Posts by seven_of_twenty

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Well, tell me what do you think the consequences of shutting down the developed worlds economies, as we are in the process of doing, will be, as compared to fighting COVID19, as we fight the flu?

Silly wabbit. How do we "fight the flu?" Flu vaccine and antivirals. Neither available for COVID-19. How bad is the "flu"? If you mean "influenza A and B" (flu is a generic term for upper respiratory infections) then it's moderately contagious and has a lethality of around 0.1% across the population in unvaccinated individuals, less than half of that for vaccinated people. Corona virus has a lethality currently estimated at 1 to 3%. A minimum of ten times that of influenza. It can be much much higher among those with other conditions or advanced age.

Corona virus is especially vicious because asymptomatic carriers are possible and the latency period before showing symptoms but after becoming infected is up to a week or more.

I mean, seriously, Shane D. , are you keeping up with actual news and experts or are you relying on weird theories? Anyway, if the virus is allowed to spread unchecked, medical facilities for all medical care will be overrun and unusable or dangerous. There will be widespread panic, hoarding, perhaps riots. If the proper public health measures are used, there will be time to develop a vaccine and antivirals and reopen the economy.

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Any opinion?

Sure, if you provide a transcript. Many of us have no time to sit through Youtube videos.

Sober but encouraging and well written article about the promise of remdesivir. https://www.statnews.com/2020/…head-against-coronavirus/

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Like a bad song clears out a dance floor, remdesivir can clear the viral levels in a person, as long as it can interrupt enough replication. The key, researchers say, is that it has to be delivered somewhat early in an infection, as the virus is still proliferating. In patients who develop severe disease, it’s not the virus that’s always the main problem. The body’s own immune system can react by heading into overdrive and causing secondary complications like organ damage. An antiviral can’t head that off once it’s begun.

“If you wait to treat someone until they’re in the ICU on a ventilator, it’s too late, you’re not going to do a darn thing,” said Richard Whitley, an infectious disease expert at UAB who coordinates the antiviral consortium.

That, of course, is still just opinion. The work is just getting off the ground but, as the authors note, it may move fairly fast because toxicity and dose studies were already done for ebola.

oldguy 's link above is truly terrifying:

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Four patients with COVID-19 who met criteria for hospital discharge or discontinuation of quarantine in China (absence of clinical symptoms and radiological abnormalities and 2 negative RT-PCR test results) had positive RT-PCR test results 5 to 13 days later. These findings suggest that at least a proportion of recovered patients still may be virus carriers.

[my emphasis]

I just returned from what used to be a routine trip to the bank, in this case, to cash a check. I decided to wear a mask (I was the only person there with one). At least, they recognized me and didn't think the mask was so I could rob them! In order to get in and out of the restricted parking lot and complete this simple transaction, I needed to touch probably 8 - 10 separate items, some more than once, all of which had been touched by dozens or even hundreds of people between cleanings if they even were ever cleaned. I used hand sanitizer liberally and the bank, to its credit also had some laid out but it was 20 feet away from the teller window on a shelf! Why? Returning to my car, I removed the mask and got its straps tangled in my glasses. It will take practice to improve safety just for a trip to the bank. I wonder how long I have to leave the cash in a warm and dry environment before it's actually safe to handle without gloves. The world has indeed, at least for now, changed.

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As noted, do not use ibuprofen. A French medical expert said that.

With due respect, unless there is some evidence for not using it, it does provide relief of pain and lowering of fever. Do you still have the link? I'd like to see why it is claimed to be contraindicated specifically in COVID-19 infections.

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Anyway. While I'm waiting for the car in the garage and reading a book in the lounge, I enter into a conversation about covid19 with a couple of guys nearby. One of the them asks if I know who Sylvia Browne was. I answered "wasn't she that psychic?" He then shows me his phone with the following picture on it, extracted from Browne's 2008 book:

https://static.independent.co.…3-15-at-14.29.22.png?w660

Not perfect, buy hey not bad! Got me thinking anyway. Good news is, now we know covid19 will end as suddenly as it appeared. :o :o

Thanks for that. I needed a good laugh. This is a case of the monkeys with infinite time paradox. Sylvia Browne was a greedy, slimy, stupid, lying woman who profiteered in the millions of dollars a year by bamboozling and abusing grieving people for money. Of course, the great psychic never saw her own end coming.

