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

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One of what exactly? People point out some countries that supposedly had success with HCQ, I’m pointing out the opposite. HCQ has foggy results at best. It is what it is.
You yell at me for posting Twitter, yet you post nothing to support your assertions. Unless something has changed, it seems that HCQ is being used as a co-therapy in Peru. Note- I did not find this from Twitter.
"The momentum became so great that the national government there did a turn-around and declared both the anti-parasitic drug and hydroxychloroquine as authorized for use. They did this despite the lack of evidence from randomized controlled trials. "

"In Peru, the government has followed the community clinicians lead in a pragmatic bid to economically and expeditiously save lives. Growing numbers of them declare in concert that the treatment is working. There are no widespread reports of adverse events but that doesn’t mean they don’t occur. The research and fact finding in Peru isn’t done yet."
 
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@BIGRUBIGDBIGredmachine

Ask realclearpolitics to update their article to address this one, please.
OK will monitor RCP for you, maybe this new "study" won't go the way of the fake Lancet and hackneyed Boulware "studies". Quick question--I didn't delve into the "study" report yet, so what exactly was involved in this new "study"? From the article it sounds as though this new "study" is an analysis of prior "studies", no? The researchers,, including Thibault Fiolet of Paris's Centre for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health, assessed 29 studies - processing the data of 11,932 patients who were treated with hydroxychloroquine, 8,081 who received hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin, and 12,930 in a control group that received neither.
 
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South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, sri lanka, estonia, ice land, uruguay, cambodia, mongolia, bermuda, barbados,uganda, zimbabwe, finland, croatia, greece, denmark, czech republic, austria, switzerland, portugal, japan, amongst others.
So you're attributing the chicomvirus rates in those countries to wearing masks, eh "Greg"?
 
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If anyone ever doubted the stupidity of some Americans, never fear, they're still here. If it weren't so sad and dangerous I'd be tempted to laugh, as I just never thought I'd see something like this.



“We love the uneducated “
lmao
 
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Hospitalizations and death rates way down. Is it treatments, SD, virus losing strength or all 3?
decreased rate of spread and improved treatments. Decreased rate of spread is a result of herd immunity (more responsible) and masks/distancing (less responsible). the bigger cause for reduced transmissibility is my opinion.
 

Thought this was interesting. I know that anitgen tests are not as reliable as PCR tests, but an incredibly low cost/quick test could help people feel more comfortable until there's a vaccine in widespread use. For $5 a pop, I know I'll get my family to take it before we get together indoors for the holidays.

@RU848789 thoughts?

Sorry, been catching up due to the hurricane, lol. Good that I got delayed, since Derek Lowe posted on it yesterday in his In The Pipeline blog and as usual, he provided better info than I likely would have. You're absolutely right that this could be a big deal. This one looks for the virus's nucleocapsid protein (Np), which attaches to a Np antibody on the strip and then migrates via a solvent down the strip and is then captured by another antibody forming a complex that provides a color change if positive, like a pregnancy test. Fast, reasonably accurate antigen tests that can be carried out by technicians (it's a nasal swab) at various clinics and other facilities (like schools or workplaces) and give a result in 15 minutes on whether someone is infected is something many have been calling for for a long time and thought we would have had already.


This is the kind of screening test that could really help control outbreaks much better, as fast results that are positive should lead to immediate quarantine, as opposed to now, where plenty of people are likely not quarantining for the 5 days it takes to get the results, especially if they have no symptoms. Since this is more of a screening test, one could imagine that a positive result with no symptoms might mean someone would want to get a true PCR test to really see if one is infected (they're more sensitive). Also, the few false positives mean a few folks will quarantine unnecessarily, but I think we can live with that, while the few false negatives are a problem, as people will think they're uninfected when they actually are infected, but with such a rapid test, they could get tested again the next day or so to at least minimize time walking around being infectious.

