Bijou Drains
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Hydrochloroquinine is a particularly difficult drug, I have a bit of insight into it as my partner was using it for six months from May 2019 to Dec 2019. She has been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthristis and it is used as a second level immune surpressant after methotrexate.
I am guessing to an extent that the beneficial effect is from the immune supressant qualities. It has been reported that part of the problem with Covid 19 is the immune system reaction to it.
Again I am putting 2 + 2 together, but bats have the highest body temperatures of mammals. The immune response, especially the fever response is designed to raise the body temperature to a level where it kills off viruses.
Usually this works, however it appears that because Covid 19 has developed in bats, the extreme temperatures developed in human fevers, which kill off most ordinary viruses, are not impacting on this virus and are in fact are more harmful than the virus itself.
It would follow that a drug which reduces the immune response may help, however as Marcos says, this needs to be a balanced approach, too much immune supression not only leads to problems with Convid 19, but it also leads to problems with other infections such as pneumonia, etc.
As I said I have some familial experience of this drug and its side effects can be pretty nasty, including blindness and other liver and kidney difficulties, which is why my partner had to come off treatment.
To no ones great surprise it is not as simple as Dopey Donald thinks, as Marcos says it will take a balanced and individualised approach, if this medication is useful its usage will vary from patient to patient and situation to situation.
It may be helpful to treat this virus, however in my opinion the rush back to “normal life” threatens the lives of many, with profit again being placed above human need. It would be foolish to play down the long term impact of this pandemic an a world wide basis.
Ozzymandis wrote
In a typical year anything up to 650,000 people die globally of the flu (anyway) , yet we have a tenth of those fatalities currently registered. And we’ve got this?
Do the maths, this pandemic has not even started to bite, yet we are at 1/10 of the ANNUAL flu fatalities, this is despite world wide lockdowns and social distancing. The current daily death rate is nearly 6,000. If you multiply that times 365, that gives you 2.2 million deaths if the current rate of deaths continued for a year at the same rate, which it clearly will not. This figure is before the virus has any where near hit its peak in most of western Europe, North and South America, Africa, South East Asia, the Indian sub continent, in fact it hasn’t peaked in most parts of the world, despite what you say about plateaus in some territories (where is this?). The death toll globally from this virus will outstrip Spanish Flu by a long way.
Ask yourself this during the last “flu seasons” how many doctors and nurses hear about who were dying from flu?
There was a report in Scotland that 13 residents all died from Covid 19, do you recall that ever happening in a flu epidemic?
Another factor in this is the recovery time, flu cases in intensive care usually take about a week of intensive care to move out of the ward. With Covid 19 that is more like three weeks, that trebles the use of ICUs and stretches the capacity of ICUs. This means increased likelihood that people who would survive without treatment will not get the treatment they need to survive. Similarly, just because there is this outbreak, people don’t stop having heart attacks, strokes, etc. If ICUs are full up these people will die from lack of treatment.
Why didn’t Capitalism nosedive 100 years ago like it seems to be doing now?
It did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post%E2%80%93World_War_I_recession
“What has once more been demonstrated is the potential we – and this time the we is world society – have to rapidly repair the damage inflicted by capitalism and re-construct its many structures to meet peoples needs”
Just think how quickly the banks and trading houses in places like the city of London, etc. could be converted into comfortable and beautiful living spaces for families.
Rumour has it that as a generous act to help spirits during the lock down, Phil Collins has graciously agreed NOT to release any songs, any on line concerts or make any fuck wit comments about a subject he is ill placed to make any rational comment upon
I’m not one for praising the rich and famous but I think Phil deserves a pat on the back. With a bit of luck the rest of the Z List celebrities jumping on the Coronavirus to boost their flagging careers will make similar public spirited gestures.
Bijou, I think you can take over from Dave B. Sc. as our Chief Scientific Adviser.
I wouldn’t want to risk the ire of L Bird!
Dave B wrote – I am giving my opponents a chance here by winging it.
You most certainly are!
I think the Princess Diamond dataset indicated that 85% of the cases where asymptomatic,
The numbers were as follows and show nothing of the sort:
eventually all 4,061 on board were tested, 705 tested positive, therefore 3,356 tested negative, a negative test does not mean you are asymptomatic, it means you do not have the virus it means the the virus is not currently active in your system. of the 705 who tested positive 392 or roughly 4/7ths were asymptomatic (have the virus active in your system but are not showing outward symptoms). This is very different from 85% asymptomatic
And in the village of 3000 called Eugano in Italy near Venice ? isolated and tested it was 75%
The actual story is as follows and relates to Vo Euganeo nor Eugano:
“Professor Cristani directs the Molecular Medicine Department in Padua. His team carried out 3300 coronavirus swabs on the entire population of one of the initial 11 lockdown towns in northern Italy, Vo Euganeo, the only one in the Veneto region.
No one else decided to test every single member of the lockdown community. The results immediately showed that 3 percent of all those tested were positive. “We did not realize at the time this was a huge number but we immediately were able to see that the majority of those who were positive did not have any symptoms”, said Cristani.”
