I'm not focused solely on nursing homes. I'm focused on the whole picture.
They certainly didn't do well with nursing homes.
COVID-19 Pandemic: Transmissions, Deaths, Treatments, Vaccines, Interventions and More...
- Thread starter Richie O
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I'm not focused solely on nursing homes. I'm focused on the whole picture.
They certainly didn't do well with nursing homes.
I'm not either but I'm not talking about warehousing! I'm talking schools and office buildings without carpets. Most schools have cafeterias and many office buildings do too. What they all lack is individual bathrooms but there are many units 100× better the the tailgate port a john. One person to a room. Caregivers have their own private spaces. You asked who would work it? Everyone. So many nursing homes and others employees stop working out of fear because of cramped conditions. The low paid left, maintenance workers stayed home because the were making more at home with the free $600 which has become the worst thing for the economy. Pay essential people essential wages instead of lazy people at home a free $600. I'm not talking about people who are qualified for unemployment. Is it ideal? Is anything these days ideal but it's a million times better than what was done which was basically nothing
I believe anytime a patient , no matter what age , is struck by inflammation of the cardiovascular system they are told there is a better than 50% chance of permanent heart damage. Cardiomyopathy or pericarditis needs immediate treatment. Is it possible these patients did not get medical intervention soon enough? Probably since we only found this out in the past several months.
As many have suspected, Texas was way undercounting deaths, as they just added 600 deaths to their count today. This is not the equivalent of some states, like NY/NJ, adjusting death counts to include presumed COVID deaths (mostly of people who died with a clinical COVID diagnosis in the hospital, but never had a formal PCR test, as the test was considered both unnecessary and risky for no benefit) - this is simply doing a better job of accounting:
After months of undercounting coronavirus deaths, Texas' formal tally of COVID-19 fatalities grew by more than 600 on Monday after state health officials changed their method of reporting.
The Texas Tribune reports the revised count indicates that more than 12% of the state's death tally was unreported by state health officials before Monday.
The Texas Department of State Health Services is now counting deaths marked on death certificates as caused by COVID-19. Previously, the state relied on local and regional public health departments to verify and report deaths.
Public health experts have said for months that the state's official death toll is an undercount. State health officials said Monday that the policy change would improve the accuracy and timeliness of their data.
https://abc13.com/texas-coronavirus-deaths-death-tally-covid-19-covid-numbers/6338657/
After months of undercounting coronavirus deaths, Texas' formal tally of COVID-19 fatalities grew by more than 600 on Monday after state health officials changed their method of reporting.
The Texas Tribune reports the revised count indicates that more than 12% of the state's death tally was unreported by state health officials before Monday.
The Texas Department of State Health Services is now counting deaths marked on death certificates as caused by COVID-19. Previously, the state relied on local and regional public health departments to verify and report deaths.
Public health experts have said for months that the state's official death toll is an undercount. State health officials said Monday that the policy change would improve the accuracy and timeliness of their data.
https://abc13.com/texas-coronavirus-deaths-death-tally-covid-19-covid-numbers/6338657/
almost every state the reports of deaths lag the death by a bunch. It takes time to verify these things, although I agree the -1 thing was weird, apparently it was a duplicate that had already been counted.
Certain governor had a ship brought in and another venue retrofitted into a hospital. Also had a “hospital” in a park with nurses and staff. Many volunteers. So they barely got used when the elderly could have gone there. But they went into nursing homes. To quote this gentleman “why”?
move up retirement age to 55. id self isolate if i didnt have to work. make it my problem to stay alive in exchange for slipping off the yoke
Missed this last week, but Oxford is planning on doing challenge trials.
https://www.theguardian.com/science...lunteers-lab-controlled-human-challenge-trial
https://www.theguardian.com/science...lunteers-lab-controlled-human-challenge-trial
Russia announced a Covid19 will be available on 8/14. Let’s keep an eye on this. Should be interesting. https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/28/europe/russia-coronavirus-vaccine-approval-intl/index.html
Thankfully the news is good out of TX since the number of cases is on a downward trend and the transmission rate has improved significantly. Death rates will be dropping accordingly after the lag. Curve is flattening out there
Sounds super sketchy. They are pretty much running a P3 trial on their entire population. At least run some human challenge trials first, you’re Russia, you can do human challenges all day long.
