Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

[9873210]

In the USA I believe that in considering their booster strategy they have a second dose of J&J listed as an acceptable booster option for people whose initial vaccine was the single-dose J&J vaccine (Pfizer and Moderna are also considered acceptable boosters for someone who previously received a single J&J dose).

Yes.The CDC says the booster can be Any of the COVID-19 vaccines authorized in the United States after any initial shot.

Without clear cut evidence this simplifies the logistics, and may also have a push effect if people ask "which booster?" instead of "to boost or not to boost?".

[look]

magnesium

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32649272/

[look]

Tadashi Watanabe in a book shows how to prepare garlic. There are several choices.

in one of them, we let the garlic teeths in salt water during 1 to 3 days. After that we place them in shoyu during 1 to 3 weeks.

when i was young, i ate garlic with bread and cheese, and with an egg too.

[XFool]

Covid: WHO warns Europe once again at epicentre of pandemic

BBC News

Europe is once again "at the epicentre" of the Covid pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned, as cases soar across the continent.

"At a press conference WHO Europe head Hans Kluge said the continent could see half a million more deaths by February.

He blamed insufficient vaccine take-up for the rise."

[XFool]

when i was young, i ate garlic with bread and cheese, and with an egg too.

When I was young I ate sugar sandwiches.

[servodude]

when i was young, i ate garlic with bread and cheese, and with an egg too.

When I was young I ate sugar sandwiches.

Damn! Sugar on buttered toast! I'd forgotten about it.... like a "cis" fairy-bread

[jfgw]

when i was young, i ate garlic with bread and cheese, and with an egg too.

Great with baked beans and brussels sprouts — it brings social distancing to a whole new level!


Julian F. G. W.

[servodude]

when i was young, i ate garlic with bread and cheese, and with an egg too.

Great with baked beans and brussels sprouts — it brings social distancing to a whole new level!


Julian F. G. W.

But I think the orientation of the distancing is 180deg to that which protects against COVID

[Hallucigenia]

This is really nice :
https://www.science.org/content/article ... ral-spread

A classic example of how a new tool in molecular biology allows us to understand something that was previously mysterious. There's been a lot of attention on mutations in the spike protein on the outside of the SARS2 virus, as they're relatively easy to express on the outside of pseudoviruses, but it's much harder to study the proteins inside the virus. This is based on the existing technology of viruslike particles (VLPs) which contain all the virus’ structural proteins but lack its genome so can't replicate. They've then added the mRNA for a reporter gene, so the more mRNA that a VLP delivers, the more the infected cell lights up.

What they found was delta has a mutation, R203M, in the nucleocapsid protein that protects the genome and recruits replication enzymes. In fact it's part of a seven–amino acid stretch that is a mutation hotspot, but R203M is spectacular - it increases the amount of glow/reporter mRNA in the host cells >10-fold (and the alpha ("Kent") mutation in that area increased the glow 7.5-fold. They were then able to go to a high-level biosafety lab and test the mutation in live virus in lung cells, and it produced 51 times more infectious virus than "classic" SARS2.

So in the immediate future, this allows us to look out for R203M mutations appearing in other lineages and to panic appropriately. But in the longer term, a better understanding of what this bit of the nucleocapsid is all about will hopefully allow the development of drugs that can attack a key part of the viral infection process.

[Hallucigenia]

This is really not good - the bosses of the main teaching hospital in Cambridge, Addenbrooke's, say
“The sorts of cases that we’re having to cancel at the moment, because of lack of beds, are the sorts of cases we would never we never imagined cancelling. And we’re doing it day after day at the moment.”
“So, we could barely cope before Covid...this is ceasing to function as a hospital...The situation is as serious as it was in February, March [2020], and the beginning of January [2021]”

https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/ ... e-9224152/

To be fair the Cambridge University Hospitals trust has been a bit of a financial basket case for a while now, but at the moment they've lost around 15% of beds "due to infection control and the reconfiguration required due to the pandemic"

Cambridgeshire seems to be a bit of a hotspot at the moment, but it's still not good that one of our top hospitals is in this state. At a national level we're back over a 1000 on ventilation, just like we were this time last year.

[dealtn]

https://www.cambridgeindependent.co.uk/ ... e-9224152/

Interesting that much of the supply constraint is because they are trying to keep open, and operating, many of the areas that were closed in earlier waves (and presumably in the current wave - concurrent with vaccinations etc. - the public appear to be much more willing to use health care services rather than avoid them as in the earlier waves).

So what gives? Start closing non-Covid healthcare provision once again? Do we think the public will accept that (partial) solution this time around?

[Hallucigenia]

Interesting that much of the supply constraint is because they are trying to keep open, and operating, many of the areas that were closed in earlier waves...So what gives? Start closing non-Covid healthcare provision once again?

I think we're some way past that point - they're saying "The situation is as serious as it was last year...we have done very few inpatient elective operations over the past few days...the situation is as serious as it was in March 2020 and January 2021"

That's the reality of where things on the frontline are now - which is all rather at odds with eg the Telegraph loudly proclaiming "Covid pandemic over in Britain", and MPs behaving in Parliament accordingly.

