Covid-19 News

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    Look at it this way. You are in a war zone, country you don't know, trying to get out alive.


    You have a guide who is also trying to get out alive, and anyway is not an evil person. He knows a bit more than you do about the terrain, where the fighters are likely to be, etc. He gets info via radio so as time goes on his understanding of where you are and local topography gets better. But he may change his mind about the best route.


    What do you do? Reckon because he is an old fox you should do the opposite of what he says?


    The spin-doctoring continues.


    Fauci

    - Funds a lab to do gain of function research against the suggestion by hundreds of scientists this is not a good idea

    - Moves research to Wuhan, somehow Wuhan has virus leak

    - Jan 14th begins vaccine development for Covid, but months later is saying "nothing to worry about"

    - Never speaks about public health initiatives to improve care (how to make yourself healthy - Vitamin D!)

    - Under his watch (or lack of it) many deaths in nursing homes

    - Won't speak about hydroxycholorquine (despite his own group publishing a paper in 2005 that chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS) or ivermectin, but glows like a light bulb for Remedesivir because it can make money for pharma friends


    I feel sorry for the board members who fall into your blackhole of logic, where anything can be spun in any way. But he looks like the definition of evil. Who, pretell is evil in the elite? (no spin-doctoring, just write us a list)


    • Official Post

    And what is that analysis?


    :)


    Well, if they did not have it analyzed and peer reviewed like they say, it will be another scandal on the order of the Lancet HCQ study. This is a very large health care system, representing many hospitals though. No doubt, they have robust checks and balances to prevent their lead researcher making public statements he can not back up. Especially after this HCQ thing has been so politicized in the US.


    I will go out on a limb and say that they just can't be that stupid, and trust it is a good study based on their word. Hopefully soon, you will have the data to rummage through.

  • Germany is an interesting outlier with 100 deaths / million. I found this research paper and it looks like the nurseries is not included in the statistics. Is that true? Always wondered what's so special with Germany and their low death rates although being similar to other countries in western Europe (having a lot of travel, dens areas) Maybe the main thing is they early impose masks recommendations and also made sure there was a good supply of them. Anyway if they did not include nurseries and had the fraction of deaths as in Sweden they would end up with around 400 deaths / million which is closer to other similar countries in Europe but still on the low side. Also they did a lot of testing.

  • for those that want more data and stats on the Henry Ford HCQ study....

    Henry Ford study finds Hydroxychloroquine cut death rate in COVID-19 patients

    Treatment with Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, and Combination in Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19



    https://www.ijidonline.com/art…-9712(20)30534-8/fulltext

    this has P scores and such

  • Treatments were protocol driven, uniform in all hospitals and established by a system-wide interdisciplinary COVID-19 Task Force. Hydroxychloroquine was dosed as 400 mg twice daily for 2 doses on day 1, followed by 200 mg twice daily on days 2-5. Azithromycin was dosed as 500 mg once daily on day 1 followed by 250 mg once daily for the next 4 days. The combination of hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin was reserved for selected patients with severe COVID-19 and with minimal cardiac risk factors. An electrocardiogram (ECK) based algorithm was utilized for hydroxychloroquine use. QTc>500 ms was considered an elevated cardiac risk and consequently hydroxychloroquine was reserved for patients with severe disease with telemetry monitoring and serial QTc checks. The clinical guidelines included adjunctive immunomodulatory therapy with corticosteroids and tocilizumab.


    I'm not an MD type, but it sure looks like the people in each group where matched very closely (conditions, etc).

  • Treatments were protocol driven, uniform in all hospitals and established by a system-wide interdisciplinary COVID-19 Task Force. Hydroxychloroquine was dosed as 400 mg twice daily for 2 doses on day 1, followed by 200 mg twice daily on days 2-5. Azithromycin was dosed as 500 mg once daily on day 1 followed by 250 mg once daily for the next 4 days. The combination of hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin was reserved for selected patients with severe COVID-19 and with minimal cardiac risk factors. An electrocardiogram (ECK) based algorithm was utilized for hydroxychloroquine use. QTc>500 ms was considered an elevated cardiac risk and consequently hydroxychloroquine was reserved for patients with severe disease with telemetry monitoring and serial QTc checks. The clinical guidelines included adjunctive immunomodulatory therapy with corticosteroids and tocilizumab.


