COVID-19 Pandemic: Transmissions, Deaths, Treatments, Vaccines, Interventions and More...

[LC-88]

The fight against masks is the Seriously the most asinine thing I've ever seen in my adult life. Do these folks also think condoms are a conspiracy?

Anyone with decent parents has been told since he could speak to cover his mouth when sneezing or coughing to avoid spreading germs. Masks are just a more serious version of that very simple concept: put something solid between those emitting germs and those breathing in.

What's the argument against that, again?

For most people that are against masks, I think it's not about the science, but "what's next" and "where do we end up". Weekly scans in order to go to school and work. Mandatory vaccines every three months. Imprisonment and or property confiscation for non-compliance? Classic give an inch, take a mile argument.

If you told a smoker in 1960 that someday they couldn't smoke in the office, a restaurant or a train. They would have laughed in your face.

 

[Proud NJ Sports Fan]

I'm not anti-science, I grew up in a family of scientists and as you know I work exclusively with them, but I was raised to be skeptical of everything because sometimes science is wrong, I don't think it's fair to label people like me as anti-science (I'm assuming you're referring to me).

And FTR I'm not anti-mask either, in fact I'm wearing one now.

Also, Scientists don't agree on everything

For Numbers, only the scientists that back up the policies that he favors are the correct ones

 

[RU848789]

The one stat I always see from the Mayo study is the 7 day mortality reduction from 11.9 to 8.7. I thought that was sort of disappointing and it reminded me of the Remdesivir results.

It does have similarities to the remdesivir trial, but plasma has far more clinical results to date and aggregating a bunch of smaller RCTs, while not a perfect way to do things, did show 57% mortality reduction vs. controls/matched controls (was in my 2nd link in my post you replied to).

My gut tells me plasma is fairly effective, but you have no idea how pissed off I am about FDA's miss on not ensuring we had an RCT done in April at the height of the outbreak in our area. We had the patients and the plasma and I kept asking about it (I emailed and tweeted at several study authors, but kept hearing that's for the FDA to do).

 

[King of S]

FDA authorizes convalescent plasma treatment for Covid patients

FDA authorizes convalescent plasma treatment for Covid patients

Huge!

 

[Greg2020]

Talking cable news and politicians here. Sure a few print articles here and there

Its exactly why Alex Berenson is a hero

lmfao

 

[Greg2020]

The last confirmed death was 8 days ago.

As John Waite sang for The Babys in 1977 "Isn't It Time?"

fake news.

 

[Greg2020]

How many deaths did he and the WHO contribute too...if you believe in Bidens comments which i dont you better step up to the plate to account for Faucis lies

hysterics

 

[T2Kplus10]

The one stat I always see from the Mayo study is the 7 day mortality reduction from 11.9 to 8.7. I thought that was sort of disappointing and it reminded me of the Remdesivir results.

Remdesivir is an exceptional drug that has helped many patients. The only problem with it is that production needs to ramp up. If plasma is another Remdesivir, many lives will be saved.

 

[ArminRU]

It does have similarities to the remdesivir trial, but plasma has far more clinical results to date and aggregating a bunch of smaller RCTs, while not a perfect way to do things, did show 57% mortality reduction vs. controls/matched controls (was in my 2nd link in my post you replied to).

My gut tells me plasma is fairly effective, but you have no idea how pissed off I am about FDA's miss on not ensuring we had an RCT done in April at the height of the outbreak in our area. We had the patients and the plasma and I kept asking about it (I emailed and tweeted at several study authors, but kept hearing that's for the FDA to do).

Agree, really is crazy to me how a RCT wasn’t done forever ago. I do feel like this is a more effective treatment than Remdesivir .

 

[RU848789]

DC to Boston is about the same as South Korea - no excuse for not being able to do what SK did with developing/deploying tests, despite all your silly posts to the contrary. We utterly failed having testing available anywhere, which is independent of the size of the US.

With regard to having "data" on symptomatic people presenting at doctor's offices and hospitals, I've already posted about that via the ILI (influenza like illnesses) reports, which were way up in our area starting in the beginning of March (first link), plus there have been numerous studies estimating the NYC had >10,000 cases by the end of February (and NENJ probably had a similar amount and some estimates are much greater), and finally, as per the 2nd link, a paper was just published showing that COVID was growing unknown to anyone in Jan/Feb in Seattle (based on COVID testing of retained "flu" samples that were negative for flu), so it's also quite likely the same was going on in this area.

