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QuantumIvory
Posts
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My bitch about masks. -
Lockdown Sceptics@Doctor-Phibes But who of those who imposed the lockdown has the courage to admit they might have gone too far?
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Lockdown ScepticsI've been following this website for a couple of weeks and found it informative as well as a good tonic for the MSM's fearmongering of CV. It focuses mainly on the UK (where it's based), but there are tons of links everyday to good articles, studies, columns, etc. from around the world arguing against either the lockdowns or the severity of them.
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More prostate cancerNot that I completely agree, but here's another view:
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/why-i-wont-get-a-psa-test-for-prostate-cancer/
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My mom diedVery sorry to hear, my sympathy to you and your family.
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Update on antimalaria drugsThousands of Covid-19 patients world-wide are signing up for studies exploring whether antimalaria drugs fight off infections of the new coronavirus, according to a Wall Street Journal review of a clinical-trial database, and thousands more patients are taking the unproven pills as part of their treatment.
Researchers studying the drugs have drawn up plans to enroll about 200,000 people to test whether the drugs could be used to prevent infections or help the sick get over them. More than 100 studies are under way, according to the analysis, which reviewed the U.S. government’s clinicaltrials.gov registry of trials and interviewed researchers.
The global efforts are seeking a long-elusive answer regarding these drugs: Could they help fight off a virus? So far, researchers in China and France studying small numbers of patients have reported they may help patients, and U.S. doctors using the drugs tout their benefits.
Yet many infectious-disease experts say there isn’t sufficient scientific evidence to determine whether taking an antimalaria pill will truly help in a safe way, especially studies comparing how patients who took the drug fared with those who didn’t.
"’Does it offer benefit?’ is the big question we want to know the answer to,” said Roy Gulick, chief of infectious diseases at New York’s Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian. “We’re not there yet.”
The most advanced studies could have results in the coming weeks, researchers said.
Citing the lack of evidence, public-health authorities and infectious-disease experts, including Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have cautioned against coronavirus treatment with the drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, until there is more concrete evidence.
This week, a panel convened by the U.S. National Institutes of Health recommended against using hydroxychloroquine in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin except during clinical trials. The experts cited potential heart problems the combination could cause.
The NIH also said there wasn’t sufficient data to recommend, or recommend against, using hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine alone
Many hospitals, however, are giving the drugs to Covid-19 patients in a bid to relieve breathing difficulties, while doctors are prescribing the pills to patients with mild symptoms such as cough and fever to stop the condition from worsening.
Some doctors who have been giving the drugs to Covid-19 patients swear by their benefits, and say patients can’t wait weeks or months for rigorous studies to read out.
“I don’t need anything else to convince me,” said Joseph Brewer, an infectious-disease specialist at St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., who says most of the four-dozen moderate and severe patients he treated with the drugs have improved. “I’ve seen people get better in one to two days.”
The antimalarials are among dozens of drugs developed for other uses that are now under study to see if they can help tackle the new coronavirus.
Chloroquine was approved decades ago to treat and prevent malaria by fighting the disease parasite. Hydroxychloroquine, discovered later, is considered by doctors to be less toxic. Researchers later found both could reduce inflammation. Hydroxychloroquine is now approved for autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, and chloroquine has been used for those diseases, too.
The pills can have rare side effects, including eye and heart problems, although hydroxychloroquine less so.
Researchers have repeatedly explored whether the malaria drugs could fight off viruses, from HIV to influenza and coronaviruses, but the pills never worked in humans.
Some scientists and doctors, looking for something that could help treat coronavirus cases, were drawn to the malaria pills, theorizing their anti-inflammatory properties might help contain the hyperactive immune response seen in Covid-19 patients.
The medicines’ potential for treating Covid-19 gained traction in March as President Trump praised them on Twitter and during news conferences.
One reason for the excitement: A laboratory study in China found that chloroquine could inhibit the coronavirus from entering cells, suggesting it could stop the virus. Studies in China and France testing the pills in small groups of patients found their symptoms improved and levels of the virus in the blood dropped.
Preliminary research justifies deploying the drugs to treat mild coronavirus patients, before they require hospitalization, said Peter McCullough, a cardiologist at Baylor Scott & White Health in Dallas, which is studying hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic in health-care workers.
Patients can’t wait, he said, the years it could take to get full results from rigorous trials. “We have to make some decisions now,” he said.
Yet many infectious-disease experts question the preliminary results. They say a widely cited French study, which tested hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in 20 patients, was flawed, partly because several patients who fared poorly weren’t factored into conclusions.
The International Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, the medical society whose journal published the research, later said it fell short of its “expected standard.”
Also, some other studies haven’t found a clear benefit. In Brazil this month, part of a trial was suspended because patients getting high doses of chloroquine developed heart problems and appeared more likely to die.
An analysis of 368 patients in U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, released this week, found that more died if given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care. The results weren’t peer-reviewed and the authors noted they only included men with a median age older than 65 years.
The Infectious Diseases Society of America and the American Thoracic Society this month advised the therapy be limited to hospitalized patients in clinical trials, citing limited research.
Unlike some of the first trials to produce results, many trials now under way compare patients getting the drug with a control group of patients who aren’t, which researchers consider the best way of evaluating whether an experimental medicine works.
Some of the trials combine the malaria pills with other drugs, while other studies are exploring different doses and frequency. Many trials are testing how they fare in nurses, doctors and other health-care workers who regularly face exposure to the deadly respiratory disease.
At the University of Pennsylvania, researchers are testing hydroxychloroquine in 400 people to see if it could work in three different scenarios: to treat cases quarantined at home, to aid hospitalized patients at either high or low doses, and to prevent infections in health-care workers.
