Covid-19 News

Quote from Wyttenbach

Brilliant news from California!

Maybe not so brilliant. From the linked report:

" The Stanford group warns that their conclusions rely on the accuracy of the antibody tests, which isn’t assured. The authors say that if the test they used is less accurate than they think, it could strongly affect their conclusions, or even negate them. People had to be on Facebook and have a car to respond to their ads. And if they were trying to get a test, they might have been more likely than average to have had covid-19 symptoms, which could have inflated the results. The group of volunteers was also skewed toward women and was less than 10% Hispanic, even though this ethnicity accounts for more than 30% of known covid-19 cases in Santa Clara. "

From above the Lancet:

More than a billion Indians currently stand at the precipice of a massive increase in cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). India had shown a staggered course of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission, with 1397 cases diagnosed between Jan 31, and April 1, 2020. However, there has been a recent surge in cases, with numbers rising to 5194 as of April 8.

1

The Indian Council of Medical Research, under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, has recommended chemoprophylaxis with hydroxychloroquine (400 mg twice on day 1, then 400 mg once a week thereafter) for asymptomatic health-care workers treating patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19, and for asymptomatic household contacts of confirmed cases.

2
The document states “its use in prophylaxis is derived from available evidence of benefit as treatment and supported by preclinical data”. Although some in-vitro evidence supports the antiviral activity of hydroxychloroquine and its precursor chloroquine, there is no peer-reviewed publication that evaluates either drug for exposure prophylaxis of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Even for treatment of diagnosed cases, only one small study reported faster nasopharyngeal viral clearance, with no data for clinical improvement.3
This evidence, or the lack thereof, hardly justifies state-endorsed, widespread use of hydroxychloroquine for prophylaxis.

But the use of anti-malarial drugs in India has been widespread, chloroquine in particular since 1945. If hydroxychloroquine is widely distributed for prophylaxis then this is as good as Mass Fever Treatment because it will be available to all the population who will know to up the dose on acquiring a fever as they have always done in treating malaria. This prophylaxis itself probably won't prevent cases as the 400 mg dose once a week in insufficient to block the virus which requires 10 uM serum or extracellular levels to completely block entry and replication from in vitro work. Low levels are effective against malaria because of intracellular concentration. There are now a total of 521 known deaths from COVID-19 in India which is miniscule compared to what is happening in the developed world. But the number of cases has increased exponentially to 15722 today from April 8 despite lock down measures. So lets hope the Indian MRC has made the right decision and HCQ turns out to be as effective as Raoult and Zelenko's dodgy data suggests (even without the Zn and Azithromycin) . If it does prevent the millions of anticipated deaths then maybe a similar treatment could be rolled out here and universally. I believe it has worked well in China but they are suppressing this probably as much as their total number of fatalities. So watch the number of cases/deaths data for India over the next few weeks. If it drops the way it did in China from the 20 Feb onwards when they were wise to CQ then we will have our billion population clinical trial

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Yes they will. With homeopathic treatment, nobody gets anything. Everybody gets the same nothing.

That's what big pharma sells to people. My personal experience is vastly different.

There is one basic error about homeopathic dilution. There will always be substance left due to adhesion at the glass. Further not all substances are really very diluted and half of the medicaments prescribed are just natural extracts where you take 1..5 drops with some water.

There is one mystery in all archaic medicine/medical treatment. What causes the action? is it the information carried/induced by the substance or just the information the immune system gets? 95% of all illnesses originate from complex "mental disorder" only 5% need a strong cure = drug.

From a physics point of view and also from the point of the cellular immune system, that is based on RNA inference, the action of as single (few) perturbing agent will have a much stronger effect as one of a large dose because of the (evolution-) trained feedback that will ultimately counter react if a certain signal level is exceeded.

So, a homeopathic dose might work like a soliton wave and a high dose like a random chaotic stimulation.

Last: Swiss big pharma (I'm well connected..) is testing individual homeopathic chemo treatment since a few years. Might be one reason they did spend a lot of money > 100mio$ to down classic homeopathy!

Quote from seven_of_twenty

This is a sadly common misconception among non-medical people including prominent economists and politicians. Herd immunity needs to come from vaccines or infections treated effectively by an excellent treatment and not from untreated infections "in the wild." That method is mayhem!

