Covid-19: bad news on the science front
Unfortunately the last few days have been pretty brutal for scientists trying to develop covid-19 treatments. Note that all of these studies are not yet peer reviewed nor fully clinic trials (good science can't work that fast). However their lack of statistically significant results (with moderate sample sizes) suggest that the potential effect size of the drug is likely minor which is terrible news.
hydroxychloroquine -
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v2
"no evidence that use of hydroxychloroquine, either with or without azithromycin, reduced the risk of mechanical ventilation in patients hospitalized with Covid-19"
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.10.20060699v1.full.pdf
"No evidence of clinical efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in patients hospitalised for COVID-19 infection and requiring oxygen"
remdesivir -
https://twitter.com/GileadSciences/status/1253404143714066432/photo/1
A study summary accidentally posted by WHO suggests that remdesivir had no beneficial affect. The company claims the results were inconclusive. Either way it is bad news, as a highly effective drug would have a large effect and likely be detected in a trial of this size.
These studies are all preliminary, and future studies could suggest that either of these treatments are more effective than these studies suggest. Additionally the drugs may be more successful when used in different situations. However the news over the last few days suggests that no highly effective cure-all is going to be ready any time soon.
Lastly, there is no way to say this without sounding political, but government scientists are reporting pressure to investigate drugs for political -- rather than scientific --- reasons. Please trust your trained professionals during these times. It is a bad idea to inject yourself with disinfectants.
I mean for me, I had been hearing about anecdotal success and wanted it to be true because I just want people to...not die?
I'll somewhat disagree that he has a sense as to how to control his base. I mean, the guy just blabs anything that crosses his mind. His base, the frothing mouth breathers they are, eat it up because he thinks and speaks like they do - close minded, uninformed, and lacking any coherency of complex thought. The Rep party follows his lead because their base is married to religious belief and guns, and is largely composed of Trump's base (although, IMO, they are two separate groups). The more educated GOP'ers would dump Trump if any other warm body could sway his base, but there is nobody. And without his mouth-breathing base the GOP will lose every election. So they'll follow him blindly, like puppets, to avoid losing 'power'. Because, apparently, losing 'power' is worse than losing our Constitution based democratic republic.
This is the problem with our country. You are making broad generalizations about a lot of people. I am not a trump supporter. I find him to be an idiot and I am embarrassed that he represents this country. I don't identify with either political party. The frothing mouth breathers you refer to are most likely just normal, hard working people. Maybe they vote a certain way because they believe very strongly in a single issue, but I bet they are mostly decent people. We have allowed ourselves to be divided when I bet that we aren't that different from each other. Let's stop widening the division with hateful generalizations and try to find more common ground.
There's no doubt that the college football season will be suspended this fall. Most university will be going to online classes. The baseball season could start in July in AZ with some empty small fields. The NFL season will start on time in empty stadiums. It will be depressing not having college football this season.
No doubt? Really? Can I get a look at your time machine?
In case you haven't noticed, the situation is changing every day. It's ridiculous to claim complete certainty about events that are months away.
April 24th, 2020 at 11:31 AM ^
J.
1. Despite all the down votes you are generating, just wanted to let you know that you are making more sense than most people on here. I tend to agree with most of your votes.
2. All though it is quite possible that there will not be a college football season this year, I would lean more toward one happening at this point. As we start to dip our toes back into the water and find that the sky isn’t falling, some of the fear will start to subside.
3. It’s time to start looking at more practical and effective ways to combat this pandemic instead of the extreme approaches that most have taken.
April 24th, 2020 at 12:10 PM ^
I neg banged ya... because you won't let me borrow your tinfoil hat.
April 24th, 2020 at 10:10 AM ^
It's very hard to know now what we will be thinking in late summer. But there will be lots of pressure -- much of it financial -- to play college football this season by some means (empty stadiums?). The universities, the coaches and players, the media companies, and even a bored populace in need of emotional distraction are likely to create a strong will to "get this done." This is not to say it will be a good decision.
Why is this dude getting downvoted while that pompous old douchebag gets 40 upvotes?
its not MINOR to the people it helped...
