Coronavirus: How dangerous a threat?

[Chris Gadsden]

What is it worth now?

about a half a billion dollars. More or less.


but, eh, ya know, Portnoy is not relevant because you don't frequent the site.

got it.

 

[Merckx index]

Spain is another country that recently carried out widespread antibody testing, and used the results for, among other things, estimating mortality rates at different ages. I haven’t been able to access the full report. However, I was able to find some up-to-date age-related mortality rates in Spain based solely on confirmed cases (I think. The overall mortality rate is 10%, which suggests that a large majority of all confirmed cases are contributed by the very old):

0-9 0.2%
10-19 0.3%
20-29 0.2%
30-39 0.3%
40-49 0.6%
50-59 1.4%
60-69 4.9%
70-79 14.1%
80-89 20.7%
90+ 21.9%

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105596/covid-19-mortality-rate-by-age-group-in-spain-march/

The antibody testing in Spain found that 5% of the population was seropositive. The proportion of confirmed cases per million is 0.6%. So there are 8.3 times as many people who have been infected as confirmed cases (though we should correct for currently infected people who haven’t yet made antibodies). If we divide the mortality rates listed above by 8.3, we should get a fairly good indication of true mortality rates. This assumes that seropositivity is more or less constant in different age groups, but this is what the Netherlands study found. As further confirmation of the accuracy of this estimate, the values are reasonably close to the corresponding age-related mortality rates in France (in parentheses), from the ages 30-79 (bold) , posted earlier. The values at younger ages are so low that one might expect large differences, while the French estimate of mortality above 80 was considerably higher that what I have calculated here for Spain.

0-9 0.024% (0.001%)
10-19 0.036% (0.001%)
20-29 0.024% (0.007%)
30-39 0.036% (0.02%)
40-49 0.07% (0.06%)
50-59 0.17% (0.2%)
60-69 0.59% (0.9%)
70-79 1.70% (2.4%)
80-89 2.49%
90+ 2.61%

So it was about 10 days for the both of us before we got back into the weight room/track and resumed training. As I mentioned, I lost ~12 lbs of muscle mass and virtually all CV fitness.

You lost twelve pounds of muscle in ten days, just from inactivity? And all your CV fitness? I never heard of muscle being lost virtually overnight from inactivity. And in my experience, CV fitness lasts far longer than ten days.

had you ever built anything in your life you may have come to realize there really are things worse than death.

There are things worse than death, but if you think money or some business is one of them, I think your priorities are wrong. What's really valuable is the knowledge you gain building something over your life, and nothing other than death can take that away.

Not to mention that implying that Portnoy could lose his life's work is way over the top. He's in his early 40s, he founded Barstool less than twenty years ago. He isn't even capable of comprehending. what it would be like to lose 40, 50, 60 years of life's work. Especially life work that was actually significant. Getting rich from reviewing pizza and offering garden variety opinions about quarterbacks doesn't even deserve to be called "building something".

 

[Nomad]

You lost twelve pounds of muscle in ten days, just from inactivity? And all your CV fitness? I never heard of muscle being lost virtually overnight from inactivity. And in my experience, CV fitness lasts far longer than ten days.

C'mon...quit trolling - it wasn't lost "overnight" FFS. It was 10 days of complete inactivity. Pre-flu I was 185 and the day I went back to the gym I was a sad 173 - virtually all muscle (muscle atrophy). I just don't ride or run like many masters endurance athletes do. My athletic background was HS & college football (late 70s) and then I did the bodybuilding/powerlifting scene in the 80s & 90s before transitioning to triathlon in my early 40s. I weighed 215 when I was bodybuilding. I still hit the weights 4 days a week with a lot of that for rehab & PT for some serious injuries sustained from a MV accident in 2017 when an idiot blew a red light while texting and T-boned me...not fun.

My CV fitness was toast because I could barely run 100 yds without stopping as part of a 4 mile training run when I started back. It was about 3 weeks later I was able to hit a 1 mile TT at V02max getting close to pre-illness levels (sub 7). So, maybe you don't train regularly with weights to understand any of this and you just ride for either fitness or competition.

 

[Merckx index]

C'mon...quit trolling - it wasn't lost "overnight" FFS. It was 10 days of complete inactivity. Pre-flu I was 185 and the day I went back to the gym I was a sad 173 - virtually all muscle (muscle atrophy).

