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On April 30 2020 22:10 Artisreal wrote:
In Germany we had a receding R number as well. Also before the lockdown.
Because people kept the fuck away from each other.
So you're saying you're 100 % confident that the R0 was receding because everyone was informed way ahead of officials and also self restricting, and not because this thing was circulating for a while already and some were already building up immunity?
I wouldn't be.
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On April 30 2020 22:15 Vivax wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 22:10 Artisreal wrote:
In Germany we had a receding R number as well. Also before the lockdown.
Because people kept the fuck away from each other. So you're saying you're 100 % confident that the R0 was receding because everyone was informed way ahead of officials and also self restricting, and not because this thing was circulating for a while already and some were already building up immunity? I wouldn't be.
![[image loading]](https://www.zdf.de/assets/grafik-rki-100~1280x720?cb=1587548934470)
From the ZDF (German public television) with primary source RKI (advising body to the government, research insititute).
Widespread contact reduction from 22.03.
That means social distancing works. I doubt that, as you suggest, we have widespread immunity due to roundabout 3 weeks of high transmission rates. Especially in light of some federal states having their first official case in early march.
Albeit anecdotal, I remember while on a business trip in the south of Germany, I've never had more choice regarding my seat in the train. in addition to that public transport was rather empty and people generally tried to maintain a distance already.
In conclusion. Am I 100% convinced that this is due to the measures instead of herd immunity? Of course not, I'm not that kind of scientist. Althought they won't sign 100% either. I'd rather say that the overwhelming part of the German science community is sure, that it's not herd immunity we're seeing at play but rather effective social distancing measures.
You may be sceptical of that, though I see absolutely no reason to be.
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Fair enough.
There's this rumour about reinfection being possible going around. I'd like to be a test subject for that since I believe I already had corona.
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On April 30 2020 22:49 Vivax wrote:
Fair enough.
There's this rumour about reinfection being possible going around. I'd like to be a test subject for that since I believe I already had corona.
Been a lot of news the last few days about it likely not being possible to get reinfected if you check the last few pages of the thread.
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Reinfection false positives are most likely caused by dead virus fragments according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). [source]
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Points to vasculitis imho. Maybe in the lungs. But it's just guesswork from me.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On April 30 2020 19:51 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On April 30 2020 15:54 Lmui wrote:On April 30 2020 15:04 Danglars wrote:Gilead Sciences remdesivir is being touted as an effective drug to quicken recovery and lower deaths. Scientists on Wednesday announced the first effective treatment against the coronavirus — an experimental drug that can speed the recovery of COVID-19 patients — in a major medical advance that came as the economic gloom caused by the scourge deepened in the U.S. and Europe.
The U.S. government said it is working to make the antiviral medication remdesivir available to patients as quickly as possible.
“What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert. “This will be the standard of care.” [...]
California-based biotech company Gilead Sciences and the U.S. government reported that in a major study, remdesivir shortened the time it takes for COVID-19 patients to recover by four days on average — from 15 days to 11. Also, a trend toward fewer deaths was seen among those on the drug, Fauci said. APThe NYT reports the FDA is going to emergency authorize it for treatment. It's a standard antiviral nucleotide analog (the high presence of chemists in this forum will recognize the drug's similarity to adenosine) that hurts replication and hence viral production in cells. It's pretty cool stuff in the world of treating this disease prior to an effective vaccine. The results look promising, but are short of more rigorous studies. Studies look promising, my guess: In the USA, it's going to be $1000+ for a 2 week supply without insurance. The catch is that you have to start dosing early - during onset of initial symptoms, or even before at exposure time to see maximal benefit. If it can limit the worst of the symptoms, Gilead is going to make a killing off of it. Initial results are that it also dropped mortality - 8.0% on the drug died vs. 11.6% receiving placebo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RemdesivirLooks like it was primarily as an antiviral against Ebola. No news yet on scalability. Wikipedia has this: On 23 March 2020, Gilead voluntarily suspended access for compassionate use (excepting cases of critically ill children and pregnant women), for reasons related to supply, citing the need to continue to provide the agent for testing in clinical trials. so even with this news, I'd guess 60-90 days to even begin manufacturing this at a visible scale, even with 16/7 work to stand up the manufacturing lines, and with ~80k new cases a day worldwide now, it'll likely be reserved for only high risk populations. Specifically, medical professionals, elderly, immunocompromised and the rich. Edit:: A more updated, and layman oriented article: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/04/first-treatment-for-sars-cov-2-shortens-recovery-time/ Two things to take into account here and not jump on this as conclusive that remdesivir does anything at all. (1) Everybody is rushing to test their medicine with even the tiniest chance of working to slow/stop Covid. I don't think that under such conditions having a p cutoff at 0.05 is enough. A p=0.05 basically means that 1 in 20 times such a result can be seen due to random chance even if the populations are exactly the same. So if there are 20 trials for different drugs, all of which do *nothing*, the expected outcome would be that one of them looks like it does something (it's still random, so it could be none of them do, or even all 20 of them do, but the p-value simply says that the chance of getting a result like this even if there is no difference is 1 in 20). There are a lot more than 20 potential drugs being tested vs Covid right now... (2) Gilead conducted the trial themselves and have serious economic interest in a positive outcome. It wouldn't be the first time a pharmaceutical company "finessed" the conclusions from a trial to look more positive than it merits. Steps have been taken to ensure the raw data from clinical trials is opened up. I do not know if that is the case here as well. If they have, then I would wait for an independent organization to doublecheck that there is no funny business going on here. If they haven't then I would be hesitant to take this trial at face value. That said, having any kind of weapon to help fight off this virus is going to be very very welcome and I really hope this is indeed a true positive and makes treating patients a little bit easier.
