Covid 19 SANITY

The reason is because those are basically guesses at treatment, and may or may not be any different than sugar pills or any other placebo. Vitamin C was a test in China, not replicated. Hydroxychloroquine is all the rage right now, and there are about 60 ongoing studies between HCL and Chloroquine. Two of the early ones showed no benefit vs control, one showed minor benefit (faster clearing of chest CT on 30 patient study).

Remember 99% of people are going to get better without treatment anyway, and if you look at people below 50 it's closer to 999/1000. So you need very large studies to determine the effectiveness of a drug for a disease like this.

The other thing is that HCL can cause heart issues, QT prolongation. It's been observed already for covid19 patients, which is troublesome because covid19 has shown to have direct viral infection of heart tissue... so when people are already on medication that may give heart risk, blanket prescription of HCL may exacerbate this. We don't understand why covid19 seems to affect some people's hearts and others. A guy from my university got it with classic symptoms, and his partner got super mild respiratory symptoms but ended up in the ER for heart arrhythmia from covid19. Thank God his doctor hadn't prescribed him HCL, or he might be dead. Another doc on my university forum has a pt at his hospital who was relatively young, got prescribed HCL, and had an adverse reaction and is now in liver failure. Yes, these are *rare* side effects. But that kid was going to recover...he traded his liver and now needs a transplant for maybe shortening his covid19 illness by a few days.

There is a real ethical/informed consent risk at play here. To get informed consent the patient needs to know clearly the upside AND downside of treatment. Here no doctor can accurately testify to upside, except to say, might help, might not. Fortunately the downside is well known and risks are very low probability.

I don't think politicians should get involved in the prescribing of drugs. That's between patients and doctors. But the publicity surrounding HCL after President Trump's response - and I absolutely do NOT lay this at his feet..plenty of stupidity on both sides between the breathless rebuttal by the left and the doubling down by the right - has resulted in a situation where we are prescribing a drug with no proven benefit for this disease due to groupthink. And, insanely, the average person's opinion about this treatment flows down party lines. That's idiocy.

There are a lot of drug treatments going on right now, for HCL and others. We'll know soon if it works or not.

A lot of medical treatments are often not understood, they just try them and sometimes the patient gets better, sometimes they don't work so they try something else. Its a lot of fuzzy math in that world, and there's no perfect explanation like physics can provide. As the decades go by the sample size numbers can get better and better and more studies produce more numbers they can be more sure they understand. That's why I like that Singing Whale cartoon, its awesome how they show the scientists argue over what the truth is..the newpapers go along wth it... until finally the genius scientist comes up with the best explanation and its accepted by all the newspapers. Of course its not the truth.

But Hannity rhymes with Sanity.
Sorry couldn't resist.

Wait! Maybe this could be the Title...Of an upcoming Rap/Hip Hop collaborative with John Eppstein as the "Dope" (that means smart John E) MC!
(I want first db's-ahem-dibs on that name BTW)
This might be a way to connect and have Face/Hammer Time with all our "Stay At Homies"

Kidding aside, regardless of our individual beliefs... "God bless us, everyone"-Tiny Tim. My favorite line, of my favorite book, by my fave author of all. (even over Shakespeare or Sheldon-Sidney that is!)

Whether in our lives, or on a thread like this...
Let's all STAY friends, including when I'm right and your obviously wrong!
Chris
P.S. I'll catch up this thread, before bed tonight. Lots to think about, as I read each post.

Covid19 has an rna proofreading function that influenza viruses do not. Means it should be more stable -> better candidate for long term vaccine.

Regardless where you stand, this shit is funny.

Agreed on all points, including doctors having a stash. Lots of doctors began prescribing to themselves and family so they’d have it on hand, which is a pretty crappy selfish thing to do. Some patients who take it regularly couldn’t get prescriptions filled because of the run - I have a family member in that situation.

Was just listening to a podcast where they were talking about some study of thousands of Lupus patients - and not one had contracted Covid. Of course, Lupus patients take Hydroxychloriquine.

this would be fantastic news! And of course, as I mentioned earlier, there’s no way to know for sure what those numbers would look like *without* social distancing. Just too many variables. I’m someone who generally thinks the public health officials have known what they’re doing with their recommendations, so that’s my own angle on this. I do think the economy will bounce back on the other side of this, though of course I understand not everyone’s business will have survived. To me, that’s one of the main needs of economic stimulus plans: how do we get as many businesses and individuals and families through this as possible. I know it’s all highly imperfect.

Here is the full chart:



The flatness of the curve suggests that the authors refuse to speculate on the future. If so, it's a wise decision. 

"Only" 60 thousand dead. More than died in Vietnam, and we built a memorial for that sacrifice. Who will speak for the 10/20/30/60/100/500 thousand dead this time? No one, I'm afraid- the world, in it's eternally fractured political and social discourse, will be too busy blaming each other to remember and appropriately honor the involuntary sacrifice of so many. I hope I'm wrong, but it's already happening. Has been happening- and will surely continue.

Franklin Graham is correct: the world is fallen. The proof is not in the virus itself, but in how all too many governments and leaders -and the media- have responded. When no one is responsible, everyone is responsible. We are all in it, up to our necks. Too bad so many people fail to understand this truth, which should be self-evident.

Be safe out there!

The problem is that pointing out the flawed proselytizing of imminent "exponential" death by everyone from learned scholars to those parroting headlines on FB for virtue signalling is that attribution for the flattening will always circle back to social distancing.   Even in the data where people were left to die without medical help, the curve flattened on it's own, signifying that there was/is a natural number of deaths that would have happened, but as I stated before, there can be no way to tell a statistical difference between a working quarantine and a gross overreaction.  The human inclination is to believe their actions "work" even with very little evidence to the contrary.   Of course, governments will cry victory and rhetoric will be at all time highs, academics will continue to believe in their infallibility despite needing to continuously revise their alarmist data down and down and down, and the public at large will shrug and say "oh well, at least we survived" and the outcome will be that nobody will be held responsible for wrecking the economy.

There's plenty of 3rd party video available showing a complete lack of "overrun hospitals" in large urban centers.  Locally, the news claimed our largest hospital to be "overrun" 2 weeks ago but speaking with a person who works there, it is NOT overrun, but there was a surge of people who were "sick" but since then a lot of them have tested negative.  Most surges like this seem to be people convinced by media headlines that they will die if not treated quickly, so they rush to the doctor/hospital at the slightest symptom.  I personally know a few people who have been to the doctor multiple times with "symptoms" who have been determined to NOT have nCOV-19 infections.

It's pure lunacy to allow this kind of thing to drive us all wild.   It's going to be pure insanity to allow those responsible for destroying so many lives to get away with it too. 

Two guys go for a walk, and pass by a burning house. The first says - "Oh no! That house is going to burn down!" and calls 911. They watch thoughtfully as the fire department shows up and puts out the fire. As they walk away, the second looks at the first and finally speaks up, saying "boy...you sure don't know much about fires."