Coronavirus

[Daniel in SD]

The most populous state of the union is California. 48% of the known cases are from Hispanic patients. A significant number use prepaid phones with no web apps. It might work, or it might not.

As far as the Luddites like myself: I know I'm not loading somebody's random malware on my phones. The government databases have been breached by outsiders, insiders, and from legislation. They are already considering to have the "COVID app" to help voter registration drives by the DNC. Two birds with one stone. The stone is paid for out of our paychecks.

And it would not work with people like me anyhow. I have 5 portable phones I use, and only two have apps. When I'm out having fun, I don't carry one.

The homeless people in San Diego all seem to have smartphones. 81% of Americans have smartphones.
You could use a separate prepaid smartphone to run the app if you're super paranoid. Anyway, it doesn't have to work for people like you, most people run many privacy invading apps on their smartphones.
P.S. I'm always surprised that luddites own Teslas, the most privacy invading conveyance ever built.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

48% of the known cases are from Hispanic patients.

This doesn't seem that significant. They make up 39% of the population, so they don't seem terribly over-represented. Seems like most of them probably have normal smartphones. They likely are somewhat over-represented because they tend to work in professions which result in higher exposure risk, and can't WFH (health care, etc.).

 

[PeterJA]

I see your references from Dr Cheng and your references to "Oral" Vitamin C. My question was related to your statement "and because news of a nontoxic, non-drug treatment".

Is it your position or Dr Cheng's position that HDIVC (high-dose intravenous vitamin C) is a non-drug treatment?

The reason I ask is because this seems exactly like a formerly identified vitamin now being used and administered clinically as a treatment regimen and not as a dietary supplement.

Dr Cheng says, "... Clinically, vitamin C is effective in preventing and treating pneumonia [12], multi-organ failure [14], and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)" and this sounds very close to a drug to me.

If it is a drug then the clinical study path to approval is clear. If it is not a drug then things are vague IMO.

Vitamins are natural molecules that cannot be patented. When I said "non-drug treatment," I meant non-patentable-drug treatment, such as the drugs and vaccines upon which the enormous pharmaceutical industry is built.

Yes, gram doses of vitamin C administered intravenously is treating the vitamin like a drug. But there are important differences. Most drugs work by poisoning natural enzymes in the body, such as statin drugs that poison a liver enzyme that produces cholesterol. Vitamin C doesn't poison anything. Quite the opposite, it reduces (in the redox sense and common-language sense) reactive oxygen species (aka free radicals) that are out of control in severe infection and causing tissue damage.

Patients with severe infections (including COVID-19) have massive inflammation that uses up all their tissue stores of vitamin C, so their plasma levels go to zero, and the free radicals that the body naturally produced to kill the pathogens start destroying the body. These patients are trying to heal without a necessary nutrient. Vitamin C administered orally or intravenously supplies that nutrient. If administered in sufficient quantity, it can stop the raging inflammation and start to improve body functions within hours.

Interestingly, most animals produce their own vitamin C (your cat doesn't need orange juice), and they produce large amounts when fighting infection. The reason is the same: to protect the body from the storm of free radicals it produces to destroy the invaders. However, humans and guinea pigs have lost the ability to produce vitamin C, apparently because it was so abundant in our ancestral diet that the mutation that broke the producing-gene did not hamper survival enough to be weeded out by natural selection. So high-dose vitamin C is actually a "natural" treatment in the evolutionary sense. Our bodies know what to do with it.

All this is basic science established for decades, but it is not taught in medical school, or high-dose vitamin C would be a first-line treatment for severe infection in every hospital. Obviously this is not the case, and doctors like @bkp_duke are taught to sneer at such "holistic medicine." Why would that be?

Could it be because patentable drugs and vaccines are extremely profitable, while natural molecules are not... so Big Pharma has every incentive to promote patent medicines rather than commodity vitamins? You tell me.

 

[Norbert]

P.S. I'm always surprised that luddites own Teslas, the most privacy invading conveyance ever built.