So certainly by late February, there were many symptomatic cases walking around, but no tests for any of them before early March and still <1000 tests/day by mid-March. It seems nearly certain that if we had tests available by late February, we'd have been finding cases by then and probably would've easily had a few hundred cases by early March, if only we had had testing capability in place.

https://www.healio.com/news/infecti...new-york-were-preceded-by-uptick-in-flu-cases
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2589-5370(20)30223-6
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/us/coronavirus-early-outbreaks-cities.html

With regard to shutting things down, the biggest reason California likely started with earlier shutdowns is they had more cases and deaths through early March and into mid-March vs. New York. As of 3/4, CA had 53 cases and 1 death, while NY had 3 cases and zero deaths and it wasn't until 3/12 that NY had more cases than CA (328 to 237), but at that point CA had 4 deaths, while NY had none. NY finally passed CA in deaths on 3/15. So, it's not a surprise that CA closed schools on 3/13, while NY did that a few days later on 3/16, when bars/restaurants were also shut down.

Yes, CA's "formal" shutdown order came on 3/17 vs. 3/22 for NY (due to bickering between BDB and Cuomo, which was unfortunate and the formal shutdown shouldn't have taken that long), but both states were effectively closed up by around 3/16, by which time NY's cases had ballooned very quickly to ~3X those in CA (1374 to 392), as NY (and NJ) was unknowingly in the midst of an incredible exponential growth phase unlike any seen during this pandemic - just a week later, on 3/23, NY had over 25K cases, while CA had just 1700 (15X). I believe that if NY (and NJ) had SK's 10,000 test/day capability by late February, we would've seen the 3/16-style case numbers by early March and potentially might have shut down 2 weeks earlier or at least 1 week earlier, saving perhaps ~50% (1 week earlier) to ~80% (2 weeks earlier) of the lives lost.

https://abc7news.com/feature/health...-to-becoming-a-new-york-level-crisis/6108354/

Not sure what your point is about Fauci - it's all in the article. Everyone in the field knew there was the potential for asymptomatic transmission going on by early February, based on the study cited, but it took a few more weeks to get a robust set of data showing that was likely going on (including data from the Diamond Princess and elsewhere). Also, while I think Fauci and our political leaders (federal and state) should've sounded stronger alarms, it's also unrealistic to think Fauci should've been screaming to shut down the country with <75 cases and zero deaths on 3/1? Hmmmm, maybe if we had had robust testing in place and seen hundreds of cases by 3/1, perhaps things would've played out differently.

Anyone who's been reading my posts since late February knows what a big deal I've made of the US having been woefully unprepared with regard to the most important containment element in any pandemic arsenal - testing. The post above details much of this. Well, today, an excellent paper came out of Notre Dame detailing their modeling of the early days of the pandemic through March 12th (a summary article and the actual paper are linked below) and it essentially agrees with everything I've been saying.

COVID-19 Pandemic: Transmissions, Deaths, Treatments, Vaccines, Interventions and More...

You sound like you really have some problems. I use to have Gout pretty consistently until I really changed my diet with salad for lunch and cutting my drinking. I use to have maybe 3-4 attacks a year and could last for 3-10 days, real difficulty walking. Now, maybe a small gout attack once a...

rutgers.forums.rivals.com

The paper shows that there were more than 100K infections by 3/12 and possibly even 1MM infections by that date, by which time we had run only 5300 tests, with 1514 positive cases in the US. Surely if we had been running 10,000 tests per day, like South Korea was by late February, we would've seen thousands of cases by then too and had probably a similar level of info we ended up with by mid-March when we started shutting things down, i.e., we likely could have shut down in early March, saving 75-90% of the lives lost, especially in NY/NJ and the NE US, which were hit hardest and earliest.

The first excerpt below is from the summary article and the second one is from the actual paper. They're essentially saying the same things I just said about how if we had adequate testing in place weeks earlier, we would've shut down earlier and saved a lot of lives.

