Restarting The Economy, An Alternative
There was an article in a newspaper (Washington Post?, one of them anyway) proposing that the economic damage being done is worse than the disease it is to “cure”. That is a false choice.
The dichotomy presented is just that there are only two choices: Lock down everyone OR Let Disease Rip but restart the economy.
There’s a third choice: Segment the problem space and restart those areas that are free of disease.
There are some States with a very few cases. There are others, a handful, with “community spread”. Put a border between them. (Bear in mind that I’m inside one of the places to be “walled off” for a while…)
There are States with very few cases:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/
West Virginia 16 +4 16 Wyoming 26 +2 26 South Dakota 28 +7 1 6 21 North Dakota 30 30 Alaska 32 +10 32 Montana 34 34 Idaho 47 +5 47 Nebraska 50 +8 50 Hawaii 56 56
So first thing you do is put a National Guard unit at the border of each State. Traffic stops. Flights stop. Trains stop. This virus has not feet nor wings. To spread, it requires humans to move. Stop the moving.
In every State, you do a 2 week lockdown. Everyone stays at home.
During that time, the State Government does a survey of counties. Which counties have NO Covid-19. At the end of the 2 weeks, all those counties WITH cases, get the National Guard at their entrances and exits. All those counties with NO cases, rejoin with each other and restart commerce. It is my guess that would be most of the counties of the nation, mostly excluding some major metropolitan areas (New York City and suburbs, Seattle area, San Francisco to Silicon Valley) and some scattered areas along transit routes.
I’m pretty certain that the 788 cases in Texas will be in a small number of urban areas in highly urban counties; and that almost all the rural areas (and certainly the Desert West Texas outside of El Paso) can be cleared and back to work rapidly. Similarly the Mountain counties of California, like Alpine County population 1175 will have zero cases and checking that would take the County about a day. So why not do that, and tell those folks they are “free to move about the county”? Similarly all the other sparsely populated rural counties of the nation.
Covid-19 by area of USA
From: https://infection2020.com
Now you move to a finer grain repeat of the process inside the remaining areas. In the mean time, the rest of the Nation gets back to work AND you don’t have to Kill Granny and Gramps to do it…
Inside Silicon Valley / S.F., for example, you can again segment the bay area counties. While there are likely many cases in the “well connected” areas with Silicon Valley Elite who do a lot of business with China, I’d guess that the number of cases on the East Valley where the poorer Mexican population is large will be approximately zero. So you put a grid over the metro area, and segment neighborhoods. Those places that started the 2 weeks with no cases, and are still free of cases, get identified, and after providing another 2 weeks worth of supplies, told to chill for just 2 more weeks, then they, too, can return to the rest of the country.
As this process continues, you have an ever shrinking area of significant cases where you can concentrate you resources. Test whole neighborhoods. Give them a hydroxychloroqine treatment, whatever.
Most importantly, these folks are now able to be supported by the economic activity in the rest of the country.
There will inevitably be the odd ‘straggler’ case in some ‘cleared’ county. When that happens, the county again is put on isolation, 2 weeks home quarantine, contact tracing, etc. etc. Rinse and repeat.
Similarly, at a macro level, any other Country that can be shown disease free can get restored air travel and such as long as it agrees to block any travel to infected countries / areas. Anybody who is clearly not being effective is on the ‘no contact’ list.
The notion from the article that we just let the young ones go back to work and get / recover from the Chinese Wuhan Covid-19 Virus is daft. Two reasons:
1) Many of those younger folks WILL get severe disease. This isn’t a hard cut off at an age, it is a sloped line of probabilities. Many WILL need hospital care. We just don’t have enough hospital beds, even for that population. After infection, some will have damaged lungs such that they are winded after short walks. Some men end up sterile. You would have to set you age cut-off for “young” at about 20 to avoid that. Just not possible.
2) You are just accepting that the folks in the high risk group WILL eventually die, just a bit later. What will you do, keep them in a bubble the rest of their lives? Eventually they will come out, for a doctor visit or to get food; or the virus will find a way in. On objects, on staff with latent infection, from the mail carrier. Does it really do any good to move your killing Granny to 4 months from now? Or 6? Remember, your hospitals are STILL going to be crashed from the small percentage of younger folks with bad cases. We have about 100,000 ICU beds. 60,000 are used for other things. That’s 40,000 for bad cases. Take our 320,000,000 or so population, and assume only half are “young”, so 160 Million. Now assume only one in a thousand has a ‘bad case’ (it is more than that). Now you have 160,000 who need an ICU bed to not die. Congratulations, you just killed 120,000 younger folks. (You get to kill the roughly 16 Million older bad cases later when the old folks get let out into the sea of viruses…)
It just is NOT a good approach.
It will be a year before we know IF the vaccine that is being tested actually works, or kills people. Remember ADE Antibody Dependent Enhancement. This was demonstrated in the SARS-1 virus (that is very similar). Once vaccinated, on exposure to the actual disease, a MUCH WORSE case develops often leading to death. A “quicky restart” of the economy expecting a working vaccine on schedule is rolling very loaded dice that want to kill millions. Not a good idea.
We KNOW that isolating infected regions / cities / neighborhoods works.
Then, the other minor point. It is way too early to be talking about just letting the virus run and putting everyone back to work. We are “testing” in a drug trial a couple of drugs that were shown by French M.D.s to dramatically cut virus particles and clear patients in 6 to 7 days. It is published. Yes, the sample size was small (order of 50) but they did their homework and showed it. These drugs are in New York now (about 1/2 of all US cases) and start being used on Tuesday (tomorrow). We will know in a week how well this works. After that week, then is the time to ask questions about path forward. IF we really have a cure, and the clinical use so far says so (with potential for error), it is far preferable to treat all the cases, then test, identify, and eradicate in any asymptomatic folks in areas with community spread.
Status Today
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
This list is sorted by new cases. The USA is now #1 in new cases. Italy still leads in total deaths. From 64k cases, 6k deaths. Now a 9.4% death rate, up from an 8.5% fatality 4 days ago. Their hospital system is in melt down, so that will continue to get worse. 50,418 are still hospitalized or in other treatment. 3204, in ICU of which, historically, over 80% die.
The USA, adding cases at double the rate in Italy, will likely pass them in total cases in a week. We still have time to avoid becoming another Italy with a broken medical system and staff. All it takes is the will to segment and isolate. To chill for a couple of weeks at home with the family.