One could also see this being used allow schools to reopen with far more confidence and for public events to be held with far more confidence, although using them for that could still be an issue since all it takes is one false negative superspreader to cause an outbreak at a large event - which is why large events will likely still require masking if we roll these fast tests out very widely and test frequently (people who need to be tested), but it would at least be nice to know that the vast majority of people attending an event or a school are negative. Been dying to see someone finally develop a test like this (see my April post below), although an instant test from a pin prick of blood (or saliva; this one requires a nasal swab, so it has to be done by someone else), which could be done at home, would be even better. Lowe has a nice summary below on how to deploy such tests.


What’s proper? The FDA’s EUA is for testing people that show up with symptoms to see if they really do have SARS-CoV2. I think that’s appropriate, because you’re more likely to have a higher percentage of those folks who are really infected. If you tried to deploy this test across a large asymptomatic population with a very low true infection rate – everybody in New Zealand, for example – you would create turmoil. New Zealand’s real infection rate is vanishingly small, but Abbott’s quick $5 test would read out a false positive You Are Coronavirused for 1.5% of the whole country, never lower, which would be a completely misleading picture that would cause all sorts of needless trouble.

On the other hand, if you’re testing symptomatic people in a community where the virus is already known to be spreading, you can do a huge amount of good. Let’s imagine you test 1000 such coughing, worried patients under conditions where you expect that 10% of them really do have the coronavirus. In the course of testing all thousand, you’ll run those 100 positive folks through, and you’ll correctly tell 97 of them they they need to go isolate themselves immediately, which is a huge win for public health. Three of them, unfortunately, will be told that they’re negative and will go out and do what they do, but that’s surely far fewer than would be out and around without the test. You’ll also run the 900 other people through who actually have a cold or flu or something and not corona, and you’ll tell maybe 13 of them (900 x 0.015) that they’re positive for coronavirus and that they should isolate as well. That’s not great, either, but it’s worth it to get the 97 out of 100 real infectious coronavirus patients off the streets. And meanwhile you’ve correctly told the other 890 people in your original cohort that they do not have coronavirus, which is also a good outcome. But remember, with that 98.5% specificity you’re going to send 15 people out of every thousand you test home to quarantine even if no one really has it at all. If 1% of your sample of 1000 people is truly infected, you’ll probably catch all ten people who are really positive. . .but you’ll also tell 14 or 15 people who don’t have it that they do, crossing over to finding more false positives than there are real ones.


Edit: meant to add a link to this very insightful commentary from Dr. Mina from Harvard, an epidemiologist and expert on viral testing technologies. He's been making the point for months that we have more of a testing problem than anything else and it's due to our medical culture's reliance on having perfect tests for accurate diagnostics instead of good tests for rapid screening and fast response/decisions, especially in a pandemic. I've talked about this a bit previously and Lowe mentions it, but Mina does a much better job of making the case, as per this excerpt:


FOR PUBLIC-HEALTH PURPOSES, speed and frequency of testing are vastly more important than sensitivity: the best test would actually be less sensitive than a PCR test. As Mina explains, when a person first becomes infected, there will be an incubation period when no test will reveal the infection, because the viral loads are so low. About “three to five days later, the PCR test will turn positive, and once that happens the virus is reproducing exponentially in a very predictable fashion.” At that point, critically, “even if a rapid test is 1,000 times less sensitive than a PCR test,” Mina says, the virus is increasing so rapidly that the test “will probably turn positive within eight to 15 or 24 hours. So the real window of time that we’re discussing here—the difference in sensitivity that makes people uncomfortable”—is so small that public-health officers would be missing very few asymptomatic people taking the test in that narrow window of time. Given that the current testing frequency in most states, using highly sensitive but expensive and delayed PCR tests, is not even once a month, he points out—“Really, it’s never.”

So even though a saliva-based paper test wouldn’t register a positive result for as long as a half or even a full day after the PCR test, it would have great value in identifying pockets of infection that might otherwise be undetected altogether.

