A government-funded analysis found hydroxychloroquine ineffective for COVID-19, increases risk of death

[Geoff Guenther + 317]

3 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

beep beep boop boop beep

Go back to work

It's almost 10pm. How late do you work?

[0R0 + 6,251]

2 minutes ago, Geoff Guenther said:

As I've said through Feb and March - Trump lied the entire way through, telling people there was no risk, telling them to go to work, telling them it was just a flu, telling them to try hydroxycloroquine, telling them to try injesting bleach.

He did everything except do his job, which was to make sure the country was ready for an epidemic. And when the states tried to start ordering things he'd just outbid them.

Anyone who is going to talk about malice on the part of the Chinese will have to accept equivalent malice on the part of the Trump administration. I happen to think that both are fed with a combination of corruption and incompetence instead.

He was wrong. He was advised incorrectly, by people who were apparently promoting the spread of the disease, including the CDC, Fauci's NIH section, and many others who gave deliberately incorrect information to the administration and the public including not to use masks and gloves. 

Your reading of a joke and a bit of wishful thinking as serious just makes you a Democrat hack, the HCQ/Z is still very much the best cheap way to deal with early stage infections with CV19. As Dr. Raoult had noted, the VA report is scientific fraud. It is being used by the establishment to stop the drug trials and the reporting BECAUSE of the success. The thing the medical establishment fears most is a quick successful treatment with cheap drugs. That makes their biggest potential profit machine in decades go away without a penny in their pocket. Hence the entire industry is piling up against anything that can yield successful treatment. 

Stop reading the propaganda. Read around and through it. 

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

12 minutes ago, El Nikko said:

beep beep boop boop beep

Go back to work

Ьээр воор он иоэs, шэ gфт fфциd фцт комяаdэs!!!

[El Nikko + 2,145]

8 minutes ago, Geoff Guenther said:

It's almost 10pm. How late do you work?

*doesn't understand shift work*

Must be nice to be you 😂

[SUZNV + 1,197]

24 minutes ago, Geoff Guenther said:

As I've said through Feb and March - Trump lied the entire way through, telling people there was no risk, telling them to go to work, telling them it was just a flu, telling them to try hydroxycloroquine, telling them to try injesting bleach.

He did everything except do his job, which was to make sure the country was ready for an epidemic. And when the states tried to start ordering things he'd just outbid them.

Anyone who is going to talk about malice on the part of the Chinese will have to accept equivalent malice on the part of the Trump administration. I happen to think that both are fed with a combination of corruption and incompetence instead.

To be fair, no one could lie if they never sure about the future.  Stock markets have lots of prediction, all of the are lying? The decision based on China and WHO data with some preparation for uncertainty but not in this much difference. What were you expected him to say back then if he didn't have the mid April's number of death in March? You are sitting next to a dying person and he is worrying and he is looking for some hope, would you tell him:"you will die for sure"?

And you sound like the mainstream were encouraging people to trust Trump for the last 3 years and now he failed them. So mainstream and Governors failed no one so far? Because they trust in Trump' s leadership until now?

Do you think China CCP and WHO have any responsibility in their data? No, you think they did a good job, but not Trump and the whole world leaders believe in it, even you still believe in now, so why would you accuse a person believe in these number back then?

And what would you be so sure about China data anyway? The China neighbor was doing well because they don't trust China nor WHO.

Edited April 24, 2020 by SUZNV

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

6 minutes ago, 0R0 said:

He was wrong. He was advised incorrectly, by people who were apparently promoting the spread of the disease, including the CDC, Fauci's NIH section, and many others who gave deliberately incorrect information to the administration and the public including not to use masks and gloves. 

Bang on dead accurate.

[Geoff Guenther + 317]

2 minutes ago, 0R0 said:

He was wrong. He was advised incorrectly, by people who were apparently promoting the spread of the disease, including the CDC, Fauci's NIH section, and many others who gave deliberately incorrect information to the administration and the public including not to use masks and gloves. 

