The biology of coronavirus COVID-19 - including research and treatments

"Inside the NIH’s controversial decision to stop its big remdesivir study"

(my bolding)
"Steven Nissen, a veteran trialist and cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, disagreed that giving placebo patients remdesivir was the right call. “I believe it is in society’s best interest to determine whether remdesivir can reduce mortality, and with the release of this information doing a placebo-controlled trial to determine if there is a mortality benefit will be very difficult,” he said. “The question is: Was there a route, or is there a route, to determine if the drug can prevent death?” The decision is “a lost opportunity,” he said.

Peter Bach, the director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, agreed with Nissen. “The core understanding of clinical research participation and clinical research conduct is we run the trial rigorously to provide the most accurate information about the right treatment,” he said. And that answer, he argued, should ideally have determined whether remdesivir saves lives.

The reason we have shut our whole society down, Bach said, is not to prevent Covid-19 patients from spending a few more days in the hospital. It is to prevent patients from dying. “Mortality is the right endpoint,” he said."

https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/11...al-decision-to-stop-its-big-remdesivir-study/

 

Hmmm.

So... millions of people ending up in a coma or locked-in syndrome or something like that would be a rousing success? Just as a hypothetical.

That doesn't seem like a reasonable end-point. Medicine seriously has to stop with this obsessive mindset where mortality is the only thing that matters. I'm not saying this relative to this drug but in general, it's exemplary of the fundamental flaws within medicine, the ones that create the demand for alternative medicine, among other disastrous outcomes.

It sounds more like responding to specific check-box type political incentives than doing what's right. Especially as in many cases those who end up surviving with no quality of life will not get the help that they need. On purpose. Dying isn't always the worst-case scenario.

 

I think he's referring to mortality being the original endpoint in the study, which then got changed midway PACE-style to number of days in hospital. Something that doesn't exclude those who received Remdesivir from suffering severe consequences of having had COVID-19.

 

Interesting podcast featuring Andrew Pollard who heads up the Oxford group working on a vaccine
Other podcasts also accessible from the link page

https://www.theguardian.com/science/audio/2020/may/13/covid-19-do-we-need-more-than-one-vaccine

 

Gilead should ditch remdesivir and focus on its simpler and safer ancestor

https://www.statnews.com/2020/05/14...ivir-and-focus-on-its-simpler-safer-ancestor/

 

Merged thread

BBC: Coronavirus: A third of hospital patients develop dangerous blood clots

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52662065

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1261080214320406532


https://twitter.com/user/status/1261080227633037312

https://twitter.com/user/status/1261080236906741771

 

"‘Weird as hell’: the Covid-19 patients who have symptoms for months
Researchers keen to work out why some people are suffering from ‘long tail’ form of the virus"


https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2...advent-calendar-covid-19-symptoms-paul-garner

 

This reminded me of TTP, a rare blood condition . Symptoms include dizziness, confusion , and can be triggered by bacterial infection amongst other things.
Quite rare ( or at least that was what friend was told) whose son died of it a week after being admitted to hospital.He had been feeling unwell for a couple of weeks .

 

'Llamas are the real unicorns': why they could be our secret weapon against coronavirus

 

This is the academic paper for the molecular clock analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which suggests there is no proof the outbreak started in China.

(Newscast video of author explaining, as linked in my previous post. https://www.s4me.info/threads/the-b...vaccines-treatments.14022/page-20#post-258820)

"Phylogenetic network analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes"
Forster et al

https://www.pnas.org/content/117/17/9241

 

It happens in the Netherlands too.

https://www.bd.nl/brabant/coronavri...t~ae6e600e/?referrer=https://news.google.com/

https://nos.nl/artikel/2334166-duizenden-patienten-met-milde-coronaklachten-zijn-wekenlang-ziek.html

 

Virus Survivors Could Suffer Severe Health Effects for Years
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...8xavj1io4anKSQL4OpNPXtjuSpA0GwOndEAeE3nyGdf48

"While researchers are only starting to track the long-term health of survivors, past epidemics caused by similar viruses show that the aftermath can last more than a decade. According to one study, survivors of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, suffered lung infections, higher cholesterol levels and were falling sick more frequently than others for as long as 12 years after the epidemic coursed through Asia, killing almost 800 people."

https://twitter.com/user/status/1244390001875529728


" Hong Kong’s hospital authority has been monitoring a group of Covid-19 patients for up to two months since they were released. They found about half of the 20 survivors had lung function below the normal range, said Owen Tsang, the medical director of the infectious disease center at Princess Margaret Hospital."

" In another study, CT scans taken over a month of 90 Wuhan coronavirus patients found that of the 70 discharged from the hospital, 66 had mild to substantial residual lung abnormalities on their last CT scans, which showed ground-glass opacity, said a March paper published online in Radiology."

 

Prolonged infection COVID-19 https://amp.abc.net.au/article/12260660?__twitter_impression=true

'Mirabai twice thought she was clear of COVID-19. But she has just returned a third positive test'

 

Coronavirus: Immune clue sparks treatment hope

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52754280

 

Interesting?

https://twitter.com/user/status/1265191892561604608

 

Interesting suggestion in this Twitter thread...

Apparently measuring levels of covid19 in sewage gives a week of warning about an upsurge in cases to come.

Code:

https://twitter.com/BrennanSpiegel/status/1265119535901732865

https://twitter.com/user/status/1265119535901732865

 

I doubt it.

There is also another study claiming that coronavirus immunity is not maintained. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.11.20086439v1

The serological findings suggest that where there is significant genetic variation of the antigenic proteins, immunity is not maintained (just like Influenza).
Their conclusion about short-lived immunity is also wrong because they don't seem to understand how the immune system works. The plasma cell/antibody kinetics they observed is typical of all short lived infections and vaccinations. Immune memory is based on memory T-cells and B-cells, not plasma cell kinetics, but I guess PhDs of virology and professors of epidemiology don't learn that anymore.

 

didn't know where to put this
https://twitter.com/user/status/1265628483851608065

 

Somebody sent me this. I haven't read it, but I see it has 10,000 claps in one day so seems to be popular.