Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
This is a good read on prophylaxis!
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Coronavirus
- Thread starter James Lemon
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- coronavirus virus
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The news channel in the USA catering to Donald Trump supporters. I like them when, on a very occasion, my views agree with their extraordinary bias.
However, their ridiculous denial of the Pandemic in the past several months is something only expected from a satirical show like “Saturday Night Live” or “The Harvard Lampoon”!
Look at their strong denial trajectory to reality, as if they had never had doubts!
Asher
However, their ridiculous denial of the Pandemic in the past several months is something only expected from a satirical show like “Saturday Night Live” or “The Harvard Lampoon”!
Look at their strong denial trajectory to reality, as if they had never had doubts!
Asher
Jerome Marot
Well-known member
This comprehensive guide for healthcare professionals shares much of the Chinese medical experience with the coronavirus in ENGLISH, for the purpose of encouraging collaboration and better treatment outcomes:
drive.google.com
English handbook of COVID-19 prevention and treatment(1).pdf
drive.google.com
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Simply Brilliant!This comprehensive guide for healthcare professionals shares much of the Chinese medical experience with the coronavirus in ENGLISH, for the purpose of encouraging collaboration and better treatment outcomes:
English handbook of COVID-19 prevention and treatment(1).pdf
Thanks so much for a superb link!
Asher
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
OUR President is now touting Choroquine but do we have access. UK has blocked exports!
Asher
Asher
Doug Kerr
Well-known member
Hi, Asher,
Well, I heard that (partially) at this morning's Coronavirus Task Force briefing.
President Trump said that, assuming that the testing confirms the desirability of using chloroquine (or perhaps hydroxychloroquine) as a prophylactic against COVID-19, one of the major US pharma houses (I didn't catch which) said that the cost would only be $3.00 per tablet and that they would donate, I think, one million tablets to the effort.
I have no idea how the dosage might work.
Best regards,
Doug
Well, I heard that (partially) at this morning's Coronavirus Task Force briefing.
President Trump said that, assuming that the testing confirms the desirability of using chloroquine (or perhaps hydroxychloroquine) as a prophylactic against COVID-19, one of the major US pharma houses (I didn't catch which) said that the cost would only be $3.00 per tablet and that they would donate, I think, one million tablets to the effort.
I have no idea how the dosage might work.
Best regards,
Doug
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Should be $1 per tablet or less in the bulk needed. 400mg hydroxychloroquine or 500 mg chloroquine tabs.
2 loading dose for as if for malarial
Prophylaxis
6 hours later then 1 per week for adults and children over 12 after getting prescription from own physician, taking into account all precautions as with any prescription.
Likely plaquinel is best!
Asher
Jerome Marot
Well-known member
Excuse me for having doubts: Chloroquine has been used against malaria for decades but has also been known to be useful as viral treatment. If it were that efficient against COVID-19, the Chinese would have found it. Yet, in the pdf I cited earlier (post #93 above), chloroquine is cited, but as a second recourse after lopinavir. A further search then finds this article:
www.wired.com
And then, there is of course the fact that chloroquine is already used to protect against malaria in some countries, so many people are already on the drug. Maybe we should check how the epidemic unfolds in these people, who are already under treatment.
Chloroquine May Fight Covid-19—and Silicon Valley’s Into It
The old malaria drug is getting used against the coronavirus. Tech enthusiasts are abuzz. One missing step: clinical trials.
And then, there is of course the fact that chloroquine is already used to protect against malaria in some countries, so many people are already on the drug. Maybe we should check how the epidemic unfolds in these people, who are already under treatment.
Jerome Marot
Well-known member
Projections from the Imperial College, London: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/im...-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Jérôme,
So many people are not on the drug for malaria at it became resistant and mono therapy is no longer generally recommended used, except by private little one person stores in say Nigeria who don’t know about the WHO ban on the drug for malaria now we have better options.
It is used for certain inflammatory diseases and arthritides. But we do have experience from past use by over 70 million people.
It’s used as treatment in Israel, China, South Korea, France and now hospitals in the USA
Healthy folk taking it prophylactically for 18 months would be fine. We only need folk to cycle in sections of the populations: 4 months on and 4 months off.
It doesn’t have to work better than 70% or so to slow transmission!