The strength of this system is that it would actually abrogate the need for contact tracing, says Mina. “If your goal is not to have a heavy hand over the population” (implementing onerous public-health restrictions on businesses and recreational activity), this is the way to do it, he explains, because it strips away “all of that complexity.” Most people who test positive will have done so before they become infectious, and can easily self-quarantine for the six days or so until they cease being infectious. Even if some people don’t quarantine, and the test cuts off just 90 percent of all the infections that might spread, “you’d immediately bring the population prevalence of the disease to very low numbers, to the point where all of a sudden society would start to look safe again.”
 
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Article = BS (just like all previous "reports" of reinfection)

You can deny it all you want, but there is now scientific evidence that it’s possible. Although the article goes into detail how this is likely the outlier.

I guess you’re used to just reading twitter headlines instead of actually educating yourself. Sorry, but you look like a moron.
 
You can deny it all you want, but there is now scientific evidence that it’s possible. Although the article goes into detail how this is likely the outlier.

I guess you’re used to just reading twitter headlines instead of actually educating yourself. Sorry, but you look like a moron.
One it isn't scientific evidence. Two the sourse is highly questionable. Gullible is the word for you!
 
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You can deny it all you want, but there is now scientific evidence that it’s possible. Although the article goes into detail how this is likely the outlier.

I guess you’re used to just reading twitter headlines instead of actually educating yourself. Sorry, but you look like a moron.

@WhiteBus @T2Kplus10 you guys are fake news.






 
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Please watch the YouTube video posted above. It is very well done and science-based. Either one of two things happened: (1)the anti-HCQ crowd purposefully cooked their results by giving a higher dose to obtain bad results; (2) the people running the studies with the bad results were idiots. Let's face it, big Pharma had nothing to gain from HCQ, and some were going to do everything they could to deep six the results. Others hate the guy who promoted HCQ and they did not want to see it promoted as successful, perhaps because they feared backlash.
Sorry, completely unimpressed. If its purported benefit is as an antiviral, then using the highest tolerated dose in an acute setting over a week or so would seem to be the best approach, so I have zero idea why Campbell (who I like) thinks a low dose is key here. HCQ has a well established safety profile, so giving more ought to be better than less if the goal is to deactivate the virus.

Also, keep in mind that HCQ is active in vitro against CV2, but has zero benefit in very controlled hamster and macaque studies (where animals can actually be dosed with precise amounts of the virus) either as a treatment or a prophylactic and it also has no activity in in vitro human models, all of which is nicely summarized in a new article in Nature. If these data were available before human trials (which is usually the case), nobody would have ever approved such clinical trials.


And your comments about "2 things" are just nutty. You really think the medical professionals running HCQ trials that found no benefit actually would have "cooked results?" You know, Boulware (who ran the RCTs that showed no prophylactic benefit) was very hopeful HCQ would work in that capacity, but the data just didn't show it and you know what happened then? He was threatened and bullied by the HCQ army and has left Twitter and other social media because of it - people don't run trials with the idea of sabotaging them. And you think the only other possibility was that they were idiots? Wow, talk about being biased.

Occam's Razor applies here - the most likely explanation is the simplest. It's far more likely that the RCTs (the gold standard when run well, despite your protestations to the contrary) and most of the observational trials showing no benefit simply reflect the clear science seen in highly controlled animal and human model studies. The variable results seen in some other observational trials showing a benefit simply reflect the weaknesses of such retrosepctive, non-randomized, non-controlled studies, as such studies often show conflicting results when there is little or no benefit of a drug.

Finally, Big Pharma was generally not involved in any of the HCQ trials, so how would they have "controlled" the outcomes of them? Also, if you truly believe they were influencing such things, how could they have let the dexamethasone Recovery study be published (by the same UK group that showed HCQ was ineffective), showing this old, off-patent steroid has significant mortality reduction or that convalescent plasma (which pharma gets nothing from) looks very promising (even if lacking in RCTs)? Your "theories" simply don't hold up to even cursory scrutiny.
 
