Coronavirus

[SageBrush]

Just to give you an example of how dizzyingly complicated this business of assigning a cause of death

Not quite by random chance, I received an email from my state DOH today with guidelines how to fill out a death cert in the Covid-19 era. The interesting detail was the guideline to write 'suspected Covid-19' or 'probable Covid-19' based on clinical diagnosis if formal lab testing was unavailable.

I don't know how the number crunchers are going to tabulate this but from a physician's perspective it seems reasonable.

 

[Daniel in SD]

Maybe it's because people in Malaysia receive the BCG (tuberculosis) vaccine?
Something that is also being studied.
Can an Old Vaccine Stop the New Coronavirus?

 

[SageBrush]

I think the problem is Navarro really isn't a scientist

If that fool reads a study that says e.g. 30% of patients taking the remedy developed Qt prolongation > 500 mSec, what is his interpretation as a 'social scientist' ?

 

[jhm]

The discussion of HCQ needs be quarantined to its own forum. Some of us may be driven to self-harm if this persists. I might need to find an old ice pick with which I can self-lobotomize.

Please, out of concern for the mental health of your TMC pals, take it somewhere else.

 

[Papafox]

"Less than perfect" is a galactic understatement for the studies that support HCQ.

The term "polished turds" comes to mind. Shine it up all you want, in the end . . . it's still a turd.

Your answer here exposes the real problem. Your previous response was useful because it pointed out potential shortcomings in using country data to draw conclusions. Your current response is just ridicule, which is so detrimental to the aim of this thread, which is to further a discussion on the COVID-19 phenomenon.

The biggest problem with this thread right now is that there are a handful of regulars here who are hard-over antagonistic to people who challenge their views. We all know who they are. My request to you is to continue laying out counter-arguments like you did in your previous response, but stay away from the ridicule because it is un-professional and harms the value of this thread.

 

[SMAlset]

Speaking of damage to lung and heart tissues from CV19, just saw this article on how doctors are observing damage to heart tissue even in those without respiratory distress. They are finding receptors in lung tissue to be the same as in heart tissue and leading them to another avenue of research. This is from an article in Kaiser Health News.

“But some patients with no previous heart disease also showed signs of cardiac damage. In fact, patients with no preexisting heart conditions who incurred heart damage during their infection were more likely to die than patients with previous heart disease but no COVID-19-induced cardiac damage.”

From Kaiser Health News website (requires cookies):
Mysterious Heart Damage, Not Just Lung Troubles, Befalling COVID-19 Patients

Link in AppleNews to the same story:
Mysterious heart damage, not just lung troubles, befalling COVID-19 patients — Kaiser Health News

This would certainly be a concern to younger, healthier patients who become infected and even those asymptomatic carriers who are not worried about getting it because they get over it so no big deal.

 

[SageBrush]

Of course everything you say is relevant, but the conclusion you keep coming back to is that someone who is not a doctor cannot be taken seriously in this discussion.

THE most important lesson that a physician learns is to recognize their limits; to know what they do not know; to know when to seek expertise.

 

[Papafox]

And ignore the studies that don't show efficacy...
Doctors aren't claiming it doesn't work, that's why they're studying it!
You, however, are claiming it works and are simply looking for data points that support your view. Someone claiming the opposite could do exactly the same thing. You're going to need to do a much more sophisticated analysis than looking at plots.

Let's talk about the studies that don't show efficacy. Consider this one:
Small Trial Suggests Antimalarial Drugs Not Effective For Treating Coronavirus

Here's a quote from an article about the study:
"Like the Marseille study, the Molina trial was also a small pilot study. Molina and colleagues used the same dosing regimen as Gautret. In contrast, however, to the Gautret study, eight of the 11 patients had underlying health conditions, and 10 of 11 had fevers and were quite ill at the time the dosing began."

So, the study used only 11 patients, all of who were already showing very serious illness and 8 of whom had underlying additonal problems. What the study showed, if you can believe a study with so few participants, is that HCQ when given too late in the disease's progression may not be particularly helpful. Even the proponents of the treatment would agree.

I submit that this study was undertaken with the expressed purpose of giving the earlier HCQ studies a black eye. Both the original 20 person study in France and this 11 patient rebuttal study have problems. What one needs to do is look at the entirety of the data to gain a clearer picture.

 

[EVNow]

Yep, the update compressed all peaks because of the Spain and Italy data. Newsome needs to hit F5.

Yes - here are fairly detailed notes on the latest update. Also, lots of data like length of hospital / ICU stay etc. People who are tracking Covid closely should check this out.

COVID-19 Estimation Updates

 

[deonb]

This virus simply isn't nearly as deadly as most others because it can't be. A virus that incubates this long and spreads this easily is never going to be all that deadly(with modern medical support). If it were that deadly, it wouldn't be able to incubate for 13 days.

Rabies (60 days)
Hantavirus (30 days)
Dengue (15 days)
HIV (9 months)

 

[SageBrush]

Speaking of damage to lung and heart tissues from CV19, just saw this article on how doctors are observing damage to heart tissue even in those without respiratory distress.

