Covid 19

[LTsatch]

Re: Covid 19

Interesting post - I have been following a slightly different set of statistics. i have been watching the positive tests per 1 million population for each country and a second set of deaths per 1 million population for each country. i find this, for now, the most informative. There is an obvious caveat however. Suppose a man dies of heart attack or a cerebral bleed at age 88, and we find incidentally that that he was corona virus tested positive. Should he be included as a death from Corona Virus or not?? Serious question since so many of the deaths that occur are in very elderly, otherwise ill, people (a large majority being men and not women except for South Korea). As a physician I would like to know a little bit more of a breakdown and be sure that the deaths are indeed CAUSED by Covid-19 and not just occurring in patients who just happen to have a positive blood test.

It's like any other situation where an unknown illness suddenly enters into an already health compromised elderly life. I can actually use my own father as an example. Three months ago at 87, he was starting to become very weak. He already suffered from kidney failure, diabetes, and a rough heart. Get him to the hospital, find out he has inoperable bone cancer. given a choice, stop your current treatments and die in a week or suffer a relatively long painful death from bone cancer. He decided to take the less painful route and was gone in ten days. His death certificate states that he died of renal failure.
Just because you have another more serious disease or virus when you die, it does not automatically make it your cause of death. I am glad he did not live to see this cluster**** of a world we now inhabit. As the last of his generation in my immediate family, he did us all a service by making the choice that he did. When he had to make the choice, his answer to the Doc was, "Well, I guess I am not playing third base next year".

[Slap Shot]

Re: Covid 19

Harbinger of doom here, but, she knows her stuff: (need to learn to post pics like you cool kids do )

⚠️As predicted, the number of #coronavirus cases in US is exploding with greater acceleration than *any* other country with this many cases.

More #COVID19 testing is revealing the huge number of cases with more still to come.

Expect a MASSIVE surge thru the next few weeks. pic.twitter.com/nVQvCAF8Zw

— Dr. Dena Grayson (@DrDenaGrayson) March 20, 2020

Fake news!! You're nasty!!
-Orange Droolius
-e.cat

[DrDemento]

Re: Covid 19

Many, if not most Korean men smoke. The women do not. This might be a factor?

Did not know that for a fact. Could be a big part of that. But the same holds for other Asian countries with the men smoking and the women usually not (I would imagine) yet the statistics are not showing the 70%/30% split that is being seen in SK. I have no clue about this as yet but am sure some computer program will find all sorts of possible relationships.

[DrDemento]

Re: Covid 19

It's like any other situation where an unknown illness suddenly enters into an already health compromised elderly life. I can actually use my own father as an example. Three months ago at 87, he was starting to become very weak. He already suffered from kidney failure, diabetes, and a rough heart. Get him to the hospital, find out he has inoperable bone cancer. given a choice, stop your current treatments and die in a week or suffer a relatively long painful death from bone cancer. He decided to take the less painful route and was gone in ten days. His death certificate states that he died of renal failure.
Just because you have another more serious disease or virus when you die, it does not automatically make it your cause of death. I am glad he did not live to see this cluster**** of a world we now inhabit. As the last of his generation in my immediate family, he did us all a service by making the choice that he did. When he had to make the choice, his answer to the Doc was, "Well, I guess I am not playing third base next year".

Spot on. Having signed numerous death certificates in my 50+ years of practice, I put little or no stock in the statistics quoted that use them as an absolute cause of death. Too many times an autopsy is necessary to determine a cause and families simply refuse for one reason or another (many on religious grounds). Sometimes the issue is forced by a government agency but most often not. Your point about just because someone has developed or been found to have disease ABC at the time of death, does not automatically make it the cause of death.

[SteveO]

Re: Covid 19

Spot on. Having signed numerous death certificates in my 50+ years of practice, I put little or no stock in the statistics quoted that use them as an absolute cause of death. Too many times an autopsy is necessary to determine a cause and families simply refuse for one reason or another (many on religious grounds). Sometimes the issue is forced by a government agency but most often not. Your point about just because someone has developed or been found to have disease ABC at the time of death, does not automatically make it the cause of death.

