Corona Virus Updates Part 6

From the news feeds:

COVID-19 research has overall low methodological quality thus far: case in point for chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine

Pre-proof of article for Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (Wikipedia on this journal)

Their main points are that the urgency of the pandemic has caused a rush of papers and not all of the research is very solid. (note: they are quite critical of the evidence for chloroquine) It's a pretty readable paper, headed up by a number of bullet points that pretty much summarizes the whole thing)

Their conclusions:

Flawed methodology and sub-optimal reporting of research findings could lead to biased estimates of effect.

This could lead to treatment decisions that are not optimal based on biased estimates which could harm the patient.

SECOND ARTICLE
Probiotics and COVID-19 - one size does not fit all

Comment: interesting to me, because I do take a probiotic. This is a letter in the VERY reputable, ancient, and famous British medical journal called The lancet.

Bottom line: not surprisingly they find that while probiotics may help with diarrhea induced by antibiotics (so if you had a course of antibiotics while dealing with COVID it might help) that they do not help one bit with coronavirus. So, although probiotics were recommended by China's National Health Commission and National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, studies indicate that ti's not effective for Covid-19.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

It's the change whether an increase or decrease from the previous day

nice listening into a group of ICU doctors in different hospitals discussing the things they see, they try and that protocol says should work and it doesn't. The discussion will scare some but it very interesting I don't understand the anagrams or the topic in depth but how they are brainstorming and trying to solve and understand each others experiences.




interesting comment 5 diseases in 1 at different stages of the covid-19 diseases.

originally posted by: puzzled2
nice listening into a group of ICU doctors in different hospitals discussing the things they see, they try and that protocol says should work and it doesn't. The discussion will scare some but it very interesting I don't understand the anagrams or the topic in depth but how they are brainstorming and trying to solve and understand each others experiences.

interesting comment 5 diseases in 1 at different stages of the covid-19 diseases.

Like I have suggested all along, a cocktail effect. May be.

Reference to Africa and its recorded low numbers, for now, but.....

uk.yahoo.com...

Hi not sure if right place for this question

Why with 4,000 mutations and tests showing 80% get a mild or non-existence reaction why aren't we using these weaker strains as vaccine in the demographic of those least likely to get really sick?

This Vaccine Types
Shows we already do exactly this for several serious diseases

There are 4 main types of vaccines:

Live-attenuated vaccines
Inactivated vaccines
Subunit, recombinant, polysaccharide, and conjugate vaccines
Toxoid vaccines

Could this be what happened in china and with 1.4 billion people the virus spread to fast out of Wuhan to prevent it. China's Mandatory Vaccination Law Went Into Effect on December 1, 2019

With the major Chinese cities not showing much in the effect of sickness other than Wuhan. Could the above link be wrong and the vaccine worked and the pandemic is the result of deliberate release. Hurt a mere few in % of their population and then crash world economies and make the power move. Would this match with the information laid out in the 2016 book Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America?

If this is true how much do we need to pay to get the vaccine or risk developing our own?

a reply to: Byrd

Definitely a need for more data, there is a planned trial, meant to start today if the funding came through.

Neuroinvasion in COVID-19

SARS-CoV-2 presence in the cerebrospinal fluid of COVID-19 patients with acute respiratory failure: a pilot study.

www.trialregister.nl...

The neuroinvasive potential of SARS‐CoV2 may play a role in the respiratory failure of COVID‐19 patients

Taken together, the neuroinvasive propensity has been demonstrated as a common feature of CoVs. In light of the high similarity between SARS‐CoV and SARS‐CoV2, it is quite likely that SARS‐CoV‐2 also possesses a similar potential.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Neurological Insights of COVID-19 Pandemic

The intriguing part though is that recently reported studies have noted altered mental health in some COVID-19 patients showing symptoms like anosmia and ageusia thereby indicating a neuroinvasive nature of the virus.

pubs.acs.org...

originally posted by: primalfractal
The intriguing part though is that recently reported studies have noted altered mental health in some COVID-19 patients showing symptoms like anosmia and ageusia thereby indicating a neuroinvasive nature of the virus.

pubs.acs.org...

Definitely something to watch. Though not uncommon I’m guessing - I often lose taste and smell for a day or two when I get a common cold.

a reply to: puzzled2

Also have had that thought.