Country Total New Deaths New Recovrd Active Serious Per1M Pop USA 42,443 +8,897 517 +98 295 41,631 1,040 128 Italy 63,927 +4,789 6,077 +601 7,432 50,418 3,204 1,057 Spain 33,089 +4,321 2,207 +435 3,355 27,527 2,355 708 Germany 29,056 +4,183 118 +24 422 28,516 23 347 France 19,856 +3,838 860 +186 2,200 16,796 2,082 304 Iran 23,049 +1,411 1,812 +127 8,376 12,861 274 Switzerland 8,547 +1,073 118 +20 131 8,298 141 988 UK 6,650 +967 335 +54 135 6,180 20 98 Austria 4,468 +886 21 +5 9 4,438 14 496 Canada 2,049 +579 23 +3 320 1,706 1 54 Netherlands 4,749 +545 213 +34 2 4,534 435 277 Portugal 2,060 +460 23 +9 14 2,023 47 202 Israel 1,442 +371 1 41 1,400 29 167 Belgium 3,743 +342 88 +13 401 3,254 322 323 Turkey 1,529 +293 37 +7 1,492 18 Ireland 1,125 +219 6 +2 5 1,114 29 228
USA State Total New Deaths New Recov'd Active New York 20,875 +5,085 157 +43 20,610 New Jersey 2,844 +930 27 +7 2,817 Louisiana 1,172 +335 34 +14 1,138 Michigan 1,328 +293 15 +6 1,313 Illinois 1,285 +236 12 +3 1,271 Texas 788 +190 9 +3 768 California 1,940 +185 38 +4 1,896 Georgia 772 +172 25 +2 747 Pennsylvania 644 +165 4 +1 640 Florida 1,171 +164 14 +1 1,157 Massachusetts 777 +131 9 +4 767 Tennessee 615 +110 2 613 Connecticut 327 +104 8 +3 319 South Carolina 299 +104 5 +2 294 Missouri 183 +93 3 180 Ohio 442 +91 6 +3 436 Arizona 234 +82 2 231 North Carolina 348 +77 348 Utah 257 +76 1 256 Minnesota 235 +66 1 210 Indiana 259 +58 7 +1 252 Nevada 245 +55 2 243 Maryland 288 +44 3 281 Mississippi 249 +42 1 248 Wisconsin 416 +35 5 +1 410 Virginia 254 +35 6 +3 247 Oregon 191 +30 5 +1 186 Rhode Island 106 +23 106 Vermont 75 +23 5 +3 70 District Colum. 116 +18 2 114 Maine 107 +18 104 Kansas 82 +18 2 80 Iowa 105 +15 105 Oklahoma 81 +14 2 78 Delaware 68 +12 68 Alabama 167 +10 167 Alaska 32 +10 32 Arkansas 174 +9 174 Nebraska 50 +8 50 South Dakota 28 +7 1 21 Idaho 47 +5 47 West Virginia 16 +4 16 Wyoming 26 +2 26 Kentucky 104 +1 3 99 Washington 1,996 95 1,777 Colorado 591 7 +1 584 New Hampshire 78 1 +1 77 New Mexico 65 65 Hawaii 56 56 Montana 34 34 North Dakota 30 30 Diamond Cruise 49 49 Grand P. Cruise 30 1 29
Prior postings in the category: Covid
Musings from the Chiefio 
Public schools are going to on-line courses. No reason that can’t continue. A lot of people have been set up to work from home. No reason that can’t continue. That’s a big chunk of people.
Here is a UK doctor’s plea
New Orleans should have canceled Marci Gras. Looks like that made it really bad in the New Orleans area.
E M Thanks for this post ! Informed plain sensible common sense approach.
But is it based on real facts ? IE Is it based on ignorance of actual numbers in each state because of very little testing ? Or is it based on actual testing of a lot of people in each state ?
I have read reports from epidemiologists who say that for each known infected person there are 10 to 20 unknown infected persons.
The solution of course is test, test , test !
I think the same approach should be taken here in Australia. There are officially almost 2000 confirmed infections now with over 800 in one state -NSW. And these people are mostly in the big city of Sydney….Most of the rest are in Melbourne & Brisbane…
But not many people have been tested: only people who have travelled overseas with symptoms !and those who have had contact with folks who have travelled.
the solution of course is the same here as in the USA, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong & Singapore : TEST TEST & TEST
Once an area has been ‘cleared’ then life could start to become normal again as you suggest with borders to prevent reinfection.
Based on the bad experience in southern Europe, it is clear that the Mediterranian diet is to blame:) Back to roast beef and boiled cabbage.
Closed case CFR has now reached 14% on WOM. I ask, is it Italy? Seems we no longer get CFR stats, at least when I clicked the US on this site. Last look the CFR was 72%. Obviously that will come down. Just an ob.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Unusual and unexpected drop of cell phone users in China. They call Covid-19 CCP Virus (for Chinese Communist Party). So does that drop indicate the real number of incapacitated sick and dead?
They also cite reports that 30% of cases were asymptomatic carriers. Our USA government repeatedly saying not to test without symptoms assures no containment is posdible.
“They also cite reports that 30% of cases were asymptomatic carriers.”
So universal testing is essential to get a handle on this disease. And lockdown to stop the spreading….Until as TdeF said on JoNova, here in Oz, this bit of chemistry is dead !
Ohio’s daily new case count dropped 13 over the day before. Too early to tell whether or not this is a trend, but for states with an entrenched community spread it’s seems to be on a lower trajectory. The OH governor was ahead of most in shutting things down. KY & IN seem to be following his lead within a day or two. Michigan our neighbor to the north, has three times the cases and is climbing.
EM – seems a logical approach to the problem, but it’s an engineer’s response and has some political incorrectness built-in. I think the politicians won’t be able to mention the ethnicity of the areas that are either locked-down or allowed freedom (even though they do talk about the “black vote”, “Hispanic vote”, etc.).
Since the wealth-producing sections of the system are shut down as “non-essential”, there’s a limited time before the system runs out of goods to sell. Yep, farmers are still producing the food, and it’s getting to the shops OK, but we’ll be living on saved resources and borrowing which has a limit.
The result of suddenly shutting every business is that many people no longer have an income. I’m not sure about the percentage of people who are now out of a job (or really any prospects of getting one), but in the UK it’s probably over 70%. My daughter is one of them. Given that schools are only accepting kids of “essential” workers, and are expecting their numbers to drop to around 25% of previous, gives some sort of estimate. A lot of those businesses will go bankrupt, and will not quickly return after the end of the Covid-19 problem. Lending them money may help if the duration was known, and thus the total of the extra debt in the business could be calculated, but that’s an unknown so the logical thing for those businesses would be to fold immediately and hope to start a new one at some future time.
