COVID-19

[Script]

Obesity
As in cardiovascular strain ?
As in maybe leaning toward diabetic ?
As in Boris Johnson, who is 55 years of age ?

Oh, BTW, Boris got released from hospital and is recovering at his countryside house (some good news coming out of Britain at last).

 

[JohnRoberts]

I don't know that the abbot 5 minute test is living up to all the hype... it appears that some machines are sitting unused because of lack of test cartridges. Abbot said they could make 5,000 a day...

Test attention has already moved on to antibody testing to confirm immunity allowing recovered patients to lose the masks and work freely with the at risk public.

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For scary news from personal privacy, Apple and Google are reportedly partnering on a smart phone contact tracing where the phones recognize how close and for what duration phone A was close enough to phone B to transfer COVID. The smart phone app would inform both of such "contacts", the next piece of big brother is a data base of Covid compromised, and full contact tracing (with GPS?).  IIRC South Korea used some variant of this (GPS locating) for their contact tracing.

This makes George Orwells Big Brother (1984) seem almost tame.... (IMO)

Of course this "seems" like a good idea, but at what cost to personal privacy? 

JR

 

[Tubetec]

Ive been rattling on about all these potential privacy issues with the technology for years .

There was a murder here about 8 years ago, the predator met the victim in a remote location in the Dublin mountains , after he had killed her he disposed of a suitcase full of dildoes and kinky sex apparatus along with the girls Iphone in a reservoir ,through the use of metadata processing ,the state set about prosecuting the perpetrator , they were able to go back through years of stored data from the mobile phone network ,he was convicted ,but now he may end up having to be set free due to legal issues with the data storage and processing ,turns out the state ascribed its self the right to hold everybodys mobile phone metadata going back years and years without any legal underpinning . All thats changed post Covid is that they have now been able pass the nessesary legislation unimpeded on the grounds of public health. 

For those who refuse to click links ,I again site the 1958 interview with Aldous Huxley about his book 'Brave New World'  easily found on youtube (25 minutes in duration).

 

[Tubetec]

Just to follow up the item on hypertension meds I posted previously ,
Yesterday I dropped off a copy of the Lancet article to the three chemists/pharmacies in my town , I asked for it to be handed to the manager and for them to read it and respond to its contents . As we well know doctors and medical people can be very very slow to change their advice to patients ,even in the face of overwhelming evidence of a particular product being harmfull . Chemistry is a scientific endevour ,but of course the same conflict of interest still exists between retail and big pharma so it will be interesting to pin one of the most lucrative trades by the collar and see what the current advice on ACE2 medications is .

 

[Script]

A total of 77 projects to create a vaccine under way right now. Still, second half of 2021  if we are lucky until it is / they are available. Last century they would have talked about something like 7 years...

 

[cyrano]

Abbot said they could make 5,000 a day...

That's pathetic. Germany, fi, tests half a million people a week...

The most promising test for me, atm, seems to come from Anatolia, a Turkish company:

http://www.anatoliageneworks.com/en/kitler.asp?id=360&baslik=Bosphore%20Novel%20Coronavirus%20(2019-nCoV)%20Detection%20Kit&bas=Bosphore%20Novel%20Coronavirus%20(2019-nCoV)%20Detection%20Kit

 

[Tubetec]

My question is ,will the powers that be try and make it manditory ,under public health legislation to get vaccine shots ?
The reality is by the time a so called vaccine is ready almost everyone on the planet will have been exposed anyway .

 

[dogears]

My question is ,will the powers that be try and make it manditory ,under public health legislation to get vaccine shots ?
The reality is by the time a so called vaccine is ready almost everyone on the planet will have been exposed anyway .

Wouldn't be the first time.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/197/11

 

[dogears]

i watched it live... they had well known reputable doctors on panel...
if can u read/understand Turkish!
check "haberturk" news / turkey : they have youtube live streaming channel too!
....

The virus has mutated a lot but no significant changes have happened.

If you look here:
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global

You can see how it has mutated, and below the map you can see the gene / protein expression. No major changes. No changes in virulence or severity.

 

[JohnRoberts]

That's pathetic. Germany, fi, tests half a million people a week...

The most promising test for me, atm, seems to come from Anatolia, a Turkish company:

http://www.anatoliageneworks.com/en/kitler.asp?id=360&baslik=Bosphore%20Novel%20Coronavirus%20(2019-nCoV)%20Detection%20Kit&bas=Bosphore%20Novel%20Coronavirus%20(2019-nCoV)%20Detection%20Kit

IIRC when asked the spokeswoman for the US COVID team responded something like the foreign test was not FDA(?) approved.

