Covid-19 News

I regret to report that Georgia now has the highest 7-day rolling average number of both cases and deaths since the epidemic began. Both are higher than when the Shelter in place order ended. Not dramatically higher, but I think the increase is significant. See:

https://www.ajc.com/news/coron…d/jvoLBozRtBSVSNQDDAuZxH/

Quote from Alan Smith

Well, the UK lock-down is fragmenting now- Malls open, but not restaurants or pubs. It will be no surprise if we get another rise in infections.

Yes, restaurants and pubs - you have to take your mask off to eat and drink but not to shop for new shoes.

Quote from Alan Smith

Well, the UK lock-down is fragmenting now- Malls open, but not restaurants or pubs. It will be no surprise if we get another rise in infections.

The actual community infection decrease has been about 40% over 2 weeks. Difficult to find that - you need the ONS sample testing figures, or the deaths (but those are delayed a lot).

I think we all worry about opening up before we have fit for purpose track and trace. There is also a lot of political tension between economy vs safety (as on this thread). And, as on this thread the argument that opening up too soon will require lockdown in the future and therefore be bad for the economy.

I think what will happen is we open up, some places will be fine, some places will peak again. Those that do will be locally locked down. Not too bad a system if we can get the info on where they are fast enough and respond to it quickly.

Also, even though we are opening up, 2m rule, masks, + spraying disinfectant everywhere is not what it used to be, and pretty good at reducing infection. I'd worry more about (illegal) gatherings of lots of people socially and informally. To get people out and shopping you have to reduce the fear, and that then makes it more likely people do unwise things in the quiet of their own homes inviting friends round and having parties.

Maybe we are all more worried than should be because we have so much evidence of incompetence from the government. I don't mean making the wrong decisions - I mean being no good at making any decisions at all.

THH

U. of British Columbia - Cheap tetracyclines are anti-COVID-19

Therapeutic Potential for Tetracyclines in the Treatment of COVID-19

https://accpjournals.onlinelib…oi/full/10.1002/phar.2395

"The lipophilic nature and high tissue penetration in the lungs of the tetracyclines might allow them to inhibit viral replication in the lungs and, along with their antiinflammatory activity, play an important role as therapeutic agents in the treatment of COVID‐19. ... We believe tetracyclines can be potential therapeutic agents for COVID‐19 that is hiding in plain sight...."

(Also interesting is the claim in the above paper - "...zinc‐chelating properties of tetracyclines may also aid in inhibiting COVID‐19 infection in humans, limiting their ability to replicate..." - is also corroborated that tetracyclines are not just chelators, but also zinc ionophores that escort zinc through cell membranes in the following paper --- "Doxycycline as Potential Anti-Cancer Agent" -

https://www.researchgate.net/p…tential_Anti-Cancer_Agent)

A perspective on Gilead's remdesivir --

Covid-19 and remdesivir: rethinking how we measure a drug’s ‘value’

https://www.statnews.com/2020/…nking-measure-drug-value/

Quote from RobertBryant

n Japan PM Abe appears to be frustrated with the progess of Avigan

The problem with Avigan is the lack of patients. to trial the drug on..

earliest date for trial completion is now the end of August

whereas Russia pushed through trials much faster..

"don't want to politicise" .. start date was June 11 in Russian hospitals..

Quote from Shane D.

https://forecasters.org/blog/2…-for-covid-19-has-failed/

New report out by Ionnadis and team; ...

It's actually one paper out of two ... position papers for an online debate.

The set-up :

https://forecasters.org/blog/2…id-19-ioannidis-vs-taleb/

After discussion with my colleague Spyros Makridakis, we realized that organizing a scientific debate between John P. Ioannidis and Nassim N. Taleb would be of great value to the scientific community and to the broad audience. We therefore agreed with them that they would simultaneously prepare two blog posts expressing their views, to be posted at the same time. Starting from the question of whether forecasting for Covid-19 failed, they both unveiled their position.

and the other paper :
https://forecasters.org/blog/2…for-fat-tailed-variables/

Quote from Shane D.

https://forecasters.org/blog/2…-for-covid-19-has-failed/

New report out by Ionnadis and team; this time to critique the performance of his colleagues...Epidemiologist modelers. Very hard hitting commentary...probably to get even with those same colleagues who have made him a pariah for bucking their early pandemic, "sky-is-falling" narrative. After that, he settles down, and gets to the "what was said/what happened", and then on to how the various models, and modelers, erred. Then he suggests how not to make the same mistakes in the future.

