To mask or not to mask?

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And therein lies the rub. I’ve talked to practicing doctors, as have most people interested in this topic. My stepdaughter is a fourth-year medical student, whose Seattle hospital rotation was cut short in March because of the huge virus outbreak there. She has fresh knowledge and first-hand experience. I’ve looked at “respectable, scientific” studies online.

All data, anecdotal, officially researched or otherwise, from all those sources, vary not just significantly but wildly. I even saw a video of Dr. Fauci saying masks protect no one unless worn by the sick to prevent aerosol or droplet transmission. Surfaces are the threat! Next thing we hear is that no, it’s not surfaces, it’s droplets! Or something.

My local paper ran an article saying CDC proclaimed “This virus may be with us forever.” On the next page was an article proclaiming the shutdown probably should extend for months more “to be safe.” There you have it. There’s no safety, but there’s “safety.”

I’m probably above average in intelligence and I’m doing the best I can to decide what to do myself, and for my 92-year-old Mom. I feel sorry for people who have even more trouble than I do wading through conflicting recommendations. I suspect their fear dominates, because that is usually what confusion creates.





Do you ever feel like you need one of these?

51ngxdhn6tL._AC_.jpg


https://www.amazon.com/Please-Confuse-Google-Medical-Ceramic/dp/B01AHGDK5I
 
Hey....I went in to have my esophagus checked today. Guess what the radiologist and doc were wearing?...and I got's acid reflux, bad .lol ;)
 
At first, they recommended against masks; but this probably was to discourage panic buying, which would make it even more difficult for first responders and health-care workers to obtain them. It was basically a well-intentioned lie.

The initial recommendation was based on the assumption that the virus behaves the same as the initial SARS, just with a lower case fatality rate. With the original SARS, carriers didn't start to spread until they developed clinical symptoms. So the mechanism to contain the spread was to make sure that anyone sick was isolated from others. Later, data emerged that showed that the 'serial interval' for covid was 4 days when the incubation period for patients to become symptomatic was more like 5.5 days. This was proof that there was transmission prior to patients becoming symptomatic and some PCR studies done during cluster investigations showed that to be true. Also, initially, spread by asymptomatic individuals was felt to be a rare occurence until data from cluster investigations showed that it can happen.

So rather than this being some nefarious lie, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they adjusted recommendations based on the data as it came out.


Predictably, people who are more cautious by nature went out and bought surgical and N95 masks anyway; so the recommendation changed to wearing cloth masks or "face coverings," but not surgical or N95 masks. It doesn't take my Brooklyn cynicism to translate that as "Wear a mask, but not one that actually works."

Again, the N95 is to protect YOU, the surgical mask is to protect the OTHERS that come within 6ft of you (in a indoor environment with nonturbulent airflow).
 
And that is where your logic fails.
Not my logic, but part of the recommendations received from your learned colleagues when I inquired--which I also happen to agree with. One of these doctors is the son of the 67 yo I helped out as he didn't want to be near his father due to his SARS2 exposure levels as a deputy coroner. None of them recommended wearing masks outside the situations I've described.
Its about reversing the spread overall,
Reverse the spread for what reason? I believe we accomplished that in the beginning to prevent an overload of the healthcare system which has been reported a success. But what about herd immunity if we continue to reverse the spread? This is one topic that has the concern of a number of medical professions as well.
There are lots of things we delegate to the government to protect the more vulnerable. Why is the speed limit in residential areas not 'any reasonable speed' ? Why do we restrict smoking indoors ?
Thanks for trying to answer my question. You're the first. But I'm not talking about govt protections or laws, rather the comparison of the measures implemented (right or wrong) to prevent COVID vs the lack of measures implemented to reduce other preventable diseases that kill a million people each year.

What is so special about stopping COVID that the "government" basically destroyed our way of life when 4x the COVID number of people died from tobacco use last year? Or 300,000 from obesity related causes? Why didn't the medical field/government drastically change our way of life in past years/decades as we did for COVID to protect the millions that have died from similar preventable deaths?