Naturally, I wish you and yours a speedy recovery. It is useful to remember that common colds are common and at the moment, even influenza caused by influenza A and B viruses is still more common and kills more people than COVID-19. Of course, that probably will change but absent testing or a large cluster of nearby cases, give a thought to the possibility of having something else.

ETA and OTC briefly:

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Sylvia Celeste Browne (née Shoemaker; October 19, 1936 – November 20, 2013)[1] was an American author who claimed to be a medium with psychic abilities. She appeared regularly on television and radio, including on The Montel Williams Show and Larry King Live, and hosted an hour-long online radio show on Hay House Radio. Browne was frequently discredited and faced criticism for making pronouncements that were later found to be false, including those related to missing persons. She was also a convicted criminal, having faced theft charges in 1992.

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On Larry King Live in 2003, Browne predicted she would die at age 88. She died in 2013, at age 77

ROTFWL!

fabrice DAVID

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#899

It is very unlikely that natural evolution spontaneously integrated parts of the HIV GAG and GP 120 genes into a bat virus.

https://www.biorxiv.org/conten…iwnj04czziY3y0goOikRgUyPE

I am sorely tempted to insult you but under the exigent circumstances, I'll abstain from it. So please read the comments following this paper or letter which appeared on the internet without peer review. I am not a virologist but many who are left credible comments which basically not only call bullshit on the idea but also explain exactly why. This sort of specious claim does nobody any good and wastes reading time and energy. If you want to mention that a few people believe the theory, fine. But please please please stop presenting it as fact.

I still favor Myers 141 proof rum. Dual purpose, ya know? Arrrrgh!

Some quick suggestions if you get stricken and can't get medical help. Most people will have mild disease so don't freak. Self isolate and try not to infect others. Stay well hydrated, food is less important. Check your temperature and mitigate it if it's high. Suggestions for that are acetaminophen (Tylenol) and cool water and a fan!

Have on hand a thermometer (the accurate under tongue type preferably) and if possible a fingertip oximeter. Oxygen saturation should remain above 92% in people with normal heart and lungs and at sea level. Start to worry below 90% and get very worried and contact help for 88% or below. It's a good idea to test yourself for temp and oxygen while healthy as a baseline. Also note your breathing rate.

If it seems to get worse every day to the point where you are very worried, you can try taking chloroquine if you can get it. Pharmacies in India had it a week ago but I don't know now. Shipment for mine took about three weeks. Be sure to read dosing recommendations- it has an extremely long life in the body. Don't expect miracles from it.

Again if things are unstable, I'd recommend a broad spectrum antibiotic. Doxycline or Augmentin (Ampicillin plus clavulonic acid) or Azythromycin, of course for all of these, if you are not allergic. You probably know that the the virus is not affected by the antibiotic but the bacteria that often invade lungs together with a viral infection are. Use it at least 10 days or until completely well, whichever is longest.

There are some papers which suggest Vitamin D may help. For short periods, up to 50,000 units per day has been given. A more moderate approach is 5000-10,000 units. Vitamin C probably won't help but except for diarrhea, it's not usually harmful.

If you start out healthy and your condition is stable and not very serious, you still have appetite and some energy, I'd do nothing except hydration, acetaminophen and isolation.

Of course, check with your personal health professional before following anything you find on the internet including this! I hope everyone on this forum gets through this.

ETA: this is an interesting report of a moderately severe case in a healthy health professional- https://www.foxnews.com/health…s-its-not-what-i-expected

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'Pakistan has effective drug for COVID-19' | The Express Tribune

Once again as always.: scientific evidence of efficacy and adequate safety or STFU!

fabrice DAVID

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We are perhaps beginning to understand why the coronavirus causes severe leukopenia, but "silence radio" (in french in the text) in the media:

https://www.biorxiv.org/conten…iwnj04czziY3y0goOikRgUyPE

How genes from the AIDS virus are found in a bat virus, giving it not only an affinity for the pulmonary épithelium, normal for a Cov, but also the property of killing monocytes and lymphocytes, it is a deep space mystery. Some ideas ?

Did you read the expert comments to this paper? Most state it's bullshit and give scholarly reasons and citations why. I know nothing about virus structure and receptors so it's not my opinion. It's from those who seem to know. Apparently, this paper, cited before on this forum, blows up the claims that the COVID-19 virus was somehow engineered using bits of HIV-1: https://www.bioworld.com/articles/433087-article-headline

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“From everything I’ve looked at, there is zero evidence for genetic engineering; it looks like normal evolution,” said Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, who has been using genomes sequences taken from patient samples to track the spread of the virus since Jan. 11.

