shoshin

Not going to watch 7 minutes of Dershowitz or whatever that is but if he's just talking about legal precedent, he's correct that the Supreme Court ruled on this in a few cases. It's a rising issue because so many people are trying to bring back the oldies like the measles and TB...maybe get the polio band back together since they've dropped off the radar. It's impressive that it's only taken a decade or so for the once-nearly-eradicated diseases to get traction in the US.

Coronaviruses don’t live in chlorinated water...not exactly a big scientific insight. You probably don’t need a study to prove whether coronavirus survives a turpentine bath.

This guy always posts in the Silver thread and his numbers are interesting as he carves out a the the top 5 state drivers of the numbers to see how the rest of the country is doing. In those states, we see dramatically increased testing but % positive the same, which indicates rising cases. Hospitalization is level so that's good. That's the metric to watch as our limiting resource for reopening phases.

Could be that. There have also been some studies that consider people's non-homogenous reactions (not just by age) to this and the first wave will affect the susceptible, with later waves needing more prevalence to get to the same numbers of cases. It's a compelling argument. Treatments also have gotten better. When this started, we had patients lying on their backs--that's completely the wrong thing now. And a lot of drug cocktails in use now that weren't before.

Polio was a nightmare and people believed in vaccines enough to take the chance on them. Now polio has been gone so long that people are willing to let polio comeback because vaccines are some kind of evil. Definitely strange.

Are you personally upset at me because I blew up your assertions about hospitalizations? Who cares man? Lots of data and yours was an easy mistake to make. I'll be happy if HCQ pans out in any way. That Korea study is promising.

I noted that the Korea study was promising once I read it. You are so eager to attack. Why? I treat the data points as they come. That study published 2 days ago. Believe it or not, in the last two days, I hadn't read it! Read what they cited and get back to me. Good doctors wouldn't jump on a drug and write a letter based on the data they cited in that letter. The AZ docs rushed in. Your hunches and intuition? I have no hunch or intuition about HCQ. I read the studies.

This is the first even credible sounding study, and it was published 2 days ago. I haven't read it in detail yet. The AZ doctors letter was embarrassing. It was treated upthread. Edit: Read that study. Good stuff. It appears to work well in lessening symptoms by a few days when used with/out AZ (20 days with no drugs to 17). That would be welcome news to turn people around faster when they get it. The Michigan study will give even better data since it's much larger.

Unproven related to Covid, yes. Proven related to malaria, of course. I have taken it myself. We're talking about the efficacy of a drug based on the evidence so far. HCQ isn't changing anyone's vote.

That link, even if it is a decent source, does not say what you said. You said almost all doctors and nurses are taking HCQ. Your link is about doctors proscribing HCQ. I see some guy on TV talking about not taking a drug that is unproven. He seems unhinged and not much of a source of anything. Is there some gain to be made by anyone fearing HCQ, beyond just fearing taking an unproven drug?

Good. I got a whole lotta airline credits from Covid-canceled trips to use by December 31 and I plan to go somewhere warm.

Uhh link? My wife works with only nurses and doctors on the front line of this in a major city. She knows of no one taking it or even considering doing so. They all think it's ridiculous. And for the record on its effectiveness, of the 40 nurses on her particular team, all of whom have treated and continue to treat Covid patients, only one has contracted it, and she got it in the first week from a patient who they didn't think had it and who wasn't wearing her PPE. Taking normal precautions makes the difference. Not HCQ. I see no fear. I just see them criticizing others.

I've "heard" the opposite from many doctors. Look to the studies. They show no benefit to HCQ, except for either in test tubes and in China. As I've noted before, chloroquine being an anitviral had great success before in vitro vs both ebola and HIV. It's used to not living up to the hype, which is why so many doctors who follow anti-virals closely were so skeptical. They have heard this chloroquine cry of "wolf" before. Who's afraid? It's just a drug with its own side-effects and they are pretty well-known. It just hasn't been shown to work so taking it doesn't make a lot of sense. If you want to take HCQ and your doctor OKs it, have at it. Or just take it and don't consult your doctor. I don't care what you do on that front. But don't think there's any science to back up the claims, which have now retreated from "serious people took HCQ and were off a ventilator in 3 days" to "might help with prevention." The retreat on this has been telling. Who? I am sure my S&P fund holds some big-pharma, though I haven't looked to confirm it.

