Covid-19, Your health and that of your community

Quote from seven_of_twenty

Just for reference: In Southern California, a professional and licensed caregiver (I think she is a CNA) said to one of my friends:

"I don't think it's bad. It's a mass hysteria created to ruin the economy. We should all go back to normal life. Just because some people die, it doesn't mean that everyone has to stop living!"

-no comment.

SoT,

There are more than a few people that I golf with you are so convinced of this it is mind boggling to me.

It seems they are simply believing what they have been told to believe by the political party they are aligned with. They do little to no research, fact finding and 0 math to see if what they have been told to believe is true, they say it’s just the flu, it will. E gone in a few weeks.

What is going on globally is a media scam that has been clown way out of proportion.

If there were no controls put on this stateside We could have seen 10’s of millions infected, still might.

Very scary here in the states

Quote from Shane D.

So King, what do you do?

Probably my last two bits on this.

We have scientist proclaiming science

We have arm chair quarter backs pointing fingers at those they do not like.

We have people that are working in the everyday world, expressing sincere and very real fears and doubts.

Yet one thing many here do not understand is politics and how things are ACTUALLY ran.

China is a totalitarian government. They do what they want, including making dissenters disappear. They give the people no choice in many things.

Some countries are very small and have almost no social variety. (Yet many have a higher per captia rate than the US) These countries, often the size of one or two states in the US is much easier to manage.

Here in the US, we have city government, county government, state government and finally federal government.

The federal government does not dictate most actions to the states. Although it can in some cases.

Yet some here want to crap on only the federal government, or I should say one person in particular they do not like, yet put praise on other undeserving offices.

This is a tragedy that has hit the entire world. Yet is is also extremely political.

New York could have closed schools much sooner, the POTUS did not force them to keep them open. New York was late in the game of declaring a travel ban. The POTUS did not delay them in doing this. Every state / city that has serious issues ALWAYS blames someone else. Chicago mayor blames Indiana for the weekly shooting violence in Chicago. Sincerely!

Just like some have bad social issues, some have bad health management issues. The US has not done everything perfectly, but it is not one person's fault. However, the opposite political party wants to paint it as such.

I am a self employed business man. I have worked closely with government, the public and "science" for many years and have much experience in both.

Pointing the fingers at one person is always misguided and ignorant or one is knowingly politically motivated. The latter is most disgusting.

This happens on both sides of the isle. Do not say "science is science". If the REAL WORLD strictly followed science, we might have cold fusion by now. However, there is much more to this world than graphs, equations and political bias. I wish it were not so, but it is.

'Be strong, be kind, we will be OK' – PM's message in face of coronavirus impact

https://www.tvnz.co.nz/one-new…n-face-coronavirus-impact

Quote from seven_of_twenty

. . . We should all go back to normal life. Just because some people die, it doesn't mean that everyone has to stop living!"

Well, okay, there is SOME truth to that. In some situations. We can't all drive no faster than 15 mph, just because 37,000 people die in car accidents in the U.S. (I read years ago that at 15 mph, the chances of being killed are practically nil.)

Yes, we do have to take risks. Yes, some lives are sacrificed to necessity, and some to convenience, such as the convenience of driving at 60 mph on the highway. However, that does not mean we might as well drive at 90 mph. If we knew such speed was going to kill hundreds of thousands for sure, and possibly millions, no one would be in favor of allowing it. In other words, when you say "some people die," you have to put a number on it. How many is some? And what do we get? 37,000 in return for modern transportation? Worth it, I guess. Several million extra deaths in a pandemic, in return for going back to "normal" a month earlier? Not worth it!

In point of fact, I consider 37,000 automobile deaths unacceptable. The technology has been tremendously improved in the last 50 years, and fatalities per passenger mile are way down. That's great. But they should be reduced far more. I think they will be, with self driving cars. We want a world in which only a few hundred people die in automobile accidents per year. Why not? We can do it. We deserve that. Technology can always be improved, and it should be.

Quote from Shane D.

Your Homeland Security team is warning that if this keeps up much longer, they anticipate riots, social unrest, increased crimes, murders, and general mayhem.

Never happen. Nothing like that happened in 1918.

Quote from Shane D.

So King, what do you do? Who's advice do you follow? How do you lead your people out of this?

Do what Cuomo suggests. Test for antibodies. Find out who has had the disease. Encourage them to go back to work. Open up the economy one step at a time, the way they are now re-opening factories and cities in China. Keep testing. Chase down every single case. Quarantine every patient. If the Chinese can do that with 1 billion people, we can do it with 300 million.