In situations like this, I suppose the risk of rushing drugs to market has some merit. If patients are on death's door, it's worth taking a few risks if they could potentially help. So I can't exactly blame the FDA for allowing it to press forward to more widespread use.
But after the very recent China trial that failed, I find it hard to really lap up subsequent "good news" on this drug as if it's anything more than a face-saving measure. Since the trial is fairly recent, I'm guessing this article is expressing a priori skepticism about that very test. And for the "most optimistic possible" take that the manufacturer is bound to produce for their own tests, the result just doesn't sound particularly impressive.
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I have extremely low blood pressure, so I am hoping that means I am less vulnerable? *knocks on wood*
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Is this a reliable source? 2 months after outbreak in EU, I'm already becoming skeptical of such claims because they seem sensationalist in my opinion. Why is it reported so late?
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On May 01 2020 05:09 JimmiC wrote:
I had my first person I know die from Covid. He was my wifes sisters friends so I did not know him well but saw him at the occasional party. He was 39 going for a walk and a pulmonary embolism, he had mild symptoms. My non medical opinion is that there must have been some underlying condition he was not aware of. But 39 is not old and fairly scary.
Be safe all, it is not only the old (though they are the most) that can have serious consequences.
forgive my medical ignorance and I'm not all the way caught up on this thread, but do we have reason to believe that a PE could be related to Covid-19?
Of course, the reason for my ask is that I'm sure many on this forum are aware of another PE case in a young man that happened fairly recently
Edit: Just saw your link above, got it now. Sorry for the loss.
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Never got tested, but my dad had it and the worst that happened to me in that time was that I lost my sense of smell and taste for about a week.
Hoping that was it
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On May 01 2020 09:44 [UoN]Sentinel wrote:
Never got tested, but my dad had it and the worst that happened to me in that time was that I lost my sense of smell and taste for about a week.
Hoping that was it
if your dad had it and you lost your smell, it sounds extremely unlikely that would be a coincidence.
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Something I've been wondering for a while now.. how specific are those Sars cov-2 tests? Do they exclude other coronaviridae or is there significant overlap so that common cold could be a false posiive party pooper?
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opterown
Australia54784 Posts
Most of the PCRs are very very specific. Whether the RNA it detects represents live virus on the other hand though...
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On May 01 2020 16:24 Uldridge wrote:
Something I've been wondering for a while now.. how specific are those Sars cov-2 tests? Do they exclude other coronaviridae or is there significant overlap so that common cold could be a false posiive party pooper?
I assume if that were the case, it would have been talked about at some point. Especially by the people who want to make it seem as if there i no pandemic going on so people go back to work and make more money for them.
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There are not just PCR tests, but also antibody tests, which made me more worried for the specificity.
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opterown
Australia54784 Posts
On May 01 2020 16:36 Uldridge wrote:
There are not just PCR tests, but also antibody tests, which made me more worried for the specificity.
antibody tests are less analytically robust than PCR tests, so their sensitivity and specificity is more suspect. furthermore, their main application (population testing) will not be as accurate due the population they are testing (low pre-test probability, low prevalance), so false positives will be an issue (poor positive predictive value)
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EPT
