Coronavirus

[PeterJA]

Perhaps you are right. How shall we measure your profit prediction?

I haven't invested a cent in any pharma stocks. They stand to lose a lot IMO. Vaccine will likely be free

Free to whom? Will drug companies donate hundreds of millions of doses? Like GM donated ventilators? We all will pay for the vaccine via taxes and more national debt, even those of us who don't want it and won't submit to it if possible.

and it will consume the resources of future drug and device development.

In industry, the most resources for product development usually go to the most profitable products. Trump has not nationalized drug companies and ordered them to make vaccine.

Their profitable pharma pipelines of drug development have been disrupted and it will be years before they recover.

Evidence please.

Hospitals are losing money.

True. Drug companies don't own hospitals.

Clinical studies are hard/impossible to do quickly during a pandemic. No one is using healthcare or even dentistry if it can be avoided. And the likelihood of significant healthcare reforms looms larger than ever.

Universal "healthcare" insurance would be good news for Big Pharma and Big Surgery, because current "healthcare" means drugs and surgery.

In the end the companies will be asking the Gov't for reimbursement and that will come at a price. Could it be much worse?

It could be much worse for the medical-industrial complex. The public could find out that a quarter-million loved ones have died unnecessarily (in addition to the normal unnecessary deaths and suffering from diet-caused chronic disease), and they could wake up to the catastrophe of drug-based medicine and industry-captured media and government.

The obvious winners here are the PPE producers as I see it. Perhaps autos. And perhaps the nutritional supplement purveyors will do well.

Drug companies have been buying supplement companies, just as junk food companies have been buying "health food" ones.
Pharmaceutical companies buying out supplement companies
'Health Food' Companies That Are Owned by Junk Food Brands
Big Pharma is not dumb, and sees the writing on the wall. But like Big Auto, they naturally want to milk their old business model as long and hard as they can.

The list of damaged and diminished industries is going to be long - Banks, Transportation, Energy, Real Estate etc. The world is in transition toward something different. There are many serious flaws in our healthcare system but it is hard to change.

You can help change it by spreading the news that a Covid-19 cure exists now. Thank you for your attention.

 

[SMAlset]

Is there a possibility this kids’ inflammatory disease we’re seeing now could end up like the virus for chicken pox which later in life appears as shingles? or is that something doctors won’t know for decades?

 

[Knightshade]

You can help change it by spreading the news that a Covid-19 cure exists now..

Cure?


I do not think that word means what you think it means

 

[PeterJA]

Cure?


I do not think that word means what you think it means

I do not think you have clicked my link and read the information from 8 distinguished critical care doctors.
Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group

 

[dfwatt]

My medical 0.02 . . . . it's too early to tell. Need to see more data on the case presentations, lab findings, course of the disease, etc. Even if it is just from the individual cases that we have now.

Yes I think there are lots of important unanswered questions. Just add it to the pile of s*** we don't know about covid-19!!:

1) penetration of the syndrome - it looks pretty rare statistically but still we don't know
2) immune (simply an unusual presentation of infection) vs. a more autoimmune mechanism. Like you say it certainly could be consistent with an epitope that reflects the virus Spike protein merged with its ACE2 receptor but too many possibilities obviously to hazard a meaningful guess.
3) fatality / mortality.
4) does this vulnerability reflect an underlying genotypic predisposition (somewhat more likely if autoimmune)? Or is it simply a phenotype that you can get to with multiple genotypes?
5) is there a way to prevent without simply preventing infection?
6) like every other manifestation of covid-19 we lack any version of definitive treatment

 

[bkp_duke]

Is there a possibility this kids’ inflammatory disease we’re seeing now could end up like the virus for chicken pox which later in life appears as shingles? or is that something doctors won’t know for decades?

We won't know that for decades. We can make some educated guesses based upon what gets inflamed (blood vessels - increased risk for coronary artery disease, etc.)

 

[Mader Levap]

Cure? I do not think that word means what you think it means

You are wasting time. He is conspiracy nutjob that peddles vitamin C as miracle cure for COVID-19.

 

[PeterJA]

You are wasting time. He is conspiracy nutjob that peddles vitamin C as miracle cure for COVID-19.

I may be a nut job, but I am not peddling anything as a miracle.

Since folks like this seem unwilling to read anything I've written, here is a video by distinguished doctors explaining the rationale and success of their (non-miraculous) MATH+ protocol, which is more than vitamin C:

Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group

Regarding conspiracy, you'll notice that the video is housed on Vimeo, not YouTube. Any news about success of vitamin C against Covid-19 has been systematically removed from YouTube and Facebook.

 

[SageBrush]

Is there a possibility this kids’ inflammatory disease we’re seeing now could end up like the virus for chicken pox which later in life appears as shingles?

No

This Covid complication is an auto-immune disease

 

[SageBrush]

6) like every other manifestation of covid-19 we lack any version of definitive treatment

Is that true ? I read ASA, IVGG, and CS for failures. Unlike e.g. bleach, this regimen is quite effective

Incidentally, Kawasaki syndrome itself has a seasonal incidence

 

[dfwatt]

Is that true ? CS ?

Well in the sense that all we have is supportive and symptomatic care, yes. Are you aware of a definitive treatment? I mean Remdesivir is probably helpful but it's not definitive and it doesn't guarantee somebody doesn't die. It's not even clear to me how widely available it is.

