Covid-19 News

Australian researchers have published a study showing a drug commonly used to treat parasite infections can also kill coronavirus in a laboratory setting in under 48 hours.

https://www.newsweek.com/anti-…us-new-study-says-1496083

The collaborative study led by Monash University's Biomedicine Discovery Institute (BDI) with the Peter Doherty Institute of Infection and Immunity showed that ivermectin reduced Covid-19 viral RNA present in the cell culture by 93% after 24 hours and by 99.8% after 48 hours - around a 5,000-fold reduction in coronavirus RNA, indicating that the ivermectin treatment was leading to the loss of "essentially all viral material".

https://www.sciencedirect.com/…66354220302011?via%3Dihub

Ivermectin is an FDA-approved broad spectrum anti-parasitic agent¹ that in recent years we, along with other groups, have shown to have anti-viral activity against a broad range of viruses2

Quote from oldguy

ivermectin reduced Covid-19 viral RNA

the main problem with ivermectin ( a derivative of becterial defense molecule)

is toxicity..

and then there is the perennial problem of how much drug gets to the target,

the present maintenance dosing rates via the oral route for parasites such as threadworm/scabies

are ~ ten times lower than the dosing rate to give an IC50 of ~ 2.5 microMolar

perhaps a modified ivermectin would work better

This is what the new antibody test for COVID-19 looks like. It takes 15 minutes and is imported from China. It uses capillary blood from the fingertip. A blood draw from a vein is not needed.

Quality is not yet determined for sure, if I heard correctly. It is being used for some first responders in Eastern USA to determine history of exposure and possibly immune status.

This is a test for immunoglobulins and not for virus.

This test will soon be suitable for home use like a pregnancy test but you will have to do a fingerstick instead of peeing in a cup. Diabetics will tell you sticking your finger is no big deal. An automatic lancet does it for you and you barely feel it.

Important: this is NOT a RT-PCR test for active infection. It measures antibodies and not virus.

Image is a screen grab from NBC Nightly News today.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Diabetics will tell you sticking your finger is no big deal.

No big deal at all. I am a ninny but it doesn't bother me. About as bad as poking yourself on a rose bush thorn by accident. I am not at all diabetic but we have a test kit which I use every so often to be sure I am still normal.

Quote from JedRothwell

which I use every so often to be sure I am still normal.

Bites tongue.

This might be a bit more blood than for a diabetic test because those have gotten tinier and tinier over the years.

First, regarding ivermectin discussed above, it is also anti-malarial and being repurposed as anti-cancer.

A new preprint --

"In Silico Screening of Some Naturally Occurring Bioactive Compounds

Predicts Potential Inhibitors against SARS-COV-2 (COVID-19) Protease"

https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2004/2004.01634.pdf

- finds that the following natural substances that may be COVID-19 inhibitors --

Oleanic Acid, Ursolic Acid, IsoVallesiachotamine, Vallesiachotamine, Cadambine,

Vincosamide-N-Oxide, Isodihydroaminocadambine, Pentyle Ester of Chlorogenic Acid

and D-Myo-Inositol

Ivermectin has promising potential as an antimalarial

and is the subject of the WHO project Bohemia trial

http://www.ajtmh.org/docserver…3A11E9F76A0D7856567ACD566

however it has a much more specific activity against mosquitos than against Covid

Quote from Lou Pagnucco

ivermectin discussed above, it is also anti-malarial

@sot ....The flu virus family H1N1 have different surface proteins to corona virus (haenaglutinins) which bind to sialic acid containing receptors on target cells. So HCQ probably is ineffective in blocking viral HIN1 entry but still has some RNA polymerase activity accounting for being effective in vitro but not in vivo. Can supply references but it's all easy to google. Could also be why quinine was ineffective in stopping the H1N1 epidemics in 1918 and 2009 in Africa and other malarial regions but seems in its CQ or HCQ/mefloquine forms to be remarkably effective now. Even if the WHO won't accept such epidemiological data staring at them in the face! and Wyttenbach - we are all vulnerable to this due to its high mutation rate - don't stop taking precautions, self isolating.

Quote from Dr Richard

Even if the WHO won't accept such epidemiological data staring at them in the face

why not publish it on biorxiv with the correlation stats?

Good idea but you could do all of that and still be totally ignored. It would have to come from WHO epidemiologists or Ferguson's group to even be considered.

They would probably say so what, it's being developed as a therapy now anyway so what is the point? Oh so we don't have to worry about the third world. Did we ever?

Quote from Dr Richard

Good idea but you could do all of that and still be totally ignored.

You could show the data as a spreadsheet on this forum..

Quote from Toffoli

Fake Coronavirus Data, Fear Campaign. Spread of the COVID-19 Infection

It's certainly an exaggeration, but many doubts remain

"The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to trigger the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.

This is the true picture of what is happening. “Planet Lockdown” is an encroachment on civil liberties. Entire national economies are in jeopardy. In some countries martial law has been declared.

This crisis is unprecedented in World history. It is destabilizing and destroying people’s lives Worldwide. It’s a “War against Humanity”.

While it is presented to World public opinion as a WHO global health emergency, what is really at stake are the mechanisms of “economic warfare” sustained by fear and intimidation, with devastating consequences."

