Coronavirus

I knew when I saw the question posted earlier that this would escalate. I almost responded but thought to myself
“Nah, sit back and enjoy the show that will inevitably appear.”

⬆️ Well, I did bite, made a quick comment & got the hell outta there.

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I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

Simulations show that deaths in the US would be around 2,000,000 without any measures, with deaths per day peaking at 45,000 per day.

For comparison, we also know that in certain parts of the world that didn't put strong measures like Bergamo in Italy and Quayaquil in Ecuador, already lost between 0.3% to 0.4% of their entire population to Covid-19. In the US 0.3% to 0.4% means 1 million to 1.3 million deaths. So these simulations are not so unrealistic.

I should clarify. When I say measures I'm talking about shutting down businesses. My current thought is what would've happened if they left businesses open and focused on the vulnerable, while still encouraging washing hands, social distancing, masks, gloves, etc. Of course some businesses and activities make social distancing next to impossible, but protecting senior living facilities, group homes, prisons, and things like that could make up the difference. You'd also avoid the thousands of deaths that'll most likely result from the damaged economy.

But, the percentage of people catching Covid-19 would most likely not be 100% in a hypothetical situation where no preventive measures were taken.

I'd be interested in any reference links to estimated percentage of people likely to catch C19 if no measures were in place. (yes I know the number would still be very high)

FDA Gives Emergency Authorization For Some COVID-19 Patients To Use Remdesivir

The Food and Drug Administration has given emergency use authorization to the antiviral drug remdesivir to treat hospitalized patients with the coronavirus, President Trump on Friday told reporters at the White House.

Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day said remdesivir maker Gilead Sciences is donating 1.5 million vials of the drug and will work with the federal government to distribute it to patients in need.

The news comes days after preliminary results from a study of the drug showed it can help patients recover faster. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, hailed the findings earlier this week as "quite good news."

The authorization means remdesivir can be distributed in the U.S. and given intravenously to treat COVID-19 patients — both adults and children — who are hospitalized with severe disease, the FDA says. The agency defines that category as "patients with low blood oxygen levels or needing oxygen therapy or more intensive breathing support such as a mechanical ventilator."

Discussing the findings about the drug's ability to help COVID-19 patients, O'Day cautioned earlier Friday that remdesivir is used to treat advanced cases, in which people are already hospitalized. The recent positive findings, he said, are a starting point in the fight against the respiratory disease.

"We want to continue to see how we can expand remdesivir to more patient populations," O'Day said on NBC's Today show. "Clearly with other medicines and vaccines to come, this is part, I think — the beginning of our ability to make an impact on this devastating virus."

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronav...use-remdesivir

I was getting a satirical vibe as well.

This:

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imp...16-03-2020.pdf

They say:

"In the (unlikely) absence of any control measures or spontaneous changes in individual behaviour, we would expect a peak in mortality (daily deaths) to occur after approximately 3 months (Figure 1A). In such scenarios, given an estimated R0 of 2.4, we predict 81% of the GB and US populations would be infected over the course of the epidemic."

Economists are debating a lot if it is worth of the costs of shutting down a lot of business to reduce the spread of the epidemic. So far it appears to be the case.

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/he...a-c4a5ffad3ffb

This story is one of several with similar cases & results.
Just scratching my head at the political & media condemnation of one potential treatment, with an immediate acceptance & championing of another... apparently depending solely on the person that mentioned them to the media.

Why not an open acceptance & willingness to at least TRY all potential treatments when they involve long-used & established drugs with relatively safe records to treat appropriate stages of Covid19 (where they've already proven effective at certain stages in a greater percentile of patients) as determined and when prescribed by a doctor?

Why are people politicizing potential treatments and treating them like sports teams that they either champion or oppose?

Captain do you really think left wing politics have so much power that they can stop a viable treatment for Covid-19 JUST because Trump touted it as a possible cure?

Did you ever think that maybe it's you who's politicizing all of this?

Here's the thing... because I'm a caregiver for my mother, I'm forced to listen to CNN & MSNBC everyday (because that's what she watches).

I don't know if they can or they can't (stop a viable treatment for C-19)...

But what I do know because I've observed it very plainly over the past several weeks... is they are doing their darnedest to try to influence the public to reject this drug outright (painting it as dangerous and a death sentence for virus patients) because Trump happened to champion it... with headlines like this long-established drug suddenly being "deadly" and saying Trump has "blood on his hands" simply for talking about doctors who've said they used the drug for Covid19 patients and had success at several levels including: warding off the virus from developing fully, keeping the symptoms from advancing, and speeding up recovery of patients who haven't reached advanced stages of the disease where they are at the point where they require a ventilator.

Personally, I don't LIKE the way Trump has delivered various messages throughout this pandemic - but it's disturbing to see people with an agenda trying to quash anything that MIGHT be beneficial without looking into all the facts or the potential of utilizing a drug in concordance with other medicines or treatment simply because of identity politics.