Your reading of a joke and a bit of wishful thinking as serious just makes you a Democrat hack, the HCQ/Z is still very much the best cheap way to deal with early stage infections with CV19. As Dr. Raoult had noted, the VA report is scientific fraud. It is being used by the establishment to stop the drug trials and the reporting BECAUSE of the success. The thing the medical establishment fears most is a quick successful treatment with cheap drugs. That makes their biggest potential profit machine in decades go away without a penny in their pocket. Hence the entire industry is piling up against anything that can yield successful treatment. 

Stop reading the propaganda. Read around and through it. 

Oh, so the buck doesn't stop with him. Poor little Donald, he was told incorrect things from the CDC.

The dumbest things that I hear Trumpists say are "it was a joke" and "it wasn't his fault". Guess what? Any other president goes by "the buck stops here."

He's a president that fires any staff that are smarter than him and refuses to listen to anyone that says anything he doesn't like. The buck stops with him.

[0R0 + 6,251]

26 minutes ago, surrept33 said:

Isn't there maybe a different answer to the disappearing cell phone account mystery (which seems to not be localized to wuhan)?

https://apnews.com/afs:Content:8717250566

That's not to say that there isn't likely coverups and malfeasance that's happened in China. In particular, it looks like a lot of the safeguards that were put in China after SARSv1 didn't work out so well.

Of course they didn't, you can pass on the virus on public surfaces just as easily as via touch or aerosol contact. You do not need to be near the carrier, just touch a surface they touched and bring it to your eyes or mouth. The very fine aerosol hangs in the air for hours, so that 6 ft distancing lowers your chance of infection a bit, it does not come near to eliminating it. And you do not need to be within the 6ft circle but just pass in the path of a person hacking up the aerosol within hours, not minutes, and you catch it. The entire contact tracing scheme developed for SARS is insufficient. The good news is that the initial quantities of virus you get in exposures from touch or lingering fine aerosol will likely result in a low intensity infection rather than the kind of high intensity disease you would likely get from a face to face exposure in a packed subway car or a crowded bar. Sort of like a natural vaccination. 

China's methods include severe quarantine of the infected. Which is the effective part, everything else has nothing to do with successful contact tracing. 

[Eyes Wide Open + 3,537]

44 minutes ago, Geoff Guenther said:

I've been to farmers markets and had street food in Africa, Vietnam, around Europe. You think they're much different? Just because in America everyone wants everything sanitised doesn't mean the rest of the world is like that. Besides, how do you know that that pig you bought for the spit roast hadn't just eaten bat guano?

If that's your only point, I think it's pretty weak.

Weak...what weak is the lack of conceptual knowledge along with the ramifications of China's wet food market. You seem to be a well written blogger, perhaps defining the whole picture could lend some insights as to viability of combining third world countries with the mainstream. Perhaps illuminating a path forward rather than living in darkness.

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/490528-china-must-close-down-wet-markets-now

Edited April 24, 2020 by Eyes Wide Open

[RichieRich216 + 454]

The stupidity showed by these in the U.S. that have NOT done anything close to a testing protocol pushing their own narrative! 

[Geoff Guenther + 317]

2 minutes ago, SUZNV said:

To be fair, no one could lie if they never sure about the future.  Stock markets have lots of prediction, all of the are lying? The decision based on China and WHO data with some preparation for uncertainty but not in this much difference. What were you expected him to say back then if he didn't have the mid April's number of death in March? You are sitting next to a dying person and he is worrying that he is looking for some hope, would you tell him:" no hope"? And you sounds like the mainstream were encouraging people to trust Trump for the last 3 years and now he failed them

Do you think China CCP and WHO have any responsibility in their data? No, you think they did a good job, but not Trump and the whole world leaders believe in it, even you still believe in now, so why would you accuse a person believe in these number back then?

Any mid-sized company should have a risk strategy. I took a team through a hurricane in Houston and we had the traders up and running two days before any of our competition. And we made good money because we actually planned.

Arguably, the president's most important job is in keeping Americans safe. If it looks like there's something that could be disastrous for the country and there's a 10% chance it could happen his entire team should be sweating to mitigate the problem. That is really simple risk management.

How detrimental is the risk if it comes to fruition, how likely is it to happen, and what is the cost and options to mitigate? Every middle manager has come across this.

