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It’s a molecular monster
The SARS-Cov2 virus can take over and does some pretty cool engineering. (At least in the case of monkey cells.)
The infected cells produce hairy tentacles that poke holes in nearby cells to help spread the virus.
Coronavirus tentacles with small yellow virus particles attached.
So once a virus is inside it can not only hijack the cell to make more viruses (the little yellow prickly balls in the photo) it also forces the cell to make all these hairy tentacles to push the viruses into neighboring cells. Apart from being a neat gee-whiz moment in molecular construction, this is worth knowing because it gives us more targets to aim for. (More moving parts to throw spanners at).
To that end, the team found 87 drugs that are already either FDA approved or in clinical trials that might help. And 7 of them have already shown they can inhibit the virus in both human and monkey cells.
There are some major molecular engineering battles going on
Coronaviruses are larger RNA viruses than most, so that gives the virus more tools to work with. All up we know that there are 27 SARS Cov2 proteins which […]
Good news on the HCQ front
The Henry Ford HCQ study is by no means decisive, but with death rates seemingly halved (sorta, maybe, kinda) — it does show how crazy it is to ban hydroxychloroquine. It also shows it’s low risk, and with all the conflicting studies out there, that there are a lot of ways to stuff things up.
With 10 million cases around the world it seems a bit incongruous that it’s taken so many months to get a trial this basic done with 2,000 patients. When the world only had 10,000 patients in January we already knew that the three drugs that were “fairly effective” were Remdesivir, Chloroquine and Ritonavir. As far back as February 13, the South Koreans were already recommending hydroxychloroquine and telling us the anti-virals should be “started as soon as possible.” They warned that after ten days, doctors “do not have to start antivirals”. South Korea was the experiment that worked — but we ignored it.
Speaking of slow research, the UK hydroxychloroquine trial that was stopped has restarted again as of three days ago. This is a trial to see if HCQ can prevent coronavirus in 40,000 healthcare workers.
[…]
Fascinating. Could one shot of radiation calm Covid infected lungs and stop the severe cytokine storm?
In a trial in the US, five very sick Covid patients with a median age of 90 were given a “low dose” (which is not so low) of 1.5 Grey (150 Rad) of Photon beam radiotherapy (in a front and back beam configuration.) It took only 10 – 15 minutes, and four of the five showed “rapid improvement” in 24 hours. Their oxygen levels and alertness improved. They were sent home from hospital 12 days later.
The good thing about this is that apparently most hospitals already have this equipment, so they could start helping people right away (assuming it works, which we don’t know yet).
Radiation isn’t anti-viral, it’s anti-inflammatory
In theory, the shot of radiation is not “killing the virus” but is changing the immune response — and may be able to stop the deadly cascade of the cytokine storm. It calms the immune system in at least three ways (see the chart).
Anti-inflammatory treatment for Covid-19.
The curious thing about this is that it is an old treatment, and an old idea. “Hormesis” is a phenomenon where low grade […]
Just pausing for a moment to say “cheers, New Zealand”.
The last remaining barrier there are closed international borders.
LiveScience Updates
NEW ZEALAND EASES ALMOST ALL CORONAVIRUS RESTRICTIONS AMID NO ACTIVE COVID-19 CASES
— New Zealand has no active cases of the coronavirus, and no new positive cases reported in the past 17 days, according to CNN. For the past 12 days, there are no patients in the hospital receiving treatment for COVID-19 and for the past 40 days, there is no evidence of community transmission, according to CNN. Now, New Zealand is lifting almost all of its coronavirus restrictions, while still encouraging social distancing, keeping borders shut to non-residents and requiring that residents traveling into the country to quarantine for 14 days, according to CNN. New Zealand will be under “alert level 1” rules which means there will be no restrictions on domestic transport and no restrictions on workplaces or services, according to CNN and New Zealand’s government website.
New Zealands daily new cases graphed. Black marks deaths. Wikipedia NZ timeline
New Zealand 1,500 cases and only 22 deaths. The peak of the curve is somewhere around March 30th. The quarantine measures […]
We discussed the inadequacies of the large Lancet study of hydroxychloroquine supposed used on 96,000 Covid patients from 671 hospitals. It was largely useless because it ignored zinc, wasn’t randomized and was mainly used on people who were already very ill, with a terrible 12% death rate. But it is far worse than that and has now been retracted. The number of deaths listed in Australia was higher than the official Australian tally on April 21. The number of Covid cases in Turkey was 80 times higher than official numbers.
All over the world the study spooked doctors and governments (with WHO help) into stopping the use of HCQ in their large trial across in 17 countries .That trial has since been restarted.
The authors have now retracted the paper after Surgisphere refused to transfer the full dataset “due to confidentiality”.