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The first COVID baby was born, resulting in a negative death count
Guessing you don't read much of the scientific literature. Did you know that hydroxychloroquine has been tested and failed on many viruses over the last 20 years? Did you even read the French paper that started all this? It was abysmal, obvious garbage to any scientist and ignored until people like you, with zero "thinking it through", started wanting to believe it would save everyone.
Why is this surprising? Or even worth a post?
Dumb statement. The virus is here for awhile. Even if we get a vaccine by the end of the year (or even November), it's going to take at least 6 months to have enough doses to vaccinate enough people to get to herd immunity (assuming it's safe/effective) and we also have no idea yet how long immunity will last.
More Moderna data released from monkey trials. Hopefully someone translates it tomorrow. Would be interesting to see how it compares to the Oxford monkey results.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2024671
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2024671
It's sad, really. Back in March, after seeing this huckster looking guy, Rigano, on TV on Fox, telling the world they had the cure, was when I started becoming skeptical and was the first clue that this was probably going to be a scam, since the normal first move is to publish a paper for review by one's peers, not to go on TV promoting a 100% cure. Think the post below was my 2nd on HCQ.
And it's just gotten worse and worse since then, especially with this rabid HCQ Army that just won't give up, even after the several randomized, controlled trials came out showing no efficacy. But we (the FDA especially) let this happen, by not insisting on completing an RCT before letting everyone use HCQ on nearly anyone - I don't blame the docs as much as they were desperate and nothing else worked.
But HCQ was the only drug that had its own hype machine, so it got used way more that it should have. There were plenty of anecdotal reports of steroids and antivirals and blood thinners working to some extent, but we didn't see them being used all the time early on. We could've done so many other trials instead.
https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/t...ventions-and-more.191275/page-24#post-4458417
It's Russia, so it's sketchy, but they do have a lot of advanced science capability and they probably are taking the human challenge approach, where they're purposely exposing healthy military "volunteers" to the virus. That will cut time off of development. It's also a human adenovirus vector, like CanSino's, which we know has possible issues with humans reacting to the human part over the spliced in COVID part. Lots more twists and turns to come.
Whoops, yeah I meant to say human challenge trials. I bet they did that too. Are there any proven Adenovirus vaccines out there? That approach seems risky to me.
No mRNA or adenovirus vector vaccines have ever been approved, which is why I'm still a bit skeptical, despite my often optimistic comments and why I still wish the US was doing one old school vaccine with an attenuated/deactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus, like China is. If everything else falls through, China will be standing there with a vaccine that works (even if it takes more time to make a lot of it).
Generally very positive results, except for the low CD8+ T-cell response. The good news is that there was no evidence of antibody dependent enhancement in the human/primate (macaques) trials, the vaccine generates a strong neutralizing antibody immune response in 100% of participants human/primate trials (that are higher than the levels from recovered COVID patients), and the vaccine protects primates against pneumonia and inflammation in live challenge studies, with complete elimination of detectable virus levels in all primates after 2 days of the live challenge ("sterilizing immunity").
The T-cell response for CD4+ T-cells was very good, but no CD8+ T-cell response was observed (and there was a similar low Cd8+ response in humans. At this point, it's not 100% clear how important that is, especially when clinically, clearly the vaccine "worked" in the challenged animals. I don't recall all the details from the Pfizer/Oxford primate trials, but the Pfizer human phase I trials (for both of their mRNA vaccines, including the one they're going into phase III with) had more robust T-cell responses (especially for CD8+) than Moderna did, which is one of the reasons many are favoring the Pfizer vaccine (and Oxford didn't share T-cell response data). I'm betting Derek Lowe will blog on this tomorrow.
Summary:
Details - Cases
- Nationally, cases are peaking at ~2X vs. the first wave, while hospitalizations haven't quite peaked, but will likely be a bit more than half of what they were in the first wave (per capita). Deaths are up 60% from their early July low and climbing steadily, but are only 35-40% of the April peak.
- Cases have peaked (AZ) or are likely peaking (FL/TX/CA) at levels at or above NJ's peak case levels per 1MM people (per capita basis), except for CA, which is well below NJ's peak.