April 24th, 2020 at 12:01 PM ^
The actual scientific studies that have been done show that those people would have recovered without it. You just want it to be true, because Dear Leader is infallible to you twats.
Maybe people want it to be true because there is no current cure?
What should be additional bad news is that in the press briefing last night ingesting disinfectants and light to kill Covid-19 were mentioned. Throwing out any political opinion if this is where we are at in late April then how can we really believe there is any real treatment or vaccine that will be available in the near future?
Based off the moronic responses on this thread ... man do you have to be really stupid to be allowed into U of M.
Uv light ingested? Injecting bleach?
zinc and hydroxychloroquine... listen assholes I know you are all entitled to your opinions but I don’t tell you how to drive your truck... maybe you shouldn’t tell me how to practice medicine
You should get off that high horse before you fall on your face.
The UV and disinfectant ingestion is a suggestion that President Trump made during his daily televised presser. He directed (yes: directed) Dr. Birx to look into shining UV light into people to kill the virus. Said it all seemed promising to him. Here:
"The whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that’s pretty powerful," Trump said during a White House press briefing. He raised the possibility of hitting a human body "with a tremendous — whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light." ... "I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside of the body, which you could do either through the skin or in some other way, and I think you said you were going to test that, too. Sounds interesting."
"Then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. Is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?"
-- Donald Trump
The zinc thing is from a confirmed conspiracy theorist that believes contrails are toxic chemicals to control the weather. Disregard that, except for pure entertainment purposes.
April 24th, 2020 at 10:47 AM ^
It says everything that this is what is being promoted - typical Trump layman rambling - as the main takeaway from the briefing and not the fact that with the warmer weather the virus will become far less effective at infecting people.
Because this is what is important.
April 24th, 2020 at 11:24 AM ^
Is there any actual evidence that warmer weather will help in this case? Last I heard countries in their summer were having similar amounts of issues with it.
April 24th, 2020 at 12:04 PM ^
They are. Australia is pretty damn sunny and hot...
April 24th, 2020 at 12:10 PM ^
Austrailia also gets the most UV light of anywhere on the planet
Australia has only had 3 deaths per million people. New Zealand, 4.
I'm sure there's a number of factors that have helped with those low numbers (population density, access points from international travel, response, etc) and we can't say for sure that warm weather will help, but the research is at least showing that. And we can't look at those countries and say they are evidence that it doesn't.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/24/health/sunlight-bleach-coronavirus-fact-check/index.html
Its going to spread because obviously people are still going to be inside, but it appears likely that summer will at least create a more favorable environment to prepare for a possible second wave in the fall.
April 24th, 2020 at 11:15 AM ^
Did you really mention "con-trails"?
Watchout... them'frogs is gay!
ROFLMAO (Oh you Michigan grads are so much fun to fuck with)
Sweet, open admission of trolling.
Too bad nobody's been banned on this board for centuries
April 24th, 2020 at 11:38 AM ^
I luv u bruh... were you LS&A or Law?
I haven't kept up on the research, so perhaps it has been debunked as well, but haven't USC and Stanford both come out with separate studies that after antibody testing, there is significantly more people that have COVID-19 antibodies already than originally thought? The number was great enough that it put the mortality of the virus at basically the same as the flu. So that's good right?
I know neither study has had time to be peer reviewed as of when I read them a few days ago.
https://news.usc.edu/168987/antibody-testing-results-covid-19-infections-los-angeles-county/
Love how people downvote a positive post. F the fact they arent' "peer reviewed". You either use this as a positive or if it doesnt fit the narrative you like, you find an issue with it.
April 24th, 2020 at 11:28 AM ^
stop yelling about peer review and actually refute the criticisms then.
April 24th, 2020 at 11:56 AM ^
Odds that Cc2010 even knows that peer review is? Anyone?
Don't get emotional, Cc2010. It will strain your clearly limited resources. Don't be a snowflake.
Love how people downvote a positive post. F the fact they arent' "peer reviewed". You either use this as a positive or if it doesnt fit the narrative you like, you find an issue with it.
April 24th, 2020 at 11:13 AM ^
^^^ The Michigan Difference!