He concludes with this, which I thought was very well said:

"Let’s be clear: even if millions of deaths did not happen this season, they may happen in the next wave, next season, or with some new virus in the future. A doomsday forecast may come handy to protect civilization, when and if calamity hits. However, even then, we have little evidence that aggressive measures which focus only on few dimensions of impact actually reduce death toll and do more good than harm. We need models which incorporate multicriteria objective functions. Isolating infectious impact, from all other health, economy and social impacts is dangerously narrow-minded. More importantly, with epidemics becoming easier to detect, opportunities for declaring global emergencies will escalate. Erroneous models can become powerful, recurrent disruptors of life on this planet. Civilization is threatened from epidemic incidentaloma"

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Lonnadis, is one of the good ones but he doesn't understand the game he is in. The truth is many people are bought and paid for, there are epidemiologists who produce the models that fit the circumstance we wanted. Imperial College just needs a stupid 5.6% case fatality rate, and then politicians/govt insiders at all levels, special forces, WHO, CDC, pharma turned the crank to get us where they want us.

The world-makers don't care about the models they can always hire "their man". This guy is pretty honest - go to timepoint 2800 and you will see that "they consider the public a flock of sheep and you use border collies to drive them where you want them."

Part of the issue is that these tactics have been going on internationally for decades and the local western population can't seem to understand they are now having the screws turned on them.

Quote from Navid

Lonnadis, is one of the good ones but he doesn't understand the game he is in. The truth is many people are bought and paid for, there are epidemiologists who produce the models that fit the circumstance we wanted. Imperial College just needs a stupid 5.6% case fatality rate, and then politicians/govt insiders at all levels, special forces, WHO, CDC, pharma turned the crank to get us where they want us.

The truth is that you have given us nothing but unsubstantiated lies, slurs, and conspiracies e.g. many people are bought and paid for. I reckon usually when people argue like that it is because they attribute to their targets the same human venal principles they have. (I don't by this men to attack your integrity - but suspect many of the eccentric online sources you seem to believe).

• politicians - want to win power. Some (most in the UK, but not alas our beloved PM) genuinely want to do good as primary motivation, and want power mainly for that reason - though the ones who are good at it must also like power. The way politics works in 2 party countries a lot of politicians (again, not our PM) are motivated by tribal loyalty to their party, which is all mixed up with an idealistic and inevitably prejudiced view that it will be better for the country than "the other side".
• scientists however are genuinely motivated by inquiry, they tend to want to get to the truth and say it as it is. They don't all do this, and they make as many mistakes as anyone else. But they are much more likely to be on the side of the truth than others.

You can be cynical about any profession and find bad apples to justify that. Science is not something you'd do to make lots of money or get famous, so you can see why it needs other motivations. Just, for example, as teaching or nursing needs other motivations because so poorly rewarded. Those motives exist, and in professions that need them they predominate.

Quote from THHuxleynew

The truth is that you have given us nothing but unsubstantiated lies, slurs, and conspiracies e.g. many people are bought and paid for. I

The same holds for you! Re-posting XXXX and here, regarding science, I say opinions are lies too if no proof is given like for your famous topic about virus origin.

We did post hard evidence that Gillead has paid 20+ people (names!) inside CDC/WHO to make big profits with their almost crap Rems... Do not tell us that politics is just the government. The government did select these 20 + people. All western government are corrupt as their first action always is to pay back their election supporters. In Germany the car mafia multiple times tried to destroy the railway by several methods. The same happened in UK where fat old Maggi handed over the railways for private (financial) rape. We see the same in Italy with Autostrada that is filling just the big pocked of one Italian Family triad.

I could write down more than 1000 lines e.g. some about the most corrupt actions in history of British politics regarding Hinkely Point but lets stop here.

Some people here still know what is going on, because these people are healthy enough and do have a clear brain. And most important are not bound by an eternal oath that forces them to listen to the grand masters voice...

CoV-19 facts: Most people are immune due to former corona infections. Corona antibodies last up to 17 years. Good news for anti vaxers. Just get a classic corona and avoid a lung inflammation...

So most people will not need a vaccination --> less business.

But you will have to wait until the world wide mafia press will spread this information. The same for the live saving "to cheap" Heparin/Ivermectin combo.

All this information has been linked here the last few days....

Edited out insult. Shane

What a dangerous, dark, cold and hostile world out there ... all and everything corrupt, dominated by any kind of mafia, only criminal scientists and physicists who don‘t have a clue on the breathtaking new SO(4) theory...and full of virus experts without clear brains who don’t see the writing on the wall, that this coronavirus is man-made...
Is there a place to hide or to escape to?

Here the sun is bright and shining. I have learnt to live with reality but other people don't like it or to hear about it and thus live in a dream world.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0…ne-coronavirus-covid.html

An inexpensive drug reduces virus deaths, scientists say.

Scientists at the University of Oxford said on Tuesday that they have identified what they called the first drug proven to reduce coronavirus-related deaths, after a 6,000-patient trial of the drug in Britain showed that a low-cost steroid could reduce deaths significantly for hospitalized patients.

The steroid, dexamethasone, reduced deaths by a third in patients receiving ventilation, and by a fifth in patients receiving only oxygen treatment, the scientists said. They found no benefit from the drug in patients who did not need respiratory support.