As such, your plan would avoid a lot of that damage. Really, though, it depends on either having reliable and copious testing or a wet finger in the air to decide that the official numbers of “infected” in various locations are indeed correct when we know that testing is limited in scope and there are maybe 10 times more infected people than we know about yet.
We really need a test that looks for both presence of the various mutants of Covid-19 as well as the presence of antibodies that show the person has already had the local variant, and returns a reliable indication in hours or less (since you’d want to delay people at the borders until the test result was ready). Probably technically possible to do that, but may need some pretty fast footwork to develop and produce a good supply. Oh yes, the test needs to be pretty cheap, too…. Seems people are being charged $1000 to get tested in some places. Can’t afford that for each border crossing.
One person getting through can quickly produce a few hundred more infected people.
If, as seems likely, Hydroxy-chloroquinone (or similar) can act as prophylactic and stop people getting infected, then basically the problem goes away anyway. Just needs enough people in an area to be taking it to provide herd immunity and get the R0 below 1. There may be other new medicines available from the various labs working the problem that could be better, but I’d think the required testing before mass-use would delay any such alternative for at least a year.
Apart from the ADE problem, I think the mutability of any RNA-based virus precludes any reasonable prospect of a vaccine. We probably need something that just stops replication of the virus in the way the Chloroquinone derivatives do. Less easy for the virus to find a way around that, so hopefully it will be extinct before it mutates enough to replicate in that environment.
Universal testing has its own set of problems. Keys to testing: 1. true incidence rate (if you test a low inherent rate population, you will get *many* false positives, particularly with highly sensitive screening tests), the quality of your screening tests (no false negatives) and your confirmatory tests (no false positives) and the positive predictive value (which varies due to false positives, false negatives and the inherent prevalence). So no, you do *not* test everyone. You test a large enough sample within an area suspected of having a high prevalence. If it does not have that, save your tests for the areas that do and some to recheck the low prevalence areas later, just in case. These things do spread in waves.
Within those areas, you do targeted quarantines *early* and do aggressive contact tracing for both fomite hotspots and community spread. Once you are past the danger period (about three weeks), you can ease things slowly and test newly suspected cases.
Obviously severe or critical cases need to be tested in a differential diagnosis battery. There are, after all, more than one kind of virally caused pneumonia as well as the need to test for secondary bacterial or fungal pneumonias.
@Simon, don’t expect that to happen with the mutability of RNA viruses. They are more likely to have selection for resistance. That said, you just want enough time to support the immune system, which means learning enough to find ways to deal with antibody dependent enhancement (steroids for some and not for others?) and use adjuvants with vaccines. Vaccines for RNA viruses will need more aggressive testing and monitoring. Maybe some of the lessons learned from tuberculosis apply, too.
Anyway, it should be very clear now that medicine is *not* a one size fit all get it off the rack kind of thing. Medicine must be tailored to work best, so no, a top down government dominated system will fail at the worst times.
My dad was a veterinarian who in later career worked for the US Dept of Agriculture as an epidemiologist with the Animal/Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA/APHIS)
The concept EM suggests for “clearing” states and counties for normal market interactions is exactly what veterinarians did (and do, so far as I know) for hog cholera, bovine brucellosis, chicken flu …
Well, the vets had the option to “de-populate” a particular nasty location. Kill all the infected animals and burn the carcasses. This might, maybe, possibly be a bit unwelcome in New York City or San Francisco. Maybe. But it was necessary in at least one case for stopping a chicken flu that DID in some few cases cross over into human victims. The USDA gets little credit for stopping the sort of epidemics in swine and geese and bats that way to frequently afflict other nations who spend less on the health of the farm and ranch operations.
@Pouncer:
Probanly where I got the idea… history in farm country. Things you just grew up around.
Per NYC & San Francisco: Might those of us outside the cities have a vote on that?
8-‘)
Looks like India going into lockdown in about 3 hours…
I don’t see the endgame for total lockdown. This bug isn’t going away. How do you take the lid off again, given that it ain’t going to fade in the spring if the experience in hot countries is anything to go by.
@Rhoda:
The end game is when R0 drops below zero and the virus dies out in a population from lack of hosts. The more complete the lockdown, the faster that happens. The more leaky the lock down, the longer it takes. At R0=1 it does not change level and persists as a background infection.
Essentially, with R0=0 in full self quaranteen, the virus dies when the infective state is over in the folks with it. At R0=0.5 if 8000 are infected, you go to 4000 in the next cycle (one to two weeks) , then 2000, 1000, 500, 250, 125, 62, 31, 16, 8, 4, 2, 1 none.
That is why political folks start with leaky shelter in place, slowly learn it will take 6 months, and transition to full lockdown. Like most folks, they don’t really think in math and refuse to see unpleasant realities in the future so wait until it has blown up in their face to react.
I haven’t looked at the details of the lockdown in India yet, but….
(The photo is a Mumbai housing block applauding the health workers.)
It’s going to be hard, with crowding like that. It all depends on the granularity. How many doors? How many people inside that door? Any locked down space will only protect from the virus on the other side of the door, not from the virus already inside. If the virus is already inside, maybe in a few weeks (after the last person gets infected), inside will become a green zone. But the more people inside that locked down zone, the harder it will be.
Over 400k globally. USA now #1 for new cases. Sorted by new cases, 2nd number field:
At the bottom of the list, sone States that could become green zones with care. Californua still adding cases, but our lickdown us helping some. Washington State looks to have stayed low with a lid on it.
At the top, New York is toast.
Willis E has a look at Italy
“The Italian Connection”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/24/the-italian-connection/
“And it’s also why the death rate in Italy is so high—these people were already very ill. I can see why the Italians are distinguishing between dying FROM the virus and dying WITH the virus.”
A corona links listing
“Wuhan Flu”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/03/24/wuhan-flu-12/
Latest from Central Florida:
Orange Co. ‘mayor’ Jerry Demings is today issuing an executive order for all seniors & people with compromised immunosystems to stay-at-home, effective Thu. Mar. 26 at 11 p,m. (EDT) for 2 wks. Intended to mean stay inside, but allowing solo walks or runs/jogs.
Orlando mayor Buddy Dyer has issued (some kind of) order to close “nonessential businesses”. Groceries seem to be exempted; unsure of the order’s application to convenience stores.
Neighboring counties (e.g., Brevard, Lake, Osceola, Polk, Seminole, Volusia) are reportedly not (maybe just not yet?) following the lead of Orange Co.