    I'm not an MD type, but it sure looks like the people in each group where matched very closely (conditions, etc).

    The key thing to look for is randomized, if the made sure the they where uniform protocol that could be a buzzword for an advanced randomization plan (there is an art of how to randomize). But it is a retrospective study, darn.

  • Quote

    Germany is an interesting outlier with 100 deaths / million. I found this research paper and it looks like the nurseries is not included in the statistics. Is that true? Always wondered what's so special with Germany and their low death rates although being similar to other countries in western Europe (having a lot of travel, dens areas)


    A German Exception? Why the Country’s Coronavirus Death Rate Is Low:  Germany and Taiwan top Affordable Care ranking whereas United States trails behind.


    But similarly low (2.5% CZ/2.1% GE) mortality in neighbouring (and much poorer) Czechia (which does ten times less test per capita BTW) indicates, that the low Covid-19 mortality of Germans is merely of genetic origin. For example Germany has 29 ICU beds/100.000 inhabitants, whereas Czechia just 11 ICUs/100.000 (and Italy 12 ICUs/100.000 inh).

  • Very recent interview of Dr. Vladimir Zelenko on his successful use of HCQ --


    Dr. Drew Pinsky discusses Covid-19 Treatments With Dr. Vladimir Zelenko

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  • Navid - I'm glad to have this chance to answer these very partial views:


    • GOF research: if you understand (as did Gates) that virus pandemics are one of the biggest threats to civilisation out there (COVID a relatively mild version) then GOF research is needed to understadn more about how they happen, and therefore how to stop them, or how to predict their likelihood (if we had been able to do that with COVID we would have been so mych better off). I agree it is contentious, for obvious reasons, but 100s of sceintists against were outweighed by more for. I'm not sure which side of this I'd be on, I've not looked carefully at the arguments - it has been debated a lot as a key ethical question, with strong ethical arguments on both sides.
    • No likelihood (based on evidence gathered) of this coming from a Wuhan lab virus leak, whereas Wuhan live market zoonotic leak is likely. Moving to Wuhan, if you are studying Chinese bats as main danger reservoir of zoonotic viruses, makes sense, no?
    • Jan 14 vaccine development. Fauci is not a vaccine developer. But we should be very glad that vaccine development began fast (and thank CEPI and Gates for that). As for nothing to worry about, at that time everyone was hoping virus was not so highly transmissiable, and could be contained in China. I don't see Fauci as in any way different from all the other doctors who have to rest public policy on what they say and therefore tread an unenviable line between too alarmist and too complacent, getting it wrong.
    • Does not promote Vit D. Give us a break! And remember causality is not correlation. Every health guy in the world promotes Vit D to deal with deficiency, and notes that this is quite likely in urbanised populations, or those who cover up for health or religious reasons.
    • Nursing home deaths: and so also Canada, Uk, France, many places.
    • Seems he was right about HCQ. You know full well that any number of chemicals are potent in vitro inhibitors of SARS (does not transfer to SARS-2) or even SARS-2 (does not transfer to good teherapy). And if you think it is settled at all that HCQ is good therapy you have not been paying attention. RCT results, when they came (from RECOVERY trial) were less good than we all hoped. There remains possibilities for effectiveness, taken as prophylatics etc, why would any same person speak out about this when we don't know. Maybe you have not studied the history of SARS therapies and how early adoption of what seemed good killed people then?


    Viewing Fauci as the definition of evil looks like to me the definition of conspiracy "the establishment are evil and are out to get us" logic.