You know, we are talking about luddites who have 2 smartphones and 3 other mobile phones, and spending a lot of time online, discussing technological details. This is 2020.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

All this is basic science established for decades, but it is not taught in medical school

Are you sure? Even I know (and have known for two decades!) that we are one of the few mammals which do not endogenously produce vitamin C and that it is an essential dietary component. It's basically common knowledge, as far as I can tell. So why wouldn't doctors learn these basic facts in medical school? Perhaps they learn it in basic human biology in pre-med?

 

[gene]

Here's a calculator where you input your age and condition. It tells you your chances of death.

Coronavirus Dashboard

 

[bkp_duke]

Are you sure? Even I know (and have known for two decades!) that we are one of the few mammals which do not endogenously produce vitamin C and that it is an essential dietary component. It's basically common knowledge, as far as I can tell. So why wouldn't doctors learn these basic facts in medical school? Perhaps they learn it in basic human biology in pre-med?

Because it doesn't fit his narrative. His entire argument falls apart if there is every any evidence that us evil doctors are not actually under the thumb of big pharma and big gov.

But hey, what do I know. I'm a selfish doctor paid off by pharma bro.

 

[bkp_duke]

Here's a calculator where you input your age and condition. It tells you your chances of death.

Coronavirus Dashboard

Well that was disturbing. Because I'm a middle-aged male with asthma, my risk of dying is supposed to be 16.7% . . .


Pardon me. I need to go update my will.

 

[lascavarian]

When I said "non-drug treatment," I meant non-patentable-drug treatment, such as the drugs and vaccines upon which the enormous pharmaceutical industry is built.

I would be careful about that distinction when making your case. It does a lot of damage if it seems like something might be misrepresented.

Multi-center randomized double blind placebo controlled studies are very difficult but the gold standard. Perhaps this pandemic will bring a few blessing out of all this pain and anxiety.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

Here's a calculator where you input your age and condition. It tells you your chances of death.

Coronavirus Dashboard

The numbers this thing puts out are way too high! And I'm one of the ones who thinks the IFR is between 1% and 2%! (It predicts a male with no pre-existing conditions of age 20-39 has a 0.45% chance of dying!) Someone should weight these probabilities over the demographic pyramid. Probably it will come up with 5% or something.

I guess if it is reporting the current risk of death given you have tested positive, the numbers it produces may be close. Your probability of dying is currently much higher if you have tested positive. If you have not been tested (but are positive), your risk of dying of the disease is lower, currently. (One should not draw the wrong conclusions from these statements.)

Presumably over time as testing increases, the risk of death given you have tested positive will converge to the risk of the general positive but untested population.

Well that was disturbing. Because I'm a middle-aged male with asthma, my risk of dying is supposed to be 16.7% . . .

My risk of death appears to be 2.65%. I believe that is about 40 times too high. (I have no pre-existing conditions, so figure I'm about 4x less likely to die than the ~0.3% or so general risk in my age group.)

But 0.075% is a fantastically high risk of death!

 

[PeterJA]

Are you sure? Even I know (and have known for two decades!) that we are one of the few mammals which do not endogenously produce vitamin C and that it is an essential dietary component. It's basically common knowledge, as far as I can tell. So why wouldn't doctors learn these basic facts in medical school? Perhaps they learn it in basic human biology in pre-med?

Dude, this kind of nitpicking is getting tiresome, and I doubt it helps your reputation here, except among the staunch deniers of all the peer-reviewed science I have linked directly or indirectly.

Obviously doctors are taught some of the basic facts (vitamin C is an essential nutrient), but they are not taught to administer it in high doses for severe infection, or @bkp_duke would not have spent days asserting without evidence that such treatment is "unproven."

Put on your thinking cap, or stop feigning inability to think.

 

[Doggydogworld]

A phone app? Just so we can eliminate the last iota of our privacy, you want our medical info and contact info in the hands of people who have had more leaks (sic) than a Chinese vegetable market?

You have no idea how these apps even work.

The proposed Apple/Google API seems very anonymous. I haven't seen anyone propose a way in which it is not.