- AZ's hospitalizations peaked at ~55% of NJ's (per 1MM) and FL/TX will likely peak in that region (they haven't peaked yet, though), while CA will likely peak well below that, at maybe 25% of NJ's peak; these reductions vs. NJ are likely due to the much younger age of those infected in this wave.
- We still don't know where death peaks will end up but my guesstimate has been 1/3-2/3 of the peaks of NY/NJ, partly due to the younger age of those infected (as above) and partly due to improved treatments and procedures. AZ is already at 35-40% of NJ's peak and deaths there might be starting to peak, but not in the other states yet. FL/TX seem likely to reach 1/3 of NJ's peak level, but CA will likely not be more than 15% of NJ's peak.
Updating this post a week later and will try to do so weekly for awhile, as weekly as likely infrequent enough to not be fooled by 1-2 day deviations that aren't that relevant (like the usual weekend dips), but frequent enough to see changes occurring. Let's look at cases first, starting with the national picture, where total cases seem to be just reaching a peak around 65-67K cases per day on a 7-day moving average (all the data are on that basis in the charts below), which is about twice what the peak in the first wave was (around 31-32K cases/day).
The "good" news is Arizona has likely peaked in cases and started to decline a bit, although it's too early to call it a real decline, yet, IMO, while Florida, Texas, and California are all nearing or possibly at their peaks (I think, judging by the shape of the 7-day curves). Many other states could be discussed, but these seemed relevant, as FL/TX/CA are the three most populous states and they're peaking and AZ peaked a bit earlier and has a similar population as NJ, which I'm including as a comparison from the worst of the first wave. It should be noted that AZ peaked about 20% above NJ's peak, FL is peaking around 40% above NJ's peak, TX is near NJ's peak, and CA is only at about 60% of NJ's peak (I'm also using per capita data for all the graphs, so they're "apples to apples" comparisons).
Details - Hospitalizations
With regard to hospitalizations, on a national level, hospitalizations are still growing, but not as fast as they were (they only lag cases by a week or so) and they're looking to probably be only a bit above what they were in the first wave, despite there likely being twice as many cases. This was expected a few weeks ago, when it became clear that there was a much younger average age of those infected in most states in this current wave (vs. wave 1) and the hospitalization rates in AZ (which had a 1-2 week earlier outbreak than FL/TX/CA) were tracking at about half the rate of NJ's. Note that if COVID were as deadly as it was in the first wave (it's thought to be) one would expect eventual death peaks to mirror relative hospitalization rates, i.e., if a state peaks at 50% of NJ's peak hospitalization rate, one would expect deaths to be around 50%, also (assuming no improved treatments/procedures).
Looking at states, AZ has now peaked at about 55% of NJ's hospitalization rate, i.e., about 500 per 1MM vs. NJ's 900 per 1MM (all per capita). FL hasn't peaked yet and is at about half of NJ's peak rate, while TX might be starting to peak at just below half of NJ's rate (too early to call yet), and CA is close to peaking and is only at about 25% of NJ's peak. It's not surprising that CA's case and hospitalization numbers (and likely deaths) are not as bad as the other three states in this comparison, as CA reopened later and after having achieved better reopening metrics, plus CA made masking mandatory on 6/18, just as cases were starting to rise significantly, while the other three states didn't start issuing mask requirements until later and they're not nearly as strong as California's.
Details - Deaths
With respect to deaths, on a national level, they've jumped about 60% from the low in early July and are now up around 830/day on a 7-day moving average, which is about 35-40% of the death rate at its peak in April. Note that the 4 states (FL/TX/CA/AZ) I've been discussing account for about half of that death toll per day, which also means that there are many other states with less people, many of which are also spiking in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. We still don't know where death peaks for these states will end up (or total deaths, since that will also depend on whether a peak is sharp or a plateau and long decline, like NY/NJ had), but my guesstimate has been 1/3-2/3 of the peaks of NY/NJ, partly due to the younger age of those infected (as above) and partly due to improved pharmaceutical treatments (such as remdesivir, dexamethasone, tocilimuzab and convalescent plasma) and improved medical procedures.