I'm working from home. I want to reopen a month ago. We need to manage our way through this, not just shut down. We used a sledgehammer to drive a tack with the shutdown. We did need to do something because we had no idea how bad things were going to get and exponential case and death growth was attention-grabbing. We now have a better handle on things. So let's manage.

Adding to the peer-reviewed 27 papers cited in the other article on how well masks work to reduce transmission, here's an interesting new study on Covid-19 specifically. Sorry to some of you for the source. Pretty neat way to experiment using live subjects without giving humans Covid!

The speed with which we’ve ramped up testing is amazing. Good stuff. Hapless did a really thorough review of the vaccine news of late. Worth the read for the people who want to hear about the vaccine developments and the studies. The Moderna vaccine study, while promising, was not without some concerning data. Lots more to do on that front. The Oxford vaccine may yield more conclusive results sooner.

You should read the sources for that letter. There are several in vitro studies, a letter to an editor and the only things that look at all like studies of any group of humans are from China, which I’m pretty sure is a place you don’t believe. Happy to dive into any one of them but doctors citing that kind of nonsense is embarrassing. The blinded western studies don’t back up any claim on HCQ. There is a large study ongoing on preventative possibilities but no results on that yet. That will be one of the last things that could justify its use since all the other “man taken off ventilator after starting HCQ” stories have not held up to rigorous scrutiny. Still nothing to show for all the talk. HCQ has been hyped vs AIDS and Ebola so it’s used to being in the Aaron Maybin role.

Only the most panic-stricken thought it was recurring. That would be a crazy thing indeed for a virus to just keep coming back right after the body somehow developed antibodies.

You didn't substantively respond yesterday when I corrected your numbers on hospitalizations, and you also didn't respond to the numbers point I made today, which didn't point out that you're wrong like yesterday but noted that your confidence in % positive should be waning with more testing. I used to think that was a good data point too, but it's less so now. But you did get defensive and name call. So you got me there. I'm not sure you'll read more evidence but here is an article on using % positive early in a pandemic vs later and how it becomes less relevant as testing increases. And here's the same author's model based on the fact that % positive becomes decreasingly relevant as an indicator as tests increase as applied to Texas.

I am correcting your incomplete math. Like yesterday when you compared an entire flu season's hospitalization to the covid hospitalization that started in February and rose from 0 cases. I gave you a more accurate comparison, though even mine can't account for Covid starting from 0 cases, but it still showed a lot more Covid hospitalizations. Regarding the above, do you understand that percent positive as an indicator loses its relevance as testing increases? An example helps. Day 20. 100 tests. 50 positive. 50% positive rate. (Uh oh, we are missing cases.) Day 50. 1000 tests. 300 positive. 30% positive rate. (Still missing cases because we don't have adequate testing but at least fewer people are testing positive so % positive is a good indicator through a bit of a messy one). Day 100. 10,000 tests. 4000 positive. 40% positive rate. (adequate testing is in place and we feel confident that we are catching most cases...% positive rate doesn't matter anymore because see day 130) Day 130: 100,000 tests. 8,000 positive. 8% positive rate. ->Your view: This is good news...we went from 40% to 8%. ->Reality: % positive doesn't give useful data any more. Cases doubled.

Case counts when accurate are the best indicator for sure. Once there is adequate testing, the % positive means less because you're presumably catching more of the cases in the total positive results. Not sure where we are on the curve of when the pos % declining meant a lot to it meaning less but we are someplace on that continuum right now.

A study that showed that would be great news. I see nothing. One big one in progress in Michigan. I am commenting on the results of studies, not on the general risks of taking it.

Hospitalization rate over time is getting to be a better measure now that there are more tests available. Hard number to get ahold of here in PA. They have some daily numbers but they tend to suck in accuracy.

Say what? It’s been shown in several blinded studies to be ineffective. If people want to take it, so be it but it’s not proven in spite of being taken by a ton of people and subject to a lot of studies. At best it’s been shown as effective as placebo and at worst it harms patients. Might as well take quicksilver.

Right. The supply chain is breaking and will lead to mass riots. Meat is running out. Mandated masks will lead to a rash of robberies. Gates created the virus. Vaccines are a sinister plot. 3 million will die. And now this. Trying to keep this thread on an even keel takes yoeman’s work. I enjoy the discussion Magox but concede your point made many pages ago. The creatures under the bridge have won.