Gaps in early surveillance of coronavirus led to record-breaking US trajectory

Research from the University of Notre Dame provides insight into how limited testing and gaps in surveillance during the initial phase of the epidemic r...

news.nd.edu

“It was such a crucial period in terms of how this situation started,” said Perkins. “We look at the United States now and compare it to other countries like South Korea or Germany, New Zealand or Vietnam, any number of countries who have done a much, much better job controlling transmission. The key differences really come down to the time period we examine in this study. Those countries had adequate surveillance up and running at that time, whereas we show that throughout most of February the United States missed the vast majority of infections that were already out there. This particular timeframe that we focus on is really important for figuring out how we got here in the first place.”

Estimating unobserved SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United States

In early 2020, delays in availability of diagnostic testing for COVID-19 prompted questions about the extent of unobserved community transmission in the United States. We quantified unobserved infections in the United States during this time using a stochastic transmission model. Although...

www.pnas.org

Although the limitations of our analysis limit the precision of our results, we can nonetheless conclude that unobserved SARS-CoV-2 infections in the United States by 12 March could have easily numbered in the hundreds of thousands (31.0% of simulations in our baseline analysis) and quite possibly in excess of 1 million (20.3% of simulations). This result, considered together with extensive presymptomatic and asymptomatic transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (3, 4), suggests that the United States was well past the possibility of containment by 12 March. Other modeling work (16) suggests that the feasibility of containing SARS-CoV-2 is highly sensitive to the number of infections that occur prior to initiation of containment efforts. Our estimate that fewer than 10% of local symptomatic infections were detected by surveillance for around a month is consistent with estimates from a serological study (36) and suggests that a crucial opportunity to limit the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on the United States may have been missed. Although the number of tests administered increased in March (9), so too did the number of infections and consequently, the demand for testing.

Coincident with the 13 March declaration of a national emergency (14), social-distancing measures went into effect across the United States (15). Our estimate of many thousand unobserved SARS-CoV-2 infections at that time suggests that large-scale mitigation efforts, rather than reactionary measures (33), were indeed necessary. Analyses since have indicated that such measures were effective across a wide range of geographic settings (48⇓⇓–51). Even so, acting sooner could have prevented even more cases and deaths (52).

 

[bac2therac]

For most people that are against masks, I think it's not about the science, but "what's next" and "where do we end up". Weekly scans in order to go to school and work. Mandatory vaccines every three months. Imprisonment and or property confiscation for non-compliance? Classic give an inch, take a mile argument.

If you told a smoker in 1960 that someday they couldn't smoke in the office, a restaurant or a train. They would have laughed in your face.

this...what is the end game and who gets to determine it....and why

 

[Tango Two]

 

[RUinFla]

The local CBS affiliate discovered in June that some number of labs conducting the testing were only reported the positive cases. One lab, for example, reported 500 positive and zero negative cases for a given period. When the reporters asked the labs about this practice, they promised to report all results, positive and negative. As of August, the labs said they were providing all results to the state, so it must be the state was not handling the data right. This skews two figures: the positivity rate, which has been guiding decisions on reopening, and the number of people tested. Wonder if some number of labs country-wide are doing this, reporting only positive tests.

Further to my post of the other day. The NFL announced that the lab they were using for testing had provided false positives for multiple players from multiple teams, causing major disruptions in preparations for the season.

Labs have danced around the subject of false positives, saying they are rare. Now we have the lab used by the NFL in its safety protocol providing false positives for dozens of players from--they mentioned at least ten teams. Presumably it is a well-regarded lab. The NFL wants to play games, so they would want the best lab available, but it came up wanting. Add that to our all-inclusive way of classifying anything as a Covid death if the person had traces of Covid, and you really have to wonder about the numbers. Would guess the number of cases and the number of deaths are somewhat inflated, and the number tested is higher than the announced 72 million.

 

[bac2therac]

its funny watching msm and twitter tonight try to twist the narrative that convalescent plasma is being rushed by Trump, despite it already being used.

 

[tom1944]

For most people that are against masks, I think it's not about the science, but "what's next" and "where do we end up". Weekly scans in order to go to school and work. Mandatory vaccines every three months. Imprisonment and or property confiscation for non-compliance? Classic give an inch, take a mile argument.