 

[SageBrush]

Well in the sense that all we have is supportive and symptomatic care, yes. Are you aware of a definitive treatment? I mean Remdesivir is probably helpful but it's not definitive and it doesn't guarantee somebody doesn't die. It's not even clear to me how widely available it is.

I updated my earlier post. Treatment is much more than supportive care. The following is from MedScape

Treatment
The treatment should be as early as possible. It is based on the the prescription of acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin), at 50 to 80 mg/kg/d during the acute phase, then 3 to 5 mg/kg/d, and on the administration of intravenous immunoglobulins, at 2 g/kg in a single dose.


The response to treatment is usually very good, with apyrexia achieved within a few hours. It has been shown that the prevalence of coronary artery abnormalities depends on the dose of immunoglobulins and not the dose of aspirin, as intravenous immunoglobulin therapy reduces the frequency of coronary aneurysms to less than 5%.


The administration of immunoglobulins should be early, ideally during the first week of the disease; however, if there are persistent signs of inflammation, treatment can continue even after the first week.


In the event of failure after immunoglobulin infusion, defined as the persistence or recurrence of fever 36 hours after the end of the infusion, a second or even a third therapeutic cycle can be performed.


Corticosteroids have long been contraindicated in Kawasaki disease, but recent data shows that corticosteroid therapy can now be recommended in the event of initial failure with immunoglobulins.


Acetylsalicylic acid is given at an anti-inflammatory dose during the acute phase and an anti-platelet dose in the subacute phase. In the absence of cardiac complications, a low dose is maintained until normalization of the sedimentation rate and platelet count.


In children with coronary artery anomalies, treatment is continued until complete regression of the coronary aneurysms, or for life if the aneurysms persist. In the case of giant aneurysm, there is sometimes a need for anticoagulation with vitamin K or heparin and, in selected cases, surgical intervention (bypass surgery, transplantation).

 

[PeterJA]

6) like every other manifestation of covid-19 we lack any version of definitive treatment

False, but @dfwatt, @SageBrush, and @bkp_duke are unable to see my news about the MATH+ protocol, because they have blocked my crazy and upsetting posts.

 

[azaz]

Chris Hayes on Twitter

People smarter than me, is this your takeaway after reading the paper?

 

[Daniel in SD]

Chris Hayes on Twitter

People smarter than me, is this your takeaway after reading the paper?

Here is Trevor Bedford's take. He thinks it's plausible but could just be the result of many introductions from Europe and New York to the rest of the country.
Trevor Bedford on Twitter

 

[bkp_duke]

Chris Hayes on Twitter

People smarter than me, is this your takeaway after reading the paper?

So, here's the actual paper:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.29.069054v2.full.pdf

Note their edit (which is a significant one) in blue at the top. This is EXACTLY why we have peer review. To weed out substantial errors like that.

With that being said, this is a VERY well-written paper on the hard core science. It is honestly the most thorough and evidenced-based paper to date that I have read about the molecular biology and mutation of SARS-CoV-2. All the institutions listed at the top as author sites are among the very best in the world for what they do. The molecular modeling within the Spike protein is very very well done and demonstrates well what can happen when a single genetic point mutation causes an amino acid substitution, and how that substitution significantly changes the molecular characteristics of the protein in question.

There does appear from this work to be sufficient evidence to support the assertion that there are multiple different SARS-CoV-2 strains circulating, and at least one of those has resulted in a more virulent phenotype (i.e. the Spike D614G variant).

There are important implications for this work:
1) antibodies directed to the Spike protein that we use for testing may not catch all strains (this is a hypothesis, do NOT take and run with it), and it is important during their development to test them against multiple strains of the virus
2) vaccine development could be significantly set back, as any vaccine will need to produce immunity to a common fragment of the virus (easier said than done)

I don't think I can fully agree with the Twitter user's post, that this mutation explains differences between Europe/NY and Asia/Western USA in terms of pathogenicity, although the evidence leans that way. I would like to see that fleshed out more before making that conclusion.

Good find, that was a very interesting read.

 

[azaz]

France study finds only ~5% infection rate

Estimating the burden of SARS-CoV-2 in France

 

[dfwatt]

Chris Hayes on Twitter

People smarter than me, is this your takeaway after reading the paper?

Looks like pretty solid science to me they're focusing on a particular mutation in the spike protein termed Spike D614G. This mutation however is associated with several other mutations so functionally it's hard to conclude that the dominance of this particular strain of the virus as it spread through Europe and then New York is solely due to the spike protein mutation. In other words this Spike mutation is embedded in I think three or four mutations referred to as a haplotype. But it does look as though this mutation may have made the virus significantly more contagious, even than the original Wuhan bug, which itself was much more contagious than SARS 1, also due to the spike protein having higher conformity with the ACE2 receptor compared with SARS1.

For folks interested in a deep dive on the hard science I've attached a file link

 

[Daniel in SD]

France study finds only ~5% infection rate

Estimates based on their model.
Though Spain has released their first results from a serological survey and found 5% infection rate.
Coronavirus: los primeros datos de seroprevalencia estiman que un 5% de la población ha estado contagiada, con variabilidad según provincias

 

[Silicon Desert]

Speaking of viruses.... I wonder what the infection rate is of Tesla test drivers whom end up getting the disease to buy one? I got infected almost immediately after driving one