YMNV says…
I haven’t looked at the details of the lockdown in India yet, but….”
Wow that photo. That looks like many apartment buildings in China.
It is very likely that the air flow, if it exists, in that building, is hotel like, common air. (Not Good if so)
In China if one person tested positive, they would all be locked in. Like I said many times, a death trap.
Ian, Will at WUWT has experience at dissecting climate science research.But zip on medical science & infectious diseases. But I read with interest Steve Mosher’s long comment which completely undermines Will’s whole argument.Here it is :
Steve Mosher lives in Korea and ‘has been a close observer of just how they are succeeding in controlling the virus. He spells out the level and the details of what we have to do.’
“The key is changing the criteria for testing. Here [in Korea] we test and track.
An employee of a call center in Seoul, was infected.
Office had 207 people.
March 8th. he tested positive.
EVERY person in that office was tested. today 152 have tested positive, they tested floors above and below his floor. Today 3 more from the 11th floor were found and 1 contact.
They are now tracing the contact, and the contact’s contacts. All will be tested. The business was in a residential building. 553 of the people in that building were tested. floors 13-18
This little beastie lives on surfaces for up to 3 days. See that elevator button? the hand rail on the stairs? the bathroom door handle? the coffee cup that pretty girl behind the counter handed you? it’s there. Now in my building we have hand sanitizer by the elevator buttons. you get in the habit of not touching public pretty quickly. Trust me I am not a germ phobe, but the changes have been simple when they are reinforced.
Let me give you a little taste of the highly detailed info we get.
Info that is shared daily in one spot, I will include some of the earlier call center case snippits
“In Daegu, every person at high-risk facilities is being tested. 87 percent completed testing and 192 (0.8 percent) out of 25,493 were confirmed positive. From Daesil Covalescent Hospital in Dalseong-gun, 54 additional cases were confirmed, which brings the current total to 64. In-patients on 6th and 7th floors are under cohort-quarantine.”
“From Guro-gu call center in Seoul, 7 additional cases (11th floor = 2; contacts = 5) were confirmed. The current total is 146 confirmed cases since 8 March. (11th floor = 89; 10th floor = 1; 9th floor = 1; contacts = 54)”
“From Bundang Jesaeng Hospital in Gyeonggi Province, 4 additional cases were confirmed. The current total of 35 confirmed cases since 5 March (20 staff, 5 patients in inpatient care, 2 discharged patients, 4 guardians of patients, 4 contacts outside the hospital). The 144 staff members who were found to have visited the hospital’s Wing no. 81 (where many confirmed cases emerged) were tested, 3 of whom tested positive.”
“Five additional confirmed cases have been reported from the call center located in Guro-gu, Seoul, amounting to a current total of 129 confirmed cases from the call center since 8 March. As of now, 14 confirmed cases in Gyeonggi Province has been traced to have come in contact with a confirmed patient who is a worker at the 11th floor call center at a religious gathering. Further investigation and tracing are underway.”
Test, Trace, Test more.
A random test in Iceland found 1% infected. 50% asymptomatic.
If the US persists in only testing the symptomatic you won’t squash this bug.
Our cases are going up in Seoul. So we will have 15 days of voluntary social distancing.
go to work
stay away from crowds
wash your hands
wear a mask
don’t touch your face ”
There is your way to eliminating this disease in the USA !
We need to do this in Australia as well !
I hope this is right.
https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-03-22/coronavirus-outbreak-nobel-laureate
LA statistics…
Los Angeles County (excl. LB and Pas) Laboratory Confirmed Cases by Age Group (median age 47)
0 to 17 10
18 to 40 268
41 to 65 250
Over 65 107
Hospitalization and Death
Hospitalized (Ever) 119
Deaths 11
Compu Gator [said] 24 March 2020 at 10:00 pm [GMT]:
[….] executive order for all seniors & people with compromised immunosystems to stay-at-home [….]
The local news media “reportage” is muddling this. As best I can untangle this, after listening to follow-on “reportage”:
The specification of “all seniors & people with compromised immunosystems” is apparently only an advisory from Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The stay-at-home order for Orange Co. apparently applies to everyone, but with the exceptions I identified above. plus collecting drive-thro’/take-out food orders, and travel necessary to get medications (presumably also appearing for medical appointments).
Meanwhile, Florida airports continue to allow approx. 150 flights to land here each day from New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. What the hey-yell? Are our State of Florida officials sui-[bleepin’]-cidal? As only a half-aßed measure, Orlando International Airport (MCO) will be quarantining arrivals from those places, albeit only the flights arriving directly from such Cov-19-infested places.
The French Dr. is ==> Didier Raoult M.D, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Universite d’Aix-Marseille
A good interview. (yeah. I know. Oz. It is still a good interview.)
https://www.doctoroz.com/article/protocol-followed-french-covid-19-drug-combo-study
I learned today that one of the keys to finding quinine’s effectiveness was that no one in China with lupus got corona. People with lupus use quinine.
It appears the first poll results from a week of quarantine have started to come in. Not sure if the video will embed through wordpress per normal as they restricted access to it. You may have to click a link to see it via Youtube. Classic! After a week here, I feel him :-)
Prince Charles has tested positive for Covid-19.
Mild symptoms. Self isolating.
Wonder if he will change his mind about pandemic viruses…
Stupid beyond belief:
https://pjmedia.com/trending/did-the-governor-of-nevada-ban-the-use-of-trump-touted-anti-malaria-drugs-to-treat-coronavirus-patients/
I thought the FDA was the governing authority. ?.
“Hump Day Hilarity – The Mouse That ….Coughed”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/25/hump-day-hilarity-the-mouse-that-coughed/
“A short history of media memory-holing.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/03/25/your-moral-and-intellectual-superiors-177/
E M What was Charlie’s opinion of pandemic viruses ? I must have missed something.
Almost 10k new cases in the USA. , Then what’s up with Luxembourg? I didn’t think they were big enough for 200+ in a day.
Then New York wow. More cases than many countries.
@Bill In Oz:
My mistake. Wrong Prince.
[https://nwo.fandom.com/wiki/Prince_Philip_-_“If_I_were_reincarnated_I_would…be…as_a_killer_virus…”]
So with P. Charles being infected, perhaps P. Philip will change his attitude…
Still rising. Now 13k added in the USA.
CFR, has ticked up globally to 16% on closed cases per WOM.
No other such data available. The US stat for such disappeared the other night.
Will we ever see ventilator recovery stats?
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
@ EM re:
“So with P. Charles being infected, perhaps P. Philip will change his attitude…”
Indeed.
