Covid-19 discussion and humor thread [Was: CDC says don't touch your face to avoid Covid19...Vets to the rescue!

[Hapless Bills Fan]

41 minutes ago, Back2Buff said:

This much time and money is not spent on something for there not to be a solution.  Even if it isn't 100% effective.

 

In time, certainly.  But by next summer?  There's a reason vaccine candidates have a high wash-out rate.   Running the timeline backwards means pretty much one of the current leading candidates has to prove out.  Some promising early read-outs, but no certainty.

[Sundancer]

1 hour ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

In time, certainly.  But by next summer?  There's a reason vaccine candidates have a high wash-out rate.   Running the timeline backwards means pretty much one of the current leading candidates has to prove out.  Some promising early read-outs, but no certainty.

 

I bet you'll see 40-50% of people not taking it by choice. There's a lot of anti-vaccine sentiment rising in general, but to this one specifically. 

 

 

[NoHuddleKelly12]

1 hour ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

In time, certainly.  But by next summer?  There's a reason vaccine candidates have a high wash-out rate.   Running the timeline backwards means pretty much one of the current leading candidates has to prove out.  Some promising early read-outs, but no certainty.

Hap, isn't it also accurate to say that the 12-18 month timeline for completing a successful vaccine trial that's been touted since early on in this pandemic, would also represent the fastest overall such result ever? The article below references a more usual time frame of multiple years--granted, that probably doesn't account for the same type of world simultaneous pandemic urgency? Still, 18 months is being awfully optimistic that nothing at all goes off-script, right?   

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/a-coronavirus-vaccine-in-18-months-experts-are-skeptical/ar-BB11Yzjh

Edited May 21, 2020 by NoHuddleKelly12

[Back2Buff]

1 hour ago, NoHuddleKelly12 said:

Hap, isn't it also accurate to say that the 12-18 month timeline for completing a successful vaccine trial that's been touted since early on in this pandemic, would also represent the fastest overall such result ever? The article below references a more usual time frame of multiple years--granted, that probably doesn't account for the same type of world simultaneous pandemic urgency? Still, 18 months is being awfully optimistic that nothing at all goes off-script, right?   

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/a-coronavirus-vaccine-in-18-months-experts-are-skeptical/ar-BB11Yzjh

 

That's just fear journalism that is everywhere during this pandemic.  Reporters get a high by causing fear.

 

In the USA, there will 100% be a vaccine by next summer.  I would put any amount of money on it.

[K-9]

2 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

In time, certainly.  But by next summer?  There's a reason vaccine candidates have a high wash-out rate.   Running the timeline backwards means pretty much one of the current leading candidates has to prove out.  Some promising early read-outs, but no certainty.

Promising early read-outs? From what source? The PR releases of pharma companies? Media reports? Peer reviewed studies? 
 

Wall Street certainly loves that kind of speculation, though. 

[NoHuddleKelly12]

8 minutes ago, Back2Buff said:

 

That's just fear journalism that is everywhere during this pandemic.  Reporters get a high by causing fear.

 

In the USA, there will 100% be a vaccine by next summer.  I would put any amount of money on it.

I for one am optimistically hoping that’s true

[Augie]

33 minutes ago, NoHuddleKelly12 said:

I for one am optimistically hoping that’s true

 

Me too, kinda hard to reschedule a wedding without knowing a date. In case you are not aware, good venues (and even your preferred priest) often are booked 1-2 years in advance. There is a LOT that goes into this, it is NOT just “throwing a party”.  There is no way possible to know what this time frame will be until this is “safe”. 

 

 

.

Edited May 21, 2020 by Augie

[LeGOATski]

@Motorin' I would love to see a link to what you said, quoted below, because I'm not finding anything.

 

"New research is suggesting that the majority of people who are infected aren't contagious, and that small percentage of people are "super spreaders." 

 

I'm hoping we can develop a test to determine who is contagious. 
 

Scientists are saying that about 10% of infected people are responsible for 80% of infections. That there's a minority of people who give off 10 times more infectious particles when they breathe and talk than the majority of infected people, and that the majority of infected people don't infect anyone else. 

 

There's a measure of viral load emitted when you speak that can be measured, and that's perhaps what we should be testing. "

[Motorin']

5 minutes ago, LeGOATski said:

@Motorin' I would love to see a link to what you said, quoted below, because I'm not finding anything.

 

"New research is suggesting that the majority of people who are infected aren't contagious, and that small percentage of people are "super spreaders." 

 

I'm hoping we can develop a test to determine who is contagious. 
 

Scientists are saying that about 10% of infected people are responsible for 80% of infections. That there's a minority of people who give off 10 times more infectious particles when they breathe and talk than the majority of infected people, and that the majority of infected people don't infect anyone else. 