    As for "who is evil in the elite", I am not a demonologist, nor do I go around seeing evil in people who do harm. Who is most likely to harm the US at the moment? Topically, the antivax movement if as result of their propaganda US vaccination rates are lower than they could be. Also (much longer term) the anti-AGW-action movement who impede the US adopting cleaner green technologies and give China the lead in that area.


    I don't consider you evil: I'm sure that you are passionate, and convinced of the things you say, and believing you are a good person. Such passion is however deeply dangerous when coupled with mental inflexibility and a tendency to see the world in terms of evil enemies. (I'd hope you do not have either of those tendencies).


    Star Wars was escapist fantasy. Not a metaphor for the 21st century world.


    You want my moral compass?


    “Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.” Margaret Atwood.

    "Never Attribute to Malice That Which Is Adequately Explained by Stupidity" (Heinlein, maybe from Bloch)

    "Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain" (Schiller, quoted by Asimov)


    Bonhoeffer:


    “Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a stupid person than with a malicious one. Never again will we try to persuade the stupid person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”


  • The thing is, it is just a possibility that it came from GOF research, no evidence (that which people have tried to find is truly rubbish), and contradicted by the (apparently honest) testimony from the scientist in charge.


    It has to stay a possibility. But the virus could more plausibly have come from animals, as SARS and MERS did. This was a pandemic waiting to happen, GOF research or no, which is the ethical argument for GOF research.

  • Well, if they did not have it analyzed and peer reviewed like they say, it will be another scandal on the order of the Lancet HCQ study. This is a very large health care system, representing many hospitals though. No doubt, they have robust checks and balances to prevent their lead researcher making public statements he can not back up. Especially after this HCQ thing has been so politicized in the US.


    I will go out on a limb and say that they just can't be that stupid, and trust it is a good study based on their word. Hopefully soon, you will have the data to rummage through.


    Shane, you are not getting the point here. I don't doubt it has been analysed and peer reviewed. the question is what you conclude from that?


    If you have been paying attention here you know the real difficultly (whetehr pro or contra HCQ, and I see no need to be either) getting clear evidence from non-randomized trials. We learnt it the hard way being amateurs, but experts have this ingrained by now.

    • Official Post

    Shane, you are not getting the point here. I don't doubt it has been analysed and peer reviewed. the question is what you conclude from that?


    If you have been paying attention here you know the real difficultly (whetehr pro or contra HCQ, and I see no need to be either) getting clear evidence from non-randomized trials. We learnt it the hard way being amateurs, but experts have this ingrained by now.


    I don't see it as a "pro or con" issue. That makes it sound like politics, and this should be all about the science. So to me, and I think you, it comes down to whether it works or not. So far, there are mixed signals on that, meaning the jury is still out. Good question is; at this stage on the learning curve, is the negative hype warranted? Especially to such a degree that physicians are afraid to use it for fear of getting caught up in the politics, and patients afraid to enroll in studies?


    Personally, I have seen enough that were I were a patient in the early stages, I would ask my physician to prescribe me the HCQ and take with Zn. I would have no fear whatsoever of an adverse cardiac reaction, as that fear appears to be have been totally overblown. Unfortunately, here in the US few doctors seem to be authorized to administer HCQ on an outpatient basis, and it is questionable how accessible it is in a hospital setting,

  • GOF research:

    if you understand (as did Gates) that virus pandemics are one of the biggest threats to civilisation out there (COVID a relatively mild version) then GOF research is needed to understadn more about how they happen, and therefore how to stop them, or how to predict their likelihood (if we had been able to do that with COVID we would have been so mych better off). I agree it is contentious, for obvious reasons, but 100s of sceintists against were outweighed by more for. I'm not sure which side of this I'd be on, I've not looked carefully at the arguments - it has been debated a lot as a key ethical question, with strong ethical arguments on both sides.


    No likelihood (based on evidence gathered) of this coming from a Wuhan lab virus leak, whereas Wuhan live market zoonotic leak is likely. Moving to Wuhan, if you are studying Chinese bats as main danger reservoir of zoonotic viruses, makes sense, no?