I have been praying that the schemers would fall into their own traps.
Nice to know Someone is listening….
Note to Self: Don’t gloat. Don’t gloat. Don’t gloat.
It seems like I wake up to a different world every morning. Then by the end of the work day, the rules have been overhauled … AGAIN!
So now (as of 6:00 p.m. tonight) our firm’s property is closed to the public. Supposedly, our folks will be working from home. But today my boss said he would be coming into the office anyway. You can’t do much of our normal stuff from home.
So I said I would also come into the office. It’s way easier to do my normal stuff at my normal desk and computer. But I hope I don’t have to spend the usual long hours there.
EM Phillip, is the Duke of Edinburgh and not a prince unlike Charlie his son.
Phil always was a bit of the ding bat. Even Charlie said that at one point..They did not get on fo decades.
So it’s entirely possible that Phil still thinks being reincarnated as a pandemic virus is good idea.
Here’s another example of the FUBARiousness** of all things government.
The Federal Income Tax due date was pushed out to July 15th. YAY!
Our State Income Tax filing deadline is still April 15th. So… what?
Well it seems our State needs the Federal taxes filed as input to the State form. So we have to file Federal taxes by April 15th anyhow. Booo! Hiss, hiss!
We’re still checking into a workaround. If it was all old-school paper forms, we’d simply fill out the Fed form, make a copy, and then send the Fed form in with the State form. Then file the Fed form in July. But since it’s all electronic now, it appears that the Fed form must be filed.
We’ll see how it goes. It’s not apparent at the moment, but I have to think that what could be done in a paper system could also be done in an e-file system.
**FUBARiousness isn’t in any dictionary… yet. At the rate our Elite Government Overlords are going, I’m sure that it will soon be added.
@Bill In Oz:
I guess my ‘Merican half is showing… can’t be bothered with sorting titles, and tracking peerage pecking orders… Duke, Prince, Leach, whatever… (Spouse loves that stuff…) I do have a fondness for the Queen who has her head on straight (anyone who drove an ambulance in war and can wring the neck of their chicken dinner has a grip on reality…) but after thst I tend to not care about titles.
@H.R.:
Well keep checking. California fell in line with the Feds. Though for me, I’ve filed anyway as I have a refund coming.
Ossqss, that is not the only disappeared graphic from WM. I no longer see the graphics that depict that statistic anywhere on the site, not for the world or nations.
China’s numbers look ever more suspect. German numbers of serious critical look very strange. Five to six times as many deaths as serious/ critical.
Interesting to note that “As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.” Not, strangely, blazoned across the media.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid#status-of-covid-19
As they say on the page, this doesn’t mean there is nothing to worry about, but it’s a welcome sign that they’re actually evaluating the figures.
And it’s a lovely Spring day again, apart from the looming threat of a horrible death. ;-)
Locally, we are in the exponential growth phase of it. When it will top out remains to be seen. Over half of the counties have at least one known case and the state has one known death. 3 known cases in my county. Metro Birmingham is still the hardest hit, but relatively speaking the next 10 largest (population) areas are increasing at a faster rate (expected, since they start with fewer/no cases). To the extent that weather has an effect, we have had a nicely mild last 2/3rds of the month (one cool night) and a fair amount of rain. I still, though, expect an Easter/near Easter cold snap. Upside is that I don’t have to run the heater and it isn’t warm enough, yet, to need AC.
Steve C, what figures?
@CDQuarles:
Like that here, on and off, too! Had a few rainy days, but before that, and today, sunny and about right. Got my top-up of Vit-D today :-)
We do have the particularly Californian thing of cool nights so a bit of heat needed then.
Well, we are now in first place.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
@Ossqss:
Yup. Over 1/2 Million, globally.
From behind S.Korea to top of the list.. What happens when you tell people not to wear masks and leave asymptomatic spreaders and low symptom cases in the community and don’t contact trace every tested case, and test every contact.
I suppose someone had (already) thought of this sooner than I, but I realized tonight that with Wuhan being in Hubei province, this pandemic could be called the Wu-Hu Virus (where both ‘u’ are pronounced as the same letter in “flu“) [*].
——-
Note *: I have no idea whether the spelling of those place-names in Anglophone news-media is according to the CCP’s Pinyin, or to the late-colonial Wade-Gilles (sp.?), but the combined abbreviation works for me to lighten up thoughts of my odds as a senior with certain, um, recently manifested health liabilities.
@cdquarles – You mentioned rain. I was out fishing again today (quelle surprise!) and was wondering if rainy weather suppressed the virus. (File under “Things you think of while fishing.”)
My locale is sitting on the edge of a high/low pressure war in the sky, so we waffle back and forth between sunny and warmish and rainy, cloudy and cold. I mowed today in sunshine, finishing in the early afternoon. By 5:00 pm, we had rain. That’s a typical Spring hereabouts.
It occurred to me that rain washes the virus out of the air and into the drains. I just haven’t figured out a way to determine if rain is a meaningful event in tamping down the spread of the Wuhan Flu.
Ossqss [said] 26 March 2020 at 9:50 pm [GMT]:
Well, we are now in first place.
Well! Suggesting a new motto for caps & t-shirts,
on the media-colluded blue of the U.S. Democrats [#]:
“CDC & FDA bureaucracy: Making America #1 again!”
Let’s hear it, folks!: “We’re #1!” “We’re #1!” “We’re #1!”
——-
Note #: In my teen years, I assisted with a presidential-election-night party given by my parents, probably for the 1964 Goldwater/Johnson election, but maybe for the 1968 Humphrey/Nixon election. My Dad had covered a large sheet of plywood with blackboard paint, then painted an outline-drawing of the U.S. states. “Everyone knew” that states forecast as carried by the Republicans, because of the commonly prefixed adjective “blue-blood“, should be colored in using blue, and those won by the Democrats, then only relatively to the left, should be colored in using red (which rendered as pink when using blackboard chalk. But major-t.v.-network coverage in one of those years, contrary to what “everyone knew”, used the reverse, and that’s what’s stuck in the mainstream media ever since.
Hummm, I think CG may be on to something. The WuHuFlu?
@HR, great, now we need to know how long this thing is viable in rain soaked ground, fish, worms, chipmunks and squirrels are all exposed. The exponential ramifications could be challenging. Is there a mask for them? I give up! :-)
Queue up Rick James, “Give it to me” :-)
Video redacted due to lazyness~
I volunteer to eat the bass to test their infectivity. Roast squirrel too for that matter…
Looks like New York now has more cases than all but 5 countries:
Maybe we can give New York / New Amsterdam back to the Dutch…
:-)
Well, I’m doing my part to stop the spread of the Wu Hu Flu.
