Covid-19 News

    • Official Post

    Great piece in the Guardian by George Monbiot. He writes polemics from 'left of centre' but this all makes a lot of sense.



    We are trapped in a long, dark tunnel, all of whose known exits are blocked. There is no plausible route out of the UK’s coronavirus crisis that does not involve mass suffering and death. If, as some newspapers and Conservative MPs insist, the government eases the lockdown while the pandemic is still raging, the eventual death toll could be several times greater than today’s. If it doesn’t, and we spend all the warm months of the year in confinement, the impact on our mental and physical health, jobs and relationships could be catastrophic.

    We have been told repeatedly that the UK was unprepared for this pandemic. This is untrue. The UK was prepared, but then it de-prepared. Last year, the Global Health Security Index ranked this nation second in the world for pandemic readiness, while the US was first. Broadly speaking, in both nations the necessary systems were in place. Our governments chose not to use them.

    The climate modeller James Annan has used his analytical methods to show what would have happened if the UK government had imposed its lockdown a week earlier. Starting it on 16 March, rather than 23 March, his modelling suggests, would by now have saved around 30,000 lives, reducing the rate of illness and death from coronavirus roughly by a factor of five.


    https://www.theguardian.com/co…19/uk-government-pandemic


    The high death rate in the UK has been a tragedy, and of our own making.


    What matters is the future - will we have good enough track and trace to get out of lock-down properly. The jury is still out on that one. We seem to be continuing a slightly exceptionalist stance (e.g. with a centralised app, centralised track and trace) but I'm hoping our systems can be made to work.


    The real issue, and this will shed new light on left-right politics, is how does the world get out of extreme indebtedness? Very low inflation, low interest rates, fiscal austerity are not going to do it for us. Medium inflation, more borrowing, higher taxes, lots of social infrastructure and transformation (CO2 reduction stuff, also transport shift towards more active lifestyles, massive spending on preventative health measures for all) spending might. Without that social spending the danger is of an extreme left-wing or extreme right-wing revolt in democracies. The generation so thoroughly disadvantaged by policies of the last 20 years will at some point become political.

    HCQ: the evidence so far.


    Latest meta-analysis


    As this points out - it is difficult to conclude much at the moment - the data is too heterogeneous and poor quality.


    This study is useful as a review of all previous (up to May 13th) studies.


    In addition: given this large amount of data, and the lack of a clear signal, how can anyone question the current medical view which is: "HCQ - efficacy against COVID unproven - beware heart complications"?


    I'm just interested, if people here are still very positive about HCQ, why is this?


    Saying - there is no good evidence and potential dangers is not the same as saying "it is not a helpful therapy". It is just: unproven. The medical reaction to such things is don't do them except as part of controlled trials.

    • Official Post
    Quote from THHuxleynew

    The real issue, and this will shed new light on left-right politics, is how does the world get out of extreme indebtedness? Very low inflation, low interest rates, fiscal austerity are not going to do it for us. Medium inflation, more borrowing, higher taxes, lots of social infrastructure and transformation (CO2 reduction stuff, also transport shift towards more active lifestyles, massive spending on preventative health measures for all) spending might. Without that social spending the danger is of an extreme left-wing or extreme right-wing revolt in democracies. The generation so thoroughly disadvantaged by policies of the last 20 years will at some point become political.


    I think there is only one way out of this, that is for the government to forgive its own debts. After all, it's no so long ago we finished paying off our WW2 debts. He who owns the mint can never go broke.

    Here is new evidence on HCQ and HCQ+AZT treatment based on observational study using a large cohort with homogeneous data and matching propensity scores very carefully. This is about as good as it gets in terms of making systematic sense of that large US experience of using HCT and HCT + AZT.


    https://www.medrxiv.org/conten….20099028v1.full.pdf+html


    Large difference in lab results for the different treatments, but no difference in mortality.


    They find no differential cardiac risks - not surprising given the hospital setting and filtering of those who get HCQ.


    These are high quality results (unlike the vets study).