You just posted fake news!! Sad my stalker is at it again!
She is a Professor and researcher of infectious diseases at Yale. You sell liquor in a grocery store. Who do you think knows better about diseases , her or you?
 
Article = BS

Sorry, these aren't erroneous reports, like most of the earlier ones were (where there was simply a false positive weeks after recovery, due to residual nucleic acids still being present); both cases have had the virus sequenced and in both the initial and second infections were due to slightly different strains of the virus. Here's what I wrote on Monday, elsewhere (forgot to post it here somehow). Let's just hope this is very infrequent and that most who get reinfected have mild/asymptomatic cases.

First high confidence report of a case of reinfection with SARS-CoV-2, as a patient from Hong Kong, who was infected back in March (confirmed by PCR viral test and was symptomatic), recently returned from Europe and was tested (mandatory in HK) and found to have an asymptomatic case of COVID with a slightly different strain of the virus, indicating that it's highly unlikely this is a lab artifact (as earlier reports of reinfection were). Hoping to see more documentation of this case, also.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/24/first-covid-19-reinfection-documented-in-hong-kong-researchers-say/

This is not a major surprise, though, as experts never thought sterilizing immunity post-infection (i.e., 100% protection from even being infected) would be forever. It's not for most viruses and, in fact, several of the vaccines in primate trials don't show sterilizing immunity in all cases, but they do show immunity to the extent of not becoming sick (kind of like the flu vaccine), which is still very important.

Also, 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 (we didn't). While this isn't great news it's still very possible that the vast majority of recovered COVID patients (and eventual recipients of a vaccine) will have immunity for a few years, like SARS/MERS and not less than a year like for the common cold coronaviruses. As the linked article said, "
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."
 
She is a Professor and researcher of infectious diseases at Yale. You sell liquor in a grocery store. Who do you think knows better about diseases , her or you?
Yes she is a professor. Not a practicing doctor nor a scientist or with direct knowledge of the patient. You got fooled again. She has no direct knowledge that the first positive was real. The amount of 1st fake positive is outstanding!
 
Yes she is a professor. Not a practicing doctor nor a scientist or with direct knowledge of the patient. You got fooled again. She has no direct knowledge that the first positive was real. The amount of 1st fake positive is outstanding!
Lmao you don't know how science works. DO you know what a journal is?
 
Sorry, these aren't erroneous reports, like most of the earlier ones were (where there was simply a false positive weeks after recovery, due to residual nucleic acids still being present); both cases have had the virus sequenced and in both the initial and second infections were due to slightly different strains of the virus. Here's what I wrote on Monday, elsewhere (forgot to post it here somehow). Let's just hope this is very infrequent and that most who get reinfected have mild/asymptomatic cases.

First high confidence report of a case of reinfection with SARS-CoV-2, as a patient from Hong Kong, who was infected back in March (confirmed by PCR viral test and was symptomatic), recently returned from Europe and was tested (mandatory in HK) and found to have an asymptomatic case of COVID with a slightly different strain of the virus, indicating that it's highly unlikely this is a lab artifact (as earlier reports of reinfection were). Hoping to see more documentation of this case, also.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/24/first-covid-19-reinfection-documented-in-hong-kong-researchers-say/

This is not a major surprise, though, as experts never thought sterilizing immunity post-infection (i.e., 100% protection from even being infected) would be forever. It's not for most viruses and, in fact, several of the vaccines in primate trials don't show sterilizing immunity in all cases, but they do show immunity to the extent of not becoming sick (kind of like the flu vaccine), which is still very important.

Also, 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 (we didn't). While this isn't great news it's still very possible that the vast majority of recovered COVID patients (and eventual recipients of a vaccine) will have immunity for a few years, like SARS/MERS and not less than a year like for the common cold coronaviruses. As the linked article said, "
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."
There is no evidence that anyone has been infected twice with COVID-19. Just like the numerous previous reports, wait a few weeks and it will be debunked.
 
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