If you told a smoker in 1960 that someday they couldn't smoke in the office, a restaurant or a train. They would have laughed in your face.

If wearing masks lead to as positive a result as smoking limits did it would be an overwhelming success

 

[RU#1fan]

Thanks for posting...more evidence that sutdowns are worse than openings

Wrong. Not at the expense of thousands dying.

 

[RUJohnny]

Read the whole chain here please, Numbers, starting with Chris As tweet. I'd like your response.

View embedded media

@RU848789 asking for your review and thoughts.

 

[Barnaby&Neill]

View embedded media

Why is he retweeting a cancer epidemiologist instead of an infectious disease expert?

 

[slyker]

Interesting that the Johns Hopkins Corona Virus Resource Center Home page for weeks and weeks had on its front page, a prominently displayed chart for "have countries flattened the curve?" as the US was spiking upwards. But just about a week or so ago, as it became clear the US data was improving dramatically and the case count started on its current steep downward decline..... that chart magically disappeared from its prominent position on their front page! It is still there on its site, but you need to drill down a couple pages to find it. Why are they so afraid of sharing good news? As soon as the news starts to get good.... viola !! Its hard to find. Anyone shocked anymore? Of course the individual state data is still showing fluctuations up and down, so they still keep that chart on the front page were they can highlight in red on that page that there are still hot spots. Even though most of the red zones have mostly been in the less populous states as of late. .

Have Countries Flattened the Curve?

 

[okieKnight908]

its funny watching msm and twitter tonight try to twist the narrative that convalescent plasma is being rushed by Trump, despite it already being used.

That's actually your narrative, so you can give yourself something to whine about. If anything, the narrative was exactly what you just said - he's tooting his horn over something that's been available for awhile.

 

[bac2therac]

That's actually your narrative, so you can give yourself something to whine about. If anything, the narrative was exactly what you just said - he's tooting his horn over something that's been available for awhile.

No its not its what they did all last night

 

[LETSGORU91]

If you arent sick why are you wearing masks...asymptomatic spread studies are dubious at best

We have someone running for President saying he will have a mandate to wear masks anytime you go outside..why are you claiming otherwise

I don't condone that rationale when providing guidance for using a mask...plus its factually incorrect. Please do a little research before you make false statements which the population may perceive as true. This is what got Fauci in trouble back in March. I found these links in less than 10 minutes.

Asymptomatic shedding of coronavirus

Asymptomatic transmission

""Based on CDC studies, about 60% of cases are transmitted by those without symptoms."

More studies on asymptomatic transmission

Asymptomatic transmission: SARS-cov2 vs. SARS-cov1

He never ever said they were basically worthless. He has repeatedly said they should be worn after admitting he only said not to wear them to save them for our frontline workers.

I'm glad Fauci reversed course on mask wearing, but here are a few excerpts from his March interview on 60 minutes.

"Right now, people in the United States should not be walking around, wearing masks"
"Theres no reason to be walking around wearing a mask"
"When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little better, and it might even block a droplet"

The nationwide head of infectious disease should have never uttered these three sentences, yet he did so consecutively in about 60 seconds.

 

[RU23]

Sorry if this was mentioned. Looks like we have our first confirmed case of virus reinfection out of Hong Kong. 4 months later. Not great news, but I personally knew this had to be possible based on the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen. Hope numbers is right that in most cases there will be 6 months of immunity minimum, and hopefully more like a year.

The patient was asymptomatic the second time around, which is good news. Seems protection from T cells will be longer lasting than protection from antibodies.

 

[ArminRU]

Sorry if this was mentioned. Looks like we have our first confirmed case of virus reinfection out of Hong Kong. 4 months later. Not great news, but I personally knew this had to be possible based on the anecdotal evidence I’ve seen. Hope numbers is right that in most cases there will be 6 months of immunity minimum, and hopefully more like a year.

The patient was asymptomatic the second time around, which is good news. Seems protection from T cells will be longer lasting than protection from antibodies.

Just saw this too. This article does a good job explaining. I wonder if this is normal behavior for viruses where you can get infected again, but the body is easily able to clear the virus to the point where the person is asymptomatic.