    My reservations: cohort matching mean age is not the point unless age distributions are the same, because mortality vs age is very non-linear. But, the comorbidities, maybe even more important, look quite well matched. If you combine all the comorbidities however it looks as though the treatment group scores higher comorbidity than the control group? I've only included the more common ones - the table summarising matching in the paper is very long. So perhaps the neutral result here is not quite fair, and a more careful analysis of this data would indicate a small positive effect for HCQ? We would need to look more carefully at what is their propensity score. There is obvious room here to get the result you want - to some extent - but not to push things too far in any direction, especially because they have done some sensitivity analysis checking results against some simpler propensity scores, with no difference.



    Cohort Matching





    THH,

    I normally agree with much of your thoughts on LENR testing and do not think you are overly biased against LENR, but a stickler for detail and procedure.

    Yet, your bias shows through on this subject. Please note:


    (1) HCQ obviously is political in the US. Became so ever since a certain politician made unwise and incorrect claims about its efficacy


    Indeed, this has been political. Yet please show me per your statement where Trump HIMSELF ever made unwise and incorrect claims. I have seen his interviews where he said it was interesting, showed promise, could be a game changer. These are all statements various MEDICAL and other sources have said as well.

    The media (and statements such as yours) are putting words in his mouth. (Not that he needs any help with that!) It is the MEDIA making this a big deal, not Trump. Yet you blame HIM and not the MEDIA. Again, show me proof otherrwise.


    SOT said that Trump should shut up about HCQ. Well, I challenge people here to show actual quotes or interviews where he has politically pushed this and pushed it in quantity. The MEDIA went crazy when they found out he was taking HCQ and broadcast it.... not Trump. How come we are not demonizing the MEDIA for their "incorrect", "unwise" and political reporting? Such as saying Trump said to drink bleach..... a complete fabrication and intentional political ploy.


    Again, it is true that Trump often makes disparaging statements and personal attacks against persons he does not agree with. Something many simply cannot stand as they think a president should be a "nice guy". While I do not agree with a lot of his verbal approach, being a "nice" guy is not part of the qualifications for a president. However, when coming to technical issues such as HCQ, I have seen nothing but "appears", "could be", etc. from him and that he does not say it over and over and over again. The MEDIA on the other hand, vomit it out every 5 minutes!


    So I challenge those here to report accurately as they sit on high horses about data, real science and "the truth".




    "Money buys elections. Look at Trump. If you want a "money rules the system" script, "


    Well, money does have power, no doubt. But it does not "rule the system". Again, you are straying from your creed of accuracy and non-bias.


    B. Sanders is a millionaire as is almost all candidates. He did not make it. But especially look at Bloomberg, net worth of possibly $53 BILLION! He reportedly spent 1/2 a BILLION dollars on his campaign and could not win squat. No one came close to spending (or having) as much money as he and he could not even break into the top 3 candidates. So I can take your statement and modify it... "Money does NOT buy elections. Look at BLOOMBERG. If you want PROOF that money does NOT rule the system".


    Do you think Republicans are the only "rich" politicians, therefore corrupt and not to be trusted? Who do you think the richest politician in the US is? Not Trump

    It is Governor JB Pritzker at about $3.5 Billion in net worth. A liberal democrat. Trump is listed at $2.1 billion by some estimates.


    So I feel that you often present yourself as not being political...not biased.... that you stick with data and the facts... yet it simply is clear that you do not always. You clearly are biased and political. I am not saying this is wrong or bad, but simply that you are being a bit hypocritical. (Same as others here on both sides, including myself at times.)


    I simply encourage people to quit twisting or spinning things when they really know better. (Again, including myself)

    Quote from Alan Smith

    I think there is only one way out of this, that is for the government to forgive its own debts. After all, it's no so long ago we finished paying off our WW2 debts. He who owns the mint can never go broke.


    I would disagree with this....


    Much government debt is via bonds sold to private individuals. So we should just stiff them?


    Much debt is actually "transferred" from other accounts. Such as the US's Social Security fund has been "borrowed" from to fund other debt. If the government simply erases that then again, private citizens who paid their entire working life into that fund, will be robbed.


    Much debt is owned by other governments. The US has a huge monetary debt to China. Simply defaulting on that would have severe economic consequences.


    and no.... "who owns the mint can never go broke" is absolutely proven incorrect. Venezuela and other countries have attempted to "print money" out of debt. This simply causes hyper-inflation that makes the money less valuable than the paper it is printed on! If this concept was true, every country in the world would be printing as much money as they could. However, we know this does not work at all.