For a guy whose primary responsibility is to keep Americans safe it's pretty shambolic.

[SUZNV + 1,197]

2 minutes ago, Geoff Guenther said:

Any mid-sized company should have a risk strategy. I took a team through a hurricane in Houston and we had the traders up and running two days before any of our competition. And we made good money because we actually planned.

Arguably, the president's most important job is in keeping Americans safe. If it looks like there's something that could be disastrous for the country and there's a 10% chance it could happen his entire team should be sweating to mitigate the problem. That is really simple risk management.

How detrimental is the risk if it comes to fruition, how likely is it to happen, and what is the cost and options to mitigate? Every middle manager has come across this.

For a guy whose primary responsibility is to keep Americans safe it's pretty shambolic.

Did you ask yourself  what would you do if you were him? With precise actions you would take?

Edited April 24, 2020 by SUZNV

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

From 1966 to 1970 I did research on dangerous viruses. We didn't have great protective gear and we didn't have hand sanitizers. We had ultraviolet radiation in an "ultraviolet curtain," and we had bleach. Whenever my lab partner or I changed the culture medium of tissue cells (L929 mouse fibroblasts or HeLa) we'd dip our hands in dilute bleach solution (about 20:1). It worked better than soap and water.

I agree that the president would better serve the nation if he wouldn't add color to what the doctors have to say; however, he is fairly disappointed in a gang of doctors that were supposed to be the best in the world and turned out not to do much in the way to protect us. Then, as a fairly simplistic treatment regimen was outlined by a French doctor in a desperate situation, those doctors wouldn't even consider it for the longest time. These were the same doctors who told us not to use masks, remember? Then Mr. Pence repeated it because he didn't know. 

It is very easy to be a Monday morning quarterback on this deal. I can barely watch those shows anymore. But it's sort of lose-lose. When Mr. Trump was assured by China that this wasn't a person to person contagious virus, he hesitated but a while before going with his gut and banning travel from China. I submit that that saved thousands of lives, even though all the opposition piled on. Then he banned travel from Europe. Finally--I don't know where it came from--he mentioned wearing masks. 

It is safe to say that this is not our finest hour. It's not one the president planned for. John Bolton, probably the smartest, most paranoid man in the room, prompted the disbanding of the PREDiCT group. But if you go to the NIH, or the CDC, it's like going to the Louvre the first time: the place is massive, with smart workers everywhere. Yet the two men at the top of these two towering institutions completely failed to have supplies laid back for an eventual pandemic. Study up on the politics inside the CDC and NIH and get back to me on the mask and bleach story, will you?

And by the way, the weakest medical student knows that you don't give hydroxychloroquine and zithromax to heart patients without first checking the QT interval, and that you don't give them if you suspect myocarditis. This virus enters the heart--causing myocarditis--in the later stages. The French doctor knew enough to know not to use HCQ/Z in advanced cases, but rather in early cases that were susceptible to advancing to death. 

There seems to be nobody in charge that's willing to accept controversial medications, that everyone is trying to be "in charge" but also avoid responsibility if things go bad. In the trenches, there are plenty of times that doctors have improvised . . . sometimes with great results and sometimes with awful results. We have a cadre of well-trained physicians out there combating something they've neither treated before nor been trained to treat. This pandemic was as new to them as to you and me. And it was certainly new to the president. it is a time to stand behind our people, try to forgive them for their shortcomings and pettiness and praise them for doing the best they can do. 

I am just tired of everyone who doesn't agree with the political scene at the moment to pile on and twist any foible into insanity. This is, in a way, wartime. In wartime, a patriot supports his or her leader. I don't mean to preach and you're of course welcome to your own rhetoric. I just won't be reading it. When I happened upon this forum, it was a lively debate and I learned something. These days it has turned into a state fair midway for any sort of rot that anyone hiding behind anonymity wants to blurt out. 

[0R0 + 6,251]

24 minutes ago, Geoff Guenther said:

Oh, so the buck doesn't stop with him. Poor little Donald, he was told incorrect things from the CDC.

The dumbest things that I hear Trumpists say are "it was a joke" and "it wasn't his fault". Guess what? Any other president goes by "the buck stops here."