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On the HIV/AIDS front, chloroquine (250 mg twice daily) has been administered to HIV-1-infected patients with baseline viral loads over 50 000 copies per mL, in combination with lamivudine (150 mg twice daily) and hydroxyurea (500 mg twice daily) in an ongoing clinical trial in India.2

In the study cited, chloroquine was used to potentiate a well known anti-retrovirus therapy (ART) drug, not by itself. The standard of care in the USA is a combination of anti-retroviral drugs targeting in part, reverse transcriptase. Preset combinations are now available in a single pill, once or twice a day which improves compliance and achieves zero detectable virus (by PCR) in a large proportion of non-neglected cases. Chloroquine should definitely be studied against COVID-19 but in combination with the most theoretically promising anti-retroviral drugs. The only time it would make sense to take chloroquine alone for COVID-19 would be if there is no other choice which indeed can be the case at present.

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......This plasma therapy would only treat a very few patients.(rich and private) and could not be rolled out for general use on the NHS. But it's worth a try if all else fails.

Incorrect. The technology is little different from blood transfusion. In fact type and crossmatch is even less critical for plasma from type AB donors than for blood. If the plasma is processed into immuno-globulins, it's more complicated to make but easier to administer. Millions and millions of transfusions are performed each year. Once worked out, the process of giving plasma would be not very different.

However, doubt on its efficacy has been voiced. One Chinese doctor of particular interest, not an old person, received everything known to man to try to save him including convalescent plasma and died anyway. But Dr. Lipkin holds a very responsible position and has done excellent and extensive work so I would love to see what the paper in question actually claims. Hopefully it will have been done double blind or at least with a control group. If not, how would they know the outcomes without the treatments? The clinical course of the disease is not predictable.

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Plasma as a blood product prepared from blood donations is used in blood transfusions, typically as fresh frozen plasma (FFP) or plasma Frozen Within 24 Hours After Phlebotomy (PF24). When donating whole blood or packed red blood cell (PRBC) transfusions, O- is the most desirable and is considered a "universal donor," since it has neither A nor B antigens and can be safely transfused to most recipients. Type AB+ is the "universal recipient" type for PRBC donations. However, for plasma the situation is somewhat reversed. Blood donation centers will sometimes collect only plasma from AB donors through apheresis, as their plasma does not contain the antibodies that may cross react with recipient antigens. As such, AB is often considered the "universal donor" for plasma. Special programs exist just to cater to the male AB plasma donor, because of concerns about transfusion related acute lung injury (TRALI) and female donors who may have higher leukocyte antibodies.[14] However, some studies show an increased risk of TRALI despite increased leukocyte antibodies in women who have been pregnant.[15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_plasma

There are issues of transmitting infections including HIV and perhaps even CJD (mad cow) so the risk/benefit ratio would have to be worked out. But it would emphatically not be limited to very few rich and private patients. Not in the US anyway. I can't speak for the NHS. It is not always well spoken of when spending money on novel treatments is discussed.

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Obvious isn't it? There is a massive black market trade of chloroquine in Africa ever since the governments tried to restrict its use because the malarial parasite was becoming increasingly resistant to it. It is also used as a cheap anti-HIV drug . The clinical trials of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine have already been done and are 100% effective!

OK, I'm really tired of stupid shit like this. Either give a scholarly reference or at least a respectable authority or STFU!

Chloroquine is not an approved or proven anti-HIV drug and there is insufficient evidence that it works significantly against corona virus much less at 100% effective levels. At best, it seems it may be able to potentiate the action of other antivirals and even that is very preliminary. And while a very safe drug, chloroquine does cause hypersensitivity (allergic) reactions which can be severe as well as the potential for damage to various parts of the eye.

A particularly egregious case from SoCal: A run (10K IIRC) was sensibly cancelled because of the corona virus. So what did the organizers do next? They allowed participants to pick up their meet gear (placards, t-shirts and other memorabilia) in a local park from a table staffed with many volunteers with the stuff being handed and handled by many people and passed person to person until it got to the person wanting it. How incredibly ignorant, stupid, and negligent! The average person has no clue what a microbe is or how they spread. The average person knows nothing and cares nothing of science. Their priorities are church, sports, entertainment, and business. This is what will make the pandemic much worse than it would otherwise be. Nobody any more knows how things actually work.