This is from the RFI website who are – “a French news and current affairs public radio station that broadcasts worldwide in French and in 13 other languages”- “It draws on the expertise of its Paris-based editorial teams and unique global network of 400 correspondents to provide news bulletins and features”
Actually with even two different haplotypes of the virus ; I think that is the right spelling it might be halotype or something- this is a really interesting subject but will save that for later as they say.
The word I think you are talking about is haplotype. It might be easier to use the term strain, Haplotype has a couple of technical meanings, but strain is probably the best word to describe what I think you re referring to. There is evidence that there are two strains which have been labelled the L type (which is the more lethal) and the S type (which is less lethal). The L type was more prevalent in Wuhan (about 70% of cases were of this type), whereas the S type is the one that seems to be spreading most quickly. This fits in with what is generally understood about viruses, they tend to become more lethal as they multiply. There is a evolutionary reason for this, the mutations that don’t kill spend longer in their hosts, have a higher chance of multiplying and overtake the more lethal ones. From an evolutionary point of view a virus does not gain from killing its host.
There were empirical and theoretical reasons why it could be higher.
Some are arguing at 90%
But anyway for every symptomatic case there are 4 times as many asymptomatic.
No there are not, As you can see from the Diamond Princess statistic, it is closer to 4/7 ths, all be it in a skewed sample in terms of age profile health, etc.
So from that any number you want to come up eg 1% should be divided by 4.
No it shouldn’t
We don’t know or I don’t know who these symptomatic cases are that are being tested.
I don’t have the data.
Are they mostly over 70?
Do they live in cities with high nitrous dioxide [car exhaust] pollution.
It is weather, does the wind blow and geography as much as anything, so watch Madrid.
Are there lots of old fogies still on 40 unfiltered a day?
You say you don’t have the data, then go on to make an awful lot of assumptions about data that you don’t have! All of the evidence suggests that areas of dense population are the first to be hit and that the spread in these areas is the quickest. You don’t have to be a genius to work out that the most probable reason for this is the likelihood of human to human transition and lack of social distance in big cities, rather than the prevaling wind, cigarettes or car pollution!
I also find it somewhat amazing that a Socialist of all people would dismiss the possible early deaths of 1,000s of fellow workers in terms of “old fogies”. If it was mainly killing black people, or Asian people would you dismiss it that easily, is it not ok to be racist but perfectly fine to be ageist?
There is data of up to 8% mortality rates for common colds in old peoples homes; never mind flu.
What data, I have searched on line and found nothing to suggest such a death rate and also your lack of clarity is surprising what do you mean by the term “old people’s homes” are you talking about sheltered housing, residential homes, nursing homes, EMI units, there is a huge difference between them
Ah yes nurses! I think it is 8% of nurses are tested positive and asymptomatically self isolating.
That is a really interesting number!
That is overloading the NHS.
I have no idea what you mean by the term “asymptomatically self isolation”, but I am working on the assumption that by asymptomatic, you mean that they do not have the virus, this is not what asymptomatic means, as explained earlier it means you have the virus but do not display symptoms, you are however still infectious. If you think its a good idea that asymptomatic nurses go back to work then I assume you would be happy to have your dinner prepared by Typhoid Mary!
The evidence is stacking up that about 5% have it over a time period that might rank up to 30% had it and with ‘herd immunity’.
You have clearly put together a few random, figures, which are demonstrably wrong and come with an equally random and incorrect figure
I have just talked to a friend and said I can’t deal with this shit and bat flu drones telling me to get back in the house.
And if you end up on a life support machine because of your decision, that’s a life support machine that a fellow worker (aged or not) could have used to save their life, not a very fraternal or cooperative action, in my view.
Seasonal Flu related deaths 2015-19
2014-15 season – 28,330
2015-16 season – 11.875
2016-17 season – 18,009
2017-18 season – 26,408
Source Public Health England -Surveillance of influenza and other respiratory viruses in the UK Winter 2018 to 2019
Re the following advice:
It is believed that the coronavirus like other viruses cannot withstand high temperatures and for which reason it tends to proliferate in the sinuses which is the coldest part of the head. The remedy involves using a simple hairdryer and water spray to direct heated water molecules into the nostrils to penetrate the sinuses.
One of the reasons the body goes into a fever is that the temperature rise causes viruses to die, basically the body overheats to kill the invading virus. However, if this virus is from a bat, as has been suggested, we have a problem. Bats are unique amongst mammals in actually flying, as part of this they have to produce high levels of energy when they leave the roost and when they return to the roost. Consequently they have a body temperature that is much higher than most other mammals, including humans, and one which would be lethal to a human. So temperature will kill the virus, but might not be bearable for humans.
I did a bit of epidemiology as part of my Open University Studies and have been doing a bit of number crunching, based on stuff I did back then.
The difficulty with the data is general lack of reliability and also lack of testing. However there are a couple of exceptions that can be used to further extrapolate information. Firstly South Korea, which carried out large scale testing and appears to have been reporting honestly and secondly the figures from the Diamond Princess Cruise ship where there was full testing and long scale monitoring.