-Hopkins Grad
April 24th, 2020 at 11:27 AM ^
Many scientists are viewing these studies very skeptically because of the quality (or lack thereof) of the antibody test and issues with participant recuritment amongst other things. This isn't just hating a study because it doesn't fit the narrative. There are real concerns about its quality.
On the whole though both studies were good news. Just likely not to the degree they report.
Even as someone who's strongly in favor of opening things back up sooner rather than later, I think those California studies are total bunk. They suffer from selection problems, very dubious adjustments to the raw data, and a small enough sample size that it's possible their numbers could be explained entirely by false positives Their results are in way too high of a range to be useful. Their results make no sense when applied to populations outside the study area. (They leave open the possibility that there are more infected people in certain areas than the population of those areas.)
The New York study has none of these problems, and is the only one I'd use right now.
Viruses are hard to treat. Most treatment is focused on symptom relief. Also, many viruses do not have a cure or vaccine (e.g, herpes, rhinovirus, some forms of HPV), and it took years or decades in some cases to develop vaccines for some virus vaccines.
I'll take my chances.
The best defense is a good offense. Be healthy...exercise daily, eat a balanced diet, maintain a healthy body composition, get enough sleep, practice stress relief techniques, don't smoke, & drink alcohol only in moderation. And, give back to something outside your bubble.
The problem with any results out of China is that the CCP very likely have their thumbs on the scales, particularly with respect to a drug developed and manufactured by a U.S. company. It's probably no coincidence that the same day of the WHO's Remdesivir "oopsie" a Chinese company announced that it had developed an effective vaccine that could be in production in a matter of months.
My bullshit detector is off-scale high right now.
April 24th, 2020 at 11:09 AM ^
Well at least we know your 'bullshit scale" is working... now could you please give us an analysis of the M football team, I have my doubts about the leadership there too!
April 24th, 2020 at 10:14 AM ^
None of this is a surprise at all. There was no valid reason to expect this to be an actual treatment once the actual scientific studies started to come in.
April 24th, 2020 at 10:30 AM ^
That's a relief. I thought you were going to tell me mainlining Lysol with a turkey injector doesn't actually work.
April 24th, 2020 at 11:15 AM ^
On the contrary - mainlining Lysol will absolutely kill the virus. It'll kill the patient a little faster, though.
April 24th, 2020 at 11:19 AM ^
M Grad = Turkey Injector?! WTF are you doing to your turkeys?! Jesus Christ what the hell is going on at that University Campus where you're violating animals in such a way!
(Turkey Baster bruh)
**Nevermind I digress, there IS such a thing as a "Turkey injector"...holy fuck humans are sick animals.
*EDIT: Negbangs give me a a hard on here at work... thank you! My staff thanks you!
April 24th, 2020 at 11:58 AM ^
Testing! Testing! The testing is worthless. I could test negative today and get it tomorrow. They need to check for antibodies. Then we will know that 50% of Americans already had this and it it is no more deadly than the flu.
April 24th, 2020 at 12:07 PM ^
You're starting to make too much sense... negbang for you!
April 27th, 2020 at 10:08 PM ^
And then you have this just in .....
The recent Stanford University antibody study concluded the death rate to be between 0.1 to 0.2 percent, in other words, right in line with the seasonal flu.
April 24th, 2020 at 12:25 PM ^
That and the BAD science of they are not testing everyone (because they can't) which means the death rate is also FAR lower than it is being presented compared to who actually has it. Sure its a bad virus but it's not the plague either.
I'm ready for things to open up and people to still use distancing while shopping or other as well for awhile.
Life has bad bugs in it ..... it has been a part of history for a long time.
Testing is great but it's a fact that there are false positives and negatives and this isn't going perfectly nor are the numbers that are out there. I think the number of people that have had it are far higher than being reported which means ... yep ... it's on par with the flu like you said.
April 24th, 2020 at 12:17 PM ^
Lots of doctors on the board today.............
April 24th, 2020 at 12:39 PM ^
That's because with the close of the basketball season, and football season likely being cancelled all of their work has dried up.
Well guess we all should bunker down for a couple years, maybe the virus will get bored and go away.
If only the human body was engineered to fight diseases when exposed to them.