First Covid-19 reinfection documented in Hong Kong, researchers say

Researchers in Hong Kong on Monday reported what appears to be the first confirmed case of Covid-19 reinfection.

www.statnews.com

Another good point of the article:
“Experts said it was also important to consider the immune response the patient generated after his first infection. While most people seem to mount a solid response, there has been indication that some people do not produce neutralizing antibodies — those that can block the virus from infecting cells — at very high levels, for unclear reasons.”

 

[King of S]

Interesting that the Johns Hopkins Corona Virus Resource Center Home page for weeks and weeks had on its front page, a prominently displayed chart for "have countries flattened the curve?" as the US was spiking upwards. But just about a week or so ago, as it became clear the US data was improving dramatically and the case count started on its current steep downward decline..... that chart magically disappeared from its prominent position on their front page! It is still there on its site, but you need to drill down a couple pages to find it. Why are they so afraid of sharing good news? As soon as the news starts to get good.... viola !! Its hard to find. Anyone shocked anymore? Of course the individual state data is still showing fluctuations up and down, so they still keep that chart on the front page were they can highlight in red on that page that there are still hot spots. Even though most of the red zones have mostly been in the less populous states as of late. .

Have Countries Flattened the Curve?

Exactly!

 

[King of S]

Just saw this too. This article does a good job explaining. I wonder if this is normal behavior with viruses that you can get infected again, but the body is easily able to clear the virus to the point where the person is asymptomatic.

First Covid-19 reinfection documented in Hong Kong, researchers say

Researchers in Hong Kong on Monday reported what appears to be the first confirmed case of Covid-19 reinfection.

www.statnews.com

Nonsense

 

[HALL85]

It does have similarities to the remdesivir trial, but plasma has far more clinical results to date and aggregating a bunch of smaller RCTs, while not a perfect way to do things, did show 57% mortality reduction vs. controls/matched controls (was in my 2nd link in my post you replied to).

My gut tells me plasma is fairly effective, but you have no idea how pissed off I am about FDA's miss on not ensuring we had an RCT done in April at the height of the outbreak in our area. We had the patients and the plasma and I kept asking about it (I emailed and tweeted at several study authors, but kept hearing that's for the FDA to do).

Convalescent Plasma (CCP) has had very good results to date and once again we have a solution that is being politicized by the MSM. Most of the doses that have been administered to date (going back to April) have been on the sickest patients and the reality is that since the plasma comes from donors, the rate limiting factor is getting enough doses to treat a broader group of patients. FDA is working with Americas Blood Centers and the Red Cross on helping to ramp up collections and production which sounds easy but it's not. Relying on the public to respond and for non-profit blood centers to be able to shift resources and still meet the demand for other blood products. They are trying to get 200-300K doses manufactured by the November. If they could get 2-3 million, they would, but the system just can't grow that fast.

Trump clearly announced this last night to have a boost going into the convention. Trust me; nothing earth-shattering has happened over the past two weeks. The NYT article was even wrong. This trial and build-up has been happening for six months and will continue to gain momentum because it's working.

 

[King of S]

Interesting that the Johns Hopkins Corona Virus Resource Center Home page for weeks and weeks had on its front page, a prominently displayed chart for "have countries flattened the curve?" as the US was spiking upwards. But just about a week or so ago, as it became clear the US data was improving dramatically and the case count started on its current steep downward decline..... that chart magically disappeared from its prominent position on their front page! It is still there on its site, but you need to drill down a couple pages to find it. Why are they so afraid of sharing good news? As soon as the news starts to get good.... viola !! Its hard to find. Anyone shocked anymore? Of course the individual state data is still showing fluctuations up and down, so they still keep that chart on the front page were they can highlight in red on that page that there are still hot spots. Even though most of the red zones have mostly been in the less populous states as of late. .

Have Countries Flattened the Curve?

Same with TV media. No mention lately how hospitalizations and cases have dropped dramatically In the U.S. over past few wells. Why??

 

[King of S]

Same with TV media. No mention lately how hospitalizations and cases have dropped dramatically In the U.S. over past few wells. Why??

Sorry - weeks not wells- too much going on today.