In comorbid cases that are documented causalities of CoV-19, health care professionals are correct in officially documenting CoV-19 as the fatal tipping point. The psycho-epidemiology and pathology of the virus suggests increasing allostatic overload trajectories that further weaken immune system response accelerating atrophic comorbidity that leads to fatalities. An extremely large cohort of the elderly population have manageable chronic and comorbid preconditions. But once the virus in introduced into the intercellular environment of eukaryotic cells, that's the game changer.

Allostatic overload suggests that the acute stress response in humans becomes maladaptive when it is predominantly activated in response to CoV-19 amidst preexisting comorbid stressors. Immune responses to stress, such as increased coagulation, release of cortisol and increased load on the heart, are both protective and adaptive in the short-term, but chronic immune response can cause severe tissue damage or death. These bodily responses are designed to be invoked when faced with acute situations and then "turned off". Chronic stressors drastically increase under CoV-19 infections and cause immune response to be invoked too frequently until it becomes essentially inert leading to viral fatalities.

Define safe? Define rid of it? In general, there is a clear lack of an understanding of biology of cells and viruses etc. A virus is NOT alive. It needs a cell to duplicate and live. The studies and comments you see about it being on clothes, steel, plastics etc means its detectable. Not even sure how viable the virus is to be able to infect someone.

The coronavirus family has been around forever in various forms, ie some colds as well as more seriously SARS as two examples. This strain covid19 can obviously be deadly but that seems to be mostly for those with underlying health issues and/or immunity issues.

Will there be a vaccine? Seems so, but that takes time though there is early testing going on now.

Thanks for your post. You're absolutely correct, plants, animals and humans contain eukaryotic cell organelles that allow them to self-replicate. In contrast, viruses are free forms of DNA or RNA that can't replicate on their own and are essentially inert. The CoV-19 is a strain of the SARS-CoV-2 but the mRNA signal sequencing is vastly different. That's why it will take time to develop an anti-viral vaccine.

I'm hoping the antimalarial agent Chloroquine phosphate will deliver genomic sequencing that prevents the C0V-19 virion from binding to receptors. Hopefully we can perform RCTs with significant results over the next couple months to determine it's effectiveness. Unfortunately it has serious side effects such as chronic rheumatoid arthritis and even death, if taken incorrectly. Even when taken correctly, it can cause severe stomach distress.

[HockeyRef]

Re: Covid 19

In comorbid cases that are documented causalities of CoV-19, health care professionals are correct in officially documenting CoV-19 as the fatal tipping point. The psycho-epidemiology and pathology of the virus suggests increasing allostatic overload trajectories that further weaken immune system response accelerating atrophic comorbidity that leads to fatalities. An extremely large cohort of the elderly population have manageable chronic and comorbid preconditions. But once the virus in introduced into the intercellular environment of eukaryotic cells, that's the game changer.

Allostatic overload suggests that the acute stress response in humans becomes maladaptive when it is predominantly activated in response to CoV-19 amidst preexisting comorbid stressors. Immune responses to stress, such as increased coagulation, release of cortisol and increased load on the heart, are both protective and adaptive in the short-term, but chronic immune response can cause severe tissue damage or death. These bodily responses are designed to be invoked when faced with acute situations and then "turned off". Chronic stressors drastically increase under CoV-19 infections and cause immune response to be invoked too frequently until it becomes essentially inert leading to viral fatalities.



Thanks for your post. You're absolutely correct, plants, animals and humans contain eukaryotic cell organelles that allow them to self-replicate. In contrast, viruses are free forms of DNA or RNA that can't replicate on their own and are essentially inert. The CoV-19 is a strain of the SARS-CoV-2 but the mRNA signal sequencing is vastly different. That's why it will take time to develop an anti-viral vaccine.