I linked to some of those very facts earlier. There's no reason not to start there, rather than working backwards from what MSNBC is doing. (And no, that stuff was not just for "talking about" the possibility; he recklessly said "what have you got to lose?" about a drug that can kill you if not taken in the right dosage.)

The fact that they're so zealous about this doesn't tell us anything, since that's what you'd expect both if they were being partisan and if they were right. They also might be, ya' know, both.

As always, Trump's public speaking abilities are sometimes questionable to say the least (one of his many faults), but the spirit of what he's talking about is usually discernible.

At the time he said "what have you got to lose" projections for the virus were horrifying & people were dying from it rapidly.

So his saying "what have you got to lose" was quite obviously not advice to the average joe to go buy some at the drug store and take it because it would be fun (like "try it, you'll like it"), but rather intended for people who were headed for death (when your prognosis is death, you have nothing else to lose).

The biggest caveat for this somewhat misplaced saying was that the drug can only be obtained via a doctor's prescription (and Trump knew this).

No one can just go buy some over-the-counter to "try" it. So the obvious inference was, if your prognosis from a doctor is a dire one, then trying anything that your doctor could prescribe (in this case a drug that's been approved for a variety of diseases for over half a century and had already shown some success for Covid19 sufferers) is better than doing nothing or trying to ride it out, hoping for the best as symptoms are becoming more fatal by the hour.

Also, to be taken into account (and this goes for everyone, not just Trump, on either side of the aisle including Drs. Fauci and Birx) that many statements made throughout this crisis have been based only on what's known at the time - when Trump started talking about Hydroxy-C it was not yet known that it proved ineffective on patients in advanced stages of the virus. All that was known at that time was that many doctors had had some success using it on patients in earlier stages.

As far as I can see nothing in his statement contains those qualifications, and I don't find all of them obvious even in retrospect. He seems to have been talking about anyone who has the virus (nevermind that they can't necessarily be sure, given the dearth of testing). Not that people should have to be parsing these briefings for context and implication, anyway. Public health briefings obviously can't have people just spitballing, because desperate people latch onto stuff, so anything like this is inherently reckless, even if a thorough and dispassionate analysis might lead most people to think he probably meant something less reckless than his opponents suggest. That's a depressingly low bar. Either way, it certainly isn't accurate to say he just "talked" about it.

That said, I'm not that interested in parsing just how shrill MSNBC was in response. We can always assume they will be. But, as the old saying goes: never take the wrong side of an issue because your opponent has taken the right one. From the evidence, it appears Trump got people's hopes up prematurely (an easy outcome to predict for most, I think), and that MSNBC is right to say as much, even if they were always going to find something to criticize him for.

There has certainly been a difference in coverage on these two possible treatments, but it seems as if there should be, given the different results we've seen when they've been properly tested.

You really don't think it was obvious he was talking about people trying it who were running out of options? I sure did. Sometimes he gets in trouble for assuming people know what he's talking about when they don't, and that's unfortunate. Not necessarily in this case but it seems like a lot of times people want things to be spelled out to them as if they were children.

I think maybe that's what he intended, but just reading the words, it isn't really there. The literal context is only people who have the virus. Regardless, it's a sensitive situation, so "c'mon I really meant this" isn't a valid defense for anyone, let alone the President. And whether it was obvious or not, it sure looks like at least a few scared people overreacted and harmed themselves as a result.

"He's just not a great communicator sometimes" is an okay way to brush off the occasional uncouth remark, but in a public health crisis a careful conveyance of accurate and reliable information is hugely important, so yeah, suddenly little verbal ticks and bad intellectual habits become life-or-death matters.

But it's mostly beside the point, since this particular issue is just about determining precisely how over-the-top MSNBC's reaction was. The really relevant thing is about the disparate coverage of the top possible treatments, which looks perfectly warranted to me.

I've had this conversation with my wife and she's on your side. I'm not used to conversing with people in such literal terms so maybe it's just something I'm more used to.

I dunno, we're not necessarily disagreeing about his intent, just about how much we should care about what he literally says compared to likely intent. I think even parsing Trump's intent is kind of pointless, though, since the first time we ask ourselves what he meant we're already putting more thought into the statement than he initially did. He obviously just blurts out whatever occurs to him in the moment.

My take on all of this:

MSNBC's commentary on Trump's handling of the pandemic is partisan, but no less so than their counterpart, Fox News. MSNBC wouldn't have the tone they do, if right wing Fox News hadn't made being caustically hyper-partisan so profitable for a cable channel. MSNBC is a reaction to Fox News... I deplore the existence of all hate news/commentary media, it's divisive and causing America to polarize.

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Trumps' statement about using Hydroxy-C and more recently about using aerosol disinfectants and UV light internally, are completely uncalled for by a President...Those statements were foolish and dangerous. Homer Simpson might be excused for saying something so stupid, but not the President....If a Democratic president had said that it would be Fox News crying bloody murder like there was no tomorrow, or maybe they would claim he was born in Africa.

Trump has handled the pandemic poorly, he's flip flopped more than a jumping jack and that's due to his narcissist personality which requires constant attention while needing to shift responsibility to anyone other than himself.