Covid-19 News

    Quote from ccooper

    Although this is from a paper published by a political advocacy group, it is logical and thorough.


    I think it has a problem. Everyone agrees that children and people under 20 are at a low risk of getting a serious case, or dying. However, a S. Korean study showed that they are as likely as anyone to get the disease and become infectious. When that happens, they can infect other children, teachers, parents and grandparents. That is a serious problem. In Georgia at a YMCA summer camp there were 600 campers in late June. A COVID-19 infection spread rapidly through the camp. See:


    https://www.webmd.com/lung/new…h-a-georgia-summer-camp#1


    How COVID-19 Raced Through a Georgia Summer Camp


    By E.J. Mundell


    HealthDay Reporter


    FRIDAY, July 31, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- With school reopenings just a few weeks away, a report on how the new coronavirus spread rapidly through a summer camp in Georgia suggests kids transmit the virus very well.

    Nearly 600 young campers and counselors attended the camp in late June, and of the 344 who were tested for COVID-19, 76% tested positive by mid-July. Three-quarters of the COVID-19 cases for which information was available involved symptoms, including sore throat, headache and fever.


    The camp opened for staff on June 17 and kids started arriving four days later. The first known case involved a teen camp staff member who developed chills on June 23 and tested positive for COVID-19 the next day.

    After that, the camp was quickly disbanded and it closed on June 27.


    Campers, who averaged 12 years of age, hadn't been required to wear masks although camp staff wore masks, the researchers said. . . .

    Robert,


    CNN is the liberal left answer to Fox News.


    Both nearly unwatchable due to their obvious political bias’.

    Neither can report on anything without slamming Group Think Red and Blue.


    It is comical to me that people actually listen and then cite this babble as “proof”.

    Quote from Navid

    Anyone who's tried to do a RCT on any complex system knows - the real world is extremely complex. Go do an RCT on a user interface with two similar user interfaces - almost impossible. It is only FUD dispensers on message boards like this one and Fauci (and the gang CNN etc) who are using RCT to dismiss evidence out of hand.


    (1) A drug RCT is not like two different user interfaces, where the user knows which they are using. That is a very bad comparison. In an RCT the drug taker will be given a pill or injection, neither the taker nor the physician administering it will know whether it is the real thing or a similar shaped and colored, similar tasting (if possible) placebo. That fact together with stratified pairwise or 4 or 8 way randomisation makes comparisons perfect with no possibility anything confounding the results.


    (2) Observational retrospective evidence gets dismissed very easily. you for example, dismiss all the evidence of that type that shows negatives on HCQ. Rightly, i've now come to see as i educated myself more about the difficulty in getting good matches, however it is done.


    (3) COVID has particular problem, in that disease rate is highly and non-linearly sensitive to age. That breaks all the standard statistical techniques unless you have a very large study (and the correct "auto-binning" technique).


    Those 3 points are factual, and I'm happy to discuss to what extent they do are don't apply to different trials, with details and where necessary stats, with anyone interested. I will enjoy educating myself in the process (my main motivation for posting here)!


    THH

    Quote from Roseland67

    CNN is the liberal left answer to Fox News.


    Both nearly unwatchable due to their obvious political bias’.


    I do not watch either of them, so I cannot judge. All reporters have a bias, although some make more effort to overcome their own bias than others. However, with regard to the subject of this thread, the coronavirus, there is no doubt that Fox News was extremely distorted and unscientific in the early months of the pandemic. CNN was far more accurate. See, for example:


    External Content www.youtube.com
    Content embedded from external sources will not be displayed without your consent.
    Through the activation of external content, you agree that personal data may be transferred to third party platforms. We have provided more information on this in our privacy policy.


    https://www.commondreams.org/n…atured-misinformation-253

    Did Fauci Say in 2005 Virology Journal That Hydroxychloroquine Can Treat SARS?  See also:

    Quote from Zephir_AWT

    Did Fauci Say in 2005 Virology Journal That Hydroxychloroquine Can Treat SARS?  See also:

    “Dr Fauci,

    No one asked you about treating Covid 19

    With HQC, Az and Zn. You were asked is using those as a prophylaxis effective against Covid 19”?