[look]

this post is about the doctors that are not working against covid. I want that you understad what i mean when i said that covid could be eliminated in 6 months if doctors work and some other things would be done.

years ago, i get a medical magazine called "American review of respiratory desease" It is from march 1983. I get it in a library, if nobody wanted it, it would had gone to garbage.
Today i begin look the highlights. Then i see an article about almitrine. It seems to me that it could be useful for covid. Then i searched in google by almitrine and covid. i found this:

https://search.bvsalud.org/global-liter ... ho-1232704

It's in a WHO site.

for they who will say that this is not cientifical proof, my answer is the same: we are in a war.

as almitrine is an old substance, nobody will gave millions to pay for a research like the friends of the virus want.

[look]

i hope you understand that the question is not simply almitrine, it's perhaps more than 100 or than 1000 treatments already studied but not read and not applied.

about almitrine, here a text from UK

https://www.hra.nhs.uk/planning-and-imp ... -covid-19/

[Hallucigenia]

It's in a WHO site.

See, this is part of the problem, you don't have the experience to know what you're talking about. This is not some kind of recommendation from the WHO, it is their library website, with a copy of a paper from the World Journal of Clinical Cases, a fairly minor journal for reporting cases. It only has three patients with no controls - it's anecdote not science.

Yes, these kinds of anecdotes can lead to proper studies, but they're meaningless on their own. Imagine I said that I had three Covid patients who got better after eating hamburgers, would you immediately put all Covid patients on hamburgers? Of course not.

for they who will say that this is not cientifical proof, my answer is the same: we are in a war.

War is all about managing resources - direct resources at the wrong target and they will be wasted. Poland had invested lots of money in cavalry in 1939 - an approach which had worked well for hundreds of years, but then they were faced by German tanks.

In this case the scarce resource is health budgets and the facilities to test drugs properly - both are limited and should not be wasted.

as almitrine is an old substance, nobody will gave millions to pay for a research like the friends of the virus want.

Nonsense. There's plenty of organisations funding trials of off-patent drugs for Covid, notably the British government with the RECOVERY trial which has saved possibly millions of lives by validating dexamethasone as a treatment for Covid - a classic "cheap" off-patent drug. It's also given answers on what doesn't work, like hydroxychloroquine. Only friends of the virus would want to waste resources on things that don't work.

about almitrine, here a text from UK

https://www.hra.nhs.uk/planning-and-imp ... -covid-19/

I really don't get what your point is here - this is a notification that a trial has been approved by an ethics committee - disproving your point that nobody wants to do trials on off=patent drugs!

It doesn't prove that it works. Yes, there is a plausible mechanism by which almitrine might help a subset of Covid patients and it's worth studying it, but no more than that. If it does work then terrific - but at the moment we don't know if it works or not.

[look]

after reading your post, i'm more calm, i ate a hamburguer today, so i am better protected... (humour)

i will separate my answer because sometimes i lost what i write.

[look]

here when i go to a supermarket, there's a guard that doesn't let anybody without a mask to enter in the suppermarket. When you are in the supermarket and the mask fals a bit, immediately an employee come to ask to place the mask better.
I don't are fan of that things, but i think that i must say that for you, as the press says covid is strong in UK.

If somebody said that 3 patients turn better after eating hamburgers, if there doesn't exist knowledge in contrary, i would yes (if i were in a position for that) order to serve hamburgers for the covid patients.

[look]

if the UK gov. tested dex. like you wrote, congratulations for the UK gov. I didn't know it.

the best remedy to prevent the initial problem of lack o oxygen is metil prednisolone, i suppose, but it exist only as a injection. Metil prednisolone is 6 times better than prednizolone. I didn't find comparison between prednizolone and dexamathazone, so it's possible that dex. is better.

[XFool]

If somebody said that 3 patients turn better after eating hamburgers, if there doesn't exist knowledge in contrary, i would yes (if i were in a position for that) order to serve hamburgers for the covid patients.

Then it sounds as if you are relying more on magic than medical science to decide these things!

The money you would go ahead and spend on hamburgers would be better spent finding out if hamburgers really do cure COVID, before you go ahead and spend it all on hamburgers. The same applies to anything else.

[Julian]

If somebody said that 3 patients turn better after eating hamburgers, if there doesn't exist knowledge in contrary, i would yes (if i were in a position for that) order to serve hamburgers for the covid patients.

Then it sounds as if you are relying more on magic than medical science to decide these things!

The money you would go ahead and spend on hamburgers would be better spent finding out if hamburgers really do cure COVID, before you go ahead and spend it all on hamburgers. The same applies to anything else.

I understand why Hallucigenia didn't feel like spending a long time trying to come up with another analogy and chose hamburgers but the one thing that analogy fails to adequately capture, IMHO, is the fact that all drugs have side effects so they have the potential to do harm. The side effect profile of a drug is also not necessarily constant, it is possible that a particular side effect might be more threatening in a group of patients suffering from a certain condition due to some vulnerability caused by that condition, and severe Covid-19 is a pretty nasty systemic potentially multi-organ disease. If you discovered that 3 patients recovered after being savagely beaten with a stick for an hour a day for five days in a row(*) would you then administer such beatings to your patients or would you try to find out if the beatings were genuinely the cause of the recovery and assess the collateral damage that the beatings caused? (Not that you're likely to get ethics committee approval for a trial on that one!)

- Julian

(*) I'm picking a pretty extreme and hence not particularly realistic analogy simply to try and convey the point about potential harm. Still not a great analogy but the best I could come up with at short notice.