Twelve pounds in ten days is one pound+ a day--that is literally overnight. How do you think atrophy works--no loss for a week, then twelve pounds in three days?

Do you really know it was all muscle, and not fat? How would you measure muscle loss? You can lose a lot of muscular strength from inactivity, but actual muscle loss is considerably less:

Having had one leg immobilized for two weeks, young people lose up to a third of their muscular strength, while older people lose approximately one-fourth...after two weeks of not moving at all the young men involved in the study lost 17 ounces of muscle, on average...Older men, on the other hand, lost about nine ounces.

https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exerc...th-fades-after-just-two-weeks-of-inactivity#1

One leg typically contains 25-30% of total body skeletal muscle mass, so if one loses 17 oz from two weeks of activity in one leg, one would expect 3-4 pounds for the total body skeletal muscle mass. That's for a young man, and if you were playing football in college in the late 70s, you aren't that young.

So, maybe you don't train regularly with weights to understand any of this and you just ride for either fitness or competition.

Not now, but in my salad days I was a competitive swimmer, and I didn't lose all my CV fitness in ten days of no training. Sure, you might lose an amount that would be critical to competition, but all of it? Are procyclists unable to race if they take ten days off? A lot of them take almost that much time off when getting ready for the TDF.

My CV fitness was toast because I could barely run 100 yds without stopping as part of a 4 mile training run when I started back. It was about 3 weeks later I was able to hit a 1 mile TT at V02max getting close to pre-illness levels (sub 7).

Maybe that was due to whatever bug you were afflicted with, rather than just inactivity.

 

[djpbaltimore]

Cachexia can be a symptom of many viral infections. It is probably that more than wasting from inactivity.

about a half a billion dollars. More or less.


but, eh, ya know, Portnoy is not relevant because you don't frequent the site.

got it.

Still haven't refuted my claim that most people have never heard of it. Seems like they are losing money bigly. Do you suppose that is a factor?

Barstool Sports ‘Hemorrhaging Money,’ Top Editor Flips Out at Writers

The website’s EIC battled with some of his staffers, even calling one writer “super-***,” as the controversial sports site faces financial strain from the pandemic.

www.thedailybeast.com

 

[GVFTA]

Cachexia can be a symptom of many viral infections. It is probably that more than wasting from inactivity.

Still haven't refuted my claim that most people have never heard of it. Seems like they are losing money bigly. Do you suppose that is a factor?

Barstool Sports ‘Hemorrhaging Money,’ Top Editor Flips Out at Writers

The website’s EIC battled with some of his staffers, even calling one writer “super-***,” as the controversial sports site faces financial strain from the pandemic.

www.thedailybeast.com

Most people have probably never heard of your specific job related task either. Does that make you irrelevant?

 

[Jagartrott]

The most interesting here is the shape of the curves and where different countries are now (before, at or (well) past the peak):

Coronavirus cases and deaths over time: how countries compare around the world

Compare the epidemic curve for most countries with these interactive charts

www.theguardian.com

 

[red_flanders]

The most interesting here is the shape of the curves and where different countries are now (before, at or (well) past the peak):

Coronavirus cases and deaths over time: how countries compare around the world

Compare the epidemic curve for most countries with these interactive charts

www.theguardian.com

Thanks for the link, that's a good overview.

 

[djpbaltimore]

Interesting news from the CDC that contact traced an outbreak in Arkansas. It came to light when a pastor and his wife tested positive. They reacted in a timely manner to close services, but this still led to 61 confirmed cases when you include the secondary spread. This just shows how indoor gatherings can be perfect viral amplifiers, particularly when there is singing and elderly people in attendance.

The estimated attack rate ranged from 38% (35 cases among all 92 church A event attendees) to 78% (35 cases among 45 church A event attendees who were tested for SARS-CoV-2). When stratified by age, attack rates were significantly lower among persons aged ≤18 years (6.3%–25.0%) than among adults aged 19–64 years (59.4%–82.6%) (p<0.01). The risk ratios for persons aged ≤18 years compared with those for persons aged 19–64 years were 0.1–0.3. No severe illnesses occurred in children. Among the 35 persons with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, seven (20%) were hospitalized; three (9%) patients died.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6920e2.htm?s_cid=mm6920e2_w

 

[djpbaltimore]

At some point, this was bound to happen.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1262948715624574976

View: https://twitter.com/WISN12News/status/1262948715624574976


A little cold water on the vaccine news from Moderna. The comparison I would make is that expecting Moderna to bring their first vaccine to market against the current competition would be like expecting the poor Orioles to win the World series this year. And the snippets that they released seemed to be designed for the lay audience, which is a red flag. But STONKS UP!

https://twitter.com/x/status/1262819157697060864

View: https://twitter.com/HelenBranswell/status/1262819157697060864

 

[Chris Gadsden]

There are things worse than death, but if you think money or some business is one of them, I think your priorities are wrong. What's really valuable is the knowledge you gain building something over your life, and nothing other than death can take that away.

