies the incentive to produce and distribute it making their substantial profits.

Deleo yes and it will only become worse until the medical authorities snap out of their present state of shock and start treating coronavirus patients with a combination of remdesivir, chloroquine, losartin and monolaurin. Or other similar analogues thereof. Medics and pharmacists I have talked to about this just react by saying 'well nothing has come down to us yet about this or oh that was a Chinese study which hasn't been proven to work in the West' Catatonic idiocy or what?

Quote

Why are these people being allowed to die when we now have cheap effective treatments? ACE receptor inhibitors, chloroquine and monolaurin? Oh, I forgot there's no profit to be made out of these treatments. Medics seem to be unwilling to try anything new even with known, relatively safe drugs used for other conditions. So how many deaths before WHO approval?Possibly

The first commandment of medicine is "primum non nocere." (first, do no harm). Do you know of any studies demonstrating the efficacy and safety of "ARB's" (ACE receptor blockers), chloroquine or monolaurin (I have no idea what that is). Profits? Nonsense. Treating physicians don't give a shit about profits. They will use anything that is proven to work and that can't make things worse. ARB's and chloroquine aren't being suppressed. They are readily available, in the US and on the internet from India, with a prescription. Actually from India, you may not need the prescription. Brand name ARB's can be quite profitable for the pharma industry -- $3 - $5 each pill. "Medics" (whatever that means) simply want to treat their patients to the best of their ability *without* harming them. BTW, Remdesivir with or without Chloroquine has promise as well but again, the efficacy and safety are just beginning to be studied. And as a potential SARS vaccine showed when tested in mice, it is not difficult to cause more harm than good.

BTW, nobody is "being allowed to die" - here anyway and also in China. The problem is that patients die in spite of combinations of remdesivir, chloroquine, plasma or serum from recovered patients, a variety of antibiotics and anti-HIV antivirals, supportive measures including "ECMO" (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation), steroids and many other things. Some, even younger patients, have received essentially all of the above and still died. Here is some additional information:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news…ates-200310235816410.html

80 clinical trials in the works: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00444-3

https://www.wired.com/story/ch…trials-aimed-at-covid-19/

Patients are dying because a known combination therapy is not being applied during the early stages of coronavirus infection - hopefully further research will establish the best treatment and save lives.

Quote from Deleo

So there can be shortages of just about anything.

On my trip to Walmart last night, I notices TP and klenex almost all gone, spam, rice dried bean almost gone. And this is a state with no cases yet.

Quote from oldguy

some here might enjoy playing with this math model of virus spread.

https://www.naturalnews.com/20…eadsheet-coronavirus.html

Not sure how "good" it is, but a fun spread (excel) sheet for projections.

notice that that model on the 6th projected 30 US deaths for today. The number is not 31.

To me, that means its assumptions of R0 and CFR must be close and nothing has changed much.

March 6: 13 aggregate deaths
.....................................................................projection of totals

March 7: 15

March 8: 18

March 9: 22

March 10: 26

March 11: 30

March 12: 35

March 13: 40

March 14: 47

March 15: 54

March 16: 62

March 17: 71

March 18: 81

March 19: 92

March 20: 104

Quote from Deleo

It's pretty eye-opening to see the new daily cases today in France +497 and Spain +527. These are similar to the increases that Italy saw 5 days ago.

As far as I can tell, only a few major countries seem to be keeping things under control, including China, Japan, S. Korea the UK and Canada. S. Korea was out of control with exponential growth, but it has now stabilized. New cases have fallen drastically. It has not taken off exponentially in Japan or the UK.

I think the S. Korean cases were concentrated in one geographic area, in one institution, the Shincheonji Church of Jesus. I think the average patient age is younger than most other countries, so the mortality rate has been low. Also, I assume it is low because the Korean doctors are doing a great job; they are not swamped with patients the way the Italian doctors are; and because the Korea authorities have tested hundreds of thousands of people. *

I sure hope the Italians manage to control it. Their latest numbers are shocking! I was hoping the quarantines they put in place in the last few weeks would begin to have effect. An awful lot turns on what happens in Italy. Whether the EU states can control it, and what other western democratic societies should do.

* Whereas the U.S. CDC reports there have been 8,500 tests administered. (The number of patients is smaller because some patients need two or more tests.)

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing-in-us.html

In other words, we still have no idea how many people are sick in the U.S., and you can ignore the Worldmeters total of 1,109. It could be 10,000 by now. Our Federal officials are hard at work trying to prevent more tests. I kid you not. As I noted earlier, see:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0…virus-testing-delays.html

In another "I kid you not" surrealistic moment in history, president Trump wanted to leave sick people on a ship because he thought bringing them ashore would increase the numbers and reflect badly on him. He actually said that, in public, with the cameras running:

"I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault. It wasn't the fault of the people on the ship either, ok? It wasn't their fault either, and they're mostly American, so I can live either way with it. I would rather have them stay on personally, but I fully understand if they want to take them off. I gave them the authority to make the decision."

In normal times, that would be considered insane or treasonous. Either way, it would be grounds to have removed from office. It is also absurd because apparently he failed to notice the numbers were already added to the U.S. totals.

One of the passengers on the ship responded: "He can come on board if he wants and serve us our food and bring me my towel."

Maybe this is interesting... From time to time I use a plant as remedy for a bad stomach, fever or even when i have a strong cough. In german it is called meisterwurz (English: masterwort) It grows in the alps (and also in my garden) and i learned from my grandma and mother that this plant can be really helpful. It has a strong antibacterial and supposidly also antiviral effect. The attachment describes some of its benefits and it seems to be an universal remedy. (Unfortunatley only in german)

Quote from gerold.s

meisterwurz (English: masterwort)

plus Melampyrum pratense...These are medicines from folk knowledge before the Romans maybe

Have antiinflammatory activity

If they target the over inflammation in the lungs.. they might be useful

http://othes.univie.ac.at/19178/1/2011-12-07_0007624.pdf

the stannified extract into methanol is more effective