With regard to specific states, AZ is already at 35-40% of NJ's peak and deaths there might be starting to peak, although it's too early to make that call yet - they've had several individual spikes that were at 50-60% of NJ's peak, so I think that 50-60% is possible to reach with the 7-day moving average. FL/TX/CA have not peaked yet and FL/TX, in particular appear to still be climbing rapidly, with FL currently at about 20% of NJ's peak and TX currently at almost 15% of NJ's peak, so FL/TX seem likely to reach at least 1/3 of NJ's peak level (largely based on comparison to AZ) and maybe more. However, CA likely won't reach more than 15% of the NY/NJ peak given the lower hospitalization rates.
Keep in mind that all of these are educated guesses and a big wild card is assuming cases don't go way up amongst the elderly from here on out - they already are increasing in FL and if that continues and also occurs in the other states, these states could easily reach or exceed the upper end of my estimated range of 2/3 the level of NJ's deaths. Hope people find these to be informative - please let me know if any obvious errors (hard to keep all the #'s straight, lol).
https://covidtracking.com/data#chart-annotations
Summary:
- Note: I'm using 7-day moving averages on a per capita (per 1MM) basis for these discussions of cases, hospitalizations and deaths, from the Covidtracking site. The biggest issue right now, data-wise, is the Covidtracking site has incorporated the extra 600 TX deaths on one day on the TX chart, but appears to have spread them out over the last 6 days in the national chart (and Worldometers hasn't put them in yet, which is why they're death 7-day avg is about 100 less than Covidtracking).
- Nationally, cases definitely have now peaked and remain roughly at ~2X vs. the first wave, while hospitalizations look to be just peaking now and will likely be slightly more than the peak in the first wave, but only a little more than half of what they were in the first wave (relative to cases, which are now twice as much per capita). Deaths are up nearly 2X from their early July low and climbing steadily and are now about 47% of the April peak (1050 now vs. 2250 in April - 7-day averages).
- Cases are clearly declining in AZ and are just starting to decline in FL/TX/CA. The AZ peak was about 30% more, per capita (per 1MM people) than the NJ peak (about 3500/day or 400/1MM) per day or , while the FL peak was ~50% more, the TX peak was ~10% less and the CA peak was ~40% less.
- AZ's hospitalizations peaked (and are declining) at ~55% of NJ's (which were 8000 total or 900 per 1MM), while FL is peaking at about 50% of NJ's per capita rate and TX is peaking at ~45% of NJ's rate, but it's still too early to call the peak for FL/TX yet; CA looks like it's about to peak at maybe 25-30% of NJ's peak. These reductions vs. NJ are likely due to the much younger age of those infected in this wave.
- My guesstimate has been that deaths in AZ/FL/TX would likely be about 1/3-2/3 of the peaks of NJ (about 270-300/day or ~31/1MM); NY's was a little higher), partly due to the younger age of those infected (as above) and partly due to improved treatments and procedures. AZ has likely peaked at ~40% of NJ's peak, but they're having major fluctuations, so hard to call a peak yet. FL and TX are now at 20-25% and 30% of NJ's peak, respectively, and neither has peaked. CA's case/hospitalization rates have been well below the other 3 states and is why CA is only at 10% of NJ's peak and will likely max out at <15% of NJ's peak.
Still going to try to do this weekly for awhile, as weekly as likely infrequent enough to not be fooled by 1-2 day deviations that aren't that relevant (like the usual weekend dips), but frequent enough to see changes occurring. Let's look at cases first, starting with the national picture, where total cases have definitely now reached a peak (a 2-week plateau, so far) around 65-67K cases per day (7-day avg) which is about twice what the peak in the first wave was (around 31-32K cases/day over a 4-week plateau).
The "good" news is Arizona has clearly peaked in cases and started to decline significantly, while Florida, Texas, and California all appear to be at their peaks and just starting to decline. Many other states could be discussed, but these seemed relevant, as FL/TX/CA are the three most populous states and they're peaking and AZ peaked a bit earlier and has a similar population as NJ, which I'm including as a comparison from the worst of the first wave and since there's so much local interest. It should be noted that AZ peaked ~30% above NJ's peak of ~400/1MM, FL peaked ~50% above NJ's peak, TX peaked ~10% below NJ's peak, and CA peaked about 40% less than NJ's peak (I'm using per capita data for all the graphs, so they're "apples to apples" comparisons).