    Indians in Mumbai slums: about 60% are carrying anti bodies Compare also: Brooklyn’s Hasidic Jews are acting like they have herd immunity. Could they be right? People in these slums are also living collectively. I guess there is growing body of evidence, that conservatives can have their form of truth working in their social environment and progressives as well. They're just mutually untransferable into their social groups, which we can see from attempts to apply herd immunity strategy to liberal countries like Britain, Holland or Sweden, where they ended with fiasco.


    If you're individualist progressive, who doesn't like hygiene and organized life, then the social distancing and face mask wearing is better for you, because you've no built immunity yet. But if you're germaphobic conservative who is living collectively, then you already have herd immunity developed from frequent mutual contacts with your peers and keeping bacterial concentration low during it.


    Note that progressives aren't more fearful than conservatives in general: they just fear of different things. Progressives are often individualists and they fear of collective threats, like pandemics or global warming and conservative past, which they connect with colonialism, religion and racism. While conservatives tend to underestimate these risks: instead of they fear collectivist power and dystopian future. They simply have different evolutionary strategy like r/K selection strategists in breeding. And their strategies actually work by itself - they just aren't transferable outside of their social environment.


    The conclusion is, in the time of crisis for conservatives it's better to behave conservatively, for progressives progressively.

    Quote from THHuxleynew

    The problem with Ivermectin - as with the very many anti-viral agents out there - is that in-vitro antiviral activity does not transform directly into in vivo.


    THH: FUD Alert: Ivermectin has been shown to work in at least three studies with 3 different virus that (studies) were linked in this forum more than once.


    Thus THH tries again to intentionally promote lies!

    My advice : With your underground medical understanding you should stop to post! Ivermectin in vivo was just a verification study nothing else! (I tried to explain it to you about 3 weeks ago but may be you have forgotten it already - early dementia?)


    Quote from THHuxleynew

    (1) A drug RCT is not like two different user interfaces, where the user knows which they are using. That is a very bad comparison. In an RCT the drug taker will be given a pill or injection, neither the taker nor the physician administering it will know whether it is the real thing or a similar shaped and colored, similar tasting (if possible) placebo. That fact together with stratified pairwise or 4 or 8 way randomisation makes comparisons perfect with no possibility anything confounding the results.


    THH would like to kill CoV-19 sick people with placebos. RCT is just a golden key for big pharma to get as much money as they like. See Statin cases with finally more damage or Viox or best opiates!

    RCT are more or less useless and the usual starting point of a long lasting fraud as evidence proof is no longer needed...

    Quote

    The problem with Ivermectin - as with the very many anti-viral agents out there - is that in-vitro antiviral activity does not transform directly into in vivo.


    Such a comment is irrelevant, as Ivermectin as far I know was tested only in vivo. But I guess, your problem with Ivermectin is very similar to this one of HCQ: both they're threatening profit of vaccination and Big Pharma lobby.

    +early HCQ vs -HCQ Analysis from a clever chap

    https://hcqtrial.com/


    "Many countries either adopted or declined early treatment with HCQ, forming a large country-randomized controlled trial.

    2.0 billion people were assigned to the treatment group, and 663 million to the control group.

    As of August 5, 2020, an average of 37.8/million in the treatment group have died, and 438.5/million in the control group, relative risk 0.086.


    After adjustments, treatment and control deaths become 78.2/million and 626.6/million, relative risk 0.12.

    Confounding factors affect this estimate, including varying degrees of spread between countries. Accounting for predicted changes in spread, we estimate a relative risk of 0.21.

    The treatment group has 79.1% lower chance of death.

    We examined diabetes, obesity, hypertension, life expectancy, population density, urbanization, testing level, and intervention level,

    which do not account for the effect observed."


    Costa Rica meeting Canada.. on Nov 1 wlll those Nicaraguan guestworkers still be there??

    Quote from Shane D.

    politics in the west, took over the science regarding HCQ.

    In NZ ,HCQ trials have been abandoned... virtually zero infections for the last fourteen weeks.

    In Australia , HCQ imports are confiscated.. and prescriptions are restricted to not-Covid.

    Most Oz media parrot CNN.. HCQ= serious side effects, ineffective.