Testing is critical to determine contact tracing and ultimately herd immunity (antibody tests).  We are not close to where we need to be to answer these important questions for public health.

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I guess it is a good sign that the public and media are focussed on finger pointing and assigning blame, instead of what do we do now.

JR

 

[Script]

Not the first centenarian to be released from hospital
https://www.itv.com/news/central/2020-04-15/106-year-old-woman-thought-to-be-britains-oldest-patient-to-recover-from-coronavirus-discharged-from-hospital/

 

[Script]

The reality is by the time a so called vaccine is ready almost everyone on the planet will have been exposed anyway .

Immunity after infection (antibodies) thought to protect for two or three years. After that reinfection. So, yes, vaccines are needed.
---
SARS vaccine never happened though. Deadlier virus and more severe symptoms, and therefore slow spreading.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Reportedly a new saliva based covid test has received emergency approval. This will reduce exposure risk for healthcare workers no longer taking nasal swab samples...

Not DIY yet, but closer.

JR

 

[cyrano]

Immunity after infection (antibodies) thought to protect for two or three years. After that reinfection. So, yes, vaccines are needed.

In this case immunity will be measured in months, not years. Re-infection has already been observed.

In Belgium, a one month old baby has been reported as infected. The big question here is how?

The parents never took the baby outside, both tested negative and were quarantined the entire time.

 

[Tubetec]

I guess a less invasive test than the nasal swab might be a plan , the tester might accidentally hit the tonsils of someone with a weak sneeze/gag reflex and get deluged by snot n vomit  ;D

 

[Script]

Re-infection has already been observed.

Or was it resurgence? I think they don't really know yet.

- Resurgence happened in Japan very early this year with a female Chinese tour guide. She had been discharged when not fully recovered. ADDED: (later said, test samples need to be taken from deep down in the lungs)
- Then there were reports of reinfections in Korea. But they corrected it and said they probably had seen false negative tests before discharging people.
- China tested monkeys and claimed those monkey did not get reinfected. Let's hope they are right on this one.

Still a lot to learn.

(a)  If reinfection IS possible, everybody should stay home immediately. Only absolutely essential business should keep running.
(b) If resurgence reinfection IS NOT possible, everybody should still stay home most of the time for now until we have learned a little more.*

*Note: Just my opinion

 

[JohnRoberts]

Good news for a change (and on topic), we are getting very positive early reports about an experimental treatment for COVID 19.  Remdesivir (Gilead Sciences)  Developed as a treatment for Ebola it failed to show much benefit there, but currently looks promising in multiple clinical trials.

Of course this is a big drug company trying to make big money but reportedly it changed the course of the viral illness for multiple already very sick patients, by blocking reproduction of the virus, reversing the progressions of symptoms, leading to recovery in days.

These are still in trials so not fully proved, but promises a treatment that if it works it could save lives.

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Apparently COVID19 is very stressful for the old and infirm, like typically inhabit nursing and senior care facilities. Not in the headlines but many of the reported COVID19 deaths were in these senior care facilities around the country. It is likewise not news that many of these are poorly managed to extract profits, despite increasing costs for senior medical care. Disturbing reports about finding numbers of dead bodies stashed in facilities that lost control of the infection.

JR 

 

[hodad]

Good news for a change (and on topic), we are getting very positive early reports about an experimental treatment for COVID 19.  Remdesivir (Gilead Sciences)  Developed as a treatment for Ebola it failed to show much benefit there, but currently looks promising in multiple clinical trials.

This is good news for sure.  One caveat is that Remdesevir is an infusion & can only be administered in a hospital or clinic setting, so it's not like you can get a vial of Remdesevir pills & take them at home.  Still, it has some potential to save quite a few lives. 

A little further down the line is a pill developed down the road from me (Emory University) that shows some promise & was recently licensed to a pharma company for testing.

 

[dogears]

tocilizumab is also supposed to be really effective for handling the cytokine storm / ARDS.

 

[Tubetec]

The nursing homes are a fast emerging scandal here now too , Gov,mnt claim its private enterprise so are trying to wash their hands of the situation , somewhere around half of all deaths related to the virus are in the care home setting . PPE wasnt made available to staff early enough and proper guidance wasnt  provided by the health authority . The reality is this whole care home idea needs overhauling , small self contained living spaces with on site medical staff and centralised food prep ,community based might be a plan.