Covid-19 News

Alex Michael Azar II

(born June 17, 1967) is an American politician and businessman. He is the 24th and current United States Secretary of Health and Human Services since January 29, 2018. He was the United States Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services under George W. Bush from 2005 to 2007.

seems to be able to be able pronounce medical words OK but without any knowhow...

epidemiological experience =zero

Quote from seven_of_twenty

It is a bad idea for highly susceptible persons to go into store where every item has been handled and you have no way to decontaminate them.

I recommend a face mask and surgical gloves in the store. (You may have difficulty finding gloves. We have hundreds because my wife uses them in her work, and we now chuck them into the clothes washing machine after use, and re-use them.)

You can decontaminate food items. Some experts say it is not necessary, but we do it, according these instructions:

Note that Dr. VanWingen added comments:

Correction: Rinse fruits and vegetables with water - no soap.
Correction: NIH Data - COVID-19 lives on cardboard for 1 day.
Clarification: Perishable foods like meat should be brought in the home and refrigerated. Clarification: Only disinfect the outside packaging.

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Much better and not all that much more costly is to use a delivery service (there are long lists of these) to pick up the items and deliver them to your door.

I have seen delivery service people working in the grocery stores. They pick up the same produce I do. It has been handled just as much. Perhaps you mean delivery people from a dedicated warehouse? I am not familiar with delivery services.

Anyway, you can reduce the danger of produce that has been handled with the methods described in the video. Supposedly. You can also reduce the danger by going first thing in the morning, when the people at the grocery store have just restocked the shelves. If you are old or vulnerable, you go at 7 a.m. during reserved hours, when other customers are not allowed in. The grocery store people are still restocking. You can take bananas right out of the box, before they put them on the shelf.

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/tre…T4D5VZUVB5DDX2ELQXIYWBYU/

Trump takes hydroxychloroquine daily. Uhho boy! Whoopee! He's a buckaroo (as they say in Russia)!

https://www.foxnews.com/politi…xychloroquine-coronavirus

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Lou Pagnucco

Why would you believe poorly written lay reports of anecdotes from, of all places, Bangladesh? Really? These give you hope? A basis for actually treating people? WHY?!?!?!?!

A rather condescending, perfunctory brush off. "Poorly written"?

BTW, I do not "believe" anything - I just compile evidence and adjust probabilities accordingly.

AND, that university meets WHO's standards.

Is it naive to add this to a growing body of circumstantial evidence that Doxycycline +/- Ivermectin may work?

You are always free to refuse treatments, after all - both speculative and approved.

Also, you focused only on what you assume is a dubiousness of claim from Bangladesh physicians and overlooked the very interesting list of modes through which doxycycline could inhibit Covid in the preprint.

Addenda --

Some additional evidence in favor of HCQ --

"Treatment Response to Hydroxychloroquine, Lopinavir–Ritonavir, and Antibiotics for Moderate COVID-19:

A First Report on the Pharmacological Outcomes from South Korea"

Conclusion: This first report on pharmacological management of COVID-19 from South

Korea revealed that HQ with antibiotics was associated with better clinical outcomes in terms

of viral clearance, hospital stay, and cough symptom resolution compared to Lop/R with

antibiotics or conservative treatment. The effect of Lop/R with antibiotics was not superior to

conservative management. The adjunct use of the antibiotics may provide additional benefit in

COVID-19 management but warrants further evaluation.

https://www.medrxiv.org/conten…05.13.20094193v1.full.pdf

Possible concerns over the longevity of Covid antibody response --

"Human coronavirus reinfection dynamics: lessons for SARS-CoV-2"

Excerpt: "An alarmingly short duration of protective immunity to coronaviruses was found by both analyses. We saw frequent reinfections at 12 months post-infection and a substantial reduction in antibody levels as soon as 6 months post-infection."

https://www.medrxiv.org/conten…101/2020.05.11.20086439v1

Early results from Moderna coronavirus vaccine trial show participants developed antibodies against the virus

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/18…-early-results/index.html

well, FYI, My county so far has 8 cases and 1 death and has tested 1926 as of today. (0.4%)

and most of those are from Fed prison.

Oh I should add, that all the cases so far are female. (age 20-29) death female in her 50's

It is hard to think that there are massive number of unreported cases out there in this part of the US.