That would likely create a sufficient pseudo herd immunity to blunt of spread.
I am trying to talk with the powers here, but it’s slow!
The drug is cheap and can be mass produced.
Asher
So many people are not on the drug for malaria at it became resistant and mono therapy is no longer generally recommended used, except by private little one person stores in say Nigeria who don’t know about the WHO ban on the drug for malaria now we have better options.
It is used for certain inflammatory diseases and arthritides. But we do have experience from past use by over 70 million people.
It’s used as treatment in Israel, China, South Korea, France and now hospitals in the USA
Healthy folk taking it prophylactically for 18 months would be fine. We only need folk to cycle in sections of the populations: 4 months on and 4 months off.
It doesn’t have to work better than 70% or so to slow transmission!
That would likely create a sufficient pseudo herd immunity to blunt of spread.
I am trying to talk with the powers here, but it’s slow!
The drug is cheap and can be mass produced.
Asher
Jerome Marot
Well-known member
Imatinib may be another potential protective treatment, as COVID-19 uses the aberson protein. It was used for SARS and MERS: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5021412/
A study on elderly patients should start next week in France.
A study on elderly patients should start next week in France.
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Fabulous knowledge!
Jérôme,
We need such drugs that can be given to millions safely.
Asher
Jérôme,
We need such drugs that can be given to millions safely.
Asher
Jerome Marot
Well-known member
On curves, epidemics and logarithms.
The web site https://mackuba.eu/ has statistics and curves about the COVID-19 epidemics. I’ll use Italy as example, the curve looks like this:
The number of infections follows a typical exponential curve. But we humans are not very good at seeing data in an exponential. Fortunately, the site allows us to present the curve on a logarithmic scale, like this:
This is easier to analyse visually. We will use the fact that exponential growth curves presented in this way become straight lines. The slope of the line directly gives the exponent or the R0, number of people each one infects. In that curve for Italy, what happens before the 23rd about is not really significative, as the number of cases is too low to be statistically significant and tests were not available. The interesting part is to the right: the curve is almost a straight line, indicating exponential growth. There is no significant lowering of the slope, meaning the R0 has not been lowered yet by 10 days of curfew.
The site also allows us to compare countries. There I chose to compare the top outside China (China’s curve being much longer) and “align by date of 100th case” (to align the curves by the date of the first infections):
The curves are all straight lines with the same slope, which is as expected as the R0 is the same (same virus). Unfortunately, we cannot normalise the curves by the country populations, therefore larger countries are on top and smaller on the bottom, but the effect is not too much of a problem.
On this picture, we can take advantage of the fact that humans are quite good at recognising straight lines to infer what is going on. We see that something peculiar happened in Spain around days 7 and 12 (probably they increased their testing capacity). We also see that South Korea managed to cut the epidemic after about 15 days. What happens in Iran is less clear, but also seems to be positive (or they are running out of tests, I don’t know). What is happening to the USA is not very clear, the curve (dark blue) just bumped over Spain at days 16-17, but this is also probably the effect of more test capacity. But what we see is that all these countries but South Korea and, possibly, Iran are in the full epidemic phase with the same R0. Any measures taken now will only have effect in 10 days, we can unfortunately extrapolate the curves over that period of time to predict the number of infections.
Checking the site from time to time will also allow us to visualise when a particular country is out of the epidemic phase, as is the case for South Korea.
The web site https://mackuba.eu/ has statistics and curves about the COVID-19 epidemics. I’ll use Italy as example, the curve looks like this:
This is easier to analyse visually. We will use the fact that exponential growth curves presented in this way become straight lines. The slope of the line directly gives the exponent or the R0, number of people each one infects. In that curve for Italy, what happens before the 23rd about is not really significative, as the number of cases is too low to be statistically significant and tests were not available. The interesting part is to the right: the curve is almost a straight line, indicating exponential growth. There is no significant lowering of the slope, meaning the R0 has not been lowered yet by 10 days of curfew.
The site also allows us to compare countries. There I chose to compare the top outside China (China’s curve being much longer) and “align by date of 100th case” (to align the curves by the date of the first infections):
The curves are all straight lines with the same slope, which is as expected as the R0 is the same (same virus). Unfortunately, we cannot normalise the curves by the country populations, therefore larger countries are on top and smaller on the bottom, but the effect is not too much of a problem.