I put little masks on each of the fish before I throw them back.
Did you know that pangolins are threatened with extinction? (I had never heard of them) They are a shy nocturnal scaly anteater that lives in forests in Asia and Africa. Over a million of them have been illegally captured there over the past ten years and sold in markets in China and Vietnam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin_trade
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2169-0
“Identifying SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses in Malayan pangolins”
“Here, we report the identification of SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses in Malayan pangolins (Manis javanica) seized in anti-smuggling operations in southern China. Metagenomic sequencing identified pangolin-associated coronaviruses that belong to two sub-lineages of SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses, including one that exhibits strong similarity to SARS-CoV-2 in the receptor-binding domain”
The tested animals were from before the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak and did not have the “polybasic (furin-like) S1/S2 cleavage site in the spike protein that distinguishes human SARS-CoV-2 from related betacoronaviruses”. But “SARS-CoV-2 exhibits very high sequence similarity to the Guangdong pangolin coronaviruses in the receptor-binding domain”. The puzzle is still missing pieces.
It’s too hard to say more about this paper, so you might want to dig into it yourself.
Hearing of some good data on multiple therapy items coming this weekend.
Also listened to a Dr. who has been using some as a prophylactic successfully. He also discussed the several steps involved to the intubation level, and the seemingly very low rate of recovery once there. Plasma therapy was one of the treatments that appears to help even those patients in reference to the first data item mentioned in the first sentence of my comment.
I hope the coming news will at least release the hydroxicloroquine preventative solution for public use.
Quite an informative video from a site I frequent. Courtesy of Mosher in this instance.
Questions on that Mosher fed link.
Looking at just the last week hides how long it took to get there. Not certainly you can remove the time element?
Ossqss: indeed, a very good video. Once you have viewed it to see his explanation of the novel graphing method, go to
https://aatishb.com/covidtrends/
Singapore went down and then came back up! Japan has no reported deaths? Japan was better at first, but now not so much. The only successes are China, South Korea, and Qatar and all of these have bounced back up somewhat.
—-
E.M., could you check for my comment in moderation in 23-march-…
I don’t see any reason why it went to moderation. Thanks.
@David A, it shows all cases to date, not just the past week. The only time element is the animation. Reset the scroll bar and play it again.
YMMV, yes, but the Y axis is cases in the past week. If time is the speed of the animation it is quite the wag to see, but it appears that China moves far slower then all other nations.
There are things I like, but it hides how much more rapid the disease progression is in the ROW compared to China. Both fatalities and case load are greatly accelerated in the ROW vs China. Also via infected per million stats, all other nations get even with China, and then quickly surpass China. ( Often by a very large percentage) And the do this in considerably less time then China’s chart claims. Also the China time frame is far too short, as the infection had two months of free run before the January 23rd Wuhan shut down.
So the Worldometer plot misses those two months completely. None of this is clear in the linked video.
I really liked the testing data by nation.
David A, they don’t ultimately plot against time. Hence, the variation.
David A: “it appears that China moves far slower then all other nations”
Interesting point. The animation runs at a speed that makes it look like a fireworks display. There should be an option to slow it down or to run it week by week. I have done this manually with the time scroll bar. What I see is that each country starts out slow, but quickly gets going. On this log-log scale all of them then appear to go at the same “speed”. Even China. Whatever ‘speed’ means on a log-log scale. I think that is interesting, that the paths and the speeds are so uniform. Until they control it, those few which do. For the the other ones, that is really scary! The gas pedal is stuck down and there are no brakes. As Dylan put it, some vandal stole the handle.
BTW, the first video has a brief shot of what it looks like on a daily basis. Too volatile to use, but we should remember that doing it by week smooths the data.
Now I want to see the data from each state plotted like this.
Including China is pretty pointless, they just outright lied from day 1.
Yes, China lied big time. But go to the Worldometer site, and one can compare the time and number of infections vs population and straight number of infections vs time. Every nations rise is steeper then China. Only South Korea starts the flattening on as rapid of a time scale, and the had advanced warning, and far earlier defensive protocols, and much greater early testing. What is remarkable is that China starts on the WM site on January 22nd, after two months of free reign spread. Look at any other nations start point with a similar number of infected and dead as what China shows on January 22, and you will see the infection spread is faster and deadlier.
China’s numbers on China are distorted on the Mosher graphic by China changing there methodology more then once. On February 12th and 13th they added in a very large back log of not tested patients using the Cov19 penimonia pathology, and then they stopped doing this moving forward. No other nations did this.
Even so other nations quickly reach 3 times the daily case load of China, and 4 times or more the daily death rate.
Do not forget that China is/was where the initial infection started, probably from just one or a handful of cases. The rest of the world was seeded from there, so they essentially start with larger, and unknown initial case loads. The later the start for a country, the greater the potential number of seed cases.
Yeah, I don’t completely agree with a December start for this. I’d say it started in China back in the early autumn, say October or November.
Re discussion a while back about quinine and Chloroquine as treatments for Corona Virus. First there’s an interesting (if incomplete and requiring a tinfoil hat) story about Chloroquine in France in (of course) Zerohedge (at https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-why-france-hiding-cheap-and-tested-virus-cure). Second, has anyone knowledge or experience of Hexaquine? It contains 120 mg Quinine Benzoate and 32 mg of Thiamin Chlorohydrate per pill. It’s an anti-malarial. Possibly applicable to Covid-19? Should pack more punch than a Gin & Tonic! Does anyone know?
@Richard Bellew:
While it is Zerohedge, so subject to sensationalism, I think it has some truth.
They managed to leave out some other likely connections:
The Green Population Bomb ideology permeating European “leadership” that desires a big depopulation. Many at the top want deaths.
Government pensions that are bankrupt at present payouts. They benefit from deaths.
Government healthcare and “old folks care” nursing homes that are bankrupt and overloaded. They benefit from deaths due to age & comorbidity.
The “open borders” folks want population replacement of those pesky independent minded Europeans. They welcome deaths.
Thd Progressives would love to kill off the old conservative votes and just keep the younger brainwashed. They cheer the deaths.
And a few more…
How many of the Official Decision Makers are in one of those groups?
How much Soros money is backing them up?
EM, watching the FDA, CDC and Democrats deliberately holding back the help for US people just to get at Trump also suggests the same attitude, they are after all Globalists as well.
