America’s Corona Tsar, Andrew Fauci, Concedes Covid-19 May Be Just a Bad Flu With a Fatality Rate of 0.1%

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

5 minutes ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

Paul G. Auwaerter

Lyme specialist?

[0R0 + 6,251]

23 minutes ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

Just read this off Medscape; don't know how to transfer. To paraphrase this infectious diseases doctor from Johns Hopkins:

1) Not very hot on HCQ. Thought to prevent viral assembly due to acidification of phagolysosome. Has some cardiotoxicity, and since the Covid-19 produces cardiomyopathy in some, worried about it. Did say that it was a pretty benign drug and worth a shot if you have any.  

2) ARDS with Covid not the usual neutrophil-mediated process but instead T-Regulatory cell-mediated. Anti-IL-6 monoclonal antibodies being used. 

3) He feels that Remdesivir is the antiviral with the most promise, on basis of studies of this drug against MERS-CoV.

{Please don't shoot the messenger.} 😃

Gilead gave China a big dose of its drug for trials. Still no word reaching headlines yet. 

I do hope the HCQ/Z is as good as the results so far indicate. You are probably hearing from doctors criticizing the drug and its diversion from Lupus patients while they are full to the gills with the combo. 

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

37 minutes ago, Enthalpic said:

Lyme specialist?

I dunno. Never heard of him. Baltimore--likely Lyme specialist.

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

36 minutes ago, 0R0 said:

You are probably hearing from doctors criticizing the drug and its diversion from Lupus patients while they are full to the gills with the combo. 

HaHa--they're not saying, but if I were on the front lines, I'd have it sloshing in my system. Let's put it this way: I doubt we'll be seeing any Falciparum malaria or urinary tract infections in doctors for quite some time.

[0R0 + 6,251]

Post it here too

1 minute ago, 0R0 said:

https://covidtracking.com/data/

CA still at just under 20% positive tests

NY and NJ still at 30% positive

You can give NY and NJ a while to finish the spread of the disease to the rest of the population (60%) who have not had it yet. A couple of days with subway traffic would do it. 

Time for the antibody test to let us know who is likely already immune.

New Abbott labs test kit for 5 to 15 minute tests.for live virus.

https://abbott.mediaroom.com/2020-03-27-Abbott-Launches-Molecular-Point-of-Care-Test-to-Detect-Novel-Coronavirus-in-as-Little-as-Five-Minutes

 

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

Anyone know people with production experience?

Open source ventilator :

https://open-source-covid-19-ventilator-canada.mn.co/

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/pandemic-ventilator-design-covid19-1.5511412

Edited March 28, 2020 by Enthalpic

[ronwagn + 6,290]

5 hours ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

^

Who knows? The heroics of even thinking about HCQ have to do with the immune suppression of a patient who would normally need his immune system going on all cylinders. It sounds as if the unique property of this Covid-19 is that it releases all these fever molecules--cytokines and all--that trigger such an unexpectedly hyped-up immune reaction that it destroys the lung parenchyma. 

This virus is flabbergasting on so many fronts that Satan himself must have spawned this little bastard. What boggles the mind, always, is that viruses have no cellular machinery whatsoever--just nucleic acids. The fact that they use our cellular machinery in the most intrusive manner possible, manufacturing devious methods of making us miserable, is always just astounding to me. 

Oh well, due to the magic of vaccines, we will eventually pretty well knock this one off its perch . . . but at what cost. Man, so far, the economy has taken a massive hit while mankind itself has taken only a little gut-punch. Tell that to someone who just lost a father or a husband and you're in trouble but the mortality rate has been very low for such a massive scare. Lots of that has to do, of course, with the incredible contagion of the damn thing. 

I hope HCQ/Z works. As a global community, we can gear up and manufacture massive amounts in short time. I rather suspect this is going to be like the Marshal Plan (Barron's today), whereby Remdesivir and/or Kaletra are used for the really sick ones and HCQ/Z for the barely ill.

HCQ for the Spanish flu? Like having penicillin available during the Civil War, it might have changed history. 

What is it about HCQ that seems to be beneficial early on? Does it reduce the cytokine "storm"?

https://academic.oup.com/jac/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jac/dkaa114/5810487?searchresult=1

The number of COVID-19 cases is still on the rise. The median time from first symptoms to ARDS is 8 days (IQR 6–12 days).² The transition to ARDS occurs in many severe COVID-19 cases. A possible explanation for this rapid and serious deterioration is the cytokine release syndrome (CRS), or ‘cytokine storm’, an overproduction of immune cells and cytokines that leads to rapid multi-organ system failure and fetal damage to tissues of the lungs, kidney and heart.³ Developing an effective approach to modulate the immune response or suppress overreactive cytokine production is of crucial importance in reducing disease aggravation and the mortality rate. There is an urgent need to identify effective and safe medical agents to treat this disease.

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

1 minute ago, ronwagn said:

What is it about HCQ that seems to be beneficial early on? Does it reduce the cytokine "storm"?

That's the presumption. Once that big bang hits--and it doesn't in everyone--it's usually ventilator time. And with it frequently comes renal failure. The virus triggers this thing when it reaches a critical mass in the lower airways. Upper airways symptoms (dry cough, scratchy throat, but no shortness of breath) warn one that the worst may be on the way. However, not all those with upper airways symptoms need to be admitted to the hospital . . . but if this works, they probably all should be considered for HCQ/Z therapy.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

That seems like it should be of the highest priority right now. No more waiting for the FDA!

[ronwagn + 6,290]

https://www.popsci.com/story/health/how-diseases-spread/

Just how contagious is COVID-19? This chart puts it in perspective.

Everything epidemiology can tell us about the new coronavirus.

 

Matthew R. Francis

February 20, 2020

[0R0 + 6,251]

I don't think the R0 as measured from official Chinese data is correct. I think it is very dependent on the demographics and geography. population density is the key figure. The Chinese infections are claimed to be 78% transferred within households. Which is odd as most households are 3 people and occasionally include a widowed grandparent. 

I suspect the R0 is far greater in dense cities. With the numbers we see now that testing is more available, and testing is broadening out, NYC metro is >40% infected. Other less dense cities on the first encounters list like Chicago and LA and Seattle are not that fast SF bay and LA give CA a <20% infection rate, and net of the less dense areas of the state, these are 25-30% infected. Washington (Seattle) is only 7% infected (probably because people self quarantined early as that was where the first hot spot was) , Michigan (Detroit) is 33% positive, so the city is likely >40%, but isn't that dense - so is an outlier, Meaning that both NYC and these cities were seeded at the same time, but the disease spread far more rapidly in NYC.

Boston, another first line city is in Massachusetts reporting a 12% positive rate Similarly, Texas (Dallas Houston) is 7%. Because they are built more spread out with less reliance on public transport. 

Second cities that have less direct international travel should be at lower infection rates, and they are, but not only due to their infections seeding later, but because they are just not as dense as the others. PA 10% and OH 7% despite having big cities, are spread out (Philladelphia has a large dense center) so it isn't so much that they got hit by a smaller and later seeding but were affected by their population density and public transport (or rather limited scale of it).

[Yoshiro Kamamura + 274]

While downplaying it as "bad flu", don't forget those who are left with wrecked lungs for the rest of their lives. I presume lung transplant donors will be hot commodity, reserved only for the richest of the rich. 

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/26/health/covid-19-lung-damage-video/index.html

Be thankful for Fauci, he may be one of the very few people around Trump who knows what he is talking about. When I heart Pence talking earlier, I have to readjust my definition of "spineless, servile minion".