There are a couple of issues. The first is that the demographics of the passengers and crew on the cruise ship were not representative of general demographics (generally older, some with long term health problems, although I would guess less very chronic illnesses and also although the crew were young, there were very few children). The second issue is that of hidden or asymptomatic cases. In South Korea the % of the population tested being less than the whole, the asymptomatic might not have been tested.
The plus side (certainly in the UK) is that using South Korea as a model is probably ok, as the demographic structure is quite similar to the UK one, see links below:
https://www.indexmundi.com/united_kingdom/age_structure.html
https://www.indexmundi.com/south_korea/age_structure.html
So using the figures from the Diamond Princess, which were as follows:
Total tests – 4061
Total Positives – 705
Asymptomatic Positives – 392
Total deaths to date – 11
The numbers of deaths to cases in this instance is perhaps not as important because of the previously mentioned demographic anomalies for the cruise ship, the number of asymptomatic cases, however is. Because everyone on the ship was tested we know that as far as can be ascertained this is a pretty accurate reflection of the level of asymptomatic infection for those on the ship. You could argue that in a younger demographic, asymptomatic infection might be less, but it is unlikely to be more, so this gives us a rate of asymptomatic infection of roughly 4/7ths of cases or possibly more.
Going back to South Korea, we have the advantage in this case of having a demographic which is closer to that of the UK. In South Korea, the death rate has been at about 1.3%, because of the difficulty with regards to the possibility of asymptomatic cases which haven’t been identified, the death rate is probably less than this, however it would probably be okay to use this as a base line higher limit.
Using all of this to examine the UK, the statistics we have in the UK are probably very unreliable in terms of cases and asymptomatic cases, due to lack of testing, etc. However we can use the death rate as a reasonably reliable source of information, if we look at the death rate in the UK (there are a number of caveats here as we don’t know what numbers of those currently infected will die) but as an informed guestimate, if we have 759 deaths in the UK, with a death rate of roughly 1.3% (from South Korea), then an estimated 58,384 people could have the infection of which 4/7ths will be asymptomatic (33,363).
In terms of the future, viruses tend to become less fatal as they spread, effectively a virus which kills its host is less likely to spread than one that is less deadly and it will progressively become the dominant strain. Very deadly viruses tend to “burn out” very quickly and don’t spread as intensively because of this, so it is likely that the death rate will reduce as time goes by. Similarly, treatments and interventions (not necessarily cures) will likely reduce the death rate over time. We certainly won’t get worse at looking after victims, but shortage of equipment might mean that victims don’t get the most effective treatments. On that basis we can estimate that, with a bit of luck the death rate will fall to about 0.5% or thereabouts, over time.
If we go back to figures from the Diamond Princess, 4061 tests were carried out for 705 positives, that means that nearly 5/6 of those on the ship didn’t acquire the virus, or were able to fight it off without infection. In some cases there were couples who shared the same living space for up to two weeks where one caught the virus and the other didn’t. We can guess from this that there is some percentage of the population that will not succumb to the infection.
If we could put this at 2/3 of the population, as another guestimate, we can start to work out when/if herd immunity might kick in and how many maximum deaths we can expect.
UK total population is 67,786,872, if only 1/3 are susceptible then that gives us roughly 22.5 million possible victims. However as the number of immune and non susceptible people increases the spread of the virus becomes less common, as it cannot find a host to act as a breeding ground. Once we get past about 70% it should be about there, so that gives us 15, 750,000 infections, with a death rate (being positive) of around 0.5%, so roughly about 315,000 deaths. Hopefully social distancing and all the other measures taking place can bring this number down significantly
To be fair to David Icke though, if Michael Gove and his Daily Mail “journalist” wife, did in fact turn out to be flesh eating lizards, in human form, who would honestly be that surprised? To be honest if tests were done and they turned out to be human, I’d be more surprised.
And presumably you take the cheque (sic) to the bank, along with all of the other citizens and spread the virus even further!
The idea that the leaders are to blame, not the concept of leadership is difficult to refute when the leaders chosen to represent the Capitalist Class are fuckwits like Johnson and Trump.
I think it is a huge danger to the working class movement to be sidelined into the issue of the leaders not the system. This is where Killman and Klein are a real danger.
Trump and Johnson end up being the scapegoats for a failing system. Undoubtedly they are a pair of clowns, but is it not the fact that they are clowns, or even the fact that we have a system that allows clowns like them to be in positions of power that matters, the market system is the issue. This is what we need to get across.
UK doctors and nurses are missing out on having personal protective equipment at this point in time, not because no one had the foresight to order them. It was because the way the system works is that it prioritises Bill Gates’ need to have yachts and Roman Abramovich’s wish to own football teams over the Social needs of the vast majority.This is the message we need to get across, the way the world’s resources are used should be about the needs and requirements of the many, not the foibles of the few.
the Chinese multi billionaire Jack Ma has said he will pay for face masks, etc. For various countries. We need to get the message out that the health and well-being of the world’s population shouldn’t depend on the largesse of one individual, but on the democratic decisions of us all about the resources we all took part in creating.
This is a time like no other to demonstrate the case for socialism