He's a president that fires any staff that are smarter than him and refuses to listen to anyone that says anything he doesn't like. The buck stops with him.

As you may have noticed, the buck never stops at Trump's desk, just like his business bankruptcies don't. 

Those are the only circumstances Trump had ever been willing to take on. 

That is pretty much where he stands with his core supporters since well before announcing his candidacy. They forgave him his soft porn flick, his extramarital affairs, his suspect financing deals, the constant cloud of suspicion about his Deutsche-bank connections being related to Russian Oligarch money. It was these easy passes he got that led him to run for office. He pointedly stood against "the swamp" and got a barrage of attacks from all over the establishment from every side. his public took that in as a positive sign that they are going in the right direction.

It is an attack from the media and Dems that wins him votes and turnout more than anything he does. The more he outrages them, the better. he just needs to avoid causing outrage fatigue among the mainstream and establishment. But he has learned the means to push their buttons and in this crisis has learned who his "trustworthy" advisers are and who are being either incompetent or acting as agents on China's, corporate, or Democrat's part in order to trip him up. 

 

Edited April 24, 2020 by 0R0

[0R0 + 6,251]

8 minutes ago, RichieRich216 said:

The stupidity showed by these in the U.S. that have NOT done anything close to a testing protocol pushing their own narrative! 

Americans are buying millions of test kits on their private dime just to know. They buy the cheap test kits from China knowing that the results are at best suspect, if not outright wrong, or spend good money on Western made tests with good confirmed accuracy. 

This is no longer February when everyone was flying blind. 

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

23 minutes ago, Geoff Guenther said:

The buck stops with him.

Well, that part is true enough.

[0R0 + 6,251]

5 minutes ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

It is very easy to be a Monday morning quarterback on this deal. I can barely watch those shows anymore. But it's sort of lose-lose. When Mr. Trump was assured by China that this wasn't a person to person contagious virus, he hesitated but a while before going with his gut and banning travel from China. I submit that that saved thousands of lives, even though all the opposition piled on. Then he banned travel from Europe. Finally--I don't know where it came from--he mentioned wearing masks. 

 

It is more irrelevant to do this Monday morning quarterbacking because by now we have realized this never was a football game. The players advising the Administration were solidly on the other side administering poisonous disinformation and blocking all attempts to stop the virus, test for it, or treat it. Trump thought he had umpires and scientists but found he had corporate lobbyists and internationalist and Chinese agents that just happened to have a medical background and talked over his head. Because of the time constraint he didn't do his usual and threw them out but hooked on to them since it would have taken too long to vet substitutes. Now he should know how much salt to put on each "adviser's" prescription.

[Geoff Guenther + 317]

4 minutes ago, SUZNV said:

Did you ask yourself  what would you do if you were him? With precise actions you would take?

In running through the planning for the hurricane? Or in preparing for the pandemic.

It doesn't really matter - in either case, you do the following:

• Gauge the threat. Pandemic war gaming in US and UK has already shown the threat on lives and on the economy. On the 23rd of January the world's second biggest economy locked down. We have a glowing RED threat.
• Gauge the likelihood. There were warnings well in advance of the 23rd of January, but suppose I was on a golfing trip until then. On the 23rd of January you'd say "China might be losing their fight" and set the likelihood of this being a US threat to, say, 20%.
• Cost of doing mitigation:
  Here we come to the options, each with different costs:
  • Just make sure that our pandemic stockpile is up-to-date - cheap
  • Start doing temperature checks at airports - cheap
  • Ban large sporting events - moderately expensive
  • Ban all flights from China - expensive
  • Shut down all schools - REALLY EXPENSIVE

That is all you have to do. It's not rocket science and any team can do it so long as the leadership is in place. The fact is that the only step that was taken until March was to reduce the number of flights coming from China.

[Geoff Guenther + 317]

9 minutes ago, 0R0 said:

Americans are buying millions of test kits on their private dime just to know. They buy the cheap test kits from China knowing that the results are at best suspect, if not outright wrong, or spend good money on Western made tests with good confirmed accuracy. 

This is no longer February when everyone was flying blind. 