Quote from JedRothwell

Early results from Moderna coronavirus vaccine trial show participants developed antibodies against the virus

Only crazy people will head for a vaccination for an illness that can be handled with dirt cheap medication - in case you are able to find an independent doctor that not just treats you the FDA/CDC/WHO way = no real medical treatment - send patient home with good wishes, if he is not yet ICU ($$$) ready...

Vaccines need at least 2 years of extended tests until they can be "safely" deployed to a larger set of population.

If COV-19 would be as deadly as SARS/MERS then a speedup would justify the risk. But currently we see only a total mortality between 0.3 .. 0.7% with < 0.1% for people younger than 65. So, still some potential customers that can be "feared" to vaccination...

Quote from JedRothwell

Anyway, you can reduce the danger of produce that has been handled with the methods described in the video. Supposedly. You can also reduce the danger by going first thing in the morning, when the people at the grocery store have just restocked the shelves. If you are old or vulnerable, you go at 7 a.m. during reserved hours, when other customers are not allowed in. The grocery store people are still restocking. You can take bananas right out of the box, before they put them on the shelf.

Quote from JedRothwell

I have seen delivery service people working in the grocery stores. They pick up the same produce I do. It has been handled just as much. Perhaps you mean delivery people from a dedicated warehouse? I am not familiar with delivery services.

The issue is not with the products- it's with shopping and handling stuff in the store before it is decontaminated. And anything other people touch, handle, or cough on has to be decontaminated. When you shop on line and take delivery at your door step or inside the trunk of your car at curbside, you are not exposed to anything other than paper or plastic bags which you can carry to a presumably contaminated spot in your home or garage. Non-perishables can sit for a day or two to reduce any possible virus on them. Perishables can be wiped down and then dropped into a "clean" site on their way to the frig. Someone posted an excellent video by a long time family practitioner physician that explained all that in meticulous and accurate detail in about ten minutes. On Youtube.

And be especially cautious of frozen stuff like TV dinners. Frozen virus is preserved, not destroyed. Possibly preserved for months. The advice there is to consider your freezer contaminated. Remove items from it with gloves and then open the package and dump the contents onto a clean container or dish without touching them. And what about delivered meals? I nuke them on the microwave until they sizzle, and the container gets hot to touch. Then I take out the contents to eat or store. Sometimes it overcooks the food. Too bad. It overcooks the virus too.

The other issue in the store, senior hours or not, is people who are infected coming too close or coughing near or even on you. People are not reliable. Why be near the general public when you don't need to? Recently, a friend of mine was following all the directions from a store including one way aisles and social distancing and masks, when an unmasked and coughing individual went the wrong way down the aisle right near her. She retreated hastily and pointed out the man to a store person who said they could so nothing about it. So yeah. Stay the 'f out of stores.

Lou Pagnucco

The study you cited (thanks for the link) is first of all restrospective. Second it is tiny. Overall 97 patients of which 22 received hydroxychloroquine and antibiotics. Consider this compared to what the NIH is about to do in the US. A prospective study of 2000 patients comparing hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin to placebo controls in matched moderately ill patients. That is likely to provide a credible result. Small retrospective studies can not. And with respect to Bangladesh, all I have seen are news reports. Are there papers? Even preprints? So we can see methods?

From your link:

"Results: Ninety-seven moderate COVID-19 patients were managed with hydroxychloroquine

(HQ) plus antibiotics (n = 22), lopinavir-ritonavir (Lop/R) plus antibiotics (n = 35), or

conservative treatment (n = 40). Time to viral clearance, as signified by negative conversion

on PCR, after initiation of treatment was significantly shorter with HQ plus antibiotics

compared to Lop/R plus antibiotics (hazard ratio [HR], 0.49; 95% confidence interval [95%

CI], 0.28 to 0.87) or conservative treatments (HR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.25 to 0.78). Hospital stay

duration after treatment was also shortest for patients treated with HQ plus antibiotics

compared to other treatment groups. Subgroup analysis revealed that mean duration to viral

clearance was significantly reduced with adjunctive use of antibiotics compared to

monotherapy (HR 0.81, 95% CI, 0.70 to 0.93). While both HQ and Lop/R showed side effects

including nausea, vomiting, and elevation of liver transaminases, none were serious."

