COVID-19 ongoing thread part 2

[mr friendly guy]

With more than 700 k confirmed cases and greater than 30 k deaths, Brazil stopped publishing its deaths.

[The Romulan Republic]

With more than 700 k confirmed cases and greater than 30 k deaths, Brazil stopped publishing its deaths.

"If we don't talk about it, it isn't there."

[mr friendly guy]

With more than 700 k confirmed cases and greater than 30 k deaths, Brazil stopped publishing its deaths.

"If we don't talk about it, it isn't there."

Well Bolsanaro said it was fake anyway. Why would we need to publish data on a fake disease? Obviously a waste of resources.

[PainRack]

https://respectfulinsolence.com/2020/06 ... very-rare/

As expected, when the WHO tries to be transparent and bring up different views in science, Nurgle cultists leap immediately and say no need social distancing and masks .

[The Romulan Republic]

US/Canada border closure to be extended to late July say sources:

https://globalnews.ca/news/7046333/cana ... -extended/

Good, if true that eliminates my main concern about a second wave hitting here over the summer.

[Mr Bean]

Happy two million everyone I'm going to guess July 2nd for three million.

[mr friendly guy]

AMC to reopen theatres in July.

Wonder what will happen to covid numbers after this? Can't be good.

[Steel]

In positive news from the last few days:

Modelling work predicts that masks could help prevent a second wave news and original article (open access)

and published a day after that - Germany sees infection rates drop by 40% when facemasks made mandatory news and original article (open access)

This gives some hope that in countries that haven't been using masks up to now, spread rates could be significantly reduced.

[mr friendly guy]

Found this on a website I lurked at on the vaccine front
https://www.covidvax.news/sinovac/

Sinovac, a Beijing-based company producing a vaccine for COVID-19 since January 2020 today announced their "CoronaVac" vaccine concluded preliminary phase I/II trials showing "favorable immunogenicity and safety profiles."

The randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled trials comprised 143 volunteers in phase I and 600 volunteers in phase II. In each group, participants were verified healthy and aged 18 to 59.

Specifically, the positive results are measured by the production of neutralizing antibodies 14 days after vaccination with a seroconversion rate above 90%

[bilateralrope]

This part of the article seems interesting:

Earlier this week, Sinovac also announced they reached an agreement to start their final phase III of testing in Brazil, staying in pace with leading vaccine manufacturers like Moderna and AstraZeneca.

Should I be worried that the phase III testing is being done in a country that was criticized for questionable data on how bad Covid19 is there, followed by them ceasing to publish the data ?

[mr friendly guy]

This part of the article seems interesting:

Earlier this week, Sinovac also announced they reached an agreement to start their final phase III of testing in Brazil, staying in pace with leading vaccine manufacturers like Moderna and AstraZeneca.

Should I be worried that the phase III testing is being done in a country that was criticized for questionable data on how bad Covid19 is there, followed by them ceasing to publish the data ?

Depends on how independent the clinicians testing it are from the government.

[bilateralrope]

United States drug agency revokes authorisation to use hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19

The US Food and Drug Administration on Monday revoked the emergency use authorisation for malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19, the use of which has been championed by US President Donald Trump.

The FDA said based on new evidence, it was no longer reasonable to believe that oral formulations of hydroxychloroquine and the related drug chloroquine may be effective in treating the respiratory illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

The move comes after several studies of the drug suggested it was not effective, including a widely anticipated trial earlier this month showed it failed to prevent infection in people who have been exposed to the virus.

In March, Trump said hydroxychloroquine used in combination with the antibiotic azithromycin had "a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine", with little evidence to back up that claim.

He later said he took the drugs preventively after two people who worked at the White House were diagnosed with COVID-19.

Reuters

Progress. Lets see how Trump reacts to this.

[FaxModem1]

NBC DFW

Dallas County Reports 305 COVID-19 Cases Monday, Adds 1 Death
Dallas County averaging 313 new COVID-19 cases per day over the last week
By Frank Heinz • Published June 15, 2020 • Updated on June 15, 2020 at 3:56 pm


NBC 5
For the sixth straight day, Dallas County is reporting more than 300 new COVID-19 cases along with another death.

