Covid-19 News

In reviewing 6212 COVID-19 patient records, the doctors noticed that many survivors had been suffering from chronic heartburn and were on famotidine rather than more-expensive omeprazole (Prilosec), the medicine of choice both in the United States and among wealthier Chinese. Hospitalized COVID-19 patients on famotidine appeared to be dying at a rate of about 14% compared with 27% for those not on the drug, although the analysis was crude and the result was not statistically significant...….review of records from 1620 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Last week, he shared the results with Tracey and Callahan, and he added them as a co-authors on a paper now under review at Annals of Internal Medicine. All three researchers emphasize, though, that the real test is the trial now underway. “We still don’t know if it will work or not,” Tracey says

Quote from Wyttenbach

but still way better than big pharma rubbish

Famotidine is scraps from Merck/ Johnson in the 1980's.

Losec (omeprazole) is more expensive but much more popular ( 60 million scripts/yr) for acid reflux .

Famotiditine has few side effects.. which explains why it is OTC

Famotidine was patented in 1979 and came into medical use in 1985.^[5] It is available as a generic medication.^[3]

In the USA the wholesale cost of this amount is about $2.^[6] In 2017,

it was the 115th most commonly prescribed medication, with more than six million prescriptions.

Michael appears to a have a pragmatic attitude.. especially in advising his sister to take a megadose of the oral form

I hope the clinical trials on the injectable form is conclusive.

If they are.. Callahan ..will get the news out ASAP...

https://www.sciencemag.org/new…emedy-against-coronavirus

I like this quote

" When it comes to experience with COVID-19..No amount of smart people at the [National Institutes of Health]

or Harvard or Stanford can outclass an average doctor in Wuhan."

Quote from Shane D.

Contrary to what the media has been trying to sell, there has been widespread compliance with the social distancing rules.

Some beaches have been opened to specific uses in SoCal. walking, running, swimming, surfing, paddle boarding and similar. But congregating in groups to sunbathe or party is precluded. The regulation says you can't sit except to rest and then you must be alone and removed from anyone else. So here is how it was observed yesterday:

(Huntington Beach) https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/26…ronavirus-heat/index.html

Caption said Newport Beach (in SoCal not New England) https://www.ocregister.com/202…lemente-as-closure-lifts/

Huntington Beach Pier (per Los Angeles Times) https://www.latimes.com/califo…stay-at-home-exhortations

Notice lack of masks, social distancing, but hey, don't tell anyone. If you did, you'd be a snitch, a rat.

ETA: I had also put up an image of Cleveland but I can't prove it's real. It may have been fake so I took it down and authenticated the others (see links to articles)

Real story in Cleveland: https://www.cleveland19.com/20…os-lockdown-orders-video/

So right, Shane D. , "widespread compliance" -- yah shoore.

Doxycycline has been used in a NY care home and found to be effective with HCQ. This age-old tried and tested antibiotic has cardioprotective properties and so could ameliorate the cardiac toxicity of HCQ as I suggested in a previous post. So we can replace azithromycin with this safer antibiotic which strangely enough has also been used to treat malaria. The doctors opinions reported in the NY post seem very positive, is this a right wing paper and so is supporting Trump's view, can any of these anectdotal reports be believed?

Quote from Dr Richard

Doxycycline has been used in a NY care home and found to be effective with HCQ

Please don't post statements like that without a link.

Doxycycline has antiviral properties too:

FEMS Microbiol Lett. 2015 Nov;362(22). pii: fnv195. doi: 10.1093/femsle/fnv195. Epub 2015 Oct 12.Antiviral activity of doxycycline against vesicular stomatitis virus in vitro.

Wu ZC1, Wang X2, Wei JC1, Li BB1, Shao DH1, Li YM1, Liu K1, Shi YY1, Zhou B3, Qiu YF1, Ma ZY4.

Author information

Abstract

Doxycycline (Dox) is a tetracycline derivative with broad-spectrum antimicrobial activities that is used as an effector substance in inducible gene-expression systems. We investigated the antiviral activity of Dox against vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) infection in cultured H1299 cells. Dox at concentrations of 1.0-2.0 μg ml(-1) significantly inhibited VSV replication and the VSV-induced cytopathic effect in dose-dependent manners, suggesting that Dox may have broader activity in inhibiting viral replication, in addition to its well-defined bacteriostatic activity. Dox exerted its antiviral effect at the early-mid stage of VSV infection, suggesting that it did not interfere with VSV infectivity, adsorption, or entry into target cells. These results indicate that Dox can inhibit VSV infection and may therefore have potential applications for the treatment of viral infections.

Doxycycline (and other Tetracyclines) potential:

https://accpjournals.onlinelib…doi/pdf/10.1002/phar.2395

But LOTS of drugs have such potential!

Another take on this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32229706

Here's the link:

Long Island doctor tries new hydroxychloroquine for COVID ...

nypost.com › 2020/04/04 › long-island-doctor-tries-ne...
4 Apr 2020 - Coronavirus could cost New York State $243 billion ... ”With the [limited]resources we have at the nursing home, we took a deep breath and realized we ... Alam is not the only one to begin using doxycycline in the fight against COVID-19. ... Jimmy Carter's Head-Turning Statement About TrumpNYPost.com.

Quote from Shane D.