Seems Germany audited their statistics. Quite the change from 23 severe/critical the last day.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/germany/
I have seen that Pfizer/French HCQ/Azth study. It is encouraging, but remember, only 80 people were treated. Do not be surprised if numbers like that don’t hold elsewhere and especially where conditions are different. That said, were I on the front lines (have been there), I’d take it, just like I took one of the first Hep B vaccines back in the early 80s.
Christian Perronne, head of the infectious diseases department at the Raymond-Poincaré Hospital near Paris, says he is already using these treatments. “But the problem is, the stocks are very limited. There aren’t many drugs available, which is a pity. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are the most active,” he told FRANCE 24.
“Professor Raoult’s team has done a very preliminary study, but on 24 patients, it’s still quite convincing. It shows the reduction of the virus in the patients’ secretions. We hope that this will slow down the spread,” he explained, referring to the research in Marseille.
Raoult explained that his team had conducted a clinical trial during which he had treated people infected with COVID-19 with chloroquine. After six days, only 25 percent of the patients who had taken the drug still had the virus in their bodies, according to the physician-microbiologist. In contrast, 90 per cent of those who had not taken chloroquine continued to have the coronavirus.
For Perronne, that should make it possible to use this treatment today. “I fully agree with the authorities and my colleagues that further studies are needed to find out more about this. What I am asking is that, as of today, the factories that manufacture hydroxychloroquine are working day and night to provide millions of treatments for patients who, today, are isolated in their hospitals and do not have antiviral treatments. We know this product can work and will probably prevent many people from going into intensive care,” he explained
‘We have to go to war’
https://www.france24.com/en/20200324-chloroquine-can-work-some-insist-as-debate-on-using-anti-malaria-drug-against-coronavirus-rages
@jim2,
Thanks. From that report I can see that they are doing sputum examination (ever had or done a bronchial lavage so you can limit some sources of contamination/confounding?) and maybe others, too, on their cases. There is in-vitro data, as far back as 2003, if I am remembering correctly, that the chloroquinone family had inhibitory action. Some other known antivirals, known via in-vitro work, have also been shown to have inhibitory action. The main questions are: 1. How effective are these, 2. How safe are these, 3. Who should get them, 4. Who shouldn’t get them and what other treatments can be used for those who can’t use the available ones.
Seems an enforcable lockdown coming for NY NJ Conn soon. Grumbling are heard. There are a large amount of those folks up there coming to Florida and we don’t want them here. Gov Desantis has even spoken to that problem.
The USA cracks into 6 figures, over the 100k line.
Italy beats China, right behind the USA.
A bunch of 5 figure countries now.
New York is screwed. New Jersey right behind. California doing A Lot better (probably from our early lockdown in the hot counties), but still doubled in 4 days. Florida showing a big jump (Spring Break & N.Y. Snowbirds?) Louisiana too.
Interesting interview with a leading Korean expert on Chinese WuHuFlu Covid-19
Key points:
Masks essential to stop the spread.
20% are asymptomatic
30% lose sense of smell and taste for 5-10 days.
Kids are often asymptomatic or low symptom carriers.
3%-ish fatality rate in S. Korea.
July or August end BEST CASE…
Countries that have controlled this did so by stong actions and preparation after MERS & SARS experiences scared them into preparation.
Kaletra, chloroquine found somewhat effective. In use for critical patients.
Remdesivir being tested.
This could be useful. Mix vinegar and hydrogen peroxide to make a peracetic acid. It kills bacteria that hydrogen peroxide alone can’t. From the article:
Peracetic acid is formed by the reaction of hydrogen peroxide with acetic acid. It has excellent disinfectant activity, requiring use levels of only 0.02% or lower against bacteria. However, it has poor stability, tending toward the reverse reaction back to hydrogen peroxide and acetic acid. Formulations with peracetic acid often also contain hydrogen peroxide and acetic acid to help stabilize it.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/pharmacology-toxicology-and-pharmaceutical-science/peracetic-acid
That South Korean video is great !
I’ve been reposting it here in Oz.
The Asian Boss video is very good. (YouTube gAk7aX5hksU)
The South Koreans expert is Professor Kim Woo-joo from Korea University Guro Hospital.
He says many interesting things; I’ll add a few more to that list.
8:00 – 8:36 You can get re-infected after you recover. They have had cases where the symptoms appear again 5 – 7 days after recovery and discharge from the hospital.
The three main ways to get infected are from droplets (sneezes, talking, shouting), from direct contact (shaking hands), and from indirect contact (touching contaminated surfaces).
Getting infected by breathing the air is possible in some circumstances — indoors, closed, crowded, active, where the droplets get smaller so that gravity doesn’t take them down. But outdoors this is not a problem.
Wearing glasses helps. Masks are definitely effective. The WHO just wanted the doctors to have them available as top priority. But masks are necessary for everybody.
And more.
CD, there is documentation of November 17th that I saw. That is two months plus of basically uninterrupted spread in one of the most populated cities on earth, in a nation with 4 times the population density of the U.S.
The world meter for China starts on January 22nd with about 250 cases and 8 dead. By then every hospital in Wuhan had been massively over run, with people lined up for blocks trying to get in.
In much less time then this, with simi quarantine, 20 percent of the Diamond Princess was infected.
In much less time then this, 80 percent of one congregation if over 1000 people were infected.
China allowed zero observations. Two of four of China’s quarrantine methods were death traps that excellerated the RO dramatically.
China’s numbers are aggregious lies.
Thailand Medical News has an article on complications of hydroxychloroquine use with certain patients with cardiac arrhythmias.
Sorry, no link right now.
However it was a China study, and I would think with existing long term use history, this would be known. Unless it was a virus specific interaction with compounding pre conditions.
Chloroquinones and cardiac arrhythmias is known. That said, lots of things cause arrhythmias.
CD, so the question is for some, a potenital problem, or potential death, with or without it…
Just sayin.
There are known cardiac, eye, and drug interaction issues with chloroquine, and more. Higher dose makes them worse. The big question is what dose is prophylactic, curative, and problematic? And are those enough different to be both safe and effective. The anti-malarial prophylactic dose is much lower than the therapeutic one, for example, so has fewer isdues in long use. It isn’t a free ride in any case. No drug is. So doctors get to work out all that part. IIRC, it can also slow kidney clearing time for some other drugs.
The chloroquine is not actually the viral limiting medication. Zinc is the limit factor as it prevents RNA replication inside the cell. but the cell walls tend to limit penetration of zinc into the cell. Chloroquine increases the perpetration of Zinc into the cell. Zinc prevents the replication of the virus. Chloroquine accumulates in the body and becomes toxic as too much accumulates increasing cell wall penetration of metals.