Not to mention that implying that Portnoy could lose his life's work is way over the top. He's in his early 40s, he founded Barstool less than twenty years ago. He isn't even capable of comprehending. what it would be like to lose 40, 50, 60 years of life's work. Especially life work that was actually significant. Getting rich from reviewing pizza and offering gard

It’s content and it’s more relevant than anything coming out of corporate L press these days. Portnoy calls it his life’s work and I’ll take him at his word as I’m confident he’s better positioned to make that declaration than you are.

Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Again, who’s to say your priorities are right? Other than you, of course.

A letter was received by the leader of the US Government (can I say that??) signed by more than 600 physicians urging the lock-down orders be lifted.

The millions of casualties of a continued shutdown will be hiding in plain sight, but they will be called alcoholism, homelessness, suicide, heart attack, stroke, or kidney failure. In youths it will be called financial instability, unemployment, despair, drug addiction, unplanned pregnancies, poverty, and abuse.

Because the harm is diffuse, there are those who hold that it does not exist. We, the undersigned, know otherwise.

Even Portnoy understands this.

https://www.scribd.com/document/462319362/A-Doctor-a-Day-Letter-Signed

 

[Chris Gadsden]

Still haven't refuted my claim that most people have never heard of it.

Maybe try substantiating your claim. Like, back it up. Start be defining “most” for me.

 

[Koronin]

Interesting news from the CDC that contact traced an outbreak in Arkansas. It came to light when a pastor and his wife tested positive. They reacted in a timely manner to close services, but this still led to 61 confirmed cases when you include the secondary spread. This just shows how indoor gatherings can be perfect viral amplifiers, particularly when there is singing and elderly people in attendance.



https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6920e2.htm?s_cid=mm6920e2_w

Which is likely why our Governor is keeping the 10 person gathering limit for indoors in place, but allowing for up to 25 people gatherings outside. (NASCAR is exempt for allowing racing at Charlotte).

 

[movingtarget]

Coronavirus found in minks

Dutch authorities will introduce mandatory coronavirus testing on all mink fur farms in the Netherlands after it’s believed a worker contracted the virus from one of the animals.

The new measure was introduced after ongoing research found “transmission of new coronavirus from mink to human”.

"On the basis of new research results from the ongoing research into Covid-19 infections at mink farms, it is plausible that an infection took place from mink to human," the Dutch government said, CNN reports.

The research also found that a mink with COVID-19 was asymptomatic.

Euronnews reports that cases of the virus were found in two farms in the Netherlands in April after workers noticed some minks were having difficulties breathing.

It was believed then the animals had been infected by humans but the new research suggest it happened the other way around.



Although the Dutch government said “the risk of the virus being transmitted from mink to human outside mink sheds remains negligible” the Agriculture minister Carola Schouten has imposed restrictions on mink farm owners and veterinarians to report all symptoms pointing to COVID-19 to the health authorities.

All employees are now required to wear protective equipment. Animals and manure on infected farms are not to leave the site


The research also found that antibodies to the virus were found in three out of 11 farm cats on one of the infected farms and is examining the potential role of farm cats transmitting the virus.

Pending further research, mink-farm owners are advised to ensure that cats cannot enter or exit the site.

The government also urged the public to keep pets indoors but stated “the risk of people being infected by their pet remains small”.

 

[Jagartrott]

Italy's lockdown has taken heavy toll on mental health, say psychologists

Survey reveals 80% of people need support to cope with impact of coronavirus crisis

www.theguardian.com

 

[djpbaltimore]

Which is likely why our Governor is keeping the 10 person gathering limit for indoors in place, but allowing for up to 25 people gatherings outside. (NASCAR is exempt for allowing racing at Charlotte).

