Coronavirus

That anti-malarial story came to President Trump via YouTube, from a Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, in upstate New York who claims he has used them on 699 "likely" coronavirus patients starting in January. In upstate New York. None of them were tested for coronavirus and haven't been since. Fox News picked it up and he heard it there.



But the president of the United States pushed for it, so in it goes, being given to patients in New York. My question -- who got word in advance that these drugs were due to have their usage increase by 10,000-fold overnight?

I'm not saying it's not effective and they shouldn't give it a shot, but this was literally "just some guy" throwing something to the President, which appears to be how he runs our country. Let's hope he got lucky this time.

They've been using them in France and China already. Haven't undergone extensive clinical trials but there's hope they're actually working.

There is a ton of back-and-forth nonsense about the anti-malarials. It's not all from genius Rabbi doctors and it's not all immediately-to-be-poohpooh'd woo.

Coronavirus use a mechanism similar to that seen in one stage of malarial illness: the cellular "payload" encapsulates itself in membrane proteins and is engulfed into the interior of the cell. The intracellular pH difference between the interior of the cell and the encapsulated zone with the payload triggers the payload to activate some genes that start the cellular takeover. Some of these anti-malarial drugs can temper that pH difference and perhaps slow the onslaught of this virus on your cells.

The cell takes over this compartment, lowering its pH and adding enzymes to break down its contents. Corona and other viruses actually take advantage of these changes to enable their infection. In the case of coronavirus, a protease made by the host cell cuts the viral spike protein. Once cut, the spike protein triggers a merger between the membrane in the virus' coat and the membrane of the compartment it is trapped in. This finally places the virus' genome inside the cell, where it can proceed with the infection.

This series of events provides potential targets for therapies. One of these targets is the drop in pH. This is the step that's targeted by chloroquine, the antimalarial drug. Chloroquine can cross membranes and so can enter the sac containing the virus. Once there, it can neutralize the pH.

That's significant, because many proteases are only active at lower pH. If the pH inside the sac doesn't change, it's possible that the coronavirus spike protein won't be cut and thus won't be activated. This appears to be the case in cultured cells infected by the virus, and there are anecdotal case reports of chloroquine helping COVID-19 patients.

cite: arstechnica.com/science/2020/03/covid-19...n-effective-therapy/

It doesn't keep you from getting infected, it might not be effective at all. We need some measure of controlled trials. They are underway. This doesn't mean the President of the United States should tell people to mix it with azithromycin (?) and it's a miracle cure. A more sensible and TRUE statement would be that numerous therapies are being explored. What's most important is to limit exposure, slow the spread, and help where you can. Also, these drugs have a narrow therapeutic window. The line between a safe dose and one that makes you blind is not that big. Don't wing it with this stuff.

Trump, being a narcissistic psychopath (as in, multiple psychologists have diagnosed him as one, since he fits the profile: self-obsessed, manipulative, often charming, etc.), is typically just regurgitating information that sounds either convenient to his basic desires(Fox and Friends is a favored source) or was provided to him by someone whom he trusts (i.e. praises him a lot, like Kushner, Trump, Jr., etc.) While a number of people have speculated on his mental decay (rambling press conferences, losing the thread of arguments), I think it's more likely that his already-present mental problems are leading to the vast majority of his behavior (and childish outbursts, like when he suggested he could spread more fear than the "Lamestream Media" when a reporter was questioning the path his administration has taken so far.)

Didier Raoult, the French scientist behind one of the hydrochloroquine stories, looks like a fraud . tl;dr he makes up data, his study design isn't much better than, "Let's mix all the stuff under the kitchen sink together and see what happens," and has been banned from publishing in peer-reviewed journals. That rundown from the New Orleans ER doctor upthread stated that they were wasting their time with it for a while, but aren't bothering with it now.

Jackwraith wrote: Trump, being a narcissistic psychopath (as in, multiple psychologists have diagnosed him as one, since he fits the profile: self-obsessed, manipulative, often charming, etc.), is typically just regurgitating information that sounds either convenient to his basic desires(Fox and Friends is a favored source) or was provided to him by someone whom he trusts (i.e. praises him a lot, like Kushner, Trump, Jr., etc.) While a number of people have speculated on his mental decay (rambling press conferences, losing the thread of arguments), I think it's more likely that his already-present mental problems are leading to the vast majority of his behavior (and childish outbursts, like when he suggested he could spread more fear than the "Lamestream Media" when a reporter was questioning the path his administration has taken so far.)

I hope I live long enough to visit his jail cell. Pissing on his grave will do, though.

