I agree with Yancek.

So for, no drug has a proved record of a worthwhile ratio benefits/risks against COVID-19. More generally, very few is known about it, which is not surprising for a disease that was identified just a few months ago. We don't even know if any drug will help nor if any efficient vaccine will ever be found, despite the many people trying to answer these questions, to whom I am thankful.

About Mr Donald Trump, being not in concern by the next US presidential election (I am French), I will just say that he is not a person from whom I would seek advice with regard to COVID-19. I will follow the advice and recommendations given by French sanitary authorities. If I lived in the USA I would probably attentively listen to Dr Fauci.

I disagree, but admittedly I take more of the buddhism route that most bad things that happen to one self are of your own doing. E.g. you had wrong awareness, wrong action, etc.. "It is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult to see one’s own faults.".. But that's getting into philosophy...

Point I was trying to make is why not be optimistic, why take it as another opportunity to bash the US president? How responsible is that of journalism in a time like this.

Wasn't talking about medical professionals, I was talking about the media who report on such things but cant help themselves to sensationalize it. Also you misunderstood me, I was not hopeful of this drug because of Trump but because of the success stories I heard from various countries had with it.


Again I'm not seeking medical advice from the President, although he basically echos what Dr. Fauci says anyways..

Out of curiosity who thinks there is some hidden agenda behind this? Have your heard about Bill Gates owning a patent to a virus similar to SARS-CoV-2? And Giving donations to that biolab in Wuhan... What if this was all planned to get us vaccinated? It's very odd I think Bill Gates has been interested in viruses for sometime now, and is now the one playing hero; the answer to all our prayers. I know I wont be getting the vaccine, how about you?

• The Pirbright Institute, which is partially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, holds the patent on a strain of coronavirus. The Pirbright Institute also owns other virus patents, including one for African swine fever virus – listed as a “vaccine.”

• Bill Gates & Barack Obama released a docuseries on Netflix called PANDEMIC in December right before the Wuhan virus was "discovered." The docuseries pushed the need for the Gates Foundation to receive funding to carry on virus research to prevent the next PANDEMIC!

• Bill Gates funded the Wuhan lab in China that released the Wuhan virus and is already selling test kits.

• Bill Gates was a member of China's Academy of Sciences who built the lab and he was awarded their highest honor.

Here's a site with all that conspiracy stuff condensed: https://www.tierneyrealnewsnetwork.c...n-virus-3-20-1

With all that said if I was a risk for severe illness from this virus I would get the vaccine. But since i'm not at that level of risk I think it's also safe to err of the side of caution by not taking a vaccine who's development has been rushed.

I can't find any connection at all let alone any responsibility for release beyond that of the Zero to Zero group and Netflix for the docuseries, Pandemic. There have been lots of films for decades about pandemic. One, "Outbreak" released in 1995, went so far as to portray a town willfully destroyed by nuclear bombing to stop it from spreading. The risk of pandemic has grown since before the turn of the 20th Century due to increased global travel for both pleasure and business. It's a no-brainer plot and of increasing (and real) concern and since no one body has control over international travel, water and air currents, not a likely candidate for nefarious plots. Hold a rattlesnake by the tail and it can turn and bite you. Not exactly a good defensive weapon, let alone an offensive one.

There is zero evidence that the Wuhan Lab "released" the virus. So far all that is actually known is that they simply studied bats that already had it who lived in caves 1000 miles away.

The Pirbright Institute is a renowned, highly respected, publicly funded research institute mostly dedicated to the study of diseases among farm animals.

I find these supposed connections rather irresponsible, especially given how little is known so far... castles of sand.

No, the Gates foundation has been working to eradicate malaria and polio in developing countries for awhile. It sounds silly to think that anyone would believe it. Unfortunately I do know someone

The rumors, mistruths, outright lies, and urban legends surrounding COVID-19, particularly here in the States, prove that Ronald Reagan was quite correct when he said that "facts are what people think."

Except that too many people do not think.

[RANT]

As an aside, it has long confounded me that persons will believe stuff that they read on their computer screens when they would not believe the same stuff if they read in the National Inquirer or the Globe. (I understand why persons read the National Inquirer and the Globe--I like fiction as much as the next guy--I just don't understand why they believe them.)

No one can know everything. That's why we have and need experts.

We should listen to the experts.

Some random handle on Facebook or Twitter is ipso facto not an expert.

Furrfu.