The Guardian investigated the company that came out of nowhere with this enormous dataset which was used in both The Lancet paper and a New England Medical Journal paper. It turned out to be small, with a handful of employees and that include a science fiction writer, an adult content model, and few scientific qualifications. When The Guardian contacted […]
The Swedish soft lockdown will cost a lot more in the long run
Despite the relaxed approach, Sweden still had major changes in behaviour and movement patterns. The “half lockdown” may have stopped the exponential growth, but it wasn’t enough to reduce the spread. So Sweden is now trapped into maintaining some kind of isolation measures for months while other countries open up around them, and possibly, fly right over.
Norway’s sharp hard action and closed borders cost more in the short run, but they are now tracking towards zero cases and recovery beckons. Sweden has twice as many cases per capita as Norway, and ten times as many deaths, and there’s little sign the new infections are declining, nor that herd immunity is close. Antibody tests show that by late April only 7% of Stockholm may have been exposed to the virus, much less than the 20+ percent that the Swedish Chief Epidemiologist was expecting.
In the graph below the number of cases are on the same scale, though Sweden has twice the population. Given that viruses grow and decline on exponential scales, the Swedish curve could have still shrunk almost as fast as it rose — like Norway’s […]
The claims that the current pandemic Coronavirus is natural all rely on it being 96% closely related to a natural bat virus known as the RaTG13 virus. But new analysis suggests this “natural” virus only exists as a fake creation on a Chinese computer.
The implications of this type of work will affect global politics. The anger towards the Chinese CCP mismanagement, dishonesty, and the coverup will unite the world against the global bad-citizen player. It also drives a pike through the casual globalist academic programs, and the role of people like Anthony Fauci, chief advisor to Trump, head of the Expert Swamp in the US. Why was he sending money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology? Why did the West help train and supply this lab?
h/t ramblingidiot, Choroin, Selwyn, El Gordo, Rob Dinn, Mike Mitchell
The virus that SARS-CoV-2 is supposed to have evolved from looks unmistakably artificial — in sections it contains far too many “mutations” that matter but hardly any of the normal noise of silent mutations which always occur naturally alongside the mutations which change the end product. Like someone cut and pasted multiple photos together with different background noise. Other sections of the […]
In Northern Italy, people are talking about how some people have not recovered even two months later. Patients with mild infections can recover, feel fine, and test negative, but then slide into debilitating fatigue, with strange aches and pains, bouts of diarrhea, and burning eyes. Some of them even test positive again.
And these were not the serious ICU cases which are paralyzed and ventilated. The head doctor of a hospital in Lombardy said “the discomfort often seems to last even longer for people with lighter symptoms. “
Surviving Covid-19 May Not Feel Like Recovery for Some
Debilitating symptoms can last long after a person’s body has gotten rid of the coronavirus, a reality Italians are now confronting.
Jason Horowitz, New York Times
The stubbornness of the virus and the length of the convalescence have become topics of conversation in northern Italy where some of the longest-suffering Italians are finding themselves in physical and financial uncertainty, unable to shake sickness and fatigue and get back to work.
But even some of the infected who have avoided pneumonia describe a maddeningly persistent and unpredictable illness, with unexpected symptoms. Bones feel broken. The senses […]
Border closures and Quarantine appear to be reducing all respiratory diseases
It’s a striking pattern all over the world. Measures taken to reduce the spread of Covid have, not surprisingly, reduced the spread of all respiratory diseases.
This years flu season is smaller than the last five years
Good news: due to the pandemic it’s likely many people are not catching Influenza and other respiratory diseases.This shows a rather predictable result that quarantine reduces the spread of respiratory diseases. It’s a banal and uncontroversial finding.
Chris Gillham is a part of the unofficial BOM audit team here, and below he looks at WHO data across 17 countries for Influenza. (The WHO Chief of course is a belt-n-debt-trap apologist for China, but this is not their modeled interpretation, just the data). Laboratory indicated influenza cases are down an astonishing 87% in 17 nations compared to the five year period.
Quarantine is textbook microbiology, and for most of history, the best way to reduce the spread of disease. In many countries 12 days after major isolation measures started, viral growth flattened off the dreaded exponential curve. Despite that, some commentators still wonder if the lockdowns achieve anything for Coronavirus. And so […]
Figure that UK residents can be fined for gathering in a group of three in the park across the road, but can legally travel to Tehran or Moscow if they reckon it’s essential (though the Russians might not let you in). Coronavirus is raging in Moscow but Russians can fly to Heathrow for a bargain next week.
For seven weeks of lockdown people have been flying straight in without even a temperature check. Though Healthrow just announced it will trial some thermometers and ask people to wear masks. Bravo, eh?
The idea of keeping people in their homes but letting planes come and go is so bizarrely strange it didn’t even occur to me.