Old news that ACE2 receptors are also in the heart, and many other organs. Viremia will be ~ proportional to disease severity, and the degree of viremia will be concordant with other organs getting infected. The myocardial involvement has been known since the beginning due to common troponin elevations not obviously related to demand/supply imbalance.

The actual news here is not that myocarditis occurs, but that it is a minor part of the spectrum of disease.

In any case, the important ACE2 receptor is in the lungs because of its apical location.

 

[ohmman]

I submit that this study was undertaken with the expressed purpose of giving the earlier HCQ studies a black eye.

This is a big claim. What evidence do you have that would support this?

 

[Daniel in SD]

Let's talk about the studies that don't show efficacy. Consider this one:
Small Trial Suggests Antimalarial Drugs Not Effective For Treating Coronavirus

Here's a quote from an article about the study:
"Like the Marseille study, the Molina trial was also a small pilot study. Molina and colleagues used the same dosing regimen as Gautret. In contrast, however, to the Gautret study, eight of the 11 patients had underlying health conditions, and 10 of 11 had fevers and were quite ill at the time the dosing began."

So, the study used only 11 patients, all of who were already showing very serious illness and 8 of whom had underlying additonal problems. What the study showed, if you can believe a study with so few participants, is that HCQ when given too late in the disease's progression may not be particularly helpful. Even the proponents of the treatment would agree.

I submit that this study was undertaken with the expressed purpose of giving the earlier HCQ studies a black eye. Both the original 20 person study in France and this 11 patient rebuttal study have problems. What one needs to do is look at the entirety of the data to gain a clearer picture.

The data right now is all turds as far as I can tell.
What one needs to do is exactly what most countries are already doing. They allow HCQ for therapeutic use and are waiting for better studies before they make a recommendation on whether or not to use HCQ to treat COVID-19.

 

[SMAlset]

I think China doesn't do the same careful tracing as South Korea, relying more on quarantine....

I would think that it was easier to trace infected people in Korea since hundreds of them initially were all from the Church or contacts of theirs. China had a much tougher if not impossible job of tracing patients from a major travel city and business district. I had a package traveling through Wuhan in tracking some months back and did a google map search if the city and info on it. I can’t imagine how difficult it was for the epidemiologists to even start tracing the origins in the city.

 

[HG Wells]

If that fool reads a study that says e.g. 30% of patients taking the remedy developed Qt prolongation > 500 mSec, what is his interpretation as a 'social scientist' ?

I don't know about him but after reading that, my heart would skip a beat.

 

[SageBrush]

I see you're in the camp of let's not use the treatment until careful studies with control groups come out.

You have NO IDEA what is required in 'normal' times.

Fauci is well aware of the risk/benefit aspect. He is however way too smart to jump to conclusions based on anecdotal and uncontrolled data.

 

[SMAlset]

Cellular decomposition, especially in a refrigerated setting like a morgue or funeral home, would be very slow and would preserve the tissue properly for a test like this. I don't have numbers for Coronavirus, but when I worked with Adenoviruses we could keep them viable for months at 4 C, and decades at -40 C. I'm sure my old mentor still has the viruses I worked on in cold storage somewhere.

Thanks, interesting. I know some diseases like anthrax can live in the ground around dead carcases of cattle for a long time. I read an article last night that said due to the high number of deaths in NYC and the time it takes preparing bodies for burial with storage reaching capacity that they were looking at temporary burial plots where multiple bodies could be placed. Made me wonder once past the morgue however what the viability is.

 

[SageBrush]

The data right now is all turds as far as I can tell.
What one needs to do is exactly what most countries are already doing. They allow HCQ for therapeutic use and are waiting for better studies before they make a recommendation on whether or not to use HCQ to treat COVID-19.

They allow HCQ for compassionate use and are waiting for better studies before they make a recommendation on whether or not to use HCQ to treat COVID-19.

 

[EinSV]

Another study is out (pre-publication) suggesting that covid-19 transmission decreases significantly at higher temperatures.

This study finds a strong correlation between temperature and new cases per the figure below.

In addition, they find a sweet spot (I would call it a sour spot) of transmission at a mean maximum temperature of 7.5 C and very little transmission above 22.5 C (72.5 F).

My personal opinion is that it looks more and more like spring weather should help quite a bit.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.02.20051524v1.full.pdf

 

[bkp_duke]

Your answer here exposes the real problem. Your previous response was useful because it pointed out potential shortcomings in using country data to draw conclusions. Your current response is just ridicule, which is so detrimental to the aim of this thread, which is to further a discussion on the COVID-19 phenomenon.

The biggest problem with this thread right now is that there are a handful of regulars here who are hard-over antagonistic to people who challenge their views. We all know who they are. My request to you is to continue laying out counter-arguments like you did in your previous response, but stay away from the ridicule because it is un-professional and harms the value of this thread.

Don't have time to repeat the same response 4X per day. If new data pops up, I'll review it. Right now, I'm done withe the HCQ theory.