Baring Chloroquine, vitamin C is our next bet to limit or reduce viral replication, improve the bodies resistance to stress, and increases the ability of the immune system’s response. Vitamin D & E also assists. They accumulate so can become toxic from long term heavy dosing but C is readily flushed from the body and can be easily tolerated..
I take D&E and a gram a day of C and plan on massive doses of C if infection is noticed…pg
@EMSmith; Good friend of mine was a Navy pilot . Now, the drink of choice for Pilots was Gin&Tonic, but the Flight Surgeons recommended that they skip the tonic as it could reduce a pilots night vision ability, a side effect of the quinine. I would think that tonic water and zinc would provide the same effect as chloroquine medication. The gin might provide a nice side effect and make the tonic more palatable. 8-) …pg
@P.G.:
For traditional British tonic, yes, but to “save” people from too much, current tonic water has a very small dose. Takes about 10 L to get the theraputic dose (if my input data were right).
I’d still be willing to chug a couple of L / day if shit bit me. (I have actually done that a few years ago for something else. It gets hard to swallow over 4 L a day after a couple of days).
@EMSmith; as it is accumulative. I would expect you could work on it a few drinks a day if you got a head start on it. Prevent a serious infection if you happen to get exposed by reducing the RNA replication. Just be sure to take zinc to maximize any beneficial effect.
Finding Tonic Water might become difficult as “someone” seems to be taking all quinine things out of the market place…pg
Hmm, another thing. If I am remembering correctly, the ‘mycin’ antibiotics affect RNA synthesis in bacteria and maybe mitochondria. So, azithromycin may directly inhibit the effect of an RNA virus taking over the RNA systems of a cell, which include protein synthesis. So, for many; though sadly probably not all, the chloroquinones + zinc sulfate + azithromycin might be the best combo, plus C, D, and E where one or more of those are relatively deficient.
I read somewhere that azithromycin had good effects in people with cystic fibrosis, so there may be additional benefits here if part of the viral pneumonia syndrome includes inducing fibrosis.
It doesn’t build up as much as you might think:
https://www.drugs.com/monograph/quinine-sulfate.html
Azithromycin also increases interferon creation:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4923851/
CDQuarles [said] 29 March 2020 at 6:16 pm [GMT]:
So, for many; though sadly probably not all, the chloroquinones + zinc sulfate + azithromycin might be the best combo, plus C, D, and E where one or more of those are relatively deficient.
Sigh. Of particular interest to my family:
Drugs that affect heart rhythm
Hydroxychloroquine should not be taken with other drugs that could cause heart arrhythmias (irregular heart rate or rhythm). Taking hydroxychloroquine with these drugs could cause dangerous arrhythmias. Examples of these drugs include:
• amiodarone,
• chlorpromazine,
• clarithromycin.
[….]
Heart drug
Taking digoxin with hydroxychloroquine may increase the levels of digoxin in your body. This may increase your risk of side effects from digoxin.
<https://www.healthline.com/health/hydroxychloroquine-oral-tablet#interactions>.
A day or 2 ago, a search found me a link that I assumed was comparable info from <https://www.drugs.com>, but I failed to log it, and now I can’t find it. Maybe I’m just too distractec by other things I need to accomplish today.
https://www.rgf.com/products/air/reme-halo/
An interesting take on everything. Argues that there were 2 viruses – both manufactured. The first quite deadly and reason for China’s lockdown. The second to cover up.
1. https://youtu.be/jFvCwdfoiH8 – runtime17:53
2. https://youtu.be/82XXjJPJncg – runtime17:23
3. https://youtu.be/MgCJfzGa-4E – runtime13:04
Pres. Trump news-conf. 17:14–~17:30 EDT (23:14 GMT):
Trump announced 1_000_000 U.S. diagnostic samples have now been tested (“and tested accurately”)
Social-distance guidelines will be retained thro’ end of April (per whatever model is most credible to him, presumably from some combo of U.S. HHH, CDC, FDA–but I hope not from WHO).
FDA has now given prompt approval to use of hydroxychloroq. (Hcq.) & chloroq. (Cq.) (feel free to supply the proper chemical-name endings, whether “-quine” or “-quinone”). Now many millions of doses have been donated of Hcq. & Cq. (dates of arrival not announced that I heard). Upon receiving a complaint from Guv. ________ of Ohio, Pres. Trump, arranged FDA approval, previously stalled (ahem!) for machines that clean 120_000 masks/day.
Feds are now distributing ca. 1_000 new ventilators. More are being built by U.S. brand-name companies, e.g., GM (60_000), GE Healthcare, Honeywell, MyPillow(!), United Technologies, and a few other companies.
Numerous details unintentionally omitted: I’m not a touch-typist, merely fast hunt-&-peck.
The chloroquinones are known to exacerbate prolonged qT intervals on electrocardiograms. That syndrome is known to increase the risk of cardiac arrest. NB, 40J of energy, applied at the right time in that interval is also known to cause cardiac arrest (that’s right, a chest thump at the right time with the right amount of energy can kill).
Digoxin, a plant derivative from foxgloves, if I am remembering correctly, does the same thing, so the two obviously is an issue for some. Same is true of amiodarone, which, like digoxin, is *given* to help with some cardiac arrhythmias and/or heart failure. If I am remembering correctly, digoxin has a large number of interactions and a very narrow therapeutic window. Close monitoring is required for proper use of this one.
Clarithromycin is another of the ‘mycin’ group and is a macrolide like erythromycin or azithromycin. No surprise there.
So let me do some math.
We have a huge package in the US that will be distributed in a few weeks to those who have online accounts with the IRS. Others will get checks mailed to them.
We have a very large population in the US that, from various studies, doesn’t have $400 stashed for emergencies. Add to that many prisoners being released for health concerns (do they have income), and the plot thickens in the next few weeks.
Just sayin, think about the calculus.
Interesting news from inside China and parts of Europe too
Headlines
FDA OK’s Addition To Stockpile Of Malaria Drugs For COVID-19
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/30/823987540/fda-oks-addition-to-stockpile-of-malaria-drugs-for-covid-19
FDA issues emergency authorization of anti-malaria drug for coronavirus care
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/29/fda-emergency-authorization-anti-malaria-drug-155095
FDA authorizes widespread use of unproven drugs to treat coronavirus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/30/coronavirus-drugs-hydroxychloroquin-chloroquine/
( About 12 minutes )
( About 5 1/2 minutes )