Display More

Conspiracy theory rubbish.

There are real and serious questions about how we trade off economic slowdown against lives - sure. Maybe best would be to let 2% of the population die at home for the good of the (mostly younger) rest. Few would want this, but it is arguable. And even more disagreements as to what should be done in the nothing is great real world.

The level of the health problem has not been exaggerated and doctors in any of the countries suffering exponential increase in case numbers overwhelming heath systems will tell you this.

The information in that link (65,000 deaths by April 5th) and comparison with yearly flu deaths is just stupid. Profoundly stupid. It makes me think they are either idiots or do not know what exponential growth is as can be see from any of the many worldometer graphs: https://www.worldometers.info/…s/coronavirus-death-toll/

Short argument: why is COVID worse than flu?

(1) 10X more deadly

(2) 2X more virulent (easily spread)

(3) No population immunity => 10X more people would get infected in one season than from flu.

The predicted US growth rate (highly uncertain - it is true) comes from looking at similar curves from other countries practicing similar lockdowns.

That web page is not just wrong, it is a line of argument that has stopped some countries from acting quickly and therefore incraeses enormously both total death rate and the length of time severe lockdown has been needed. Dangerous and bad.

That it seems credible for some just means it is even more dangerous PR.

If anyone here doubts the factual inaccuracy of that link's conclusions (its base facts are correct, it then just completely misrepresents what they mean) I'm sure anyone here could give evidenced reason for the epidemiologists predictions. But the link gives no argument for its wrong conclusions, and prove by unargued statement is pretty difficult to rebut!

Japan PM to Declare State of Emergency as Early as Tuesday

Read more: Japan PM to Declare State of Emergency as Early as Tuesday | Newsmax.com

Quote from Toffoli

"Conspiracy theory rubbish."

Fact is that we have no reliable theory so far.

Fact is also that the death rates of Wuhan,Milani, Madrid cannot be projected to the rest of the world due to smog levels that correspond to smoking of 80 Cigarettes a day!

The official estimate for the death rate (Lancet) currently is a factor of 0.7% that includes all old (-er) people with preconditions.

But interestingly here in Switzerland the average age of the people that did die is exactly 83 years = mean todays live expectation.

Of course this will slightly lower the actual factor because these now dead old ones will miss in the unaffected death statistics.

The main problem is that the majority of people thinks that they can individually rule about their death. They do not accept the reality of nature, the laws of evolution that clearly tell us that the weakest can be wiped away just over night.

If political leaders are no longer able to respect all these basic laws of nature, then at the end we all will live in a crippled civilization, where the wealthy weak decide about the destiny of the stronger younger and more healthy ones. Historically this always ended in chaos and destruction.

Thus there is only one way out: Fully lock in the old and vulnerable ones and just go on with "normal live" but with adequate safety to hold the curve in a reasonable band width.

And yes the Spanish flue killed > 100'000'000 people but that is light years away of what we will see with corona.

Quote from Toffoli

Perspectives on the Pandemic, Professor Knut Wittkowski

https://youtu.be/JRhvnlQHKc0

"I'm not paid by the government. So I'm entitled to actually do science."

Went to watch it, but the link provided above is to an unrelated video.

The Wittkowski video is here:

The great crawl of China: Tens of thousands of Chinese tourists are stuck at a jam-packed tourist attraction after it reopened amid coronavirus pandemic https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne…coronavirus-pandemic.html

https://videos.dailymail.co.uk/preview/mol/2020/04/06/5514850866825181341/636x382_MP4_5514850866825181341.mp4

I guess the Chinese think they have it all under control now

I think they are playing with fire.

Quote from Toffoli

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to trigger the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.

Umm . . . This makes absolutely no sense. The thing is, "powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians" do not want the world to spiral into mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair. That is the last thing they want! Powerful financial interests are powerful because they own stock and they sell millions of IPhones, cars, or computers to ordinary people. When ordinary people cannot buy these things, powerful interests stop making money. Overnight.

I am a charter member of elite Ivy League powerful financial interests, albeit only at the margins. When the world spirals into unemployment, bankruptcy, we members of the elite lose our shirts along with everyone else. That's what happened in the Great Depression and in 2009. Yes, a few people make money short-selling, but we cannot all do that. When short selling works, it is a method of taking money from fools. If everyone does it, there are no fools left to pay the smart people. Everyone can profit from a rising market, but only a handful can profit from falling stock prices (by short selling). See the movie "The Big Short" for details. You will understand this only works when a small number of people do it.

If you want to say that some members of the financial elite benefit from things like pollution and low automotive safety standards, there is some truth to that. That is trafficking in misery and death. There are some members of the elite who do that, such as the Koch brothers and the coal interests. But there are other members of the financial powers who make a lot of money fixing such problems. Such as wind turbine companies, and Volvo, Tesla and other ultra-safe automobile manufacturers. Volvo and Tesla make money by taking business away from companies that make sloppy, dangerous, obsolete automobiles. Specifically, Tesla has taken the entire luxury automobile market away from all other makers. Partly because Teslas are trendy, but mainly because their cars are far safer, easier to drive, and technologically 40 years ahead of the competition. I have driven a Tesla, and it is like going from 1980 to 2020.