We probably need to

Quote from Wyttenbach

Only crazy people will head for a vaccination for an illness that can be handled with dirt cheap medication - in case you are able to find an independent doctor that not just treats you the FDA/CDC/WHO way = no real medical treatment - send patient home with good wishes, if he is not yet ICU ($$$) ready...

Vaccines need at least 2 years of extended tests until they can be "safely" deployed to a larger set of population.

If COV-19 would be as deadly as SARS/MERS then a speedup would justify the risk. But currently we see only a total mortality between 0.3 .. 0.7% with < 0.1% for people younger than 65. So, still some potential customers that can be "feared" to vaccination...

This is actually a good point. Sometimes a badly tested vaccine may be worse than the sickness. That's the case for the

swine flue vaccine we got in sweden at least the narrative here is like that I do not know the details. And now there

is a strong political push to develop a vaccine in record time, yes, some warning bells are ringing. If I'm 40 and suppose

to take this vaccine for us to reach herd immunity, is it rational to say hey yes, not so sure, I would rather then make really

sure that they really did a top notch job on the testing front and did not cut corners as usually is done when one optimize

tasks and take more risks of ruining the end result (this is a common problem). If I was 95 years old I would probably say

hell yes let's have it and do the rational thing. I think that we are really at risk doing things stupidly here and end up

promoting the anti vaccers which I would hate because then more children will dye in measles ... Anyway if

you still think an early vaccine is better, then should a child get the vaccine?

Quote from JedRothwell

Early results from Moderna coronavirus vaccine trial show participants developed antibodies against the virus

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/18…-early-results/index.html

Nice hype so they could raise $1.25b valuation at a 15-20% premium to Friday's close!

Anyway, we have the slide deck on how CDC Communications creates vaccine demand. They certainly do invest in the correct things - PROPOGANDA - not vaccine safety.

You can see they are stepping up their pathetic messaging on mainstream media - this segment is an embarrassment to lab coats around the world.

lenr-forum.com/attachment/12435/

lenr-forum.com/attachment/12436/

lenr-forum.com/attachment/12438/

Found out today that Medcram had five of their videos taken down by YouTube. Those videos (I think) had to do with possible treatments for Covid-19

The first thirty seconds of their latest video describes what happened:

A few years ago who would have foreseen this kind of thing happening, how times change.

Not only is there corporate abuses of power, sometimes even local police just can't help themselves but to take it out on the little guy doing no one any harm. In the name of the Emergency Measures Act. At a Tim Hortons Donut parking lot, on Canada's friendly east coast of all places! First 3:50 of the video one gets the picture.

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

― William Pitt the Younger

This is a reflection of why Sweden did what it did.

Background

1. Sweden vaccinated to quickly against the swine flue and this is considered as a mistake and therefore calculated that it would not gambling

on an early vaccine

2. The experience was that in Sweden it was not possible to follow the lead of Japan and South Korea. Initial there was tracking done but

it soon got out of hand. I'm sure that we could do better but maybe the strong privacy laws we have need to change. Actually what if the

deathrate was 10%, then you need to Korean style so I think that this need to change.

3. They realized that this is hitting the elderly the most

4. Low death rate among young people

5. Swedish ground laws do not allow for hard lockdowns

6. This is going to take a long time so it's better to get the population on board for the ride and

make sure not overdoing the restrictions so it can be sustainable just so that we do not run out

of capacity in the health care

7. No kids seam to be spreading the virus in china () no such case reports) and almost no cases of kids.

8. elderly people live by them self to a high degree.

So the strategy become, shield the elderly, stay home if sick even mildly, goverment implemented laws so that staying home was no cost

(before we the first and perhaps the second sick day was a loss). Use good hygiene, keep distance, work from home if you can. Elderly

people should not meet family but isolate themself. No crowds. Almost everything recomendations and no fines. Keep lower schools open

and the higher schools will be via internet in order to lower the pressure on the public transportation that is needed for the essential

workers.

I just recently heard that 3 out of 4 of the deaths in sweden is from nurseries, and that is a failure of the companies running the

elderly homes, the nurses did not get any protection wear and no testing was done and of cause as anything with an IQ greater

than a stone would realize you get a corona wild fire in the nurseries. But this is not a failure of the overall rules, but just bad

management in those companies. If you factor out the nurseries then you get the figures of Denmark, but if you want to calculate

the death rate of it then we have at least the same figures as in Norway. Will see the ifr is sketchy in Sweden right now, but with an

ifr of 0.5% we would have around 10% infected in Sweden, Norway has about 2.5% infected. The ICU units has lost 20% patients in a weak in

Sweden the death rates goes down, the cases still remain stable but that's because we are doing a lot more test right now. This comparison

needs to remove the nursiries deaths in denmark and norway as well, but it is known that they do not have the same problem and the elderly

care in Norway is top notch I believe.