If you can not see the difference between murder, and standing 5 1/2 feet away, instead of 6', from the person next to you. Or miscounting your 11 friends at the park having a beer with you, instead of the 10 allowed...then there is no hope in my trying to reason with you.

Please do look at Sweden: Such a fringe discussion can only occur if country is ruled by a ruthless mafia. Just protect the vulnerable and tell everybody about the now known cheap and safe medication.

Please do not drive people crazy! There is 10000% no reason for a grand mama to not take a grand child into her arms. Children do not transport the virus. Switzerland will explicitly allow this again for the hyper obeying old folks. In my neighborhood grandchildren visited grand mama on a regular basis and also more than 5 kids did play together.

But there are always people that have a police agents should and call for help....

Quote from Dr Richard

Doxycycline has antiviral properties too:

Yes: But probably you will destroy your guts flora... But still 1000% better than taking the shortcut...

It is time that doctors do understand that all bacteria are carriers of virus and most parasites do host the whole cascade for their protection. It's is no surprise that the best antibiotics also fight the secondary attack that builds out after the lysis of a bacteria.

CFR?

OK perhaps there are lot of people out there not counted as cases and some dead not counted as deaths but....

just raw numbers 988,928 US cases, 55,461 deaths (with 15000+ in serious condition)

gives 5.6% CFR. I don't here anyone talking about that.

If there are 50 uncounted per documented cases, that is one thing but if it is only 5 uncounted it is another.

The more recent numbers I find (at least for the E coast) are:

https://thehill.com/policy/hea…us-preliminary-data-shows

NY releases figures estimating 14 percent in state, 20 percent in NYC have had COVID-19

using NY numbers only 22,275 deaths, 293,991documented cases. or 7.57% raw numbers

and if adjusted by the 20% testing adjustment gives 1.5% CFR for NY

THHuxleynew ...There are LOTS of antibiotics and antivirals to test, agreed, but a thorough understanding of their biochemical actions and specific targets within the cellular-virion environment is paramount. Fortunately there is a huge literature on most medicines in current use there already, allowing intense screening biochemically which compounds are more likely to be useful or perhaps rejected. For example rifampicin is specific for binding to the beta sub unit of DNA dependent RNA polymerase so would not be effective against coronaviruses which don't have this type of polymerase. Anti-senilty drugs like rapamycin is an interesting angle since this virus definitely has a selectivity for older patients Maybe famotidine has an affinity for the coronavirus spike proteins like chloroquine so prevents viral entry. Need to go a step further than molecular modelling and do further biochemical tests, Add it to Anti Bat though it's looking good!

Quote from Shane D.

Not sure about those photos. Daily Mail tried the other day to use an old stock beach photo showing a very crowded beach.

Geez, man. That's why I gave links to the sources. And it's why I removed a supposed photo of a Cleveland protest when I could not authenticate the image to a main line source. You don't really think the LA Times is going to use an old image to make up a story, do you? I also saw video from San Diego beaches on the local news. It was the same there. Complete disregard of social isolation and beach regulations as well as very crowded protest rally with no masks (at the foot of Grand Ave. in Pacific Beach, on the ten o'clock news.

S Africa is on the BBC news today as the worst case of COVID-19 cases and deaths in Africa! 87 deaths so far! Wait a minute? Do they even have a pandemic there? The African outbreak is absolutely nothing compared to deaths from dengue fever, malaria, HIV or Ebola to make but a few. Maybe they all take ivermectin!

Quote from oldguy

gives 5.6% CFR. I don't here anyone talking about that.

If there are 50 uncounted per documented cases, that is one thing but if it is only 5 uncounted it is another.

Nobody will know the real number until we have widespread antibody testing with a completely reliable antibody tests. Current antibody tests return substantial false positive errors which can totally negate the results when a population has few real positives.

Dr. Birx, in an interview last night, also said that we will not have rapid efficient virus testing until the current RT PCR tests are replaced by tests that measure antibodies. I think she means ELISA (enzyme linked immuno assay). This is how HIV/AIDS testing developed. An easy, fast and cheap ELISA test was used for screening but that had some false positives so all positives (and only positives) were confirmed by the Western Blot test. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_blot I am not sure but if understood her right, for COVID-19, the confirmatory test would be RT-PCR.

Quote from Shane D.

But that probably wont last much longer, as the studies are pointing to the virus being less deadly than originally believed.

Sure, WTF! We have only more than 50,000 deaths (and approaching a million cases) in something like a month or six weeks in the US. Nothing to see here. Move on. Nothing to worry about not to mention the possibility of fresh exponential growth in cases and deaths if social distancing and mask wearing are not observed. Deaths, as I noted before, are not the only end point of this pandemic. Many more people suffer terrible illness, pain and permanent organ damage as a result of infection.

Quote from Dr Richard

Maybe they all take ivermectin!

Maybe they all eat bread or drink milk. The data from Africa are early and wildly incomplete. I hope the pandemic doesn't affect them but I suspect it will, soon, and in a disastrous manner and the same, I am afraid for much of the undeveloped world when it catches up to them and finds them with many less defenses and much less technology than the developed nations. The only salvation for them will be a good vaccine or medicine or hopefully both. I shudder at the potential cases and deaths to come. A pandemic expert (sorry forgot which) said on TV last night that there is another terrible shoe to drop.

BTW: Dr Richard - thanks for including links in some of your posts. It's really difficult to evaluate posts and claims without having the source.