In theory a company or stalker could set up cameras and bluetooth scanners that record these anonymous, rotating ID codes along with face photos. When people later tested positive and their ID codes were broadcast the camera owner would know which faces had COVID. What they would gain from this knowledge isn't clear and it could easily be outlawed.

Heck, Zuckerberg probably records 98% of every word ever spoken or written and nobody seems to care about that. I don't use Stalkbook and don't have location services turned on, but I have absolutely zero concern over an open source app based on the Apple/Google framework.

But we really can't allow reliance on and placing of hope in such an app (which is currently ephemeral) to delay the hiring of a few hundred thousand contact tracers and getting them trained up. Time is of the essence.

An app doesn't replace manual contract tracers. It just multiplies their effectiveness by letting them focus on tracking down more difficult cases. It would also VASTLY increase our knowledge of how, where and when the virus transmits.

There's going to be plenty of people who won't touch an app, but they will talk to public health authorities.

And vice versa.

 

[AlanSubie4Life]

An app doesn't replace manual contract tracers. It just multiplies their effectiveness by letting them focus on tracking down more difficult cases. It would also VASTLY increase our knowledge of how, where and when the virus transmits.

Agreed. Just need to be sure it produces a well-curated list. You definitely don't want overwhelm either. There will certainly be iteration.

 

[PeterJA]

Because it doesn't fit his narrative. His entire argument falls apart if there is every any evidence that us evil doctors are not actually under the thumb of big pharma and big gov.

Maybe you're right. Why don't you try providing some?

But hey, what do I know. I'm a selfish doctor paid off by pharma bro.

Straw-man alert! I already debunked that one, but keep trying.

 

[bkp_duke]

Maybe you're right. Why don't you try providing some?

You made the claim doctors are under the control of big pharma. It's not MY JOB to disprove that.

It's your job to PROVE the claim you made. Otherwise it is just a statement you pulled out of your ass.


If we are going to play that game, then I assert you are a Russian Troll. YOU must prove me wrong.

 

[PeterJA]

You made the claim doctors are under the control of big pharma...

Boy howdy, when I said try again, I didn't mean the exact same straw-man.

I said conventional doctors are trained by a system dominated by Big Pharma. (Big Surgery is another dominator.) But of course you know that, and I've lost interest in debating someone who twists my words and claims to have acquired and read 50 journal papers in 26 hours while maintaining a steady stream of TMC posts.

Bring something better to the table, such as integrity.

 

[TEG]

A 'shocking' two-thirds of patients recently hospitalized in NY had been staying home

 

[MXLRplus]

You have no idea how these apps even work.
...

And neither do you. Only the team that codes it really knows all it does. Some governments want access to the data. And the data is only as secure as the people running it. Like I said the DNC wants it to do voter registration. What else? Only the coder knows for sure.

Here come COVID-19 tracing apps - and privacy trade-offs - AP

It would need a very high level of adoption. Especially in vector class people.

 

[dfwatt]

Yes, we have WHO stating their is not evidence that antibodies means immunity. Read that again. It does not say there is no immunity. It only points out that we have no evidence. Other experts agree but point out that historically antibodies will give some amount of immunity. As a lay person I will continue to believe there will be some immunity for people with antibodies. I am not foolish enough to declare lifetime immunity but in the absence of evidence I will go with history of antibodies.

Recent South Korean study shows that reinfection is highly improbable. Don't have the reference at my fingertips but it would be a one-off at least in relationship to coronaviruses if antibodies conferred no immunity.

 

[madodel]

You made the claim doctors are under the control of big pharma. It's not MY JOB to disprove that.

It's your job to PROVE the claim you made. Otherwise it is just a statement you pulled out of your ass.


If we are going to play that game, then I assert you are a Russian Troll. YOU must prove me wrong.

My wife stopped ordering any cardiac drugs once the Pharmaceuticals stopped providing dinner education events. We even have to buy our own pens now. Just citrus fruit for all cardiac patients now. Big Citrus pays well. The good thing is she doesn't have to listen to sales pitches from drug reps any more. And not one of her patients has had a case of scurvy since.