Covid-19 News

I bought a pulse oximeter in case I get COVID-19. There was a pile of them in the drug store. They are recommended for people my age. It is a remarkable gadget. It shines a light through your finger and measures the wavelength. Oxygen levels are a function of the color. Apparently, if the spO2 number goes below 90%, you should go to the hospital. That's what it says here:

https://www.comhs.org/about-us…et-one-to-warn-of-covid19

I also got a Shingrix vaccine for shingles, a more powerful replacement for the vaccine they developed years ago. It knocked me flat! Persistent ~100 deg F fever for 24 hours (so far). Vaccines are not to be trifled with. You can see why they will have to do careful testing of a COVID-19 vaccine.

I have to get a booster shot in two months. Ouch.

I got a 2-part hepatitis vaccine years ago. It was no picnic, but this was worse. I read that the hepatitis vaccine might offer some protection against COVID-19. I hope so.

Quote from JedRothwell

I also got a Shingrix vaccine for shingles,

My wife got shingles ..this year..neuropathic pain was not relieved by the meds.. only soft massage worked.. for 2 months

but there is no vaccine here in OZ

the govt cost/benefit analysis concluded it wasn't worth it

https://www.pbs.gov.au/industr…ne-psd-november-2018.docx

Maybe Aussies are just tough.. shingles.. crocodiles are OK...

on the other hand hydroxychloroquine is scary..

HCQ is forbidden for Covid

"“If you don’t comply you may receive an on the spot fine of $1334,

a court-imposed penalty of up to $13,345 or 6 months imprisonment.”

http://covexit.com/are-aussies…quine-than-of-crocodiles/

The flavonoid quercetin has several anti-viral modes --

Quercetin Emerging As An Adjuvant for COVID-19 Treatments

https://www.thailandmedical.ne…t-for-covid-19-treatments

One of the doctors muzzled by Big Tech continues his wrongthink thought-crimes --

HCQ works in high-risk patients, and saying otherwise is dangerous - Harvey Risch

Excerpt: "... I can only speculate about the cause of the FDA’s recalcitrance. HCQ is an inexpensive,

generic medication. Unlike certain profit-generating, patented medications, which have been

promiscuously touted on the slimmest of evidence, HCQ has no natural financial constituency.

No one will get rich from it.

Further, it seems quite possible that the FDA, a third of whose funding comes from drug companies,

is under intense pressure from those companies to be extremely conservative in its handling of HCQ.

If HCQ is used widely and comes to be recognized as highly effective, the markets for expensive and

patented COVID-19 medications, including intravenous drugs that can only be used in the hospital,

will shrink substantially.

https://www.washingtonexaminer…ng-otherwise-is-dangerous

the war room

Calling in is Dr. Harvey Risch, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, and Dr. Li Feng Yan to make their case and answer audience questions.

a joke from Dr Zelenko TM 55.24

a child goes to his mother and asks his mother where do we come from

the mother says

we are made in the image of God ..we have the spark of the divine within us

then the child goes to his father and says “daddy where where do we come from”

and so his father says “we evolved from monkeys

so the child is very confused so he goes back to his mother and he says

mommy i'm confused

you said we come from God but Dad says that we come from monkeys

so his mother says ..it's not really a contradiction that's my side of the family

and that's his side of the family

but the point here is that..

It depends how you look at the human being

if you look at the human being as a divine creation

then your motivation will be early intervention with therapeutics that are effective

regardless of the profit margin..

Quote from Lou Pagnucco

Excerpt: "... I can only speculate about the cause of the FDA’s recalcitrance. HCQ is an inexpensive,

generic medication. Unlike certain profit-generating, patented medications, which have been

promiscuously touted on the slimmest of evidence, HCQ has no natural financial constituency.

No one will get rich from it.

Further, it seems quite possible that the FDA, a third of whose funding comes from drug companies,

is under intense pressure from those companies to be extremely conservative in its handling of HCQ.

If HCQ is used widely and comes to be recognized as highly effective, the markets for expensive and

patented COVID-19 medications, including intravenous drugs that can only be used in the hospital,

will shrink substantially.

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Re HCQ - NHS here is no way in the pocket of big Pharma - and has a similar view of HCQ for patients in hospital with COVID symptoms. It does harm.

