Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[TVScout]

British study finds ‘no deaths in otherwise healthy school-age children’ hospitalized with covid-19

https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3249

[Xenos]

Free article:

What if the First Coronavirus Vaccines Aren't the Best?

https://news.yahoo.com/first-coronavirus-vaccines-arent-best-123248940.html

Quote

Seven months into the coronavirus crisis, with more than 30 vaccines rapidly advancing through the rigorous stages of clinical trials, a surprising number of research groups are placing bets on some that have not yet been given to a single person.

The New York Times has confirmed that at least 88 candidates are under active preclinical investigation in laboratories across the world, with 67 of them slated to begin clinical trials before the end of 2021.

Those trials may begin after millions of people have already received the first wave of vaccines. It will take months to see if any of them are safe and effective. Nevertheless, the scientists developing them say their designs may be able to prompt more powerful immune responses, or be much cheaper to produce, or both — making them the slow and steady winners of the race against the coronavirus.

“The first vaccines may not be the most effective,” said Ted Ross, the director of the Center for Vaccines and Immunology at the University of Georgia, who is working on an experimental vaccine he hopes to put into clinical trials in 2021.

 

Quote

Many of the vaccines at the front of the pack today try to teach the body the same basic lesson. They deliver a protein that covers the surface of the coronavirus, called spike, which appears to prompt the immune system to make antibodies to fight it off.

But some researchers worry that we may be pinning too many hopes on a strategy that has not been proved to work. “It would be a shame to put all our eggs in the same basket,” said David Veesler, a virologist at the University of Washington.

In March, Veesler and his colleagues designed a vaccine that consists of millions of nanoparticles, each one studded with 60 copies of the tip of the spike protein, rather than the entire thing. The researchers thought these bundles of tips might pack a stronger immunological punch.

When the researchers injected these nanoparticles into mice, the animals responded with a flood of antibodies to the coronavirus — much more than produced by a vaccine containing the entire spike. When the scientists exposed vaccinated mice to the coronavirus, they found that it completely protected them from infection.

 

[BobbyPhil1781]

Interesting the NY Times would publish this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/29/health/coronavirus-testing.html

Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be.

The usual diagnostic tests may simply be too sensitive and too slow to contain the spread of the virus.

[ramssuperbowl99]

9 hours ago, acowboys62 said:

So what makes this study accurate in your mind vs the studies that showed the combo reduced the mortality?  Not asking to stoke the fire, genuinely looking to understand the difference in one versus the other. Putting any political stuff aside how can a non medial/scientific individual decipher between the two? 

There are 2 reasons I'm confident in the increased mortality:

1. Rare drug-drug interactions (which is what this is, basically) are difficult to spot normally, even in larger clinical trials. This type of meta analysis is the best way to get a large sample size to start bringing these things to light.
2. This isn't so much a comment directly on the accuracy of the study, but this result completely fits with everything we know about how QT prolongation works when co-administering drugs. If you asked someone before this trial to model what the potential impact would be when co-administering HCQ with other drugs that lengthen QT interval, you'd hear back that this would be a risk. In general, when there's a large sample that confirms the thing you would predict, I'm more likely to take it seriously than something like reports of people being re-infected (which I've been repeatedly skeptical of in this thread) since they're based on a smaller sample and conflict with established scientific precedent. 

I didn't say this explicitly, but if you're wondering why I'm annoyed it's just because I think this is an example of pharma failing for a really bad reason. All along, I've said in this thread that risk isn't worth the reward, so it's frustrating to see that it took tens of thousands of people being administered a dose for the medical community to see that. A lot of time in pharma, we're judged only as failures when a drug is officially discontinued, but to me this is a failure because the thing that doomed this molecule was a known risk all along. It should have never gotten to this point. Some totally unexpected side effect or risk we couldn't see coming? Alright, that happens. But we didn't look both ways before we crossed the street here.

[acowboys62]

12 hours ago, ramssuperbowl99 said:

There are 2 reasons I'm confident in the increased mortality:

1. Rare drug-drug interactions (which is what this is, basically) are difficult to spot normally, even in larger clinical trials. This type of meta analysis is the best way to get a large sample size to start bringing these things to light.
2. This isn't so much a comment directly on the accuracy of the study, but this result completely fits with everything we know about how QT prolongation works when co-administering drugs. If you asked someone before this trial to model what the potential impact would be when co-administering HCQ with other drugs that lengthen QT interval, you'd hear back that this would be a risk. In general, when there's a large sample that confirms the thing you would predict, I'm more likely to take it seriously than something like reports of people being re-infected (which I've been repeatedly skeptical of in this thread) since they're based on a smaller sample and conflict with established scientific precedent. 