 

[BIGRUBIGDBIGredmachine]

Interesting that the Johns Hopkins Corona Virus Resource Center Home page for weeks and weeks had on its front page, a prominently displayed chart for "have countries flattened the curve?" as the US was spiking upwards. But just about a week or so ago, as it became clear the US data was improving dramatically and the case count started on its current steep downward decline..... that chart magically disappeared from its prominent position on their front page! It is still there on its site, but you need to drill down a couple pages to find it. Why are they so afraid of sharing good news? As soon as the news starts to get good.... viola !! Its hard to find. Anyone shocked anymore? Of course the individual state data is still showing fluctuations up and down, so they still keep that chart on the front page were they can highlight in red on that page that there are still hot spots. Even though most of the red zones have mostly been in the less populous states as of late. .

Have Countries Flattened the Curve?

Could mini-mike have something to do with why are they so afraid of sharing good news? Asking for a friend
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Michael R. Bloomberg's historic $1.8 billion gift in support of financial aid at Johns Hopkins will fuel student access and mobility, ensuring that a Hopkins education is within reach for qualified, high-achieving students, regardless of their ability to pay.

Bloomberg's record gift helps Johns Hopkins realize key goal of need-blind admissions

$1.8B donation in support of financial aid will allow university to eliminate student loans from financial aid packages for all current and future undergraduates

hub.jhu.edu

 

[RUinFla]

Further info on the rash of NFL false positives: a total of 77 players are involved and the offending lab is in--New Jersey.

 

[RUJohnny]

Further info on the rash of NFL false positives: a total of 77 players are involved and the offending lab is in--New Jersey.

Same lab responsible for the dump of positives from an "unassigned county" two weeks ago that have been slowly getting deleted in subsequent daily updates.

 

[bac2therac]

Same lab responsible for the dump of positives from an "unassigned county" two weeks ago that have been slowly getting deleted in subsequent daily updates.

.and these positive tests will be included in King Mirphys phony rt

 

[GoodOl'Rutgers]

Anyone who's been reading my posts since late February knows what a big deal I've made of the US having been woefully unprepared with regard to the most important containment element in any pandemic arsenal - testing.

iirc, in late February you were still laughing at CoVid fears. But you did get on the need for testing very early and did say we should just go with whatever WHO is using (the German test kits). I agree.. we should have tested everyone entering (or leaving the country) as a first step.. then should test EVERYONE.. which we still have not done.

 

[GoodOl'Rutgers]

Wrong. Not at the expense of thousands dying.

thousands die either way. many states and municipalities will face severe budget problems and cut funding to so many programs.. costing lives. there will be less tax revenue to spend on research and to alleviate suffering..

it really is not a simple case of risking deaths due to exposure.. there are other risks.. real risks.

 

[GoodOl'Rutgers]

Same lab responsible for the dump of positives from an "unassigned county" two weeks ago that have been slowly getting deleted in subsequent daily updates.

would be interesting to find out that these false positives were driven by political leanings of those involved. the way things are going.. seems politics has driven a lot of poor choices of officials from FBI, DOJ, CIA.. why not some clerk in a testing center.. the ends justify the means in today's world.. right?

 

[RU848789]

Just saw this too. This article does a good job explaining. I wonder if this is normal behavior for viruses where you can get infected again, but the body is easily able to clear the virus to the point where the person is asymptomatic.

First Covid-19 reinfection documented in Hong Kong, researchers say

Researchers in Hong Kong on Monday reported what appears to be the first confirmed case of Covid-19 reinfection.

www.statnews.com

Another good point of the article:
“Experts said it was also important to consider the immune response the patient generated after his first infection. While most people seem to mount a solid response, there has been indication that some people do not produce neutralizing antibodies — those that can block the virus from infecting cells — at very high levels, for unclear reasons.”

Keep in mind that for other coronaviruses, like the common cold, SARS and MERS, nobody has routinely been testing asymptomatic, healthy people, like they are for COVID, so it's quite possible reinfection with asymptomatic outcome would have been discovered for SARS/MERS, especially if we had ever looked for it. While this isn't great news (and I haven't seen the Hong Kong research documented yet), it's still quite possible that the vast majority of patients will have immunity for a few years, like SARS/MERS and not less than a year like for the common cold coronaviruses (article excerpt below).