    My opinion, like any business, governments have to stop spending more than they take in..... period. Not easy..... and you certainly will make people unhappy.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    Here is new evidence on HCQ and HCQ+AZT treatment based on observational study using a large cohort with homogeneous data and matching propensity scores very carefully. This is about as good as it gets in terms of making systematic sense of that large US experience of using HCT and HCT + AZT.


    https://www.medrxiv.org/conten….20099028v1.full.pdf+html



    Once more THH references an old study discussed many times. The folks do say nothing about the single crucial factor:


    How many days after first symptoms did the patients get the medication ?? HCQ works best as we we said 100x times now latest after 48 hours of first symptoms. We know since more than a month that after day 7 already a small percentage is "underground" ...Very old people can die even faster after e.g. only 3 days.


    Anyway THH is also citing meta studies about HCQ, what tells all you need to know about his intentions!

    • Official Post

    https://spectator.us/stanford-…s-coronavirus-deadly-flu/


    Prof. Ioannidis strikes again with a new study of the more recent serological studies from around the world. Lots of good info in the report. Here is a a summation from the article, that includes a link to the report:


    "In the past few weeks, a slew of serological studies estimating the prevalence of infection in the general population has become available. This has allowed Prof John Ioannidis of Stanford University to work out the IFR in 12 different locations.They range between 0.02 percent and 0.5 percent — although Ioannidis has corrected those raw figures to take account of demographic balance and come up with estimates between 0.02 percent and 0.4 percent. The lowest estimates came from Kobe, Japan, found to have an IFR of 0.02 percent and Oise in northern France, with an IFR of 0.04 percent. The highest were in Geneva (a raw figure of 0.5 percent) and Gangelt in Germany (0.28 percent)."

    Quote from Alan Smith

    Starting it on 16 March, rather than 23 March, his modelling suggests, would by now have saved around 30,000 lives, reducing the rate of illness and death from coronavirus roughly by a factor of five.


    That seems hard to believe, doesn't it? That is how a biological exponential increase works. It seems like nothing is happening, and then a week later you are suddenly overwhelmed. You see things like that in algae blooms. We are not used to exponential increases so we have difficulty envisioning them or even recognizing them when they are happening.


    That outcome is why the Japanese epidemiologists said they were "terrified" in the first weeks of April when daily new infections began increasing exponentially. The numbers only went up to 701 cases at the peak, on April 11, but it was the trend that was terrifying, not the absolute numbers. It was slope of the curve. The epidemiologists found it difficult to explain to the national leaders that this was a grave threat. P.M. Abe chickened out at first, and left it up to the governor of Tokyo to take action. She did. Fortunately, Abe finally declared a national emergency a week or so later. The epidemiologists pointed to the examples of Italy and the U.S., and said this is what will happen if you do nothing in the face of an exponential increase. They said that on NHK prime time national news, so the message got through to the public as well as the politicians. That did not happen in Washington. No one high in the administration said, "we will be where Italy is in two weeks," as far as I recall. Some experts outside the Federal establishment said that.


    I guess you could say the Japanese experts were fortunate to have our example to learn from. "Fortunate" is a strange choice of words . . . They could point to the tragedy in the U.S. and Europe to persuade Abe to avoid a similar catastrophe in Japan. They almost failed to do that. It was close. They might still fail weeks or months from now, but I doubt it. The daily new cases are down to ~30, with no sign of exponential increase. I think they can handle that. M. Osterholm and some other U.S. epidemiologists keep saying: "They are not out of woods yet in Japan and China. They might still fail. They still have not proved that case tracking works." When things started to go out of control in Japan in April, some of them said, "see, case tracking doesn't work after all." It is almost as if they resent being shown wrong. Like sour grapes, because the Japanese did not slip into a catastrophe, the way they predicted.


    https://covid19japan.com/

    Quote from Bob#2

    My opinion, like any business, governments have to stop spending more than they take in..... period.


    After 1600 or so, no successful government in history has done that, as far as I know. No major corporation has done that either. They always spend more than they take in. Any company that does not go into debt will soon go bankrupt. That is the iron law of commerce.