I didn't say this explicitly, but if you're wondering why I'm annoyed it's just because I think this is an example of pharma failing for a really bad reason. All along, I've said in this thread that risk isn't worth the reward, so it's frustrating to see that it took tens of thousands of people being administered a dose for the medical community to see that. A lot of time in pharma, we're judged only as failures when a drug is officially discontinued, but to me this is a failure because the thing that doomed this molecule was a known risk all along. It should have never gotten to this point. Some totally unexpected side effect or risk we couldn't see coming? Alright, that happens. But we didn't look both ways before we crossed the street here.

Got it, makes sense, and definitely when broken down like that I can see the frustration side of it. Knew risks, moved forward anyways.  Yea, just add it to the list of COVID frustrations. 

[TVScout]

Repost because it has been updated:

Asked and answered: What readers want to know about coronavirus

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/health/coronavirus-frequently-asked-questions/?itid=lk_inline_manual_61

[TVScout]

 

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?fbclid=IwAR2-muRM3tB3uBdbTrmKwH1NdaBx6PpZo2kxotNwkUXlnbZXCwSRP2OmqsI

[TVScout]

Persistent heterogeneity not short-term overdispersion determines herd immunity to COVID-19

Quote

Our estimates suggest that the hardest-hit areas, such as NYC, are close to the heterogeneity-modified herd immunity threshold following the first wave of the epidemic. 

Herd immunity @ 20%?

 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.26.20162420v2

[acowboys62]

12 minutes ago, TVScout said:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?fbclid=IwAR2-muRM3tB3uBdbTrmKwH1NdaBx6PpZo2kxotNwkUXlnbZXCwSRP2OmqsI

So that is interesting. 

[BobbyPhil1781]

30 minutes ago, TVScout said:

 

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?fbclid=IwAR2-muRM3tB3uBdbTrmKwH1NdaBx6PpZo2kxotNwkUXlnbZXCwSRP2OmqsI

I find it hard to believe anyone honestly thinks the death numbers are what they are if their minds are clear of a political agenda. Maybe if we suggested those numbers were true as Covid was simply a factor no matter how much of a factor it is whether the minority or primary. It's also naive to believe this thing isn't heavily politicized by some which could cause false reporting as a result. I'm not suggesting these numbers are accurate but I definitely don't believe the numbers that they keep shoving down our throats. The fact we don't know is just dumb.

This virus is just another check mark as to our country being so ******* gross it's disturbing. 

[vikesfan89]

49 minutes ago, TVScout said:

 

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?fbclid=IwAR2-muRM3tB3uBdbTrmKwH1NdaBx6PpZo2kxotNwkUXlnbZXCwSRP2OmqsI

I don't get why intentional or unintentional poisoning is included with Covid deaths. 

Most of the rest I can see covid contributing to the death but with poisoning it seems like they wouldn't need another cause. 

Or did they drink bleach to kill the covid?

[Xenos]

40 minutes ago, BobbyPhil1781 said:

I find it hard to believe anyone honestly thinks the death numbers are what they are if their minds are clear of a political agenda. Maybe if we suggested those numbers were true as Covid was simply a factor no matter how much of a factor it is whether the minority or primary. It's also naive to believe this thing isn't heavily politicized by some which could cause false reporting as a result. I'm not suggesting these numbers are accurate but I definitely don't believe the numbers that they keep shoving down our throats. The fact we don't know is just dumb.

This virus is just another check mark as to our country being so ******* gross it's disturbing. 

I believe the death numbers are undercounted. We won’t really know what the real numbers are until much later.

Edited August 30, 2020 by Xenos

[SwAg]

I genuinely lose hope when I read some of these posts.

[Xenos]

1 hour ago, TVScout said:

 

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm?fbclid=IwAR2-muRM3tB3uBdbTrmKwH1NdaBx6PpZo2kxotNwkUXlnbZXCwSRP2OmqsI

Hmmn, this is same doctor who posted this:

https://mobile.twitter.com/DrElizabethDC/status/1300104267282313217/photo/1

[SwAg]

You guys are literally taking a propaganda meme, realizing you’ll be laughed out of the room if you post it, so you post the source of it and hope that the room has a fifth-grade reading level.