But based on what happens with other coronaviruses, experts knew that immunity to SARS-CoV-2 would not last forever. People generally become susceptible again to the coronaviruses that cause the common cold after a year or even less, while protection against SARS-1 and MERS appears to last for a few years.

 

[RU848789]

Convalescent Plasma (CCP) has had very good results to date and once again we have a solution that is being politicized by the MSM. Most of the doses that have been administered to date (going back to April) have been on the sickest patients and the reality is that since the plasma comes from donors, the rate limiting factor is getting enough doses to treat a broader group of patients. FDA is working with Americas Blood Centers and the Red Cross on helping to ramp up collections and production which sounds easy but it's not. Relying on the public to respond and for non-profit blood centers to be able to shift resources and still meet the demand for other blood products. They are trying to get 200-300K doses manufactured by the November. If they could get 2-3 million, they would, but the system just can't grow that fast.

Trump clearly announced this last night to have a boost going into the convention. Trust me; nothing earth-shattering has happened over the past two weeks. The NYT article was even wrong. This trial and build-up has been happening for six months and will continue to gain momentum because it's working.

I've probably made 100 posts on convalescent plasma since March and have probably been one of CP's biggest advocates, but all along I've also lamented that we hadn't figured out a way to run a randomized, controlled trial. Also, the Times article wasn't "wrong" - there was intense debate about whether the FDA should grant the emergency use authorization and Fauci, Collins and Lane were all concerned with granting it due to the lack of a convincing RCT to date, as they reported.

Having said that, I think the emergency use authorization was still the right step, given very strong signals of efficacy (especially the dose-response data in the high titer vs. low titer antibodies from CP study recently published by the Mayo Clinic folks). Interesting Twitter thread on this involving Dr. Casadeval, from Johns Hopkins, the engine behind getting this all going in March. Especially thought the tweet from Dr. Hotez, a major medical figure throughout the pandemic was insightful, basically saying the data aren't perfect, but if he had COVID, he'd want CP - I feel the same way. It's unfortunate that this is becoming a political football.

https://twitter.com/ACasadevall1

 

[RU848789]

iirc, in late February you were still laughing at CoVid fears. But you did get on the need for testing very early and did say we should just go with whatever WHO is using (the German test kits). I agree.. we should have tested everyone entering (or leaving the country) as a first step.. then should test EVERYONE.. which we still have not done.

Just to clarify, I never laughed at COVID (I did laugh at a few kooky conspiracy theories about it though), but in late January/early February I thought it was going to be more like the flu, which was wrong, but in those posts, I usually noted that it could be worse. By late February, I was convinced we were in for a very bad outbreak, which is why we started our quarantine on 3/2 before the vast majority of others. And yes, I was all over testing from early on, based on a lifetime of being a scientist and knowing that early data on any scientific problem is critical.

 

[HALL85]

I've probably made 100 posts on convalescent plasma since March and have probably been one of CP's biggest advocates, but all along I've also lamented that we hadn't figured out a way to run a randomized, controlled trial. Also, the Times article wasn't "wrong" - there was intense debate about whether the FDA should grant the emergency use authorization and Fauci, Collins and Lane were all concerned with granting it due to the lack of a convincing RCT to date, as they reported.

Having said that, I think the emergency use authorization was still the right step, given very strong signals of efficacy (especially the dose-response data in the high titer vs. low titer antibodies from CP study recently published by the Mayo Clinic folks). Interesting Twitter thread on this involving Dr. Casadeval, from Johns Hopkins, the engine behind getting this all going in March. Especially thought the tweet from Dr. Hotez, a major medical figure throughout the pandemic was insightful, basically saying the data aren't perfect, but if he had COVID, he'd want CP - I feel the same way. It's unfortunate that this is becoming a political football.

https://twitter.com/ACasadevall1

Great post and agree with everything you've said. Having been under the tent to a degree with the FDA on this since March, it was clear that they were trying to get as many shots on goal as possible and fast tracking everything. I sensed a panic on the calls but also an all-hands type of response that was pretty inspiring to be honest. I have seen the Mayo data and also enough anecdotal cases to feel the same way. If I was admitted and tested postive, I would ask for a CCP transfusion immediately.