There was a town hall meeting tonight followed by a discussion. One expert keeps saying the French study was anecdotal (!), Another says that a Chinese studied concluded that hydroxychloroquine "doesn't work" against COVID-19. It is beyond irritating that Chris Cuomo, the CNN commentator and brother of New York governor Andrew Cuomo is giving inaccurate information. I don't know how to get a hold of him more directly but he has a comment page on chriscuomo,com and hopefully, one of his junior producers reads it. What is really scary is that New York might abbreviate or cancel their planned controlled study of the two drugs. I wrote:

"I'm a lifelong research physician. I am concerned that the information you are getting from experts is not accurate in some crucial points. In the case of the French study which suggests that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin might help with COVID-19, the study is absolutely not "anecdotal." It is a small, but controlled study which does have possible flaws but is based on research observation, not anecdote. The graph from the study clearly show that virus shedding in patients receiving the drugs stops in 6 days in 100% of the patients. Shedding does not stop in the control group not getting the drugs. In the Chinese study suggesting that hydroxychloroquine does not work, azithromycin was not given. And the control group was not untreated. They received "conventional" antiviral treatment including interferon alpha and antivirals. The studies are not comparable! I can send you the full scholarly journal articles if you provide an email address. I would also be happy to talk to a producer. See: https://www.mediterranee-infec…-a-treatment-of-covid-19/ -- the full article is linked to that as a downloadable PDF. The Chinese counter study is linked here: https://www.fiercepharma.com/p…just-trial-design-s-fault Bottom line for Chris and Governor Andrew: it is absolutely essential to proceed with the controlled study by New York State of combined hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin to treat COVID-19. Please feel free to contact me at (phone number)"

I guess the chance of this accomplishing anything is small and they probably won't change plans for the study anyway but I thought I should try.

If you want to send a note to Chris Cuomo use this route: http://chriscuomo.com/ask-chris/

Quote from Roseland67

you sound like my Theologian brother when I suggest that technology will find a way out of these problems, and he responds that technology got us into these problems.

The Dinasaures where doomed but

technology might save us.

https://phys.org/news/2020-03-…on-nasa-dart-mission.html

@sot box your senator's ears all you can and don't forget to mention Dr Vladimir Zelenko using HCQ/azithrothromycin in the Jewish community in NY with great success, and in Bahrain. The Chinese study is skewed against chloroquine use probably for political reasons. It just shows if anything chloroquine is as effective as the protease inhibitors without the azithromycin. Then there is the prophylactic trial for health workers in Australia. I know nobody will accept this but the extremely low cases in malarial regions strongly suggests prophylactic action of quinine analogues against coronavirus. All the experts thought these regions would be hit the worst but have been proved totally wrong. I spotted this correlation very early on.

Quote from Dr Richard

and in Bahrain

Bahrain is part of the Solidarity trial..

Globally at least 100,000 highly trained pharmacomedical professionals

are working on a solution

antmalarials,, antivirals..

For Singapore this Covid situation is more critical than for most

it absolutely depends on international trade..

Their moh.sg update site is very uptodate..

https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/clinical-evidence-summaries

With all these on-going studies we'll know pretty soon if the government was right of not to ignore advice from research pharmacologists and biochemists following the Feb 2 Wang et al paper. Oh, it only has an EC50 of 1 uM? And gosh, hydroxychloroquine even more effective (0.37 uM)? We must keep this under wraps, ministers, let's just stockpile all we have for our own use just in case it does work. Rather than immediately fast. track clinical trials. Good old Jeremy would have done the right thing for sure. Not too political I hope?

https://www.moh.gov.sg/covid-19/clinical-evidence-summaries

MOH-ACE COVID-19 RAPID REVIEW
25 March 2020
Conclusion
There is a lack of high-quality evidence to conclude that chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine

is effective and safe for the treatment of COVID-19.

A single study published thus far involved a small number of

patients and warrants further research in a larger population with longer term follow up.

Several clinical trials are ongoing and are likely to report results in the months ahead

which will determine whether antimalarials should be more widely used for COVID-19 treatment.

Quote from JedRothwell

e can't all drive no faster than 15 mph, just because 37,000 people die in car accidents in the U.S.

Switzerland had <200 deaths in road accidents last year with 8 Million population. Thus the USA should stay at 8'000. But as you noted they do commute much longer distances albeit the speed limit is lower than in Switzerland.

Boris has got it now. Now where did I stash that Chloroquine? Let's hope it's a false-positive (meant sincerely).

Quote from Shane D.

So King, what do you do? Who's advice do you follow? How do you lead your people out of this?

1) keep people at home as much a possible unless they take a test showing negative for the virus. And require random checks on those that are quarantine and fine those braking the quarantine.

2) Implement a relief program for employers giving tax credits and loans matched directly to their payment of workers to keep them on salary during lockdowns.

3) Jail or shoot all those who use the crisis to force me to give precious funding on projects not related to the crisis at hand, such as 11billion give away to other nations, millions on art, millions for programs unrelated to medicine or employment within the country.

4) Start programs to be ready for the next major event by giving grants to hospitals and medicine suppliers for extra equipment for hospital rooms and medical stockpiles

5) Prepare for after crisis by creating agreement with other countries for international relief programs, international hospital ships, and quarantine islands.

6) After crisis, create zero interest loans and grants for future for medical students payable by 2 year government work in medicine in either national or international areas.

Quote from oldguy

Start programs to be ready for the next major event by giving grants to hospitals and medicine suppliers for extra equipment for hospital rooms and medical stockpiles

This idea is only half way working: If we once are hit by the same virus kinetics (incubation 14 day spreading before symptoms multiplication rate > 4) but with a death rate of 30% then you need completely different equipment. The only thing that will work is what nature does since 100mio's of years. Create isolated habitats, what means cut any traffic in/out for well defined areas that can sustain living isolated for several months.

As mentioned many times before: Uncontrolled globalization is 100% in contradiction with natures evolution rules. Thus you first have to tease the robot minds of some economic leaders...

Let's hope Boris gets the 'miracle cure' in time.