This is increasingly becoming the most important part of our public health defense. I saw this thread about 'clustering' yesterday.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1263078161748840449

View: https://twitter.com/kakape/status/1263078161748840449

You have to keep these 10% away from large crowds (like weddings). Since we don't know who these people are beforehand, gatherings have to be limited and work from home encouraged. OSU is talking about having their football games with 25% capacity, but I just don't see it happening even if it is outdoors. This also gives new perspective on Sweden and why their outbreak seems to be pretty controlled. They have limited gatherings and people are doing voluntary social distancing. Another report released yesterday has Stockholm at a prevalence of 7% in April and possibly 20% now. Much less in the rest of the country. I think both Sweden and the USA are stuck in the middle of plans that don't seem to be working. For the USA, contact tracers are ramping up across the country, but I worry that they will be spending too much time and resources tracing people that will not transmit the virus and have too many of the super-spreaders fall through the nets. It is much easier to trace smaller outbreaks like SK, NZ, Australia, and Germany currently have.

In March 2020, a wedding in Jordan led to a large outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19). We collected data on 350 wedding attendees, 76 who of whom developed COVID-19. Our study shows high communicability of COVID-19 and the enormous risk for severe acute respiratory syndrome 2 virus transmission during mass gatherings.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/9/20-1469_article?deliveryName=USCDC_333-DM28908

The working plan for schools in my district is that high school age kids will not be back in the classroom for the fall. I forget if 6th or 8th grade was the cutoff for returning. The vacated space will be used to spread out the little kids. Other than potential staffing, it sounds like a realistic plan.

 

[Nomad]

Twelve pounds in ten days is one pound+ a day--that is literally overnight. How do you think atrophy works--no loss for a week, then twelve pounds in three days?

Do you really know it was all muscle, and not fat? How would you measure muscle loss? You can lose a lot of muscular strength from inactivity, but actual muscle loss is considerably less:

It was a significant amount of muscle mass. For one, I have a low body fat % and quite a bit of muscularity due to my regular weight training program & a very strict diet plus supplements (e.g. creatine, BCAAs, Whey protein). I could see the atrophy in the traps, deltoids, lats, biceps & leg muscles. There were also comments made by some of my friends and the trainers at the gym on the loss of muscle mass. And the mirror doesn't lie.

The key here is not just inactivity but complete inactivity from being bedridden and lack of nutrition. Under these conditions the muscles atrophy quickly. Absent any illness and shutting down training for a week or so is probably not going to reduce muscle mass and fitness that much. But in that situation, the athlete is still weight bearing and ambulatory, as well as maintaining proper nutrition. Plus influenza can cause a muscle wasting and a significant effect on metabolism:

Effects of bedrest 5: the muscles, joints and mobility

Abstract This article – the fifth in a series exploring the harmful consequences of bedrest on body and mind – describes how prolonged bedrest and

www.nursingtimes.net

One Week of Bed Rest Leads to Substantial Muscle Atrophy and Induces Whole-Body Insulin Resistance in the Absence of Skeletal Muscle Lipid Accumulation

Short (<10 days) periods of muscle disuse, often necessary for recovery from illness or injury, lead to various negative health consequences. The current study investigated mechanisms underlying disuse-induced insulin resistance, taking into account muscle atrophy. Ten healthy, young males (age...

diabetes.diabetesjournals.org

One leg typically contains 25-30% of total body skeletal muscle mass, so if one loses 17 oz from two weeks of activity in one leg, one would expect 3-4 pounds for the total body skeletal muscle mass. That's for a young man, and if you were playing football in college in the late 70s, you aren't that young.

Yes...I have read that study. And no, I'm not a young buck. But if you regularly train with the weights (properly) and consume a very healthy diet with supplementation - older people can build a significant amount of muscle mass preventing sarcopenia. This isn't anything ground breaking - check out 72 yr old Sly Stallone working out on one of his YouTube videos & and some old footage of Jack LaLanne in his 60s.

Not now, but in my salad days I was a competitive swimmer, and I didn't lose all my CV fitness in ten days of no training. Sure, you might lose an amount that would be critical to competition, but all of it? Are procyclists unable to race if they take ten days off? A lot of them take almost that much time off when getting ready for the TDF.

Sure...but have the cyclists sick with severe influenza completely bedridden and lack of nutrition, then we will see after 10 days or so how race ready they are.

Maybe that was due to whatever bug you were afflicted with, rather than just inactivity.