Well the ones saying this is leading experts. We steer the rates so that we can give good care but not more than that. Keeping a tight look at the numbers, doing proper statistics

and statistical models to support the path forward you will as a consequence get heard immunity but the target is to make sure we can cope for a long time and keep the

numbers from exploding. There are experts that disagree with this approach and argue with a lock down but they seam to not running the show here. If numbers start to run away

they will take more measures. But only if there is proof that it is needed. This strategy seam to work, and will be helped by better treatment and tests. The experts believe that it is

impossible to wait for vaccines. And also that hard lockdowns is risking pushing the problems just forward in time and toll the economy badly and is difficult to maintain for a

longer time without strong police measures.

stefan  seven_of_twenty

"untreated infections in the wild" certainly not but I agree with what Stefan says. All countries will release the lockdowns gradually while regulating social distancing with a feedback control to keep the rate of contagion manageable with some margin by the healthcare system. This can last up to the vaccine or up to herd immunity whichever comes first. The Covid-19 mortality is probably low enough to be acceptable if you spread it evenly over say 18 months. It is unbearable if uncontrolled because the excess deaths occur in few weeks.

stefan - we, UK, locked down later than we should have and have seen our deaths rise as a consequence of infected cases two to three weeks ago. A plateau is now within sight. Maybe you Swedes have less fatalities but similar case numbers because of less pollution or other factors? None of the case numbers can be relied on because the tests have varying accuracy - deaths per million population are a better measure of whats really going on, you have only 150 whist we have 228. Spain is the worst with 429 whilst India has very low at 0.3 in common with Sub Saharan countries with endemic malaria. Greece is also remarkably low for a EU country with 11 deaths per million (they recently had a large malaria outbreak caused by their 'decade of debt'.)

,

Quote from stefan

Well the ones saying this is leading experts. We steer the rates so that we can give good care but not more than that. Keeping a tight look at the numbers, doing proper statistics

and statistical models to support the path forward you will as a consequence get heard immunity but the target is to make sure we can cope for a long time and keep the

numbers from exploding.

If the figures from California are real (see link above) then this is a complete game changer. if only 1/50 gets symptoms then corona is just a cold or a mild flue with a real death rate of 0.01% at most.

Lets wait until this is verified. But the speed of covid-19 spread must be terrific and also the average immune reaction.

one more time: https://www.technologyreview.c…nfected-with-coronavirus/

Quote from Dr Richard

stefan - we, UK, locked down later than we should have and have seen our deaths rise as a consequence of infected cases two to three weeks ago. A plateau is now within sight. Maybe you Swedes have less fatalities but similar case numbers because of less pollution or other factors? None of the case numbers can be relied on because the tests have varying accuracy - deaths per million population are a better measure of whats really going on, you have only 150 whist we have more than twice that with 228. Spain is the worst with 429 whilst India has very low at 0.3 in common with Sub Saharan countries with endemic malaria. Greece is also remarkably low for a EU country with 11 deaths per million (they recently had a large malaria outbreak caused by their 'decade of debt'.)

,

Dr Richard,

Yes things happens faster in GB and it might be better to be proactive in such a case as a more analytic approach is too slow.

I think I seen figures that in the city of New York the death toll is now 0.15% but death rates is declining (probably due to heard immunity effects).

If your hospitals is not overwhelmed the difference between Sweden and GB should not in the end differ much, just that it goes quicker in GB.

Of cause not all parameters are the same so there will be differences but in large. Also an introduction of an effective treatment can change figures.

Quote from Wyttenbach

If the figures from California are real (see link above) then this is a complete game changer. if only 1/50 gets symptoms then corona is just a cold or a mild flue with a real death rate of 0.01% at most.

Lets wait until this is verified. But the speed of covid-19 spread must be terrific and also the average immune reaction.

one more time: https://www.technologyreview.c…nfected-with-coronavirus/

I think that the correct figure is a death rate around 0.1% or more, number of death in city of new york is now 0.15% and effects of heard immunity seam to take place so

I believe so they maybe land on 0.2%. Of cause If a society can protect the volnurable the figure can very well be 0.1% or even lower. Smoking old population and things can go higher

So I think we are talking about a sever flue and not a light one

Quote from stefan

think that the correct figure is a death rate around 0.1% or more, number of death in city of new york is now 0.15% and effects of heard immunity seam to take place so

I believe so they maybe land on 0.2%.

There are some critical factors:

- Initial dose. If you share (long time) a room with a strongly infected person you will most likely also develop strong symptoms.

- Smog: New York - people living along a high way have a much higher death rate. Same is seen for Wuhan, Mailand, Madrid with very bad smog conditions.

- Smokers, speeders. Same as above.

- obeseness: Leads to diabetes II high blood pressure and other problems with joints etc..

Conclusion: For some places/countries the death rate will be much higher than 0.1% . But if the Californian data is correct then a limit of 2% should not be exceeded, except if the first dose is crucial!

Just once more: The average live expectation of all Swiss covid-19 deaths is the same as that of regular deaths. This implies that the virus just works like a predator and the personal death/risk can be found in the insurance survival table...

Quote from Shane D.

https://www.spiked-online.com/…he-lockdowns-are-working/

Slowly, but surely, sanity is beginning to enter into the debate, and those experts with other opinions listened to. These comments are from the interview with John Lee (NHS Consultant Pathologist). He makes a good observation on the media, but did not copy here:

-I think it is more important than ever to try and look at this issue in a clear way in order to make sure that we are really doing the right thing on the basis of the right ideas. And it isn’t clear to me at the moment that we are.