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btw if you consider taking malaria drug as a precaution, check with your doctor first. Russian expert saying that it is effective in lowering body's autoimmune response and not targeting the virus. So it is useless unless you are unable critical condition.

Your doctor won't know because nobody knows. Chloroquine is probably best reserved to give at the start of infection or if it seems to worsen (high fever and cough). Probably best given with an antiviral such as Remdesivir . If you can find it. But realistically, there is a lot of documentation suggesting that these agents fail in many advanced cases. In some case, everything doable fails. And whether or not to use chloroquine therapeutically or preventatively or both isn't clear. In cell cultures, it does both but that's cell cultures and not people.

For what it's worth (not much!), I acquired some online from India Chloroquine but I won't take it unless I get infected or very seriously and obviously exposed.

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If other countries want to copy China they should create fever clinics. People in Wuhan etc are constantly having their temperatures checked (basically every time they enter a building) with a wave over the forehead. If their temperature is high it’s off to the fever clinic. Once they are there they are met by healthcare workers in full protective gear. But they don’t even do an immediate coronavirus test, which is kind of surprising. They first do a blood test to get their white blood cell count and then a quick CT scan of the lungs.

It's more than "surprising." It's downright bizarre for several reasons. First, forehead temperatures are notoriously and obviously inaccurate because they can't take into consideration ambient temp, wind, and probably other factors. They tend to read low by 0.5 degrees C or more compared to sublingual or tympanic temps. And of course, much worse yet, temperature tests won't detect those who are incubating the virus but do not yet have symptoms. And the elderly tend to have less temperature elevation.

The rest is just as weird. I don't know specifically about COVID-19 but many if not most viral illnesses do not feature elevated white cell counts. In fact, sometimes the opposite or changes in the "differential count" -- some types of cells are up, others are down, the total count is unchanged or lower. Maybe they are only looking for the complication of bacterial infection and pneumonia over the viral infection. A CT is useful but extreme and involves substantial radiation and cost. Also, it can not diagnose COVID-19 specifically and can be abnormal in other pneumonias, bacterial or viral.

If it were me, I'd get a history (ask questions), measure the temperature with a tympanic thermometer (using disposable covers), measure the oxygen saturation with a simple fingertip oximeter ($25 these days) and absolutely but for sure (!) run a real time PCR test for the actual virus.

About the test being painful: sure, if someone who has no idea about the anatomy of the nose just rams the probe up your nose! It's only slightly to moderately unpleasant just like an influenza test if the operator knows what they are doing. It helps to be gentle and if one nostril shows resistance to probing, use the other and in extreme cases, do a back of the throat swab through the mouth or spray a bit of lidocaine first. This isn't the middle ages.

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often the cause of the "common cold" is a coronavirus. Can you get the common cold more than once? Does a herd immunity exist for the common cold?

Most "common colds" are caused by rhinovirus not coronaviruses.

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The common cold, also known simply as a cold, is a viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory tract that primarily affects the nose.[7] The throat, sinuses, and larynx may also be affected.[5] Signs and symptoms may appear less than two days after exposure to the virus.[5] These may include coughing, sore throat, runny nose, sneezing, headache, and fever.[2][3] People usually recover in seven to ten days,[2] but some symptoms may last up to three weeks.[6] Occasionally those with other health problems may develop pneumonia.[2]

Well over 200 virus strains are implicated in causing the common cold, with rhinoviruses being the most common.[1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_cold

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There are no vaccines against these viruses as there is little-to-no cross-protection between serotypes. At least 99 serotypes of human rhinoviruses affecting humans have been sequenced.[20][6] However, a study of the VP4 protein has shown it to be highly conserved among many serotypes of human rhinovirus, opening up the potential for a future pan-serotype human rhinovirus vaccine.[21] A similar result was obtained with the VP1 protein. Like VP4, VP1 also occasionally "pokes" out of the viral particle, making it available to neutralizing antibodies. Both peptides have been tested on rabbits, resulting in successful generation of cross-serotype antibodies.[22]

The successful introduction of human ICAM-1 into mouse has removed a major roadblocker in creating an animal model for RV vaccination.[22]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinovirus

Rhinovirus is a member of the picornovirus family and unlike coronavirus, I believe it does not require the enzyme reverse transcriptase for reproduction and thus is not a "retrovirus."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picornavirus

I do not know much about corona virus induced "colds." Maybe you can look them up.

Apparently, there is a new video game around...