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Key developments for Tuesday, August 11, 2020

14 Comments on Key developments for Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Welcome to the newly revamped Key Developments, now twice weekly and with non-COVID news. Right now, it’s actually still just COVID news, but we’ll be slowly morphing it into something broader as we go.

There are over 20.4 million global cases.  Cases have grown globally by 1.7 million since last week, which is up from the week before. Global case growth is accelerating. There have been over 742,000 deaths around the globe. There are over 5.2 million cases in the US. There have been over 167,000 deaths in the US, with about 1,000 deaths per day. The US, Brazil, and India continue to lead global case growth. Mexico is third in the world in number of deaths, at over 50,000:

The Remdesivir shortage should ease this fall. Gilead is ramping up production by millions of doses both before and after October. Pfizer will help manufacture and supply it.

There are case reports of critically ill COVID-19 patients making some recovery with a novel antiviral. Per discussion with contributor Ari Allyn-Feuer, aviptadil is a synthetic analogue of a natural peptide hormone with G-protein-coupled receptors as a target. It acts as a vasodilator, but it’s mechanism of action against COVID-19 is not clear. Clinical trials are warranted.

Most infected people don’t know their point of infection. But when you read the article, you also start to realize that people rationalize and intellectualize their symptoms. They don’t believe they’re sick when they are, they think they’re better when they’re still symptomatic, and they hang out with people thinking six feet is enough distance to be protective. Droplets can carry 27 feet…

Stop it with the hydroxycholorquine already.

One in three Americans will miss their August rent payment. The eviction moratorium is over, so evictions will be starting en masse shortly. Tens of millions of Americans are about be homeless, and it’s unclear how helpful the president’s stimulus by executive order (EO) will actually be. His EO and memoranda did not include a second stimulus check.

Here’s a lecture from experts on the current status of vaccine trials.  This is really excellent work and it’s from world-class scientists and leaders in their field. Worth a watch.

The US looks to be turning a corner, but India is not looking so hot:

Europe is on the rise, driven by cases in Spain:

Small family gatherings are driving case growth in the US.

Masks, best to worst (and the gaiter-type is worse than none!):

Use an electric cooker to sanitize your n95:

A lot of college football is cancelled. Pac 12 has postponed its season, the Big Ten has postponed, and other conferences are likely to follow:

Big cities are taking huge hits. People are fleeing the cities as they are able to work from home, so home can be somewhere cheaper. Rents are dropping in metro areas. It might be hard for some cities to bounce back.

The Georgia school that made bad choices and punished its students for documenting them is now closed because of virus spread. Surprise, surprise.  More on Georgia schools:

It’s the end of a more rational era.

No, we’re probably not going to have a vaccine before election day. Not a safe one, anyway. Russia thinks skipping stage 3 trials is fine (it’s not):

Vaping is not a great idea right now:

Stephanie Arnold | cosmicpixle

Stephanie Arnold is an advanced practice psychiatric nurse and a doctoral candidate in UA Tuscaloosa’s DNP program. Stephanie moonlights from time to time at UCLA teaching mental health nursing. She also likes making cold-process soap.

  • 14 Comments
    • vdubber67 August 12, 2020

      Thanks as ever for these updates. Excellent as usual, despite the subject!

      7 |
    • Cia August 12, 2020

      The report from Yale University linked discounting the value of HCQ treatment for CV was motivated by the article by its own Dr. Harvey Ritsch strongly supporting its use. Drs. Raoult and Zelenko have published several studies on their patients in France and New York, nearly all, or all, of whom recovered from CV when treated with HCQ (preferably given with zinc and zpac). The Ford Institute also recently published an article on its effectiveness. Costa Rica used it nearly exclusively to treat CV from the beginning and has had only 50 deaths per million. I just looked at charts updated daily at Worldometers.info to find the most recent figures. The US as of today has had 508 dpm. Guatemala has had 124 dpm. Colombia 265 dpm. Panama 389 dpm. It seems probable that the drastically-lower deaths per million in Costa Rica is because of its routine use of HCQ to treat cv. The other countries listed here (all of them around the world are available at the Worldometers website) have NOT used it routinely. And it must be borne in mind that most allopathic “authorities” were extremely enthusiastic about the Surgisphere non-study which tried to discredit the value of HCQ for cv, even though the data was fraudulent even at first glance. It was published in The Lancet, but when two hundred surprisingly honest authorities wrote The Lancet an open letter pointing out the fraudulent nature of the data, the renowned medical journal was forced to retract it. Together, this information suggests that the reason for the attempts to discredit HCQ are not because it is dangerous or ineffective, but because millions of doses have been given if it or its original form chloroquine, and for eighty years it has been cheap, and that’s the sticking point. It would be difficult to inflate its price a hundred-fold to garner the support of the Pharma industry.

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    • Squab August 12, 2020

      The gaiter headlines are totally misleading.  It’s not the fact that it is a gaiter but its the thin material of Buff and knockoff Buff gaiters.  

      6 |
    • Cia August 19, 2020

      I just saw this open letter by medical doctors to Fauci about HCQ. Very important questions and information! I don’t mean to be offensive, but, as the doctors state, acting on this information would save tens of thousands of lives. The Ford Foundation which conducted a study which showed that HCQ halved mortality in severely ill Covid patients asked the FDA for permission to continue giving the drug to patients, but the FDA denied this permission. This is shameful!

      https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/doctors-pen-open-letter-fauci-regarding-use-hydroxychloroquine-treating-covid-19

      5 |