OK more biochemistry which is easy to Google - doxycycline like other tetracyclines has been shown to have antiviral activity particularly against VSV (vesicular stomatitis virus) so far of completely unknown mechanism. They act as antibiotics against bacteria by binding to 30S ribosomes thereby blocking protein synthesis. Thus bacteriostatic. More research is needed to work out a possible virostatic action perhaps mediated by preventing viral mRNA transcription by host cell ribosomes, which are hijacked by new viral infection to synthesize new viral proteins. This could act synergistically with ivermectin to block production of viral cargo proteins which in turn block the nucleus sources of antiviral defence. Let's wait and see what the Bangladesh results show. Again a pity Gordon et al missed out on testing either against coronavirus. But they could do it now. Once sound biochemical evidence is found. Add it to Anti Bat anyway for now replacing azithromycin which has much worse cardiotoxicity and was more or less randomly selected by Raoult anyway to block secondary pneumococcal or streptococcal bacterial infection once the immune system has been weakened by coronavirus. Let's be optimistic that such synergy could then potentiate hydroxychloroquine shifting the dose response relation to the left ie to lower effective concentrations, lower doses.

I just spotted an antibody examination in a stockholm hospital that has been going on for four weeks mean lag time is hens two weeks. it takes 3 weeks for the antibodies to develop. but death rates lags as well say 2 weeks. 2 thirds of the fraction death in stockhol gives swedish death rate 2000 was dead two weaks ago that. the investigation found antibodies in 15% of the working population in stockholm or 10% in sweden so if all got it we would have about 20000 deaths. Now this is an underestimattion say that the infection rate for 60 yers old and higher is zero e g non working pop. then we need to increase with 25% so we end at an ifr of 0.25%. If 75% was due to deaths in nurseries and could be avoided by top notch nursing then ifr would be around 0.05% with the swedish approach. Also these ifr figures indicate that today sweden has an infection persentage of about 25% and stockholm slightly below 40%. It is believed that herd immunity kicks in at 40%. Also note kids are immune. I used that they are immune as the working pop which is an overestimation.

More of the politicization and demonization of HCQ. Two cardiologists' opinions --

Hydroxychloroquine: A Cardiologist's View

https://www.hospicepatients.or…re-md-usa-05-16-2020.html

and, from Dr. William O’Neill, a very prominent and well known cardiologist in Michigan --

(a repost, but definitely worth watching or reading. Probably would have been censored if placed on GoogleYoutube)

http://fullmeasure.news/news/cover-story/hydroxychloroquine

Quote from Lou Pagnucco

Two cardiologists' opinions -

Cardiologists have a more informed perspective of the QT effects of HCQ and CQ

than politicised journalists

I don't see many journalists complaining about the First Amendment when Youtube censors HCQ.

Updates for 10, 43.,, 57 60 ,71 available at Medcram.com

Update 57: Remdesivir Treatment Update and Can UV-C Disinfect Public Spaces?

https://www.medcram.com/course…c-disinfect-public-spaces

Was it taken down because it linked the jump in Gilead shares to overhyped Remdesivir results?

Update 60: Hydroxychloroquine Update; NYC Data; How Widespread is COVID-19?

HCQ?

https://www.medcram.com/course…ow-widespread-is-covid-19

Time mark 1.04 discusses the author's day in ICU..Roger Seheult MD..

Update 71: New Data on Adding Zinc to Hydroxychloroquine + Azithromycin

HCQ?

https://www.medcram.com/course…ychloroquine-azithromycin

When this virus is settled in six months time there is going to be some interesting forensics on the

interference of the media... supposedly the West has freedom of information.. as opposed to the Dragon..

For ifr nerds, checkout the Norwegian antibody study. I think they found 2-2.5% has antibodies and they have about 40-50 deaths per million

yields ifr 0.16%-0.25% close to the swedish figure I tried to caclulate above.