In the UK the government stopped pursuing regular tests and instead bought £20 million in serum tests from a Chinese company they'd never heard of (I think they must have used Alibaba.com or something).

PM Johnson was so excited that he told the media that everyone could get them by ordering them off Amazon.

*sigh*

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

11 minutes ago, 0R0 said:

That is pretty much where he stands with his core supporters since well before announcing his candidacy. They forgave him his soft porn flick, his extramarital affairs, his suspect financing deals, the constant cloud of suspicion about his Deutsche-bank connections being related to Russian Oligarch money. It was these easy passes he got that led him to run for office. He pointedly stood against "the swamp" and got a barrage of attacks from all over the establishment from every side. his public took that in as a positive sign that they are going in the right direction.

SO far, that all sounds pretty good to me!

OK, so that part about getting into bed with Deutsche Bank is unsettling.  He could have picked a better counter-party; DB is in essence a continuing criminal enterprise.  (Every week, the newspapers in Germany have these pictures of yet another police raid on DB headquarters in Frankfurt, with some 150 police cars surrounding the building and these armed investigators besieging the place.)  (Russian Oligarchs?  Very tacky.  But hey, they do have capital to invest in real-estate projects.)

The Swamp needs massive firing.  You could dump over 100,000 people working in the swamp and still have a lot of work left to do.  America is massively over-bureaucratized, and that is a big problem.  America does well not because of the bureaucrats, but in spite of them. Food for thought. 

[0R0 + 6,251]

3 minutes ago, Geoff Guenther said:

In running through the planning for the hurricane? Or in preparing for the pandemic.

It doesn't really matter - in either case, you do the following:

• Gauge the threat. Pandemic war gaming in US and UK has already shown the threat on lives and on the economy. On the 23rd of January the world's second biggest economy locked down. We have a glowing RED threat.
• Gauge the likelihood. There were warnings well in advance of the 23rd of January, but suppose I was on a golfing trip until then. On the 23rd of January you'd say "China might be losing their fight" and set the likelihood of this being a US threat to, say, 20%.
• Cost of doing mitigation:
  Here we come to the options, each with different costs:
  • Just make sure that our pandemic stockpile is up-to-date - cheap
  • Start doing temperature checks at airports - cheap
  • Ban large sporting events - moderately expensive
  • Ban all flights from China - expensive
  • Shut down all schools - REALLY EXPENSIVE

That is all you have to do. It's not rocket science and any team can do it so long as the leadership is in place. The fact is that the only step that was taken until March was to reduce the number of flights coming from China.

Or help people get masks and gloves. Don't shut down anything. There was never an indication that this was a bubonic plague kind of situation. 

Isolate the high risk population in an actual hard quarantine. Support their sequestration.

Let the public and the actual experts that earn their trust from the people and their professions rather than institutional affiliation, make their decisions freely. 

You are viewing everything from the positivist point of view that it is something that has to be a coordinated public policy of deciding for the people. I am saying it does not have to be anything of the sort. 

I hope the world will have learned from this episode to chop their government's hands off and kick them out of the heath arena entirely, and remove their emergency powers completely.

[0R0 + 6,251]

5 minutes ago, Geoff Guenther said:

In the UK the government stopped pursuing regular tests and instead bought £20 million in serum tests from a Chinese company they'd never heard of (I think they must have used Alibaba.com or something).

PM Johnson was so excited that he told the media that everyone could get them by ordering them off Amazon.

*sigh*

Yes, Chinese are nothing if not loose on specifications and precision.

You get what you pay for.

Johnson should have known better. The Czechs should have known better, the Italians should have known better But they were suckered  into thinking China was taking responsibility rather than practicing their routine shakedown and fraud. Think of the CCP as "la cosa nostra" with diplomats, its own central bank, and missiles. Take the flag out from the backgrounds and call it Chiuana that they are representing and judge it all from that perspective and you will get a more realistic picture. 

[Geoff Guenther + 317]

21 minutes ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

I am just tired of everyone who doesn't agree with the political scene at the moment to pile on and twist any foible into insanity. This is, in a way, wartime. In wartime, a patriot supports his or her leader.