-The World Health Organisation initially suggested that the case-fatality rate – the proportion of people diagnosed with the disease who die – would be 3.4 per cent. This is a very high number which would have caused a huge number of deaths. But as we have had gradually more and more data coming in, those percentages have been falling. In many examples, more complete data are now suggesting case-fatality rates of 0.4 per cent. My guess is that it will end up between 0.5 and 0.1 per cent, and probably nearer to the lower end of that. So if the disease isn’t as virulent as was originally thought, the number of deaths will be correspondingly lower.

-The real point is that there isn’t any direct evidence that what we are doing is actually affecting the peak. It is possible to make arguments that sound reasonable that a lockdown should affect the peak. And yet other places which are doing different things seem to have similarly shaped graphs. It is only an assumption that the lockdown is having a big effect on the virus spread, but this is not a known scientific fact.

-The UK models, as I understand it, said that 60 to 80 per cent of the population would be infected by the virus in a short period of time. Whereas in fact some of the evidence from enclosed populations, such as the Diamond Princess cruise ship, suggests that only 15 per cent of the population may be susceptible. Maybe that is because the virus spreads in a different way than we thought. Maybe some people actually have immunity based on other coronaviruses that are already out there in the population.

-The fact is, Pandora’s Box is now open. This virus is spreading in the population. There is no evidence whatsoever that we are going to be able to put it back in its box. So it is going to spread through the population at a certain speed. And after a year or two, the number of people who are going to have died from it is probably going to be similar either way – it is just a question of the speed at which those people are dying.

-It seems incredible to me that we are not equally as interested in the effects of the lockdown on lives and livelihoods as we are in the actual virus itself. I think we are guilty at the moment of being a bit monomaniacal and focusing only on one thing, and really not focusing enough on the consequences that are coming out of what we have done to face this one thing.

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One things for sure Shane,

“IF”, and that’s a big if,

Covid 19 proves to be no worse or deadly than the regular strains of yearly flu we get

POTUS will rent space on every news outlet telling everybody that he was right all along.

He will probably get a sore arm patting himself on the back and congratulating himself on his brilliant scientific insight.

I hope he’s right, but I don’t think I’m ready for it.

Quote from Wyttenbach

Last: Swiss big pharma (I'm well connected..) is testing individual homeopathic chemo treatment since a few years. Might be one reason they did spend a lot of money > 100mio$ to down classic homeopathy!

The only reason a big pharma company would spend lots of money to develop homeopathic "treatments" is that, with apologies to P. T. Barnum, you can fool a lot of people a lot of the time. Boiron, a company headquartered in France, has an evaluation of $600 million from selling worthless crap in fancy packaging. And shamefully, many major chains in the US carry the idiotic stuff.

By the way, James Randi's million dollar prize was offered to any homeopath who could differentiate a homeopathic solution from the pure solvent it was made with by any means whatever. I don't know if the prize still exists but it went unclaimed at least three decades. Randi also drank on stage, at the start of lecture, two entire bottles of a homeopathic preparation supposed to induce sleep. At the end, he was not a bit sleepy.

Quote from andrea.s

The Covid-19 mortality is probably low enough to be acceptable if you spread it evenly over say 18 months. It is unbearable if uncontrolled because the excess deaths occur in few weeks.

The US has a population of appx 300 million. At the extremes of best case estimates, COVID-19 has a mortality rate of 0.1%. If everyone in the country acquired the disease, that would be 300,000 deaths at the extremes of a best case scenario (pro rate if you want for what you think herd immunity requires-- 80% even 60%) and it's still a pure horror sh*t show. Before comparing that to other things that kill people, remember those things will still kill people. This is added deaths.

We are already (in the US) at more than 700,000 cases and just short of 40,000 deaths. You really think 100x to 300x that number would be acceptable?

Iceland tested 12% of their population so they cannot be underestimating the positive cases that much. Their death rate is 0.5% over the tested positive. Same rate for UAE who tested 8% of the population. Let us say that they are underestimating cases by a factor 5: you end up with 0.1% mortality. If you can slow down the contagion to a constant rate and reach herd immunity in one year, it is < 0.1% population dying in 1 year on top of the 1.2% normal rate. In Italy it would be a toll of 60000 including 22000 already dead. With the present lockdown measures, the daily covid-19 deaths (today around 500/day) will be down to 200/day by May 4 when the lockdown should be relieved. If the lockdown were to indefinitely continue, rates would further drop and the extrapolation looks like death toll would stop at 30000. Should the reopening of the economy result in freezing the death rate at around 200/day, only gradually slowing down as we approach herd immunity, it may take little less than a year. It is a sad tradeoff (30000 lives) but the breakdown of economy may do as much damage. The gamble is on the real mortality figures.