Dallas County Health and Human Service confirmed 305 additional cases were added Monday, along with the death of a Dallas man in his 60s who had been critically ill in an area hospital but otherwise had no underlying high-risk health conditions.

The number of new cases added Monday is slightly lower than the county's seven-day average, which from Tuesday, June 9 through Monday, June 15, is 313 new COVID-19 cases per day.

There are now 14,537 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Dallas County with 285 deaths. According to the Texas Department of State Health Services, an estimated 8,847 people (through Sunday) in the county have recovered from the virus leaving an estimated 5,406 active cases in the county.

"Today’s numbers fall in line for what we’ve seen for the last week or so. We don’t have back the hospitalization numbers for the weekend at the time of this release but would expect those back later in the afternoon," said Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.


"We have seen an increase in hospitalization cases in Dallas County, the 19 counties of North Texas, and the State of Texas," Jenkins said Monday. "Think of hospitalizations as that part of the iceberg that you can see that is above the water. Below the water are all the people who are sick but that are not yet in the hospital. The iceberg below the water is obviously far greater than the iceberg above it and a small increase in hospitalizations indicates a larger increase in illness. That’s why that number is so important."



DCHHS said local health experts use hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and ER visits as three of the key indicators in determining the COVID-19 Risk Level (color-coded risk seen below) and corresponding guidelines for activities during our COVID-19 response.

DCHHS said Monday that due to weekend reporting, new data on those three metrics will be available on Tuesday.

"Please avoid crowds, maintain six-foot distancing when out, wear a cloth face covering, and use strong hygiene. It’s up to all of us to flatten the curve. There are many other important matters in your life and in the world right now, but we must keep our health and the health of our community at the top of our minds as we address those other important matters. The best way to keep you and your family safe is 'Stay Home, Save Lives,'" said Jenkins.

To date, of cases requiring hospitalization who reported employment, over 80% have been critical infrastructure workers, with a broad range of affected occupational sectors, including healthcare, transportation, food and agriculture, public works, finance, communications, clergy, first responders and other essential functions.

Get the latest news on COVID-19 delivered to you. Click here to sign up for our coronavirus newsletter.
Of cases requiring hospitalization, two-thirds have been under 65 years of age, and about half do not have high-risk chronic health conditions. Diabetes has been an underlying high-risk health condition reported in about a third of all hospitalized patients with COVID-19.

The county has been reporting for several weeks now that more than a third of the deaths related to COVID-19 have been among residents of long-term care facilities.

Dallas is still being hit hard.

[Nicholas]

A bit of good news

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53061281

Coronavirus: Dexamethasone proves first life-saving drug
By Michelle Roberts Health editor, BBC News online

A cheap and widely available drug can help save the lives of patients seriously ill with coronavirus.

The low-dose steroid treatment dexamethasone is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus, UK experts say.

The drug is part of the world's biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also work for coronavirus.

It cut the risk of death by a third for patients on ventilators. For those on oxygen, it cut deaths by a fifth.

Had the drug had been used to treat patients in the UK from the start of the pandemic, up to 5,000 lives could have been saved, researchers say.

And it could be of huge benefit in poorer countries with high numbers of Covid-19 patients.

The UK government has 200,000 courses of the drug in its stockpile and says the NHS will make dexamethasone available to patients.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said there was a genuine case to celebrate "a remarkable British scientific achievement", adding: "We have taken steps to ensure we have enough supplies, even in the event of a second peak."

Chief Medical Officer for England Prof Chris Whitty said it would save lives around the world.

About 19 out of 20 patients with coronavirus recover without being admitted to hospital.

Of those who are admitted, most also recover but some may need oxygen or mechanical ventilation.

And these are the high-risk patients dexamethasone appears to help.

The drug is already used to reduce inflammation in a range of other conditions, including arthritis, asthma and some skin conditions.

And it appears to help stop some of the damage that can happen when the body's immune system goes into overdrive as it tries to fight off coronavirus.