Maybe...but the first attempt at some CV excercise via running didn't get me very far with respiratory distress. But it's a moot point - since I was able to get back to pre-illness CV fitness in about 3 weeks. Could have been much worse.

And that was the main intent of the original post - to encourage excercise, a healthy diet and good vitamin D levels as a person's best bet in effectively fighting off respiratory infections - things the WH coronavirus task force should be encouraging!

 

[Merckx index]

Here’s a very useful site I’ve been wanting to find for a long time. It reports the number of tests performed every day in the U.S.:

https://covidtracking.com/data/us-daily

Now up to 400,000, which is encouraging, but according to almost all authorities, not nearly enough.

Nomad, you obviously you know your body in a way no one else can. But if you haven’t measured muscle mass loss accurately, you’re just guessing. From the link you posted:

[One week] Bed rest resulted in 1.4 ± 0.2 kg lean tissue loss

That’s about three pounds in one week, not that much more than my estimate of 3-4 lb in two weeks. Or 4-5 lb in ten days, less than half of what you claim. That’s still a very significant loss, of course. Maybe in your case, because you have made a lot of effort to add muscle you normally wouldn’t have, this extra muscle is more vulnerable to immobility than the rest. That’s just a guess.

VO2peak and one-repetition maximum declined by 6.4 ± 2.3 (P < 0.05) and 6.9 ± 1.4% (P < 0.01), respectively.

A decline of 6% is not a total loss of CV fitness. I still think that whatever you were infected with probably contributed to your CV loss. Anything that forces you to stay in bed all the time for ten days is pretty serious, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if it had effects on your respiratory system extending beyond the time of active infection. Certainly we know that can be the case for C19.

We’re getting off topic here. Your original point about the need for healthy diet, sufficient sleep and exercise in fighting off infections is obviously germane. This is an argument, among other things, for allowing people out to exercise, given social distancing.

a backlash is brewing. Forty-one percent of voters have already come to believe that the lockdowns did more harm than good. Barely two months into the lockdown, only 51 percent disagree with that assessment. As the economic trauma continues, those numbers are almost certain to shift and cast the initial lockdowns in an even less favorable light.

Sixty percent of voters nationwide believe that all businesses—ALL businesses—should be allowed to re-open if they adopt appropriate social distancing protocols. Only 26 percent disagree. The reality, of course, is that means everyday Americans will decide what sort of social distancing is appropriate.

On the core issue of who do you trust, upper-income Americans, government employees, college graduates and Democrats alike are all more comfortable with the government making sweeping decisions. The reverse is true for lower- and middle-income Americans, private sector workers, retirees, those without a college degree, Republicans and independents.

https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-lockdowns-are-increasingly-unpopular-opinion-1505239

If a state reopens and sees no immediate spike in cases, is that because it was justified, because insufficient time has passed, because other things went right, or because unlucky super-spreader events haven’t yet happened? In a patchwork, these questions will be asked millions of times over, and many answers will be wrong.

Prevented health threats are less visible than present ones, which means that successful public-health departments tragically make the case for their own diminishment. Since 2008, underfunded local departments have lost more than 50,000 jobs…

Some states are trying to make up for these losses by hiring battalions of contact tracers. These people will call every infected person, talk through their needs, ask for names of anyone they’ve had close or prolonged contact with in the past two days, and call those contacts, too. The process isn’t complicated, but it is laborious…Experts have estimated that the U.S. needs 100,000 to 300,000 contact tracers, and the nation has been slow to recruit them.

Last year, when the Global Health Security Index graded every country on its pandemic preparedness, the United States had the highest overall score, 83.5. But on access to health care specifically, it scored just 25.3. (Out of 195 countries, it tied with The Gambia for 175th place.) That is at least partly the consequence of letting segregationist tenets influence the allocation of health care.

Vulnerability to COVID-19 isn’t just about frequently discussed biological factors like being old; it’s also about infrequently discussed social ones. If people don’t have health insurance, or can afford to live only in areas with poorly funded hospitals, they cannot fight off the virus as those with more advantages can. If people work in poor-paying jobs that can’t be done remotely, have to commute by public transportation, or live in crowded homes, they cannot protect themselves from infection as those with more privilege can.

These social factors explain why the idea of “cocooning” vulnerable populations while the rest of society proceeds as normal is facile. That cocooning already exists, and it is a bug of the system, not a feature. Entire groups of people have been pushed to the fringes of society and jammed into potential hot zones. Of the 100 largest clusters of COVID-19 in the U.S., nearly all have occurred in prisons, meatpacking plants, nursing homes, and psychiatric or developmental-care facilities.