    It does not look that way. Companies issue stock and sell bonds. A bond is essentially borrowed money. In the old days you could see this happening right outside your door. The phone company issued stock or sells bonds, and used the money to buy a bunch of telephone poles. It would erect them, string wires, and THEN after all that work and expense, it would start to make money from phone calls. There would be no revenue without poles, and no poles without debt. No company ever makes enough to sustain expansion without borrowing. Not even IBM did in their heyday when they bet the company on developing the IBM 360 computer, in 1964. That cost more than the Manhattan Project. They could not have done it without debt, and if they had failed, they would have gone bankrupt.


    Nowadays you do not see the physical results of corporate debt as much, when they develop new software. Although in my neighborhood, trucks and excavators disrupted things for months when Google put in their Google fiber network. I do not know if they are making a profit from it. I could see it was costing a fortune. Even Google does not make enough current income to support such a massive undertaking.


    The trick is to borrow money, spend it wisely on ventures that will make a profit, and then make a profit that you use to retire old debt while you incur new debt. The U.S. government did this many times, for example when it loaned money to build the Transcontinental Railroad; when it paid for the WWII GI bill, educating a generation; and when it paid for the development of semiconductors, integrated circuits, and the internet. Those were arguably the most successful investments in history. Uncle Sam made a killing on them. Uncle has never operated without borrowing. Here is what governments and corporations should NOT do: Borrow a bunch of money and then hand it over to wealthy people. That is more or less the tax policy of the Trump administration. The idea is that wealthy people invest the money and the profits will trickle down to the rest of us. That doesn't happen.

    Quote from JedRothwell

    It does not look that way. Companies issue stock and sell bonds. A bond is essentially borrowed money.


    Successful companies also have a "line of credit" in a bank. That is to say, they owe money. The banking industry would not exist if everyone agreed with Bob#2's rule that, "like any business, governments have to stop spending more than they take in..... period."


    "Period" in this case would be the sudden collapse of every local and national economy, as happened in the Great Depression, the 2008 recession, and the present coronavirus collapse. Money is a resource, like cardboard or electricity. When companies stop consuming money, or cardboard, or electricity, the economy collapses. You debt is my profit, and vice versa.


    There are a few extremely profitable companies that do not need to borrow money to expand. Such high profits seldom last long, because they attract competition. More often, the most successful companies are those like Amazon, which looked like giant black hole of debt, when I last checked. They appear to be selling goods at a loss, which is taking things too far.

    Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine! According to the Independent today! How I must respect him for being man of his own convictions, I just hope he has ECG and doxycycline on hand, a small dose ivermectin too and the Rest of Anti Bat. Team Google if you can get a message to him by monitoring our stuff, let him know he needs 200 mg zinc sulphate too. Doxycycline is safer than azithromycin, possibly be knows it if he has taken advice from Zelenko. If it's good enough

    for our Leader of the Free World and after all he is of Scottish ancestry, McDonald clan maybe? Well brother clansman I wish you well because I come from the McIntyre clan! If it's good enough for the president then it should be mass prescribed worldwide in what I have said before as Mass Fever Treatment. Then we can all go back to work. Any doubters look at the biochemistry it works, use your common sense, stop thinking about the politics or your obsession with making money. He is a billionaire, why should be be interested in making a few pennies from having shares in a HCQ drug company.? He just wants to protect his family

    America and the Rest of the World. And I am saying this as a socialist, I have always voted Labour. Now we are getting somewhere!:)

    Quote from Wyttenbach

    Once more THH references an old study discussed many times. The folks do say nothing about the single crucial factor:


    How many days after first symptoms did the patients get the medication ?? HCQ works best as we we said 100x times now latest after 48 hours of first symptoms. We know since more than a month that after day 7 already a small percentage is "underground" ...Very old people can die even faster after e.g. only 3 days.


    Anyway THH is also citing meta studies about HCQ, what tells all you need to know about his intentions!


    You're being nice. Go read the actual study, at first brush (I spent 120 seconds) looks like a great fake news study. The people could have had a positive covid test and being dying of cancer. It's data from an EMR.


    Bob - obviously we cannot renege on debts. But printing money is quite possible. You are right - those Nations who have done this unreasonably have caused hyper-inflation. No-one sees that as desirable. But, in the last 10 years, inflation has consistently undershot central bank targets. To the extent that money (and debt) now is worth some 10% more than it would be had those targets been met.