[/RANT]

Just a excerpt from Wired to get one thinking biologically --

Un-Miracle Drugs Could Help Tame the Pandemic


A new idea for how to fight pandemics came to David Fedson as he walked through
Lausanne on a sunny spring afternoon in 2004. That a global catastrophe was on
Fedson's mind even as he made his way along the Swiss city's scenic streets was
not unusual. Fedson, who studied medicine at Yale and trained at Johns Hopkins,
had served on a number of national vaccination committees in the United States
. . .
By 2004, Fedson, now 82, had reached a scientific dead end. But, as he walked
through Lausanne, his thoughts rerouted sharply. If it would never be possible
to stop a pandemic viral infection with vaccines and antivirals in some
countries, maybe the virus itself was the wrong thing to treat. Maybe it made
more sense to treat people?s bodies, once they became infected, so that they
could withstand whatever the virus had in store for them.
. . .
Ever since the idea came to him, Fedson, an American who lives in the
countryside of Eastern France with his wife, has been a literal voice in the
wilderness. He says he has repeatedly discussed his ideas with officials at WHO
and the CDC. He has reached out to private charities and has written one
scientific article and ?letter to the editor? after another, calling for the
experiments that would put his idea to the test.
. . .
Fedson's idea of treating the body rather than targeting the virus was
soil-focused thinking. That he had returned to an idea from generations past
may have been more than a coincidence. His home, in France?s
Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, is more than three centuries old. When he looks up
from his work in his home office, he can see the peak of Mont Blanc through the
window.

To this day, Fedson can't comprehend why almost no one has been interested in
his idea of battling pandemics by targeting the body (what researchers refer to
as the 'host response')with generic drugs. When he talks about the idea, the
exasperation comes out in almost every other sentence. "Why we can't have the
imagination to take advantage of what we've already got is just beyond me," he
says.

I'm pretty sure some here will once again take this as political but it is exactly my point that politics has no business in a medical health protocol. The ultimate arbiter in this is what has actually been the quickest AND least risky return to normalcy and that appears to be well modeled in Australia and New Zealand who have posted amazingly good numbers combined with the most aggressive testing programs in the world. Here's an excerpt from a really good, really positive article from NY Times -

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/w...=pocket-newtab

COVID-19 is most likely here to stay in the mid-term. Best option is to modify lifestyle with goal of maintaining an increased immunity.

The drug metaformin derived from Goat's Rue (Galega officinalis) looks promising, severely limiting sugar intake, ceasing smoking tobacco -- these are just a few recommended steps to begin the lifelong task of increasing disease tolerance. Certain amino acids hold promise for metabolic priming to increase cellular immunity (T-cells), especially with increasing immunity in the respiratory system. But don't believe me! Prove it for yourself. I'm just a watchman. My job is done.

It's looking increasingly like it's not just a respiratory disease.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/h...confusion.html
https://www.today.com/health/skin-sy...d-toes-t178991

There may be more subtle and/or long term issues with other organs too, that haven't yet become apparent.

https://news.trust.org/item/20200426070622-y65rz
https://news.trust.org/item/20200426101936-kk4la
https://news.trust.org/item/20200426101936-kk4la
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/25/maki...lion-jobs.html
https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/techn...mal/ar-BB13cgd
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/lat...ake-13-2192312
https://www.stamfordadvocte.com/news...g-15226487.php
https://www.fox5ny.com/news/i-just-c...g-15226487.php
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/o...mptomatic.html
https://www.sj.com/articles/virus-fa...000-1158788574

Those numbers are total cases, not deaths. The interface at https://www.vdh.virginia.gov/coronavirus/ is a bit confusing, it lets you toggle between hospitalizations and deaths, but it doesn't actually show the percentage for either of those (it only changes the lighter cyan part in the bar charts). You can see the total numbers when hovering over each bar (so it's possible to compute the percentage).

Sometimes I wonder if other diseases would help with such outbreaks.
Measles, for example, are strange. Apparently 'resetting' the bodies immune system, while also paradoxically giving immunity to measles regardless.

We've co evolved with these illnesses for who knows how long, possibly millions of years, thousands at the very least, and only recently we have begun vaccinating.
Sure, polio sucks, but what good is a polio vaccine if the first thing people do with it is cram themselves by the millions into cities to slave away doing all sorts of nonsense?

What kind of life is that? Rural me will never understand. No matter how pretty the skylines twinkle.
Cursed catch 22. Did I survive something I would not have survived had I not been vaccinated against, lets say, Tetanus? Then why would I want to be against vaccination? I do enjoy being alive, after all.