The pandemic discourse has been dominated by medical countermeasures like antibody tests (which are currently too unreliable), drugs (which are not cure-alls), and vaccines (which are almost certainly at least a year away). But social solutions like paid sick leave, which two in three low-wage workers do not have, can be implemented immediately. Imagine if the energy that went into debating the merits of hydroxychloroquine went into ensuring hazard pay, or…health care for all? “We have decades of social-science research that tells us these things work,” says Courtney Boen, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s a question of political will, not scientific discovery.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/...andemic-states-reopening-inequalities/611866/

 

[movingtarget]

Just 7.3% of Stockholm had Covid-19 antibodies by end of April, study shows

Official findings add to concerns about Sweden’s laissez-faire strategy towards the pandemic

www.theguardian.com

Dagestan doctors speak out over 'tragically high' death toll

Russian region’s official Covid-19 toll is 36 but 659 pneumonia deaths have been recorded

www.theguardian.com

Based on the Dagestan region alone, the death toll in Russia must be higher than the official figures especially if pneumonia deaths are not being counted !

 

[Jagartrott]

16000 medical doctors from all health disciplines have signed a petition in Belgium to reopen schools for all young children (currently, only 6, 7 and 11 year-olds are allowed in schools), without social distancing rules. They say that children are disproportionately affected by the measures, that their parents are also under a lot of stress, and that the spread of the disease in schools can likely be limited if fairly simple measures are upheld (like opening windows in classes, tracing&isolating positive cases, etc.).

 

[djpbaltimore]

Really interesting analysis. I think the media jumped the gun on the west coast vs east coast strain theory. At this point, most mutations are likely to be deleterious to transmission (or neutral) until proven otherwise.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1263745877702737920

View: https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1263745877702737920

 

[Unchained]

I think saying that the media is jumping the gun is mild. In a rush to publish..or get on air..many things that were reported @2 months ago are " mostly " inaccurate..and the news media is only one culprit for inaccuracies.
And in my opinion the mutations appearing in children are the most troubling..early reporting saying children were all but immune was at the very very least premature.

More kids fall ill to mysterious Kawasaki-like disease as officials test for coronavirus

The New York City health department says children have presented symptoms of the mysterious Kawasaki disease, raising concerns about a COVID-19 link.

www.usatoday.com

 

[djpbaltimore]

That is one reason I would've liked to have seen science journalists get to attend briefings with the task force instead of Jim Acosta and Co. The briefings were about 1% as effective as they could've been at providing usable information.

This pretty much ends the chloroquine story. Not only was it not effective in combination with antibiotics, it was actually detrimental. I guess some people will argue that it was not randomized, or that Zinc was not included, but the arrhythmia data alone should be enough to freeze its use. Which probably means the FDA does nothing.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1263811764287725574

View: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1263811764287725574

 

[red_flanders]

That is one reason I would've liked to have seen science journalists get to attend briefings with the task force instead of Jim Acosta and Co. The briefings were about 1% as effective as they could've been at providing usable information.

This pretty much ends the chloroquine story. Not only was it not effective in combination with antibiotics, it was actually detrimental. I guess some people will argue that it was not randomized, or that Zinc was not included, but the arrhythmia data alone should be enough to freeze its use. Which probably means the FDA does nothing.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1263811764287725574

View: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1263811764287725574

Nothing ends blind faith and true belief.

 

[Jagartrott]

I think saying that the media is jumping the gun is mild. In a rush to publish..or get on air..many things that were reported @2 months ago are " mostly " inaccurate..and the news media is only one culprit for inaccuracies.
And in my opinion the mutations appearing in children are the most troubling..early reporting saying children were all but immune was at the very very least premature.

More kids fall ill to mysterious Kawasaki-like disease as officials test for coronavirus

The New York City health department says children have presented symptoms of the mysterious Kawasaki disease, raising concerns about a COVID-19 link.

www.usatoday.com

The Kawasaki cases are a marginal but spectacular phenomenon. Which does well in the press though, in their hunt for clicks. Children are much less likely to be badly affected by corona, and they are apparently also less likely to be infected, according to a new study:

Children half as likely as adults to get coronavirus, study says

Under-20s appear 56% less likely to contract Covid-19, preliminary evidence suggests

www.theguardian.com