    "

    May 8 and June 21Border Contriol seized more than 16,000 anti-malaria medications, including hydroxychloroquine tablets.,

    imported mostly for individual use. https://www.watoday.com.au/nat…d-19-20200729-p55gly.html


    Currently there is a comparatively small surge in the state of Victoria... bring the State up to 30 deaths/million d/M

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/20…2060704?nw=0#casesbystate

    about where Costa Rica is sitting now..37 d/M.. but much lower than the UK at 683 d/M


    The rest of Oz ,like NZ is way down at 0-4 d/M

    There is low population density as a whole in the Oz/NZ region.(total population =30 million)...and very active quarantine policies.. btw regions.

    There is a lttle pressure)but not much.) on the Victorian government to introduce some prophylaxis for the elderly,, IVM ..HCQ..

    I try to be polite on the thread: and don't mind wyttenfacts, i just call them out. But it is boring for me to do so repeatedly with the same points.


    (1) I do not create FUD

    (2) IVM as for other treatments needs RCT to determine does it work or not,for the reasons I have noted and everyone following this thread looking at the HCQ results should realise.

    (3) IVM, I posted the interesting and inconclusive long discussion on in the pipeline on whether the IVM in vitro IC50 level corresponded to plasma levels likely from safe dose. It was not clear, with several mistakes made in the post and comments. You need to read all the comments.

    (4) People who claim there exist good results for IVM, or anything, should review these, with links, saying how they rate each one. This would be useful to others. Or wait for a meta-review to come out as a preprint. Much better that than "proof by Wyttenfact".


    I tend to be positive about these treatments in absence of good evidence. It would be great if IVM was a good treatment. I don't agree with the "rush to judgement" here where it seems all a repurposed drug needs to be "obviously good - ignored by biassed mediacl establishment" is good tolerance, wide availability, and in vitro activity at some level not clearly related to in vivo levels. There are lots of similar drugs with in vitro activity - why just look at the v cheap ones? Cost is much less relevant than effectiveness. And it is just not clear (to me) which if any are effective.


    My favourite best bets so far for treatment - i don't see prophylaxis as so useful because need much better evidence before anyone will use it:

    • Dexamethasone - cheap, safe, reduces mortality by 30%!
    • Remdesivir (but only based on mfr data claims not yet published? initial published results underwhelming). I agree with some here - we still don't have much independent evidence.
    • Anti-coagulants (I think I'm going to change my mind on this since recent evidence does not look so good, but still useful for those on ventilators it seems)
    • Interferon-beta - specifically nebulised version of. Again v good data from small RCT but from mfr, not certain yet.


    Lots of other possibles.

    Quote from oldguy

    I wonder if Fauci will ban the use of a vaccine until it is proven safe and effective by 3 large randomized studies.


    Yes, I am sure he will. Actually, not Fauci but any sane public health agency will demand many large randomized studies before deploying a vaccine. Such studies are underway now, in the U.S. and elsewhere. Normally, they are only done on animals and primates at this stage, but they are being done on volunteer people, because this is an emergency.


    A lot can go wrong with a vaccine. You have to have randomized studies to find out if it causes serious harm, and also to find out if it works at all, producing antibodies. What is even more difficult to determine is whether the vaccine actually prevents the disease. Very few people are infected in the first place. Even if you test a vaccine and a placebo on 10,000 people, you may not have a single one exposed or potentially infected. There has been some talk of deliberately exposing innucculated volunteers. That would be unprecedented. It would be dangerous.


    In the first tests of the polio vaccine, they inoculated several thousand children. It seemed to work. None of them got polio that summer. Then a staticision pointed out that given that number of test subjects, it would be unlikely any of them would get polio in any case.

    Quote from DnG

    The X22 Report / Justinformed / truth and art TV are a few of the "not at the fingertip" news if your looking..

    they are not paid to tell you what to think.


    X22 report for example


    https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/x22-report/


    Analysis / Bias

    The focus of X22 is on the potential for an economic melt down where inflation drives the cost of goods to unaffordable levels. In fact, X22 provides a list of prepping materials needed for this collapse. These include: food, water, toilet supplies, weapons, ammunition, gold and silver etc. X22 also believes that climate change is a hoax. The wording of headlines and articles contain only mild loaded words, however they consistently use questionable sources such as conspiracy theorist Ben Swann and Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog. X22 also has a page dedicated to Relocations of Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors, which provides a map of where they are most concentrated in the USA. There isn’t a description as to why this map is posted. Do they have sympathy for the immigrant minors? Or is it a warning? Based on the comments below the map it appears that the readers are opposed to immigrants, with some fearing spread of diseases.