This over-reaction, a cytokine storm, can be deadly.

In the trial, led by a team from Oxford University, about 2,000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and compared with more than 4,000 who were not.

For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%.

For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.

Chief investigator Prof Peter Horby said: "This is the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality - and it reduces it significantly. It's a major breakthrough."

Lead researcher Prof Martin Landray said the findings suggested one life could be saved for:

every eight patients on a ventilator
every 20-25 treated with oxygen

"There is a clear, clear benefit," he said.

"The treatment is up to 10 days of dexamethasone and it costs about £5 per patient.

"So essentially it costs £35 to save a life.

"This is a drug that is globally available."

When appropriate, hospital patients should now be given it without delay, Prof Landray said.

But people should not go out and buy it to take at home.

Dexamethasone does not appear to help people with milder symptoms of coronavirus who do not need help with their breathing.

The Recovery Trial, running since March, also looked at the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which has subsequently been ditched amid concerns it increases fatalities and heart problems.

The antiviral drug remdesivir, meanwhile, which appears to shorten recovery time for people with coronavirus, is already being made available on the NHS.

The first drug proven to cut deaths from Covid-19 is not some new, expensive medicine but an old, cheap-as-chips steroid.

That is something to celebrate because it means patients across the world could benefit immediately.

And that is why the top-line results of this trial have been rushed out - because the implications are so huge globally.

Dexamethasone has been used since the early 1960s to treat a wide range of conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and asthma.

Half of all Covid patients who require a ventilator do not survive, so cutting that risk by a third would have a huge impact.

The drug is given intravenously in intensive care and in tablet form for less seriously ill patients.

So far, the only other drug proven to benefit Covid patients is remdesivir, which has been used for Ebola.

That has been shown to reduce the duration of coronavirus symptoms from 15 days to 11.

But the evidence was not strong enough to show whether it reduced mortality.

Unlike dexamethasone, remdesivir is a new drug with limited supplies and a price has yet to be announced.

[mr friendly guy]

Using corticosteroids isn't new for treating the inflammation associated with COVID 19.

The handbook which Zhejiang university school of medicine put out had a section on administering corticosteroids, although they used IV methylprednisolone instead of dexamethasone.

Now dexamethasone is a strong steroid in terms of anti inflammatory properties, stronger than methylprednisolone, but one needs to compare the doses. So a bit of digging.

http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-06-16-dex ... plications

A total of 2104 patients were randomised to receive dexamethasone 6 mg once per day (either by mouth or by intravenous injection) for ten days and were compared with 4321 patients randomised to usual care alone.

And from what the Chinese did (I downloaded the English translation of their handbook months ago so I am referring to my pdf file here)

Initial routine methylprednisolone at a dose of 0.75-1.5 mg/kg intravenously once a day (nearly 40 mg once or twice a day) is recommended.

So they used up to 40 mg daily to 40 mg twice a day compared to the Oxford study of using 6 mg dexamethasone daily.

Steroid conversion calculators are relatively available, so I just picked the first one on google - https://clincalc.com/corticosteroids/

So 80 mg of methyl prednisolone is equivalent to 16 mg of dexamethasone. So Zhejiang university was using the equivalent of 8 to 16 mg dexamethasone which is higher than the Oxford study. Keep in mind though, that steroid conversion is not an exact science.

Also you don't want too high a dose due to side effects and the fact that corticosteroids can become immunosuppressive.

[mr friendly guy]

Progress. Lets see how Trump reacts to this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJIm0G4I8ys
David Pakman did a segment on this, starting from time index 4:16.

Basically it boils down to there were good reports of hydroxychloroquine coming from other countries, and why don't we have some of these good reports.

[mr friendly guy]

This was brought to my attention on another board.
https://www.iss.it/en/primo-piano/-/ass ... id/5422725

Its an Italian source so I will use google translate for the part I want to highlight. Basically testing RNA samples for waste collected in December had already detected the presence of SARS-CoV-2 way back in December 2019. The WHO was notified on 31st December by China, while cases of atypical pneumonia were first reported on 26 th December in Wuhan.