Details - Hospitalizations
With regard to hospitalizations, on a national level, hospitalizations are just starting to peak and will probably peak just a little bit above what they were in the first wave, despite there being twice as many cases. This was expected several weeks ago, when it became clear that there was a much younger average age of those infected in most states in this current wave (vs. wave 1) and the hospitalization rates in AZ (which had a 1-2 week earlier outbreak than FL/TX/CA) were tracking at about half the rate of NJ's. Note that if COVID were as deadly as it was in the first wave (it's thought to be) one would expect eventual death peaks to mirror relative hospitalization rates, i.e., if a state peaks at 50% of NJ's peak hospitalization rate, one would expect deaths to be around 50%, also (assuming no improved treatments/procedures).
Looking at states, AZ peaked at about 55% of NJ's hospitalization rate, i.e., about 500 per 1MM vs. NJ's 900 per 1MM. FL looks to be peaking at about half of NJ's peak rate, TX is peaking at about 45% of NJ's peak rate, and CA is peaking at about 25-30% of NJ's peak (although still a little early to call these peaks). It's not surprising that CA's case and hospitalization numbers (and likely deaths) are not as bad as the other three states in this comparison, as CA reopened later and after having achieved better reopening metrics, plus CA made masking mandatory on 6/18, just as cases were starting to rise significantly, while the other three states didn't start issuing mask requirements until later and they're not nearly as strong as California's.
Details - Deaths
With respect to deaths, on a national level, they've doubled from the low in early July (500-550/day), as they're now up around 1050/day on a 7-day moving average (with the 600 extra TX deaths factored in), which is almost 50% of the death rate at its peak in April (which was more like a 3-week plateau). Note that the 4 states (FL/TX/CA/AZ) I've been discussing account for about half of that death toll per day, which also means that there are many other states with less people, many of which are also spiking in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. We still don't know where death peaks for these states will end up (or total deaths, since that will also depend on whether a peak is sharp or a plateau and long decline, like NJ had), but my guesstimate has been 1/3-2/3 of the peaks of NJ, partly due to the younger age of those infected (as above) and partly due to improved pharmaceutical treatments (such as remdesivir, dexamethasone, tocilimuzab and convalescent plasma) and improved medical procedures.
With regard to specific states, AZ appears to have peaked at almost 40% of NJ's peak of about 31/1MM (I think, although they're fluctuations are very large, i.e., some are at 60% of NJ's peak, so need to keep an eye on that to be sure they've peaked), which aligns well with my 33-66% guesstimate. FL is now at 20-25% of NJ's peak and still climbing, so it's unclear where they'll end up (especially if they have any large TX-style "adjustments" - today's all-time high peak was at 30% of NJ's peak).
As discussed in the summary, TX had a major "adjustment" made to their death count with ~600 deaths added (all deaths were on death certificates - this looks to be an accounting issue), which the Covidtracking incorporated into their TX death graphic all on today, jacking their 7-day avg up from about 170 to 250 per day (which makes sense as Worldometers is still at about 170/day, as they haven't added the 600 deaths in yet). This brings TX up to about 30% of NJ's peak and TX rate is still climbing, so it seems likely that FL and CA will reach at least 1/3 of NJ's peak level and maybe more. However, CA is only at 10% of NJ's peak death rate per capita and likely won't reach more than 15% of the NJ peak given the lower hospitalization rates (as expected).
Keep in mind that all of these are educated guesses and a big wild card is assuming cases don't go way up amongst the elderly from here on out - they already are increasing in FL and if that continues and also occurs in the other states, these states could easily reach or exceed the upper end of my estimated range of 2/3 the level of NJ's deaths. Hope people find these to be informative - please let me know if any obvious errors (hard to keep all the #'s straight, lol).
https://covidtracking.com/data#chart-annotations
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Thanks. Damn, had really hoped tocilizumab would be effective in mortality reduction, especially after the observational studies looked promising, but there are good reasons why randomized controlled double blind trials are so important.
So, you agree that the C19 deaths have been underreported?