I'm sure that money does influence medical decisions, at the margin. It definitely affects which drugs get funding for tests. If in the US you reckon regulation is so corrupt that it does so in major ways I'm sorry for the US.

You'd better choose a different example that some crackpot doctor claiming regulation designed to protect severe COVID patients being killed from his giving them unhelpful drugs.

Let me say again: HCQ is pretty safe normally. It interferes with the immune system and appears dangerous (though we can't yet be sure how much) for those in hospital with COVID.

THH

Senegal finds HCQ beneficial and continues with national treatment

https://www.lesoleil.com/actua…b26600648c01ff625022591ad

Quote from THHuxleynew

Re HCQ - NHS here is no way in the pocket of big Pharma - and has a similar view of HCQ for patients in hospital with COVID symptoms. It does harm.

From "Big Pharma Lobby Influencing English Health Policy"

https://www.outsourcedpharma.c…nglish-health-policy-0001

- "... NHS is not required by law to publically disclose its meetings with lobbyists, while other British government departments are required to do so. NHS also does not disclose employees that might have conflicts of interest, such as those with ties to the pharmaceutical industry..."

Firstly, as discussed in previous posts, the NHS Recovery Study certainly appeared designed to fail.

If you do not want to take HCQ, then certainly you should not be forced to.

Many doctors and dentists are already self-medicating, and, no doubt providing HCQ to

family and friends. Should people who believe they can assess the risk/benefit themselves

be forced to comply with rules you and the NHS want to enforce?

And, you also call Harvey Risch a "crackpot doctor"? Really???

Quote from THHuxleynew

Let me say again: HCQ is pretty safe normally. It interferes with the immune system and appears dangerous (though we can't yet be sure how much) for those in hospital with COVID.

This is true for the criminal handling of HCQ in the UK recovery study. If you are unlucky and face a British concentration camp doctor that prescribes you a deadly dose of HCQ (without Zink,Doxy) then you are in THH's land!

just for curiousity, this articel is dated 15. Aug. 2020, but today is 12. Aug. (MEZ)

Bit like the BBC announcement that building 7 had collapsed 20 minutes before it did

Quote from Peter

just for curiousity, this articel is dated 15. Aug. 2020, but today is 12. Aug. (MEZ)

Bit like the BBC announcement that building 7 had collapsed 20 minutes before it did

I also fond the price of particular items I usually pick up for projects suddenly skyrocketed "like Plexiglass" before any of this started..

The New York Times reports that total U.S. fatalities probably exceed 200,000:

https://www.nytimes.com/intera…2/us/covid-deaths-us.html

(COVID-19 coverage is free to all readers.)

This means the case fatality rate is somewhat higher than estimated. The numerator is larger. We know the denominator is larger than the official stats because there are many unreported cases. Just going by the reported numbers the case mortality rate is 3% (169,000 deaths divided by 5,367,000 cases). Some people have said there may be 10 times more cases than reported. I doubt it, but if that were true, case mortality would be 0.3%. On the other hand, if there are 10 times more unreported cases but 200,000 fatalities, that puts the case mortality rate at 0.4%. The numbers from Korea, where there are few undetected cases, indicate mortality at 2%. Estimates of their hidden cases put this down to around 1.5%, as I recall. Korea has an excellent health care system, whereas many U.S. hospitals are filthy and our healthcare is a third-world abomination, so my guess is that our case mortality is at least ~2%, which working backwards means there have been approximately 10 million cases. About twice as many as reported.

Lou & W

Your point is the RECOVERY trial used high front-loaded concentrations of HCQ. True, lower doses would have less bad effect.

the point is that they used a high dose exactly because this was needed to get plasma concentrations up quickly to a level where a pharmacologically active effect was posisble. So you could reasonably critique all the other hospital studies as giving people HCQ TOO LATE.

Since what doctors most need is treatment, not prophylaxis, this is not an argument against RECOVERY. The dose chosen was not toxic in healthy people.

You can always choose untested combinations of parameters where your favourite drug will work. I'm sympathetic to that. I'm not sympathetic to you arguing here:

(1) HCQ needs to be given early

and

(2) The one study which takes that (obvious) fact seriously and gives a high front-loaded HCQ dose, to allow it to be effective earlier given it accumulates slowly over time, is then called by you "designed to fail".