ETA: looking at the timeline, UAE data are too recent to be trusted. But Iceland with a population of 300000 roughly, is well past its peak of active cases.

Luckily nobody has had deuterium poisoning from a homeopathic solution.

Gazing at statistics and playing actuary is a base activity. Lowly. Tunnel vision.

You are missing in your accounting millions of lives that are being impacted, and many of those will lead to deaths - but even worse, if you know anything about it, abuse, homelessness, despair of all sorts. This is not economy vs lives. This is lives vs lives.

It is obvious to many, that this is a game being played. This was evident at Event 201 Pandemic simulation - where notably the Gates Foundation had Johnson and Johnson, WHO, China CDC. There conversations were around messaging and disinformation (wrt vaccines). Closing down social media was discussed. One of the commentators dared to note "We should have invited a provider to this meeting."

They didn't invite a single practicing physician (pulmonologist, ER physician, infectious disease specialist) to a meeting about handling a pandemic but they did discuss social media and messaging - and the need to "flood the zone" (with information and their message).

Open your eyes.

Quote from Navid

Open your eyes.

OK!

Talk about opening eyes. One of the possible consequences of hydroxychloroquine (but probably not azithromycin) is cardiac arrythmia due to, as mentioned before, lengthening of conduction time (QTc) inside the heart. This can lead to ventricular tachycardia or "Torsade des Pointes," both of which can self-convert to ventricular fibrillation which is instant death unless CPR is started and successful defibrillation is accomplished. Yes, complications with HCQ are rare. But this article explains why these conditions are hard to diagnose and treat. This why cardiology requires 8-12 years of graduate and post-graduate education and a lot of experience. If you are not a health care professional, don't try to read this, just skim it. I am linking it only to illustrate the trouble someone can get into and how complex it is to try to get them out:

https://emcrit.org/ibcc/tdp/#Diagnosis_of_torsades

BTW, HCQ is extremely long lived and tends to accumulate in tissues. Traces of it can still be detected in tissue months or even years after it is stopped.

This paper below is a very complicated analysis of whether or not azithromycin has been clearly shown to produce cardiac arrhythmias. I admit I don't understand much of it. But the bottom line is clear. The risk of HCQ is probably not overrated though it is true that complications are rare. When someone gets one, they can be hard to fix and they can kill. On the other hand, adding erythromycin may not add much to the risk. In the end, clinical studies will tell the story. So follow along, sports fans. And remember the old adage, :He who doctors himself has a fool for a patient."

https://emcrit.org/pulmcrit/my…es-or-increase-mortality/

ETA: bottom line- "

• Azithromycin and Erythromycin have different effects on cardiac electrophysiology.
• Azithromycin does prolong the QT interval, but does not cause Torsade de Pointes. It may actually have anti-arrhythmic activity.
• Azithromycin does not increase mortality.
• Azithromycin is a safe drug but should still be prescribed responsibly (it is not intended for anti-viral, anti-pyretic, anti-tussive, or anti-anxiety therapy)."

Those who want to open up the US now and are protesting in the streets for it are fond of rationalization like reaching herd immunity and supposedly much lower than quoted real death rate. That's about mortality. The medical profession also considers another important parameter and that is "serious morbidity" which is just a trade term for nasty sickness. Coronavirus, in addition to killing, cripples and maims and permanently damages internal organs leading to disability and horrific death. Far as I know, the statistics on serious complications are not available. Yet that issue has to be considered when making policy.

Just one example from today's news: https://www.yahoo.com/entertai…nda-kloots-212954036.html

Quote from seven_of_twenty

The US has a population of appx 300 million. At the extremes of best case estimates, COVID-19 has a mortality rate of 0.1%. If everyone in the country acquired the disease, that would be 300,000 deaths at the extremes of a best case scenario (pro rate if you want for what you think herd immunity requires-- 80% even 60%) and it's still a pure horror sh*t show. Before comparing that to other things that kill people, remember those things will still kill people. This is added deaths.

We are already (in the US) at more than 700,000 cases and just short of 40,000 deaths. You really think 100x to 300x that number would be acceptable?

US are at 40000 deaths but not yet at the peak of the histogram of daily deaths, so it is likely that the toll will be around 100000 in a month from now. In my view lockdown must be enforced until the active cases are drastically down, then gradually released checking that the rates don't ramp up again, which implies continued social distancing and strict health and safety rules on businesses and industries that restart. Of course it is way too early for the US.

Yes it is a horror shit show.

One needs to compute without ideological bias what is the impact of prolonged lockdown, and devise the break-even point between the covid-19 casualties and the deaths caused by poverty due to the recession. I would never delegate this analysis and decision to an impulsive tycoon concerned with polls way more than with the tragedy going on.