    There are several reports that show (were linked here some weeks go!) that Fauci did sign the financing for the Wuhan work for the SARS gain function research. This happened after Obama stopped the USA based research due to deep concerns about the risk. Basically they - in Wuhan - did illegally continue the stopped US work. There is no - zero doubt that the virus isn't from the Wuhan lab. The Chinese could not find any virus particle in the Wuhan wet market. Thus THH plase stop to post FUD if even the Chinese deny the Wuhan wet market is involved!


    Jan 14 vaccine development. Fauci is not a vaccine developer. But we should be very glad that vaccine development began fast (and thank CEPI and Gates for that). As for nothing to worry about, at that time everyone was hoping virus was not so highly transmissiable, and could be contained in China. I don't see Fauci as in any way different from all the other doctors who have to rest public policy on what they say and therefore tread an unenviable line between too alarmist and too complacent, getting it wrong.


    You again out yourself as member of the death cult, that has to defend his grand-masters voice! Fauci is invested into vaccine developers. He financed the virus. You instead should ask why nobody in the west told us what the Chinese said first day: The virus is highly transmittable due to the implanted AIDS (HIV1) origin gain function that makes ASE2 bonds 100x more strong!


    Does not promote Vit D. Give us a break! And remember causality is not correlation. Every health guy in the world promotes Vit D to deal with deficiency, and notes that this is quite likely in urbanised populations, or those who cover up for health or religious reasons.


    THH You are an illiterate ignorant. The role of vitamin D is down played by the pharma mafia only albeit several studies did show that a high VD level is important in fighting various virus. Gilead crap Remsdesivir does not save a single live but VD can save between 10-20% already!



    Nursing home deaths: and so also Canada, Uk, France, many places.

    Seems he was right about HCQ. You know full well that any number of chemicals are potent in vitro inhibitors of SARS (does not transfer to SARS-2) or even SARS-2 (does not transfer to good teherapy). And if you think it is settled at all that HCQ is good therapy you have not been paying attention.


    HCQ has been shown in dozens of studies to work in vivo against various virus. You again intentionally mix nonsense to divert people from the truth.


    You behavior here is one of the most disgusting as you make people claim you are objective but your goal is to distort obvious facts to support the mafia meme!

    • Official Post

    With regard to 'in vitro' drug tests. I can tell you for a fact that most scientists working in bacteriology, virology, or human tissue culture regard results from these tests as no more than 'smoke signals' - that's a direct quote from somebody who does it - since there is very little meaningful overlap between the in vitro and in vivo environments.

  • I don't see it as a "pro or con" issue. That makes it sound like politics, and this should be all about the science. So to me, and I think you, it comes down to whether it works or not. So far, there are mixed signals on that, meaning the jury is still out. Good question is; at this stage on the learning curve, is the negative hype warranted? Especially to such a degree that physicians are afraid to use it for fear of getting caught up in the politics, and patients afraid to enroll in studies?


    Personally, I have seen enough that were I were a patient in the early stages, I would ask my physician to prescribe me the HCQ and take with Zn. I would have no fear whatsoever of an adverse cardiac reaction, as that fear appears to be have been totally overblown. Unfortunately, here in the US few doctors seem to be authorized to administer HCQ on an outpatient basis, and it is questionable how accessible it is in a hospital setting,


    No, the "negative hype" is not warranted but I've not seen it outside the US. But doctors in the UK are not going to want to prescribe HCQ when they believe it will probably do more harm than good.


    No because of the heart complications (which we all agree are manageable).


    But because it appears to modulate the immune system in a way that is not helpful and increase death rates. That RECOVERY evidence is not looking good, is randomized, and shows that you don't want HCQ in your system when severe COVID sets in. Remember, HCQ has a long lifetime in the body, and severe COVID happens quickly.


    The point is, it is active, and the RCT evidence so far points in the direction of it being mildly unhelpful.


    Perhaps, before you are ill enough to go into hospital, it might help. Or not. We don't know.