On this picture, we can take advantage of the fact that humans are quite good at recognising straight lines to infer what is going on. We see that something peculiar happened in Spain around days 7 and 12 (probably they increased their testing capacity). We also see that South Korea managed to cut the epidemic after about 15 days. What happens in Iran is less clear, but also seems to be positive (or they are running out of tests, I don’t know). What is happening to the USA is not very clear, the curve (dark blue) just bumped over Spain at days 16-17, but this is also probably the effect of more test capacity. But what we see is that all these countries but South Korea and, possibly, Iran are in the full epidemic phase with the same R0. Any measures taken now will only have effect in 10 days, we can unfortunately extrapolate the curves over that period of time to predict the number of infections.
Checking the site from time to time will also allow us to visualise when a particular country is out of the epidemic phase, as is the case for South Korea.
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Jérôme,
Unfortunately, the numbers may be based on tests? These underestimate incidence.
We need data based on deaths don’t we?
Asher
Unfortunately, the numbers may be based on tests? These underestimate incidence.
We need data based on deaths don’t we?
Asher
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
“Italy now has more than 53,000 recorded infections and more than 4,800 dead. The rate of increase keeps growing, with more than half the cases and fatalities coming in the past week. Italy has surpassed China as the country with the highest death toll, becoming the epicenter of a shifting pandemic.”
Jerome Marot
Well-known member
Underestimating incidence is not too much of a problem if we only want to determine whether the curve is still an exponential.
As to the number of deaths, it trails the number of tests by at least a week, so not so good for finding out about present situation. Also: statistics work best on larger numbers.
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
What’s very interesting is that we have learned from analysis of mutations in the virus that every second host delivers one additional mutation in the virus. So models are being developed from this kind of detective work to estimate both paths of travel of virus infection and also silent occurrence of unannounced/detected infection cases.
So there is a level of brilliance in research methodologies and sharing in almost real time is going on. I can see that uptodate genomics in epidemiology is happening with institutions sequencing new cases and publishing then back tracking each new variant.
We will learn so much as this new science resource develops and shares their open-source software. Bedford labs is a leader in this new amazing science!
So there is a level of brilliance in research methodologies and sharing in almost real time is going on. I can see that uptodate genomics in epidemiology is happening with institutions sequencing new cases and publishing then back tracking each new variant.
We will learn so much as this new science resource develops and shares their open-source software. Bedford labs is a leader in this new amazing science!
Doug Kerr
Well-known member
Hi, Jérôme.
Thanks for this great data.
A great idea. But it doesn't look on the chart as if this is so. What am I missing?
Thanks.
Best regards,
Doug
Thanks for this great data.
A great idea. But it doesn't look on the chart as if this is so. What am I missing?
Thanks.
Best regards,
Doug
Jerome Marot
Well-known member
Have you tried going to the site and trying it yourself? You will then find out that the align process choses the first day where the number of cases is larger than 100.
nicolas claris
OPF Co-founder/Administrator
Chloroquine tested on a large scale in Europe:
https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debat...e-de-grande-ampleur-de-la-chloroquine-1187599 :
Extract, more to read in the article, but in French…
https://www.lesechos.fr/idees-debat...e-de-grande-ampleur-de-la-chloroquine-1187599 :
Extract, more to read in the article, but in French…
Asher Kelman
OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
If they would use it as we used to prevent malaria the epidemic would stop in its tracks and we could manage until a vaccine is produced. All they need to do is put millions of people on the best low toxicity antiviral drugs to healthy folk with their doctor’s approval in each case.
So those with damaged eyes or hearts wouldn’t take the drugs.
We don’t even need the same drugs. Just wisdom in which drugs to choose. If half the population is treated with some fairly effective drug, we would create artificial herd immunity until the vaccine is available 2 years.
As soon as I get one of the drugs, I will be on it!
Asher
Doug Kerr
Well-known member
Hi, Jérôme ,
Oh, sure. And the value that day is not necessarily 100.
Thanks.
Best regards,
Doug
Oh, sure. And the value that day is not necessarily 100.
Thanks.
Best regards,
Doug