But I also don't really like vaccines, despite all that. I think it also has a psychological effect.
If I know I'm not vaccinated then I'll always take more care about my actions to try and minimize the risk, and it's certainly possible to live without a vaccine, see COVID-19 (hey that even rhymes).
It also reveals many shortcomings in society we've have patched over and I don't see why anyone would want a COVID vaccine to be developed, because that's a direct re-yanking of the chain around the throat.

Now you have no excuse to come back to the city and slave away.
Why not advocate for more babymaking instead?
Ah, but, even taking out the population that now vilifies children as some sort of parasitical curse, it's also generally considered too difficult and costly to raise them.
...thanks to the status quo before COVID.

Bats got decimated by that whitesnout fungus thing, but now they're starting to form a genetic resistance against it.

So, why would I not be okay with a vaccine if a natural resistance can be formed, why not help the body with that?
Again, to me, personally, it's a matter of knowledge.
Maybe there's actually a plethora of illnesses out there that we now don't even regard as pathogens because our species bred through it naturally.
Maybe we even got some allies by breeding them into submission, like we did with so many plants and their feeble attempts at destroying us.

Yet, now we crush them up because they give our meal that special kick.
Just breed more. I've even heard that that kind of injection is actually said to be somewhat pleasant, too.

Maybe that needs to be researched more... don't get it peer reviewed without compensation, though.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

But seriously. Ehhhh. Mehhhh. COVID, man, doesn't even matter if it's a conspiracy cooked up in some lab to make us all sheeple or an actual virus, the way it's handled is still not to my liking but at the same time I see that not being vaccinated can work out, too, even if that deduces (hehe...deuce... Edit: Wait, it's deduct! Anyway... see, it's starting!) 50 IQ points or something from me at the very least.
Damn antivaxxxXxxxXXxxXXxxXxxxXxxxXxxXxxxXxxXXxxXxxerssssssssss. Can't even make a case for genetic warfare against pathogens because of them.

Anyway, what really gets my goat is myopia and co, anyway. Damn glasses, whoevever invented them cursed us all with sloppy eyesight.
Oh it'll be alright, just wear some glasses, they're sexy. They make you look intelligent.

To that I say:
Wisdom is more important, and I'd rather want to see the sexy in others, but good luck with that when I misplace my damn shotglasses.
Vaccines are the shotglasses of human immunity.
Maybe one day it will become natural, but I don't know. Maybe one day getting vaccinated will somehow teach our genes to naturally reject polio, and maybe one day two Magoose..or Mageese will produce a hawkeye child that can look at things without wearing two telescopes wired into a frame.

Freaking eyeballs, man. Yeah sure rip apart my retina one day, it's gonna happen, I just know it but thankfully there's glasses then which I can look sexy in while my vision is full of gunk and darkness.
Or get lasered.

Yeah nah, you get vaccinated against Corona-chan, I'll just leech off y'alls herd immunity.

Despite measles being eliminated in the US there were 704 cases last year. Some of them were due to people traveling to foreign countries with out being vaccinated. Some from visitors from abroad and 80% from under immunized communities.

With the MMR vaccine scare and the advents of social media there are lots of people that will not immunize their children.

Without being vaccinated for pertussis you could be a carrier and pass it off to infants which could be fatal. There are always stories on the news.

Conquering Polio was probably one of the biggest medical achievements of the 20th century. There were only 94 cases last year. 400 million people were vaccinated in just a few years and reduced the number of cases by 90%. Not to give my age away but I remember standing in line to get my vaccine ( it was oral by that time ). How many people today would automatically get a vaccine these days without question.

Herd immunity isn't perfect. Being asymptomatic you could be a carrier and infect a bunch of people. Hopefully testing a lot of people will help.

Despite what you hear the experts who have actually looked at the thing can say positively say that it was not engineered. There would be some kind of tell tale marker which there isn't.

Hydroxychloroquine is still given to folks wanting to travel to malaria sites. One takes it for some amount of time BEFORE they might be exposed, like weeks. I took it before going to Africa.

I'll agree that no one drug seems to show promise but the patients that get these drugs are not the average persons. They are in high distress generally with secondary issues. No one even seems to be concerned by the 80% out there that have little to no symptoms. OK, I know no one has time or resources now to study them.

If one is waiting for a vaccine then who knows. HIV and other virus work has been ongoing for 25 years without any results at all.

Still Sweden goes on as normal. Live healthy, if you are sick stay home.


"Hydroxychloroquine is also FDA-approved to treat autoimmune conditions such as chronic discoid lupus erythematosus, systemic lupus erythematosus in adults, and rheumatoid arthritis"

However they seem to want to sell folks more expensive biologic drugs.