So again this had spread earlier than first reported.

CS n ° 39/2020 Study Iss on waste water, in Milan and Turin Sars-Cov-2 already present in December

ISS, June 18, 2020

In the waste waters of Milan and Turin there were already traces of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in December 2019. This was discovered by a study being published by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità carried out through the analysis of waste water collected in times prior to the occurrence of COVID-19 in Italy. The samples taken in the purifiers of urban centers in northern Italy were used as a "spy" for the circulation of the virus in the population.

[The Romulan Republic]

It won't surprise me if it spread to a lot of places before it was ever detected. With how infectious it is, and how often there are asymptomatic but contagious carriers, the idea of ever containing this thing seems almost laughable in hindsight. That's not to say that authorities in many countries couldn't have done a hell of a lot better, because they sure as fuck could have. But yeah I can believe that it was a lot of places, at least a few cases, before we knew it was anywhere.

[madd0ct0r]

Radio 4 stats show does a fairly damning takedown of
1) UK testing rates (we're missing two thirds of cases)
2) 'people are just dying a few months earlier' (they're dieing years earlier)
3) risk in nursing homes. (1 in 200 over 75s in the UK have already died from corvid)
4) quarantining flyers (we should quarantine people on the way out)
5) bodmas.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000kdr6


My father in law was on an evac flight from UK to Vietnam a fortnight ago and has now completed his official quarantine in Vietnam. Local gov have asked him and family to do another two weeks once he gets back to Da Nang. My sister in law views this as two weeks holiday and agreed at once.

[Mange]

This was brought to my attention on another board.
https://www.iss.it/en/primo-piano/-/ass ... id/5422725

Its an Italian source so I will use google translate for the part I want to highlight. Basically testing RNA samples for waste collected in December had already detected the presence of SARS-CoV-2 way back in December 2019. The WHO was notified on 31st December by China, while cases of atypical pneumonia were first reported on 26 th December in Wuhan.

So again this had spread earlier than first reported.

CS n ° 39/2020 Study Iss on waste water, in Milan and Turin Sars-Cov-2 already present in December

ISS, June 18, 2020

In the waste waters of Milan and Turin there were already traces of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in December 2019. This was discovered by a study being published by the Istituto Superiore di Sanità carried out through the analysis of waste water collected in times prior to the occurrence of COVID-19 in Italy. The samples taken in the purifiers of urban centers in northern Italy were used as a "spy" for the circulation of the virus in the population.

The first case in France, retroactively discovered by old swabs, was from a man admitted to hospital with pneumonia on December 27 so it's not surprising.

[ray245]

The first case in France, retroactively discovered by old swabs, was from a man admitted to hospital with pneumonia on December 27 so it's not surprising.

Asymptomatic transmission makes it likely there were some really early cases. Some travellers coming or returning from China could have caught it, spread it in France/Italy without ever knowing they had the virus.

The virus was only detected once it started spreading rapidly to a more vulnerable population and people with symptoms. The question is why did this virus not spread as rapidly in East Asia?

[mr friendly guy]

$2315 USD for a covid 19 test billed to the insurance company from the lab, discounted to $300 when a journalist rang around. One can imagine the costs to the insurance company is going to be passed down to the consumer.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlYanoVCWTM

Fauci Admits Authorities Lied About Masks Not Working

I remember early on people were saying masks was less useful for the general public. It turns it was because they wanted the resources for front line workers. Of course they could have said it like that in the first place.

On another message board I remember people attacking Chinese people for wearing masks as that causes a shortage for front line workers as it doesn't work for people who aren't front line workers. There were differences in medical opinions which fluctuate for pro mask from Asian doctors (not just in China) to anti mask, who are mainly western medics. It turns out Anthony Fauci agrees with the Asian viewpoint all along and they covered it up.

So I guess the US lied and people died.

[madd0ct0r]

I thought the supply reason was common knowledge?

[The Romulan Republic]

America is back up to 30,000 plus cases a day for the first time since May:

https://forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfi ... 7fdcd344a7

Making America Great Again.