I'm hoping the antimalarial agent Chloroquine phosphate will deliver genomic sequencing that prevents the C0V-19 virion from binding to receptors. Hopefully we can perform RCTs with significant results over the next couple months to determine it's effectiveness. Unfortunately it has serious side effects such as chronic rheumatoid arthritis and even death, if taken incorrectly. Even when taken correctly, it can cause severe stomach distress.

Excellent post!! Thanks for the info....that side effect you mention for that quinine based drug (is that correct to say?) oh my...

[SteveO]

Re: Covid 19

Excellent post!! Thanks for the info....that side effect you mention for that quinine based drug (is that correct to say?) oh my...

Hey thanks Ref! The side effects can be chemically modulated, that's not too worrisome for me.

A French study on 30 confirmed CoV-19 patients, were administered either hydroxychloroquine alone, combined with an antibiotic azithromycin, and the control group received neither. China tried it and it was efficacious in shortening the duration of the viral infection. Unfortunately, researchers did a non-randomized trial so the results are without sufficient scientific merit.

The sample population included 6 with no symptoms, 22 had symptoms in their upper respiratory tract (sneezing, headaches and sore throats), and 8 who showed lower respiratory tract symptoms (mostly coughing). 20 of the 30 participants received treatment. Results showed that while hydroxycholoroquine was effective on its own, when combined with azithromycin it was even more effective by a significant margin. Notice the drop at Day 3 (hydroxycholoroquine/antibiotic combo) with a p value @ .002 (this is very encouraging).

Stay safe and stay vigilant my friend. Not getting my hopes up too high, but my feeling is we'll see a historical breakthrough on a vaccine in record time.

---

[DrDemento]

Re: Covid 19

In comorbid cases that are documented causalities of CoV-19, health care professionals are correct in officially documenting CoV-19 as the fatal tipping point. The psycho-epidemiology and pathology of the virus suggests increasing allostatic overload trajectories that further weaken immune system response accelerating atrophic comorbidity that leads to fatalities. An extremely large cohort of the elderly population have manageable chronic and comorbid preconditions. But once the virus in introduced into the intercellular environment of eukaryotic cells, that's the game changer.

Allostatic overload suggests that the acute stress response in humans becomes maladaptive when it is predominantly activated in response to CoV-19 amidst preexisting comorbid stressors. Immune responses to stress, such as increased coagulation, release of cortisol and increased load on the heart, are both protective and adaptive in the short-term, but chronic immune response can cause severe tissue damage or death. These bodily responses are designed to be invoked when faced with acute situations and then "turned off". Chronic stressors drastically increase under CoV-19 infections and cause immune response to be invoked too frequently until it becomes essentially inert leading to viral fatalities.



Thanks for your post. You're absolutely correct, plants, animals and humans contain eukaryotic cell organelles that allow them to self-replicate. In contrast, viruses are free forms of DNA or RNA that can't replicate on their own and are essentially inert. The CoV-19 is a strain of the SARS-CoV-2 but the mRNA signal sequencing is vastly different. That's why it will take time to develop an anti-viral vaccine.

I'm hoping the antimalarial agent Chloroquine phosphate will deliver genomic sequencing that prevents the C0V-19 virion from binding to receptors. Hopefully we can perform RCTs with significant results over the next couple months to determine it's effectiveness. Unfortunately it has serious side effects such as chronic rheumatoid arthritis and even death, if taken incorrectly. Even when taken correctly, it can cause severe stomach distress.

Many of my patients who take Chloroquine and similar drugs also have to be seen by an Ophthalmologist every 6 months due to some fairly frequent eye complications. I do have some hope for it's role in any way being somewhat antiviral for this virus. It is interesting to note (and may mean absolutely nothing) that the top 30 or more countries with high numbers of malaria infections and death seem to have very low levels of COVID-19 infections. Could it possibly be related to the high usage of Chloroquine an other anti-malarial drugs? Or is it simply that these countries are not know as having good reporting mechanisms in place for infections like this? May be too early to tell.

[HockeyRef]

Re: Covid 19

Hey thanks Ref! The side effects can be chemically modulated, that's not too worrisome for me.