    My guess is the negative bias is an attempt to counteract the document and anti-scientific screams from so many people (like you) to be given the wonder-drug physicians are keeping from them.


    And it is done because good honest physicians see HCQ as a possibility (but now enough tested that it scores less well than many other possibilities) and not something that will increase patient health if given out except under very strict observation.


    The real situation is that doctors don't know it won't work, that is why it is still being tested. Equally they don't have much hope any more that it will work. And they particularly do not want to be responsible for interventions that are more likely to harm than help patients. It has happened many times in medicine, is all too easy to do, and that is why for good reasons doctors try to be careful.

  • Link please. This has the strong smell of another Wyttenfact.


    Once more thanks for you invaluable contribution that is certainly based on deep analytical knowledge.


    Why the heck to you believe that the Chinese completely jailed an 11 million city ?? May be you need some reading first... Also did US researchers regularly visit the Wuhan lab and vice versa. They exactly knew that CoV-19 has the same properties as the old H5N1 that has been manipulated thesame way. Do you understand what 100x stronger bond to ACE2 implies??

    With regard to 'in vitro' drug tests. I can tell you for a fact that most scientists working in bacteriology, virology, or human tissue culture regard results from these tests as no more than 'smoke signals' - that's a direct quote from somebody who does it - since there is very little meaningful overlap between the in vitro and in vivo environments.


    Alan this is basically correct for all new drugs with an anknown resorption/metabolism profile.

    But we here always did discuss substances with a known resorption/metabolism profile. Even more: Most of them have been ucessfully used in older virus studies and did work fine.


    So for the use of HCQM Ivermerctin,Doxycycline,Heparin,Acitromycin,VD, all data was there long before. But not for your private smoke (nicotin that seems to work too...)

  • There is no - zero doubt that the virus isn't from the Wuhan lab. The Chinese could not find any virus particle in the Wuhan wet market. Thus THH plase stop to post FUD if even the Chinese deny the Wuhan wet market is involved!


    OK, I agree here. Wuhan wet market, though plausible, probably was not the crossing point.


    https://www.livescience.com/co…-at-wuhan-wet-market.html


    However, contrast the search for SARS-COV2 aninmal links to that for other zoonotic transfers. It takes a long time, unless you are lucky. Occam's razor makes a zoonotic jump for this look most plausible when it has been the cause of many many other new viruses, and SARS, MERS show that modern lifestyles seem to be accelerating such jumps, for the good reason that more people are living close to larger numbers of animals.


    I'm not ruling out some secret US-funded research into a SARS-COV2 type virus that escaped in Wuhan. Difficult to rule it out. But it requires a secret research program not recorded in that lab because the records don't show any such sequence used as well as lapses in biosecurity, Admittedly lapses in biosecurity are very possible, the US has outlawed such research because its own labs were shown to have repeated lapses, and the UK equally finds it hard to be biosecure.


    I am just protesting that speculation promoted to Wyttenfact status is not fact, and that neither W nor others here have any reason to have better judgement on this issue than the scientific consensus. I note that all of the early alarmist and Wyttenfactual theories about SARS-COV2 sequence implausibility as a zoonosis (it must have been bioengineered) have been blown out of the water as rubbish science. If anyone disagrees please point me to the papers that argue this and we can look at both sides?


    We have:

    • (plausible) some unknown zoonotic transfer from a not yet discovered animal reservoir
    • (much less plausible but still possible) secret undocumented research at a US-funded institute in Wuhan doing US science that escaped. It does however seem highly unlikely this would be Chinese weapons research. And it seems unlikely generally that bioweapon research would end up with a virus that looks so plausibly the result of zoonotic transfer, and that is such a rubbish bioweapon. Much as I know the US military has done weird things in the past (staring at goats) this triggers my implausibility monitor.
    • (less plausible but still possible) some not understood way in which known Wuhan GOF research could combine by mistake with existing bat viruses to generate something very close to this sequence - paper please with details, not sensationalist speculation!

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