The US appears largely the same
The good news is this explains why the UK is stuck in Viral-Neverland, with cases not declining, despite the lockdown. It’s something that can be fixed. The bad news is that Brits have been wasting weeks in lockdown running to stand still, instead of crushing the curve.
The awful news is that it says something dreadful about the health advice Boris is getting. The rot run deeps in the hallowed institutions.
In the UK, 18 million people arrived from […]
A pulse Oximeter | Image Thinkpaul: Wikimedia
A cheap device might keep people off ventilators and be the first warning of trouble
In coronavirus blood oxygen levels can silently drop to unheard of levels. People may be unaware they even have coronavirus as oxygen levels fall to the point, medicos are rewriting the record books. This is a hypoxia crisis — it’s a defining feature of the disease. In the UK, the demand for oxygen at hospitals is so great that the NHS is running out, rationing it, and asking docs to lower their blood oxygen targets.
People are monitoring their “blood oxy sats” at home so they get an early warning that they need more serious medical help. Normal blood oxygen levels are 95-100% saturated. Doctors used to get uppity at levels below 92%, and hospital alarms often go off if children with asthma fall below 90%. At 88% doctors are putting people on continuous oxygen therapy. Levels below 80% are considered dangerous enough to start causing organ damage. But medical staff are finding conscious covid patients with levels so low they are unheard of — an unbelieveable 50 percent. I read somewhere an ambulance medic found someone […]
Mortality rates show that this is a medical situation we have not seen since WWII
All statistics are suspect but some numbers still tell us something important. In the early fog of a global pandemic, a proper diagnoses is difficult if not impossible. People are dying of heart attacks because they are too scared to go to hospital, but equally, Covid is causing heart attacks and strokes that might never have happened. It’s fair to ask how many deaths are due to Coronavirus and how many are due to the lockdown, but it’s not realistic to expect that we can do an autopsy on every single patient. And as the Financial Times team points out, the excess deaths also occur in the regions of the UK with the highest infection rates — which suggests they are due to the virus, not just collateral damage. Though people will also be less willing to visit a hospital in a zone where there are more cases. On the other hand, in areas with lockdowns but no major outbreaks, the mortality rates are 10% below normal (see many US states). So these peaks could have been even higher but the lockdown saved some people […]
Soon after isolation began, Australian and New Zealand cases started to fall as fast as they rose
This is what Crushing the Curve looks like, and if works it will set the new standard, and change the way the rest of the world views this. It isn’t over yet, but still — something is working and the international press has just started to get excited.
Be aware the figures may jump next week, as testing in NSW has ramped up and everyone can now get a free test. But testing is already high per capita, with a very low positive test rates. (12,000 tests done in Australia yesterday and 99.8% were negative).
Australia has 25 million people and found just 18 new cases yesterday. New Zealand with 5 million people, got five new cases. Obviously these numbers look great from the US and UK where 700 people are dying every day.
The rise and fall of Australian Covid-19 cases, March and April 2020
…
Worldometer
Daily Mail, UK:
Australia is steamrolling the curve!
[The] Nation records just 17 cases in one day – including three states with ZERO infections – as the country’s road to […]
Virus follows fixed mysterious pattern
An Israeli Prof is claiming to be “shocked” to find that tough lockdown quarantines made no difference. He claims the virus fades after 6 weeks in the “exact same way” everywhere — which it does if you wear a welding mask while looking at the data. When asked why this extraordinary text-book-breaking shift happens he says “I have no explanation” but that doesn’t stop him concluding that hard quarantines are unnecessary.
When asked, he apparently suggested the exponential growth of viruses ends because of “the climate” or maybe “the virus has its own life cycle”. (How does he think this works? Telepathy?)
Israeli Professor Shows Virus Follows Fixed Pattern
Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel of Tel Aviv University, who also serves on the research and development advisory board for Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, plotted the rates of new coronavirus infections of the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel, Switzerland, France, Germany, and Spain.
The numbers told a shocking story: irrespective of whether the country quarantined like Israel, or went about business as usual like Sweden, coronavirus peaked and subsided in the exact same way. In the exact, same, way. His graphs show that all […]
For months there have been rumors that Coronavirus leaked from a Chinese lab. The only P4 (high security lab) in China happens to be in Wuhan, near the fish markets and people there happen to be working on synthetic coronaviruses with S proteins that happen to infect ACE2 receptors in humans. But if Mother Nature wanted to generate her own viruses, it’s hard to beat wet markets in high density Chinese hubs. And there were papers too saying the gene analysis, etc, fitted 96% with the bat-pangolin-human story.
But now we find, long before the CCP was asking for sympathy, authorities were asking the staff to destroy all those lab viruses:
“Existing virus samples must be destroyed. Information about the samples, related papers and related data are all prohibited from release. “
— Hubei Health committee on Jan 1st. (See the Epoch Times Documentary below).