    Setting inflation targets at a sensible level and sticking to them is the way to manage large debts. That exponential, over several decades, dominates. Exactly what is a sensible level is surely a trade-off, and it would not be stupid say for that to go up from 2% to 3% to speed up debt forgiveness.


    Indeed, this has been political. Yet please show me per your statement where Trump HIMSELF ever made unwise and incorrect claims. I have seen his interviews where he said it was interesting, showed promise, could be a game changer. These are all statements various MEDICAL and other sources have said as well.

    The media (and statements such as yours) are putting words in his mouth. (Not that he needs any help with that!) It is the MEDIA making this a big deal, not Trump. Yet you blame HIM and not the MEDIA. Again, show me proof otherrwise.


    SOT said that Trump should shut up about HCQ. Well, I challenge people here to show actual quotes or interviews where he has politically pushed this and pushed it in quantity. The MEDIA went crazy when they found out he was taking HCQ and broadcast it.... not Trump. How come we are not demonizing the MEDIA for their "incorrect", "unwise" and political reporting? Such as saying Trump said to drink bleach..... a complete fabrication and intentional political ploy.


    Ok, so mea culpa, you are right that Trump's original remarks were roughly in line (though expressed less cautiously) with what we were hoping at that time. But we are not making policy for countries, nor setting expectations for people. In that case caution is advisable. For example, Trump's recent comments abut the safety of HCQ (not true) may well lead many people to take it without the necessary checks - which Trump himself no doubt gets, every day. And Trump, unlike us, appears not to revise his expectations based on evidence.

    Context: discussion of this retrospective cohort-matching study.



    Quote from Navid

    You're being nice. Go read the actual study, at first brush (I spent 120 seconds) looks like a great fake news study. The people could have had a positive covid test and being dying of cancer. It's data from an EMR.


    Quote from Wyttenbach

    Once more THH references an old study discussed many times. The folks do say nothing about the single crucial factor:


    How many days after first symptoms did the patients get the medication ?? HCQ works best as we we said 100x times now latest after 48 hours of first symptoms. We know since more than a month that after day 7 already a small percentage is "underground" ...Very old people can die even faster after e.g. only 3 days.


    Anyway THH is also citing meta studies about HCQ, what tells all you need to know about his intentions!


    OK - I'd like Navid and W here to justify their statements - they seem very uninformed to me - and wrong in may key aspects of what they say. In fact I'd like both to apologise. Just as I did above to Bob.


    (N fail) from the study "All hospitalized adult patients (> 18 years) diagnosed with COVID-19 between January 20, 2020, and May 1, 2020, were identified using COVID19 specific diagnosis and laboratory findings following the WHO and CDC COVID-19 guidelines (N=3618)".


    (N fail) "120s reading and it looks like fake news". No evidence, no serious reading. It looks like an academic study. Now, one of these might indeed be fake news but you would need to spend more than 120s to determine that.


    (W fail) This study is not old. It had a data collection cutoff of May 13, published May 18.


    (W fail) It is not a meta-study. It is an observational study looking back at recent hospital records. Now, in absence of RCT the best evidence we have comes from clinical practice. The best way to get signal, short of an RCT, is to take a large cohort of patients and match them very carefully for propensity on baseline (admission) measurements by selecting suitable subsets. If I were a clinician in the US wanting quickly to get evidence for HCQ this is exactly what I would do.


    (W fail) My intentions here, notwithstanding acknowledged political views (I think Trump's presidency is disastrous for the world and hope it stops soon) are to find the best possible evidence about HCQ. It is a powerful drug that might help. It would be great if it did. It is well tolerated, in hospital setting there are no problems from its widespread use. But it is not clear whether it helps or hinders COVID patients. Unlike many, who jump on every bit of evidence, i can't say (and if you read what i wrote did not say) that HCQ is known ineffective. I guess if the hypothesis is that HCQ is a prophylactic I don't think there is any ethical evidence to determine that - patients need proper monitoring to be given HCQ long-term as you all know. Difficult to do that except for those in hospital. Equally, I've seen no evidence for HCQ as a prophylactic. The ecological studies (essentially Dr. R's argument) have so many confounding variables it is quite impossible to draw any conclusions from them. It might work as anti-viral within 48 hours of symptoms. But what is the evidence for this please? Timescale for that is quite tight since people need to be ECG tested.


    Continual transparently wrong arguments about science do the reputation of this thread no good.


    THH

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