THH

The US case rate has been nicely falling the last week or two, encouraging news. However detailed data shows the number of tests going down overall, and particularly in the hotspots the positive test / overall test ratio is going up. This nearly always indicates more positive people who never get tested.

So it is not that we know the US real infection rate is going up or down. We just don't know what it is doing.

https://www.express.co.uk/news…y-data-cases-texas-latest

Quote from JedRothwell

This means the case fatality rate is somewhat higher than estimated. The numerator is larger. We know the denominator is larger than the official stats because there are many unreported cases. Just going by the reported numbers the case mortality rate is 3% (169,000 deaths divided by 5,367,000 cases).

It is impossible to do any calculations with the current data as to many parameters are unknown. Go to Tennessee and you see 1% fatality. Go to Kuwait and you see even less. You also can see 10%...

Currently I would estimate at least a factor of 30x for people that have been in contact with the virus. As said most people (80%?) are immune at least to a high degree. So this virus will find all the vulnerables even with a herd immunity of 95 %. Aerosols can fly many hundred meters and if you (with no corona cross immunity) walk down stream and stay to long you might get it.

This virus is not covered by classic models as to many super spreaders did infect up 100 or more people.

Quote from Wyttenbach

It is impossible to do any calculations with the current data as to many parameters are unknown.

The parameters are well known in countries with functional healthcare systems such as Korea, Germany or Canada.

Quote from Wyttenbach

Go to Tennessee and you see 1% fatality.

Perhaps Tennessee has had few cases, like other rural areas such as Yamaguchi Prefecture which has 1.4 million people, 28 cases so far, and 0 deaths. Either that or Tennessee has a bad public health system and they do not know how many people have died. In any case, for large populations such as the whole of Korea over several months, you can draw conclusions.

Quote from Wyttenbach

Currently I would estimate at least a factor of 30x for people that have been in contact with the virus

Based on what? Show your work.

Quote from Wyttenbach

This virus is not covered by classic models as to many super spreaders did infect up 100 or more people.

That is incorrect. Many viruses are highly infectious, such as rubella (German Measles), but they are covered by classic models. The infection rate is one of the key parameters in the models. This has been known since the models were developed in 1760 by Bernoulli.

Quote from THHuxleynew

However detailed data shows the number of tests going down overall, and particularly in the hotspots the positive test / overall test ratio is going up. This nearly always indicates more positive people who never get tested.

True, but I think you can extrapolate from the positive test ratio to approximate the actual number. It is not very accurate, but it gives you some idea.

Quote from THHuxleynew

So it is not that we know the US real infection rate is going up or down. We just don't know what it is doing.

We can tell somewhat from other parameters, with enough detailed information. For example, in Georgia:

1. Deaths are at record highs and are still rising. That is a lagging indicator, and it depends on many factors such as the average age of the patient, but you can draw some conclusions from it. You can say that 2 weeks ago, overall cases must have been at the highest levels yet recorded.

2. Current hospitalizations are close the peak, but have fallen slightly in the past two weeks. That indicates infections might be down a little.

These two parameters are not contradictory. They show that Georgia is probably near the peak, but it might have fallen a little. That is also what "newly reported cases by day" shows. So those three add up. Even if we did not have the "Percent testing positive" we would have some idea what is going on. It is an exaggeration to say "we just don't know what it is doing."

As it happens, we do have the "percent testing positive." It has also gone down a little from the peak a few weeks ago. That may be because testing has been increased with emergency locations opening at the airport and elsewhere. Atlanta was declared a national emergency hotspot by the feds.

The graphs I just mentioned are here:

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

Other data here, including a surprisingly high number of serology tests:

https://dph.georgia.gov/covid-19-daily-status-report

Quote from Alan Smith

Antibody surveys across Africa have shown that a large proportion of people has been infected with COVID-19 — but the continent has so far been spared the worst ravages of the disease. For example, perhaps 1 in 20 adults in Kenya, or 1.6 million people, have been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, according to one preprint study that looked at blood donors in the country. Yet Kenya’s official death toll is under 500, it has not seen an overall rise in mortality and its hospitals have not reported large numbers of people with symptoms.

All well coverd by Jed's univesal model ?? factor of 80 excess cases almost no mortality... A lot to learn!