A French study on 30 confirmed CoV-19 patients, were administered either hydroxychloroquine alone, combined with an antibiotic azithromycin, and the control group received neither. China tried it and it was efficacious in shortening the duration of the viral infection. Unfortunately, researchers did a non-randomized trial so the results are without sufficient scientific merit.

The sample population included 6 with no symptoms, 22 had symptoms in their upper respiratory tract (sneezing, headaches and sore throats), and 8 who showed lower respiratory tract symptoms (mostly coughing). 20 of the 30 participants received treatment. Results showed that while hydroxycholoroquine was effective on its own, when combined with azithromycin it was even more effective by a significant margin. Notice the drop at Day 3 (hydroxycholoroquine/antibiotic combo) with a p value @ .002 (this is very encouraging).

Stay safe and stay vigilant my friend. Not getting my hopes up too high, but my feeling is we'll see a historical breakthrough on a vaccine in record time.

I'm just here for the hockey...

---

Comment

Post Cancel

[SteveO]

Re: Covid 19

Many of my patients who take Chloroquine and similar drugs also have to be seen by an Ophthalmologist every 6 months due to some fairly frequent eye complications. I do have some hope for it's role in any way being somewhat antiviral for this virus. It is interesting to note (and may mean absolutely nothing) that the top 30 or more countries with high numbers of malaria infections and death seem to have very low levels of COVID-19 infections.Could it possibly be related to the high usage of Chloroquine an other anti-malarial drugs? Or is it simply that these countries are not know as having good reporting mechanisms in place for infections like this? May be too early to tell.

Hi there! Agreed, a disruption in visual acuity does seem to be a potential side effect. To me that sounds like the fiber tract from the lateral geniculate nucleus to the cortex causes some temporary disruption to the retinotopic mapping on the cortex. In this case, partial damage to these fiber tracts can cause predictable visual problems. Apparently hydroxychloroquine seems less toxic as a chemical derivative of Chloroquine.

I think the CoV-19 numbers coming out of countries known as seed farms for malaria are underreporting due to a lack of testing. That's especially true in Thailand now with a record 89 cases yesterday. They're only testing cases showing CoV-19 like symptoms. But you may be onto something there.

[DrDemento]

Re: Covid 19

Hi there! Agreed, a disruption in visual acuity does seem to be a potential side effect. To me that sounds like the fiber tract from the lateral geniculate nucleus to the cortex causes some temporary disruption to the retinotopic mapping on the cortex. In this case, partial damage to these fiber tracts can cause predictable visual problems. Apparently hydroxychloroquine seems less toxic as a chemical derivative of Chloroquine.

I think the CoV-19 numbers coming out of countries known as seed farms for malaria are underreporting due to a lack of testing. That's especially true in Thailand now with a record 89 cases yesterday. They're only testing cases showing CoV-19 like symptoms. But you may be onto something there.

The reverse relationship to malaria cases was something i noted as soon as they started the conversation about Choroquine. Personally, i think it is artifactual and that you and i agree about under reporting. It would be nice if turned out to be this simple but it invariably does not.

[Russell Jaslow]

Re: Covid 19

The reverse relationship to malaria cases was something i noted as soon as they started the conversation about Choroquine. Personally, i think it is artifactual and that you and i agree about under reporting. It would be nice if turned out to be this simple but it invariably does not.

I once read that people who are genetically predisposed to getting sickle cell anemia don’t get malaria. Could it be those living in malaria countries by luck are more predisposed to having the genetic makeup to not be bothered by COVID-19?

[Wayuphere]

Re: Covid 19

Even though I pretty much don’t have a clue what you Dr’s are talking about, it is reassuring to see the knowledgeable contributions to this thread..
Thank you 👍👍👍

[Wayuphere]

Re: Covid 19

Question for thought.
Now that we are seeing decreased movement of people, when can we expect to see results in the daily stats of confirmed cases? At least in the US. I understand that today’s stats are from infections that occurred a week or 2 ago. So, we are at least a week away from a flattening of the curve due to self containment?
We hope..

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Covid 19

1-2 weeks