Except this isn't a war. You don't go to war with a virus. Trump wants to be a wartime president because it's impossible for him to empathise and tend to people. Going to war with China will just make the problem worse.

What the country needs is a viable strategy to get out of the lock down and deal with hotspots as they appear. A four-star medical General, if you will. So far Trump has not hired anyone that is up to that job. He should be looking for an Eisenhower - the guy behind the desk who understands the problem and is able to exert brilliant leadership.

[0R0 + 6,251]

10 minutes ago, Jan van Eck said:

SO far, that all sounds pretty good to me!

OK, so that part about getting into bed with Deutsche Bank is unsettling.  He could have picked a better counter-party; DB is in essence a continuing criminal enterprise.  (Every week, the newspapers in Germany have these pictures of yet another police raid on DB headquarters in Frankfurt, with some 150 police cars surrounding the building and these armed investigators besieging the place.)  (Russian Oligarchs?  Very tacky.  But hey, they do have capital to invest in real-estate projects.)

The Swamp needs massive firing.  You could dump over 100,000 people working in the swamp and still have a lot of work left to do.  America is massively over-bureaucratized, and that is a big problem.  America does well not because of the bureaucrats, but in spite of them. Food for thought. 

The DB fiasco was on DB desperately tying to break into the business. DJT was just a loss leader. He hung around bigger than life to bring them business from better gaming real estate and entertainment and hotel people. 

Absolutely agree.

[SUZNV + 1,197]

21 minutes ago, Geoff Guenther said:

In running through the planning for the hurricane? Or in preparing for the pandemic.

It doesn't really matter - in either case, you do the following:

• Gauge the threat. Pandemic war gaming in US and UK has already shown the threat on lives and on the economy. On the 23rd of January the world's second biggest economy locked down. We have a glowing RED threat.(1)
• Gauge the likelihood. There were warnings well in advance of the 23rd of January, but suppose I was on a golfing trip until then. On the 23rd of January you'd say "China might be losing their fight" and set the likelihood of this being a US threat to, say, 20%.(1)
• Cost of doing mitigation:
  Here we come to the options, each with different costs:
  • Just make sure that our pandemic stockpile is up-to-date - cheap
  • Start doing temperature checks at airports - cheap
  • Ban large sporting events - moderately expensive
  • Ban all flights from China - expensive
  • Shut down all schools - REALLY EXPENSIVE(3)

That is all you have to do. It's not rocket science and any team can do it so long as the leadership is in place. The fact is that the only step that was taken until March was to reduce the number of flights coming from China.

1 You are completely wrong in (1). China locked down Wuhan in Jan 23 and locked down Hebei province in Jan 24. The rest was still functioning  until a total lockdown. And the numbers of death at that time was unknown, you even didn't know how it spreads yet for (3). They can still fly off Wuhan to oversea, not to other China provinces only.

And Virus is not a fixed trends. It can be more dangerous or less with time. If he took a hash action and the virus mutated into less dangerous mutation, then the media still can blame that he made the wrong decision.

(2)

Just make sure that our pandemic stockpile is up-to-date - cheap

How many is enough? With the data now????

Which stocked up are you suggesting? Masks? Ventilation? It was too late by then. China stopped exporting orders when the decease started, only them has full pictures about Covid back then. WHO and mainstream were telling you shouldn't wear masks. On that day, I went around 8 targets and Walmart, no masks was available and they would have left US to China already.This is the worst decease since Spanish flu, mind you.

Gauge the likelihood. There were warnings well in advance of the 23rd of January, but suppose I was on a golfing trip until then. On the 23rd of January you'd say "China might be losing their fight" and set the likelihood of this being a US threat to, say, 20%

Warning with WHO and China? So which Western Leaders did anything better than him? With the risks strategy you are saying? So all Western Leaders are as dumb as Trump?

Ban large sporting events - moderately expensive

Ban all flights from China - expensive

Shut down all schools - REALLY EXPENSIVE(3)

Again, based on China's number and WHO? Which country did any of that back then? So you expect Trump much better than Merkel or Boris?

So easy for you to blame. Maybe you can have a time machine and save the world. 

 

Edited April 24, 2020 by SUZNV