Matt Hancock, Britain’s health secretary, said National Health Service doctors would begin treating patients with the drug on Tuesday afternoon.

The government started stockpiling dexamethasone several months ago because it was hopeful about the potential of the drug, Mr. Hancock said, and now has 200,000 doses on hand. . . .

Dexamethasone

Quote from Shane D.

Quoting author of "Forecasting for COVID-19 has failed"

However, even then, we have little evidence that aggressive measures which focus only on few dimensions of impact actually reduce death toll and do more good than harm

Perhaps they mean focussing on testing alone without follow-up tracking and quarantine is useless. If so, I agree. Perhaps they mean lockdowns without preparation for re-opening with case tracking in place is useless. Again, I agree wholeheartedly. You have to have multiple, co-ordinated strategies to control the epidemic. That is what has been demonstrated in China, Korea, Japan, New Zealand, Greece and now in Massachusetts and New York. The numbers prove the strategies work. Done right, and done quickly, they obviate the need for a shutdown, which is a tremendous help for the economy.

If they mean the lockdown was useless or the epidemic never threatened to go out of control and kill millions of people in the U.S. and other first world countries, that is completely wrong. There is no doubt it would have done that. It was on the verge of doing that in Italy, and New York City. The article quotes Cuomo:

“But the number of intensive care beds being used declined for the first time in the crisis, to 4,908, according to daily figures released on Friday. And the total number hospitalized with the virus, 18,569, was far lower than the darkest expectations.” 4/10/2020

“Here’s my projection model. Here’s my projection model. They were all wrong. They were all wrong.” Governor Andrew Cuomo 5/25/2020

They were all wrong because the steps taken to prevent them worked. In places like Brazil and Saudi Arabia, such steps have not been taken, or they are late, and the worst fears are materializing. Again, this is like saying: "A fire broke out, the Fire Department came and put it out, and the house did not burn down after all, so it was a mistake to call the Fire Department. We didn't need them. The house did not burn to the ground." This makes no sense!

Quote from JedRothwell

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0…ne-coronavirus-covid.html

An inexpensive drug reduces virus deaths, scientists say.

Scientists at the University of Oxford said on Tuesday that they have identified what they called the first drug proven to reduce coronavirus-related deaths, after a 6,000-patient trial of the drug in Britain showed that a low-cost steroid could reduce deaths significantly for hospitalized patients.

The steroid, dexamethasone, reduced deaths by a third in patients receiving ventilation, and by a fifth in patients receiving only oxygen treatment, the scientists said. They found no benefit from the drug in patients who did not need respiratory support.

Matt Hancock, Britain’s health secretary, said National Health Service doctors would begin treating patients with the drug on Tuesday afternoon.

The government started stockpiling dexamethasone several months ago because it was hopeful about the potential of the drug, Mr. Hancock said, and now has 200,000 doses on hand. . . .

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Given that a lot of the people who die from COVID do so from ventilators, and now 1/3 of those will no longer die, this is very good news.

The other "boring" treatment that looks to offer promise for severely ill patients is blood thinners:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/…-patients-gaining-ground/

But unlike the RECOVERY trial that is not randomised and so data very suspect. Still we know blood clots caused by COVID cause probelms, so it would be expected that blood thinners helped.

THH

Quote from JedRothwell

If they mean the lockdown was useless or the epidemic never threatened to go out of control and kill millions of people in the U.S. and other first world countries, that is completely wrong. There is no doubt it would have done that. It was on the verge of doing that in Italy, and New York City. The article quotes Cuomo:

The Cov-19 world raid will be remembered as one of the most strange pandemics we ever encountered. I would and never will blame anybody for ordering a lock-down only for doing different things to late. I posted here that the US should stop all air traffic and close down the interstates for private people more than 4 week before it happened under pressure.

The world is missing clear thinking people because in politics we elect only the conform ones that have a very narrow bandwidth of actions and always first must ask their "friends".

But the world wide scenarios are very different due to the now known facts that people in contact with classic corona are more or less immune. Without this western civilization would be broken now! Here we had no deaths age <30 and 25% of the old ones tested positive died. This pretty much reminds us of the SARS/MERS picture with 10/30% deaths.

All Cov-19 hot-spots we see so far seem to be related to human conditions of living. That is pollution, sanitary situation, how close people physically do stay, access to medical treatment an social support in case of lost labor.

Under all these aspects countries like Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark,Norway were good place to live and it will be interesting to see whether this will pay back economically over the next few years.

What we also did learn is that the medical system urgently needs a revision. Randomize double blind studies the gold stamp for generating money has no real value to solve urgent medication problems. It's also questionable under normal conditions as the long term tracking is not included. But in a pandemic only a fast reaction can save lives and the classic method of % of survival/success among different groups should be enough especially if we here talk about known drugs! Of course big pharma will not like this as randomized double blind studies are the prime defense wall to hold newcomers out of the business (due to time,costs).

What will we learn, read out of this mess?? May be that we all live in a mess since quite some time.