 

There's a measure of viral load emitted when you speak that can be measured, and that's perhaps what we should be testing. "

 

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all

 

 

[BillsFan4]

@BuffaloBillsGospel @TheBrownBear

 

How are you both doing?  Hope all is going well. 

[TheBrownBear]

1 hour ago, BillsFan4 said:

@BuffaloBillsGospel @TheBrownBear

 

How are you both doing?  Hope all is going well. 

Thanks, man!  Got a negative test yesterday, but still not feeling 100%. But overall, this has been fairly mild.  Easier than a regular cold but lingers for much longer.  Going to lay low for another week.

[The Dean]

2 minutes ago, TheBrownBear said:

Thanks, man!  Got a negative test yesterday, but still not feeling 100%. But overall, this has been fairly mild.  Easier than a regular cold but lingers for much longer.  Going to lay low for another week.

 

 

Good to hear. 

[LeGOATski]

3 hours ago, Motorin' said:

 

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all

 

 

Thanks, that's a good read, but doesn't say some people aren't contagious. It's saying that some people spread it more, with most of the theories involving their actions (like singing loudly in a choir or attending a Zumba class), not unavoidable physical characteristics.

 

One paragraph mentions differences in their immune system or the distribution of virus receptors in their body as factors. Not a characteristic that determines whether or not they're contagious, but determines how efficiently they might spread it.

 

Everyone is contagious if they have it (for two weeks, IIRC). Most contagious at the beginning and less contagious toward the end.

[BillsFan4]

19 minutes ago, TheBrownBear said:

Thanks, man!  Got a negative test yesterday, but still not feeling 100%. But overall, this has been fairly mild.  Easier than a regular cold but lingers for much longer.  Going to lay low for another week.

That’s great to hear! 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

12 hours ago, Sherlock Holmes said:

Well according to the pharmaceutical companies these vaccines give immunity against said virus the vaccine is for.

 

If you have immunity to the virus then what exactly is there to fear from people that don't have a "synthetic immunity" to said virus you supposedly have an artificial immunity to? 

 

Natural immunity is completely ignored by allopathy because it is free...

 

Also when speaking on cases of Smallpox and Polio they have been pretty much "eradicated" so I would imagine any new cases are vaccine induced. 

 

If you wish to generally debate vaccines, please go to PPP.  It's not "according to pharmaceutical companies".  Vaccine development has a history with physicians and scientist dating back to Edward Jenner in 1796 and Louis Pasteur in 1879.  Natural immunity is not "completely ignored by allopathy" because it is free, but because the History of Public Health is littered with epidemics where natural immunity was acquired at the cost of horrendous human suffering and death, usually by the people who could least afford it.  This is still true in areas of the world where vaccination is an achievement and a struggle. 
 

"Natural immunity" to one disease (measles) comes at the cost of wiping out immunity to many other diseases - children who contract natural measles have a higher death rate from other diseases because measles virus appears to reset adaptive immunity

Most vaccines are quite inexpensive to manufacture - literally pennies per dose, much of which is safety testing and sterile packaging.  Some recent vaccines legit cost more.

 

There has not been a case of smallpox in the world since 1978. Smallpox vaccine is no longer given.  Smallpox vaccine is a different virus and can not cause smallpox disease.

 

Polio infections are still found in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria (due to war) and several African countries.  ~70% of polio cases are asymptomatic, ~25% have symptoms produced by many infections (fever and sore throat), 5% involve signs of neurological involvement, and of those 0.5% progress to muscle weakness/paralytic polio - 25-30% of adults who develop this die.  People who have contracted polio may develop "post polio syndrome" where progressive muscle weakness develops years later.  "Only" 5,000 people per 1 Million affected people become permanently paralyzed and "only" 1,500 people per 1 Million affected people die.  In this country in the '40s and '50s, those death and disability numbers were considered completely unacceptable to society, polio was considered a serious disease mandating public-health closures of public gatherings, swimming pools, and quarantines. Vaccine development was made a national priority. 

Polio vaccine does not cause polio in the United States because only the inactivated vaccine is given.  Oral polio vaccine can cause polio at approximately 0.06% of the natural disease infection rate.

 

I kind of wish people who like to opine about vaccines would take, ohIdunno, maybe 10 minutes to educate themselves from neutral sources and not propegate easily disprovable statements (like smallpox vaccine causing disease or polio being eradicated).

 

Mostly I'd like to point out that in this day and age, the thought that the death rate from covid-19 might be "only" 0.1 or 0.15% while the morbidity (those who get seriously ill) remains striking, is considered justification to abandon public health containment measures (!!!!!!), while in an earlier age the same death rate and lower morbidity/similar rate of asymptomatic disease from polio was considered grounds to take the disease most seriously.

 

 

 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

19 hours ago, K-9 said:

Promising early read-outs? From what source? The PR releases of pharma companies? Media reports? Peer reviewed studies? 
 

Wall Street certainly loves that kind of speculation, though. 