The immunity may only be partial, short term, and another study found 1/3 of tested infected had very low antibody counts, some had none. In Wuhan, after the outbreak, 8600 were tested, including 3600 hospital workers, and only 2-5% had antibodies. WHO says there is no proof of immunity yet. Then there is the question of possible reinfection as seen in South Korea 5-10%, also reported earlier by China as 14%.

Preliminary studies on monkeys suggest COVID-19 antibodies provide partial, short-term protective immunity to reinfection

abc

Netanyahu expresses concern over virus reinfection in call with world leaders

www.timesofisrael.com...

It doesn't look very promising for a long term solution, but maybe as a temporary measure? Would it work if you kept vaccinating every few months? IDK.

A temporary advantage for China? Does sound like something out of the Art of War playbook, sacrifice Wuhan to look weak, and could explain why there doesn't seem to be a continuing massive outbreak there.

I am pretty sus on China launching a surprise attack sometime during the second wave.

originally posted by: primalfractal
It doesn't look very promising for a long term solution, but maybe as a temporary measure? Would it work if you kept vaccinating every few months? IDK.

In theory if everyone on planet received this temporary vaccine at the same time, then no one would have the virus. So, when the vaccine antibodies stopped working there’d be no one with the virus to reinfect them.

In terms of the science, rather than the obvious and epic logistical issues, would this work?

Coordinating such a thing is perhaps beyond mankind’s abilities. But if in theory it would work it may be our only hope if our worse fears are real.

originally posted by: puzzled2

Could this be what happened in china and with 1.4 billion people the virus spread to fast out of Wuhan to prevent it. China's Mandatory Vaccination Law Went Into Effect on December 1, 2019

With the major Chinese cities not showing much in the effect of sickness other than Wuhan. Could the above link be wrong and the vaccine worked and the pandemic is the result of deliberate release. Hurt a mere few in % of their population and then crash world economies and make the power move. Would this match with the information laid out in the 2016 book Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America?

If this is true how much do we need to pay to get the vaccine or risk developing our own?

I'm suspicious also, particularly if it's true that Beijing itself has had zero cases. I'm also wondering if, through their mandatory vaccine program, they vaxed Wuhan with a particular vaccine that set them up for what happened with the SARS-Cov-1 vaccine. It did help against the strain in the vaccine, but when the recipients caught a different strain of SARS-Cov-1, it went very badly for them. It was actually worse than if they had caught the disease itself. It all seems pretty odd to me.

originally posted by: alphabetaone
a reply to: Arbitrageur

It's the change whether an increase or decrease from the previous day

It's customary to show increases as positive numbers and decreases as negative numbers. Even when I do that, I'm not seeing much utility to the day over day graphs, do you find them useful somehow? I'm not seeing it.

I downloaded the Excel data from ourworldindata.com and plotted some graphs. This is the day over day deaths in the US graph with decreases shown as negative numbers; it just looks noisy. With decreases shown as positive numbers as in your graph (If I understand you correctly) I can't make any sense of it.



What helps somewhat is to make a 14-day rolling average of that data. Then when the graph is in positive territory, the death rates are trending up over a 14 day period, and when in negative territory,the 14 day rolling average is trending down. When it crosses the zero axis on the way down that means the increases have stopped trending up, zero is a sign of no average net increase or decrease in daily death numbers, it's flat. So I can tell something from this graph when I see it go negative, but 14 days has a lot of lag. I tried 7 days and 10 days but they were still very noisy and even 14 days still isn't smooth, but I didn't want any more lag than that in my graphs.



I also tried looking at just the daily deaths and the 14 day rolling average of daily deaths, since I was curious about the Financial Times headline I saw about death rates accelerating, but the article was behind a paywall:




What the 14 day averages show is death numbers were still trending up as of April 24 but they trended down as of April 25 since that number is lower than the number for April 24. I don't know if the peak will hold or not but so far there's a 14-day average peak at April 24. (There was also a peak on April 22 but that one didn't hold as the maximum). The raw (not averaged) data is so noisy it's hard to tell but at least it gives some idea of what's going on with the daily deaths.

Data Source

originally posted by: Byrd
From the news feeds:

COVID-19 research has overall low methodological quality thus far: case in point for chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine

Their main points are that the urgency of the pandemic has caused a rush of papers and not all of the research is very solid. (note: they are quite critical of the evidence for chloroquine) It's a pretty readable paper, headed up by a number of bullet points that pretty much summarizes the whole thing)

That shouldn't be any surprise, right?