“Health-care workers are under a lot of stress throughout this whole pandemic, and anything we can do to help lower their risk, because their exposure is pretty much continuous, they’re greatly interested in,” said Benjamin Abella, an emergency room physician at Penn helping lead the study. It may have some results by this summer.
Despite uncertainties about the benefits, some physicians say hydroxychloroquine is an appropriate medication in the absence of proven alternatives.
Vladimir Zelenko, a doctor in Monroe, N.Y., said he has treated about 400 Covid-19 patients with a regimen of hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc sulfate. Nearly all the patients avoided being hospitalized, and just two patients died, he said.
Sandoz, the generic-drug arm of Swiss company Novartis AG , plans to pump out 130 million doses of hydroxychloroquine—two years’ worth—by the end of May for government donations. To do so, it will tear through its entire supply of raw material.
“We committed everything we could make,” Sandoz Chief Executive Richard Saynor said.
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Talk about a bunch of Ingrates@jon-nyc Well, then the WSJ didn't try very hard. I personally know two restaurant owners very well who are being impacted in the same way as the guy who wrote the article. I also know several more restaurant owners in the area (although not well) and I'm sure they are experiencing the same thing. When I talk to them, I'll get back to you.
I think it's a huge problem.
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What are you reading now?
Covers Churchill's first year as prime minister. Wow...what a page turner. Impossible to put down.
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That Santa Clara study is starting to look accurateAs I mentioned elsewhere, in early February I got sick. I had extreme fatigue, dry cough and body aches. No fever, however. Later in March I was talking to someone who works in a hospital lab and this person told me they were getting tons of negatives on flu tests. They even contacted other labs to see if they were getting the same results. They were.
I understand there are false negatives in any test...but tons of them? And in other labs too?
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Talk about a bunch of Ingrates@Mik said in Talk about a bunch of Ingrates:
@QuantumIvory said in Talk about a bunch of Ingrates:
We started making the calls last week, just as our furloughed employees began receiving weekly Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation checks of $600 under the Cares Act. When we asked our employees to come back, almost all said, “No thanks.” If they return to work, they’ll have to take a pay cut.
Maybe it should be called the 'Who Cares Act'. There should be a way for employers to tell the state they offered this guy his job back. Otherwise folks are going to ride the unemployment horse until it drops, and who can blame them?
Yes, I wonder how that would/should work? Not sure about other states, but in Indiana if you're receiving unemployment insurance payments you're required to submit a weekly voucher (online) and one of the questions is: Have you been offered work?
Seems like the employer should have a way to inform the state that they've called this person back to work.
Otherwise, it's a recipe for disaster.
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Talk about a bunch of IngratesAnd this...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/our-restaurants-cant-reopen-until-august-11587504885?mod=trending_now_5
My company works with local chefs to open and operate their restaurants. We are currently a partner in more than 20 of them. We closed our dining rooms March 15, two days before the governor mandated we do so, and had to lay off some 700 employees. We are doing our best to stay alive by providing takeout and delivery service at about half our restaurants. Our goal is to survive until we are allowed to reopen.
Although our limited operations leave us at only 30% of our usual revenue, takeout and delivery has worked better than expected at most locations. After two weeks of getting the systems in place and understanding the challenges of a different business model, we realized that we needed to hire back some of our staff to help with the demand. That proved harder than we expected.
We started making the calls last week, just as our furloughed employees began receiving weekly Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation checks of $600 under the Cares Act. When we asked our employees to come back, almost all said, “No thanks.” If they return to work, they’ll have to take a pay cut.
The starting wage for a line cook in one of our restaurants is $15 an hour. These cooks receive at least $1 an hour in tips, so at a minimum they make $16 an hour, or $640 before taxes for a 40-hour week. The overwhelming majority of our laid-off cooks qualified for Oregon unemployment compensation of 1.25% of their annual gross wages weekly, or $416 in our example. The extra $224 a week provides a strong incentive to return to work.
But as of this week, that same employee receives $1,016 a week, or $376 more than he made as a full time employee. Why on earth would he want to come back to work?
This has had the perverse effect of making it impossible for us to hire enough people even for our limited takeout and delivery business at a time of rapidly rising unemployment. It will be an even bigger problem once we are allowed to reopen our dining rooms. And it will persist at least until July 31, when the unemployment bonus expires. I’d have to offer my cooks $25.40 an hour to match what the government is paying them not to work.
The Trump administration is talking about setting a timeline for when the country can “open for business.” For my business, Congress has already locked down that date. We plan to open our dining rooms on Aug. 1, once the government stops paying people $15 an hour, on top of standard unemployment compensation, to stay home.
Mr. Huffman is owner of ChefStable LLC.
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RNZ Interview with Michael Levitt -
If this doesn’t brighten your day...Looks to me like it was done on porpoise.
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The Swedish Model
If you were looking for the Covid-19 Swedish model, then go here:
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Land O Lakes -
Copper! You're famous! -
The MGM MusicalsNever been a big fan of musicals. But Singin' In The Rain? I love that movie.
And The Wizard of Oz, of course.
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Can't find the update threadVery sorry to hear this, Larry. Hang in there.
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Happy birthday, GeorgeK!Happy birthday, George! Pull out the expensive scotch for today!
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Wondering about test cross-reactivity?@Jolly This is entirely speculative, but about a week and a half before I went to Italy on February 17, I got some kind of bug. I experienced extreme fatigue and a dry cough, but no fever. I spent one day in bed (unusual for me) and it took about a week to feel better.
Later, after I returned from Italy, I was talking to a customer of mine who works for a hospital lab. He said in January and February they had a lot of flu tests come back negative. In fact, they called other labs to see if they were getting the same results and they were. In my case, maybe it was just a cold or flu, but how to explain all the negatives for flu?