 

I also may have a few sources remaining.  I neither confirm nor deny this.

 

Too early for release of peer-reviewed studies, but it's actual data, not PR releases.

 

Can't help what Wall Street loves or dislikes.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

20 hours ago, NoHuddleKelly12 said:

Hap, isn't it also accurate to say that the 12-18 month timeline for completing a successful vaccine trial that's been touted since early on in this pandemic, would also represent the fastest overall such result ever? The article below references a more usual time frame of multiple years--granted, that probably doesn't account for the same type of world simultaneous pandemic urgency? Still, 18 months is being awfully optimistic that nothing at all goes off-script, right?   

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/a-coronavirus-vaccine-in-18-months-experts-are-skeptical/ar-BB11Yzjh

 

Yes, that would be accurate.

 

Yes, 18 months is optimistic.

There are a few things working in favor of optimism:

1) Vaccine developers have been aware for years of the potential for an emerging disease to become a pandemic, and have been working hard on platform technology that can "plug in" information from a new disease into a developed platform and scale it up quickly.  Many of the early vaccines are of this variety - mRNA or DNA vaccines plugged into an existing vehicle and formulation and making use of platform potency and release tests.  So you might say that portions of the technology intended to be used, have in fact, been in development for years.  They benefit from the learnings there.  For example, Moderna struck out with several earlier vaccines and changed its platform accordingly.

2) The effort being put in.

3) The risk/benefit assessment - if you're trying to make a vaccine for a non-fatal, non-epidemic disease and the clinical trial has an arm where 3/15 patients have a serious reaction, you probably back away.  For an epidemic disease, you say "OK, they weren't THAT bad, try a lower dose next time"

[Figster]

One of our town bakery's where I live began defying orders permitting indoor dinning with or without a mask. A popular city councilman,  man of faith that goes to 3rd world countries digging wells so people have safe water to drink standing up for the owner in an open display of defiance.The bakery started gaining steam. Someone volunteered anonymously to pay the $10,000 a day fine. People started coming in from other counties to show support. Coming from places hit hard by covid 19. All was going well for them until bakery employees started receiving death threats forcing a change of plans by the owner.

 

 Can we blame anyone for being protective of their parents or grandparents the way they protected us growing up? I think not.

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Figster

[BillsFan4]

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext

‘Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis’

 

Quote

We did a multinational registry analysis of the use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19. The registry comprised data from 671 hospitals in six continents. 

 

Quote

96 032 patients (mean age 53·8 years, 46·3% women) with COVID-19 were hospitalised during the study period and met the inclusion criteria. Of these, 14 888 patients were in the treatment groups (1868 received chloroquine, 3783 received chloroquine with a macrolide, 3016 received hydroxychloroquine, and 6221 received hydroxychloroquine with a macrolide) and 81 144 patients were in the control group. 10 698 (11·1%) patients died in hospital. After controlling for multiple confounding factors (age, sex, race or ethnicity, body-mass index, underlying cardiovascular disease and its risk factors, diabetes, underlying lung disease, smoking, immunosuppressed condition, and baseline disease severity), when compared with mortality in the control group (9·3%), hydroxychloroquine (18·0%; hazard ratio 1·335, 95% CI 1·223–1·457), hydroxychloroquine with a macrolide (23·8%; 1·447, 1·368–1·531), chloroquine (16·4%; 1·365, 1·218–1·531), and chloroquine with a macrolide (22·2%; 1·368, 1·273–1·469) were each independently associated with an increased risk of in-hospital mortality. Compared with the control group (0·3%), hydroxychloroquine (6·1%; 2·369, 1·935–2·900), hydroxychloroquine with a macrolide (8·1%; 5·106, 4·106–5·983), chloroquine (4·3%; 3·561, 2·760–4·596), and chloroquine with a macrolide (6·5%; 4·011, 3·344–4·812) were independently associated with an increased risk of de-novo ventricular arrhythmia during hospitalisation.

 

Quote

We were unable to confirm a benefit of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, when used alone or with a macrolide, on in-hospital outcomes for COVID-19. Each of these drug regimens was associated with decreased in-hospital survival and an increased frequency of ventricular arrhythmias when used for treatment of COVID-19.

 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

19 hours ago, Back2Buff said:

That's just fear journalism that is everywhere during this pandemic.  Reporters get a high by causing fear.

In the USA, there will 100% be a vaccine by next summer.  I would put any amount of money on it.

 

I admire your chutzpah.  Having worked on vaccines for a portion of my career, I would not put any amount of money on it, nor do I think it's "fear journalism".

I think it's probable that there will be a vaccine by next summer, but not certainty.

 

For all we do know, there's a lot we still don't know about the human immune system, and the vaccine candidates that are fastest in development are technologies with limited track records.  Traditional vaccine candidates may take a bit longer, if we must go that route.