I mentioned in an earlier post that test results without any control were mentioned and I didn't see how useful it was without the controls for comparison. Then you explained how they would go back through the data and try to hand pick some control cases for comparison, but of course what you described sounded like a very shoddy methodology open to many types of potential bias, versus planning controlled studies in advance where the controls are randomized to eliminate the potential sources of bias.

You did make the point that in an emergency they cut some corners since it takes so long to do the randomized control trials, but when they cut corners like that in an emergency, we can't expect glowing reports about good methodology, right?

originally posted by: hopenotfeariswhatweneed
Old people , people with compromised immune systems, asmatics, people with mosquitoe born illnesses etc are among many groups at risk that have nothing to do with lifestyle choices, just stop.

Ummm... yes, they do.

Getting older does not automatically equal a weak immune system. But a lifetime of bad lifestyle choices does.

Those at highest risk from this virus are diabetics and the obese, which are both pretty much all due to an unhealthy lifestyle, with the exception of Type I diabetics, but even they can keep it well under control with proper nutrition and lifestyle choices.

People with 'compromised immune systems' - well, that depends on whether it is due to a birth defect or not, but most are a direct result of poor lifestyle choices.

Mosquito born illnesses? High dose vitamin C and multiple targeted nutritional support factors to the rescue.

The number of people who have compromised immune systems that are not a result of poor lifestyle choices are extremely low.

Oh - and even they are fully capable of surviving this virus without needing critical medical care by learning, making better choices, and most importantly, boosting their immune system naturally with A, B, C, D3, K2, Zinc, Selenium and the 4 important electrolytes - Magnesium, Potassium, Sodium and Calcium (in the proper ratios).

And I'll say it again... it makes far more sense to recommend self-quarantine just for those who are at most risk, and let the rest of us live our lives and earn the money necessary to provide the free medical and other care the sick poor people need.

a reply to: drussell41

Does seem odd and another potential pitfall for the sars 2 vaccine. Really wonder about the safety of this trial.

Researchers fast-track coronavirus vaccine by skipping key animal testing first

www.livescience.com...

Although its really pretty unlikely due to lack of evidence, a couple of Russians claimed sars 1 was a bioweapon. Looking at the article links, there was also a bit of suspicion cast on China and the US by each other.

So history repeating for SARS 2 in some ways.

SARS conspiracy theory

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Well, truth be told I always meant them for my own personal consumption, as such I knew what it represented, that valleys represented a decrease from the day prior and a peak meant an increase. I think internally, it was my way of fighting back against the "see?!?! death rates are decreasing daily" rhetoric. To me, so long as the values kept representing a rise over time irrespective of the daily change, I felt we were still in trouble.

Apart from that, thee is no practical value to it. Why I used it in the post you cited though, was to reflect why it was that a country like Sweden wouldn't feel exactly the same as a country like the US.

Guessing these are mostly heart attacks and maybe some strokes due to Covid.

At least 36,000 more people have died during the coronavirus pandemic over the last month than the official Covid-19 death counts report, a review of mortality data in 12 countries shows — providing a clearer, if still incomplete, picture of the toll of the crisis

www.nytimes.com...

The FDNY reported a nearly 400 percent increase in "cardiac arrest" home deaths in late March and early April, a spike that officials say is almost certainly driven by COVID-19, whether they were formally diagnosed or not.

Between March 20 and April 5, the department recorded nearly 2,200 such deaths, versus 450 in the same period last year, according to data it provided on Friday.

www.nbcnewyork.com...

The coronavirus crisis has led to a spike in the number of Britons dying from cardiac arrests at home, medics have warned.
More than 80 extra deaths are occurring every day in London alone before paramedics reach the victims, leaked A&E figures show.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

a reply to: primalfractal

"skipping key animal testing"? And as if I weren't freaked out enough by the speed at which it's being developed and history of the SARS-Cov-1 vaccine.

DB

One more post before bed

Some patients with no coronavirus symptoms are still testing positive months later and experts are not sure why

abc.net.au

Young COVID-Positive Redditors Describe Agony Of Ongoing Symptoms Nearly Two Months After Getting Sick

www.zerohedge.com...