HCQ was recommended by the Chineses and South Koreans back Feb and March.
http://m.koreabiomed.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=7810
The health authorities recommend Kaletra and hydroxychloroquine as the first-line treatment for COVID-19 patients. As local physicians rarely use hydroxychloroquine, most COVID-19 patients in Korea are receiving Kaletra, media reports said.
http://m.koreabiomed.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=7428
The COVID-19 Central Clinical Task Force, composed of physicians and experts treating the confirmed patients across the nation, held the sixth video conference and agreed on these and other treatment principles for patients with COVID-19.
If patients are young, healthy, and have mild symptoms without underlying conditions, doctors can observe them without antiviral treatment, according to the guidelines.
If more than 10 days have passed since the onset of the illness and the symptoms are mild, physicians do not have to start an antiviral medication, the task force said.
However, if patients are old or have underlying conditions with serious symptoms, physicians should consider an antiviral treatment. If they decide to use the antiviral therapy, they should start the administration as soon as possible, the task force noted.
For the antiviral treatment, the doctors recommended lopinavir 400mg/ritonavir 100mg (Kaletra two tablets, twice a day) or chloroquine 500mg orally per day.
As chloroquine is not available in Korea, doctors could consider hydroxychloroquine 400mg orally per day, they said. There is no evidence that using lopinavir/ritonavir with chloroquine is more effective than monotherapies, they added.
Combining lopinavir/ritonavir with chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine could cause serious arrhythmias and drug interactions due to the increased QT interval, the task force said. Thus, the combination should be administered cautiously, in a very limited case, it emphasized.
So the South Koreans, one of the most successful countries in the Covid fight were recommending HCQ as part of there treament protocol.
Now obviously HCQ turned out not to have the desired effects, but it was being use by outher countries and apparently it was not obvious garbage to the South Koreans.
Here is a paper on the timeline of HCQ evidence.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7151328/
The authors write the following:
To date, despite enough rationale to justify investigation into the efficacy and safety of HCQ in COVID-19 (Table II ),14 , 15 the evidence regarding its effect remains limited.
The evidence was not from just the French study but the Chinese study as well as in vitro studies.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7151328/
The authors write the following:
To date, despite enough rationale to justify investigation into the efficacy and safety of HCQ in COVID-19 (Table II ),14 , 15 the evidence regarding its effect remains limited.
The evidence was not from just the French study but the Chinese study as well as in vitro studies.
I can't believe companies (or whomever) would put money, time and effort into studies "because people like me" wanting to believe it might work, you have any proof of this? Because I pretty sure that's not how it works, if I'm wrong correct me.
And how can we can compare Covid-19 to any virus when we hardly know jack shit about this one? And if we shouldn't test to see if something works because efforts have failed previously as you have stated, then why are we trying to find a vaccine for this virus when we've never developed a successful vaccine for any Coronavirus?
All honest questions here and I apologize for being snarky, the last past weeks have been terrible for me and my family and I'm bit on edge.
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What % of the population do you think is considered at risk?
CDC says 41% of people have a condition that puts them at elevated risk.
How do you protect 41% of your pop while the other 59% go about their "normal" lives?
Edit: I see that there was some addition discussion prior to my posting.
Not sure that addressing senior living facilities is going to have the impact on getting back to normal that you would like it to. While perhaps a step in the right direction, it doesn't address all of the people of working age that are impacted by an underlying condition(which as noted could be upwards of 40% of the pop). RUJohnny and I went back and forth a little on this a few days ago. Simply say that those at risk should stay home makes it difficult to be normal for everyone else, example is losing 40% of teachers(or even 25%) would make it very difficult to hold normal schools, there simply are not that many "spare" teachers. That same challenge applies to a vast number of occupations. Also if 40% of the pop stay home, how much different is that really from where we are right now? Restaurants are at 50% of capacity in many places, so at most they likely bump up their business is 10%.
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Elevated means just slightly above normal up to severe. Doesn't mean 41% is at severe risk. Jeeze. Another one that brings up only the worst case scenario! Do you think what has been done was the best solution? Those people that think we should just continue on the path we are on are idiots. This isn't going away because we keep restaurants closed.
And yes people need to go about their normal lives with social distancing.
Why cant states update their cumulative death count without assigning the increment to the current date? It's a really stupid way of reporting numbers. If they cant do this then they should not even be releasing date-specific death counts until they have had a chance to scrub the data.