One of my co-workers went home sick last week and has been self-quarantining since. He hasn't been officially tested, but he is presenting symptoms that suggest he has Covid-19. He works in a small sub-department that doesn't really have its own defined work area, so they have been using various spare rooms all over our facility. That means he has recently been in close proximity with a majority of our workers at this site. So we started a frantic regime of sanitizing door knobs and other common contact points each morning. Unfortunately, there are only three people in his department, and one of them quit several weeks ago, so we have been using people from a different department to help out in his area since even before he felt sick. And we just hired a new guy for his department and our sick guy is the only one who can fully train him on the job. So there is talk of bringing the sick guy back in on Monday if he is feeling up to it.

Shellhead wrote: And we just hired a new guy for his department and our sick guy is the only one who can fully train him on the job. So there is talk of bringing the sick guy back in on Monday if he is feeling up to it.

You've gotta be shitting me. Facetime or something... I hope sanity prevails.

We're raising insects and other creatures that are sold in pet stores across the country as live pet food for birds and reptiles. We're classified as agriculture, so we're considered an essential industry. And by the nature of the work, most of our jobs require people to physically show up to do the work. That includes the new guy, who will be learning to raise several species which most of our workers are not trained to raise. We are especially busy right now because people are stockpiling our product, which is silly because living pet food has a limited shelf life. The owners of our business are sharp people, but two of them are moderately conservative. They have sometimes recently clashed with our third owner, who is a native of China and takes the pandemic very seriously. Overall, they have proactively made good decisions, but I fear that bringing back the sick guy too soon could be a mistake. But maybe the extensive daily disinfecting will make the difference. The first day, employees got a little carried away and used up gallons of cleaning product.

When anyone gets sick then sue them.
They shouldn’t be risking your health and your families’ health.

abc7ny.com/coronavirus-nyc-news-updates-new-york/6069778/

I want a mask that makes me look like Bane.

southernman wrote: Just had a good snigger - on the UK news it was announced Brit scientists/doctors are testing certain drugs for Corvid-19 treatment including anti-malarials. I was only a few weeks ago that Trump was being laughed at for mentioning this, everyone just forgets Trump is a bit of an idiot so he would only have said something like that if medical advisors (and probably pretty smart ones) had mentioned that in a briefing (but not expecting him to splash it across crisis prime time TV).
Problem with having a bit of idiot has a leader, whatever intelligent advisors tell him usually sounds utterly ridiculous when he puts it out to the people .

It's also possible, just possible, that if the media would take Trumps words and instead of reflexively making a negative statement instead do some research, and translate those words into useful info for the populace that we could be ahead of the game instead of playing catch up. I mean, it's unlikely that Trump is completely making this stuff up, there must be some data behind it that a reporter could incorporate into a story, right?

Folks are throwing darts at the wall, seeing what sticks. Some, if not most, of the therapies are going to be useless or minimally effective. Dogging someone for just mentioning them is counter productive IMHO. The WHO and CDC first say no masks, now they say masks based on data. The situation is extremely fluid and some data points contradict each other, typical for largely anecdotal or retrospective reviews.

jason10mm wrote: It's also possible, just possible, that if the media would take Trumps words and instead of reflexively making a negative statement instead do some research, and translate those words into useful info for the populace that we could be ahead of the game instead of playing catch up. I mean, it's unlikely that Trump is completely making this stuff up, there must be some data behind it that a reporter could incorporate into a story, right?

Well, most of the time... No. Trump is just basically just making stuff up because he's picking up on absurd Twitter accounts that he follows (i.e. the ones that praise him) and then simply regurgitating what he's read and/or what pops into his head at any given moment. The malarial drug thing isn't even close to the point of a decent study and precisely no one on the front lines has declared it to be in any way effective (especially when considering the toxic side effects of some of those drugs.) Meanwhile, a couple Trump supporters in the states grabbed the first version of chloroquine they could find and downed it, killing one person and putting the other in critical condition. From those same Twitter accounts/websites, he decided that a combo of chloroquine and azithromycin should be suggested to the public. That led to pharmacists flocking to Twitter to tell people NOT to do that because that drug combination can cause fatal heart arrhythmia.

So, no. I don't think it's useful to try to take what he says, reinterpret it as something useful, and then try to convey it to the public. I mean, do you think those media sources should be rearranging his statements intended to boost the stock value of companies he favors, too? Because that's been another favored tactic in the last month. Honestly, the best thing that they could do is IGNORE EVERYTHING HE SAYS, since almost none of it is useful, and wait until someone like Fauci is at the podium, in order to give the public actual knowledge, rather than speculative (or deliberately subversive) idiocy.