    "paid to tell you what to think"???


    If you base media reliability based on your judgement of that sort, rather than an analysis of factual content (or not) you will end up with pretty skewed views of the world. Like those conspiracy theories advocated by X22.


    Here is an article on algorithm-amplified fake news which mentions x22 incidentally

    https://firstmonday.org/ojs/in…fm/article/view/9170/7723


    Besides amplifying one video, algorithms also amplified and linked to other videos. As Jonathan Albright (2018) illuminated, this disinformation lived and spread in a digital ecosystem that connected videos to other conspiracy videos. According to Albright, by 25 February, less than a week and a half after the shooting, YouTube’s Application Programming Interface (API), or the server that receives Internet requests and then sends responses back to users, generated a network of 8,842 conspiracy-related videos for YouTube’s “Next-Up” section. Albright claimed that these videos have become their own genre and explored how YouTube’s algorithms monetize these clicks by connecting all of the videos together (Albright, 2018).

    As of 31 December 2018, algorithms still linked together conspiracy videos which perpetuated the same viewpoints. The algorithmically generated “Related Channels” section on the right side of Jerome Corsi’s YouTube homepage suggests channels of other well-known conspiracy theorists (See Figure 1). The first channel in the lineup is the channel for Michael ‘Lionel’ Lebron, a prominent supporter of President Trump and promoter of conspiracy theories about the “deep state” and the QAnon movement, which claims that popular Democrats and media personalities are a part of a secret pedophile cult (Drury, 2018; Feldscher, 2018).

    Fox News’ YouTube channel appears next. As of 2014, Fox News was consistently ranked as a prominent conservative news source, (Mitchell, et al., 2014) thereby aligning with Corsi’s views. Following Fox News is the X22Report, which runs daily reports about an impending economic collapse by a man named Dave out of New York (X22.report.com, n.d.). In his “Welcome to the X22 Report” video, the video to which YouTube links users if they click on X22Report’s channel from Corsi’s page, Dave claims that the central bank is controlling the world and seeks to create a one-world government [31]. Likewise, other popular video titles include “U.S. is Now In the Final Stages of Having Its Society Closed Down — Episode 601.” [32]. These videos suggest that, like Corsi’s channel, the X22Report also peddles conspiracy theories.

    The next related channel is H.A. Goodman’s channel. As demonstrated by his videos advocating for an indictment of Hillary Clinton (President Trump’s opponent in the 2016 election), in videos like “TRUMP DOJ MUST INDICT CLINTON BEFORE NEW YORK SOUTHERN DISTRICT INDICTS TRUMP” (Goodman, 2018), Goodman also aligns with the political right. He falsely suggests that Trump’s presidency is in imminent danger and the only course of action is to indict Hillary Clinton.

    Dear mods,


    re my last post.


    Conspiracy theories about COVID are certainly on topic for this thread. The set of conspiracy theory sites in the US politicising COVID, and making inaccurate claims about science (e.g. - COVID is no worse than flu) is certainly on topic for this thread, which is about debating factual info about COVID. Whenever such innacurate sites get recommended here I will point out that they have v low factual content, because based on some comments here not everyone is aware that not all news is equal, and your fave commentator calling stuff he does not like fake news, and repeating stuff he does like, is no guarantee that you have an accurate assessment of news accuracy.




    THH


    RB - would you like to comment on how scientifically illiterate that paragraph you are quoting is? Not sure therefore why you think this chap is clever? Perhaps just not scientifically literate?


    Whoever said it has obviously no idea of what randomisation is, and why this is not random in a way that makes obtaining proper results impossible

Subscribe to our newsletter

It's sent once a month, you can unsubscribe at anytime!

View archive of previous newsletters

* indicates required

Your email address will be used to send you email newsletters only. See our Privacy Policy for more information.

Our Partners

Supporting researchers for over 20 years
Want to Advertise or Sponsor LENR Forum?
CLICK HERE to contact us.