Your point is a good one WB . All the data posted still does not stop the virus and logically , even if a vaccine is available in ( hopefully) the next year, covid19 still will be here in some form . The thing which is very obvious is those same people who claim to be more in lockstep or experienced in viral studies strangely love the daily death totals. I truly believe many are themselves perhaps in the lesser risk category for a bad outcome if infected. People understand anyone of us can become infected but to almost gleefully sit by a device and print out, “see that death total in state xyz today?” There is a sense of vindication for them. A personal victory in their war against those who don’t agree or have some skepticism. For some it has become a crusade ...can I say that?... yes , a “personal crusade “for attention or so it seems. We all need to get back to life and the things we enjoy.
It seems like back in March there were so many potential solutions for the Cytokine storm issue. Almost August and I feel like there hasn’t been much progress made.
You are conflating what we know and don't know about the SARS-CoV-2. We (scientists) actually know a ton about coronaviruses - they have been infecting humans for thousands of years. They have been intensely studied for decades. Then the emergence of SARS-CoV-1 and MERS brought massive amounts of attention from the scientific and medical communities. What we don't know are the critical details about how easily people get infected, exactly how it is spread, how deadly it will be, if infection leads to life long problems, why some people die and others do fine. There is a reason for this - scientists had no data specific for SARS-CoV-2. Even now, we don't have enough data. Scientists are no better than the quality of our data and our ability to interpret the data. What is super frustrating for those not in the field, our interpretations change as we get more data. This is the way scientific progress works - scientists who can't do this are ridiculed in the field. I know a Nobel prize-winning scientist who just could not get past a pet theory in the face of new data and other scientists mock him for that.
The reasons we have been able to move so fast both towards developing vaccine strategies and identifying actual potential treatments (anti-IL6, INFb, anti-virals, anti-IL1, etc) are two-fold.
The first reason is that the virus was amazingly rapidly isolated, allowing the genome to be sequenced and the data released within weeks of the 1st known infection. Then, using recent, amazing breakthroughs in protein analysis (Cry-EM), the structure of the viral proteins was released shortly after. Just this part usually takes years.
The second reason we are moving fast is that we have 17 years of research in the books about SARS-CoV-1, which is highly related to this novel virus. Almost from day 1 we knew how this virus gets in cells, we knew how it was packaged (so we knew hand sanitizer would kill it), we had strategies ready to go for vaccines (LNP-mRNA, DNA, non-replicating viral backbones and more). And we knew what part of the virus to target.
I should add in a third reason - the study of immunology. Immunology as a stand-alone area of research is relatively new. It has, however, led to a massive amount of discoveries that are essential in this battle. The number of existing immunology drugs and discoveries being repurposed for this fight is incredible.
All of these things have been the end result of decades of basic and translational research that has been going on largely ignored by the public. Although, most of it is actually paid for by the public through extramural and intramural NIH funding (thank you!).
Thins brings me back to hydroxychloroquine, which is what started this discussion. As you know, it is not a new drug. Perhaps surprising, however, is that it has been tested for efficacy against multiple viruses (including SARS-CoV-1 and HIV). It works great in tissue culture (cells in plastic). It has never worked in animal studies. Of course, SARS-CoV-2 could have been different, but this could have been tested in a small, highly controlled setting. The so-called "clinical studies" that were published early on were easily recognizable as extremely flawed. Scientists read stuff like this and move on - it happens. Somebody had to graduate last from science school. In general, other scientists don't spend our time and limited resources trying to prove bad studies wrong.
I get that it feels like it is taking forever to make progress. Thanks to new approaches, there are some parts of this that we can do incredibly fast. But some things we can't change - if we need a new mouse, it still takes more than two-months for it to be born and grow up. If we want to test if there is an immune response to a vaccine, we still have to wait for months.
What we can be sure, however, is that an incredible amount of new information is constantly coming out and, soon we will have enough data to actually make strong/good interpretations. Of course, new data will then come out and we will have to modify/change those interpretations. Because none of us want to be mocked by our colleagues (we had enough of that in high school).
I always find it interesting when people position those that don't agree with them, or ask questions on their statements, as evil or twisted.
Can't it simply be that we disagree on the best possible path forward?
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