And told the staff to say nothing to anyone, anywhere, anytime, ever:
“Notice regarding the strict prohibition of disclosure of any information related to the Wuhan unknown pneumonia.
National Health Commission clearly mandates that all detection, empirical data, results and conclusions related to this […]
Studies may not be what they seem We need antibody tests to find the number of asymptomatic Covid-19 cases, but the German Heinsberg study was poorly done. Apparently there aren’t many good antibody tests available yet.
The early results of a small study in Germany on the town of Gangelt suggested that as many as 15% of the town might have caught an asymptomatic form of coronavirus and already had antibodies to it. This would mean that death rates to coronavirus were much lower — a mere 0.37%, not 2% (or so), and that aiming for Herd Immunity was a realistic policy. It was picked up in many newspapers and turned into headlines that may have misled a lot of people, including the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia.
“Coronavirus: Nearly 15% Europeans Now Immune in COVID-19”
“Many people may already have immunity to coronavirus, German study finds”
“Scientists say many more people than previously thought could have acquired coronavirus immunity after discovering 15% of people in city dubbed ‘German Wuhan’ could be carrying antibodies”
Five different reasons the results may be spurious The test may have detected antibodies to the harmless common cold form […]
Across the US all-cause mortality is down as as people avoid catching the flu, getting run over, and other risks. But in New York where coronavirus has hit hardest, all-cause mortality is at record highs.
This is nothing like the seasonal flu
For the whole month of March, deaths in New York were twice as high as normal. This includes not just extra coronavirus deaths but all other causes. Deaths were even higher than the number of known coronavirus deaths, leaving cardiologists worried that there may have been an increase in other conditions like heart attacks or strokes, because people were afraid to go to hospital or couldn’t get help in time.
This is an underestimate. The authors expect this number to rise as more paperwork gets completed. It’s still only a small excess in a giant country, but it hints at the scale of the event were no quarantine measures put in place, no flights stopped, and the virus allowed to spread naturally. The current epidemic is stabilizing in New York, but if major action wasn’t taken, this would be the early weeks of a pandemic about to sweep across all fifty states. And this would not be the […]
Herd Immunity is not realistic
For the first time we have true randomized testing –and it shows that Austria was officially picking up about a quarter of the real number of infections in the population. So when Austria was officially saying 7,000 were infected, the true number was 28,500. Finally, this puts a solid limit on the chance that asymptomatic rate of infection was high. There is no iceberg.
About 75% of cases were mild or truly asymptomatic (and thus not getting officially tested), but it was still only a small slice of the population — just one third of one percent.
Less than 1% of Austrians infected with coronavirus, study shows
Peter Beaumont, The Guardian
The co-founder of Sora, Christoph Hofinger, told a news conference: “Based on this study, we believe that 0.33% of the population in Austria was acutely infected in early April.” Given the margin of error, the figure was 95% likely to be between 0.12% and 0.76%.
99% of the population is still vulnerable
The Austrian chancellor estimates only 1% of the population had had the infection (presumably he is including an estimate of people who had already had the virus, cleared […]
For doctors or nurses reading — there’s a call to share this widely
An information event on this online SUNDAY April 12 8pm US Eastern time. (Open, free to anyone who wants to listen). That’s 10am Monday morning EST Australia.
This is not the flu. Most of the time apparently it’s not ARDS either. Coronavirus it turns out — is a vascular disease as much as lung disease. In fact in 70-80% of ICU patients putting them on a ventilator straight away may make the situation worse.
Currently patients in ICUs have about a 50:50 chance of making it out alive. The odds are terrible. Doctors have been reporting how people can degenerate suddenly into a life threatening crisis situation. Now, perhaps this explains it. This kind of hypothesis is one of the reasons we really want to crush the curve, now, because we are so underprepared and there is so much to learn. If this is right it will save many lives.
This could solve several mysteries at once
This virus causes heart damage, it raises clotting factors. People seem fine, then they relapse.
One recent paper found people with high levels of D-dimer, a clotting factor, […]
Locking up the olds and letting this rip still has some drawbacks.
Coronavirus: Nearly 800 people under the age of 50 have died in the US
Alex Woodward, The Independent
Nearly 200 people in the US in their thirties have died from coronavirus, among the nearly 800 people under age 50 who have died following the outbreak.
At least 45 Americans in their twenties have died from the Covid-19 disease caused by the virus, not including another nine deaths involving people under 20 years old, according to data collected by The Washington Post.
One third of young deaths had no known co-morbidity. Doctors have little idea what factors increase their risk. It may be genes, which is yet another reason to hammer this down and delay this round. Gene and blood tests might enable us to figure out who was high risk of being hospitalized.
How many deaths among the under 50 will the average person tolerate before they stop sending their kids to school out of fear?
Hundreds of young Americans have now been killed by the coronavirus, data shows 8 out of 10 based on 37 ratings […]
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