Add to the discussion that COVID related "protections" have possibly created a new preventable disease category in that the numbers of previously preventable cases (cancer, etc.) are/will spike due to COVID related shutdowns. This was brought up by my friends son last month as he was seeing a shift in causes of death along with his fellow coroners. And just yesterday(?) a group of 500 doctors sent a letter to the WH on the same non-COVID deaths.
https://www.scribd.com/document/462...60149026&source=hp_affiliate&medium=affiliate
I dont think it should be mandatory to wear a mask 'in public'.
there is no reason to require you to wear a mask.
Perhaps I'm confused then as that is not what your posts 448, 453, and 461 implied to me at least on face value. I took it as you wanted everyone to mask regardless of circumstance to protect any potential vulnerable individual.
I live on a rural lot
I guess our definition of rural is different. Rural sewage in my book is a hole in the ground or top-shelf, a 55 gallon drum and 100ft of field. Any place that has a septic system is city living.;)
 
CDC now saying the thing doesn’t transmit via surfaces nearly as easily as initially thought.

That changes things fairly dramatically.

Mhttps://www.foxnews.com/health/cdc-now-says-coronavirus-does-not-spread-easily-via-contaminated-surfaces

Also seeing a new inflammatory disorder in kids who’ve been exposed to Covid. That’s not good.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health...e-in-kids-and-teens-likely-linked-to-covid-19

Not sure if this should go in this “mask” thread or the “did you catch it” thread but most folks discussing overall Covid fun are reading both I assume.

We don’t have a “what did you touch today” ;) or “did your kids organs go haywire” thread yet. :)
 
yup...it's an airborne virus. we knew that....and it can "float" in a cloud for hours.
 
Reverse the spread for what reason? I believe we accomplished that in the beginning to prevent an overload of the healthcare system which has been reported a success. But what about herd immunity if we continue to reverse the spread? This is one topic that has the concern of a number of medical professions as well.

Mis-spelling. Reducing the spread rather than reversing. Its an epidemic of a respiratory virus. Until we learn something different (and I hope we dont), there is no 'chronic Covid infection'. You get infected with the virus, there are only two outcomes:
A. The virus replicates in your body, you become sick (or you remain asymptomatic) and you recover after 2-3 weeks.
B. The virus replicates in your body and it kills you.

We dont have:
- a known animal reservoir that is widespread through the community like we have for example with Lyme disease.
- patients who are chronic carriers who continuously shed like a 'typhoid mary'

An epidemic with those characteristics can be managed (and a few countries have shown us how to do that). You reduce the reproductive rate to below 1.0 population wide. Eventually, more people recover from the virus than are newly infected by it and the total number of 'actively infected' goes down and trends towards zero. If we consistently do so, eventually the epidemic will run its course and one day the last patient with covid will either recover or die with it. This is the plot from Austria which illustrates that relationship pretty well:

Austria_Covid_cases.jpg

Orange is 'everyone who ever had the virus', red is 'currently infected', green is 'recovered' and white is 'dead'. You notice that delay between the red and the green curve, as time passes, people move from the 'red' to either the 'green' or 'white' pile. If you push down R0, eventually the number of people who recover exceeds the number of people who acquire the disease and your number of 'currently infected' starts to go down. It's like effing magic!





The reason we want to stop the covid epidemic: Because in addition to killing people, it puts large numbers of people in the hospital, requires expensive resources to take care of them and has a potential to leave them with long term disability. So if we can keep this at lets say 5% of the population overall, we are better off than letting this run its native course until it infects 60+% and it only stops due to herd immunity. If you want to see 'herd immunity', take Queens or Brooklyn at the height of the epidemic and multiply it by 3.

What is so special about stopping COVID that the "government" basically destroyed our way of life when 4x the COVID number of people died from tobacco use last year? Or 300,000 from obesity related causes? Why didn't the medical field/government drastically change our way of life in past years/decades as we did for COVID to protect the millions that have died from similar preventable deaths?

Covid has done this damage in the span of 2 months while affecting only a minority of states. If this was allowed to spread through all the states at the same rate it spread in the tristate area, it would dwarf those numbers for the other diseases you mentioned by multiples before the year is over. Both smoking and obesity kill 'willing participants', Covid kills without regard to participation status.

Add to the discussion that COVID related "protections" have possibly created a new preventable disease category in that the numbers of previously preventable cases (cancer, etc.) are/will spike due to COVID related shutdowns. This was brought up by my friends son last month as he was seeing a shift in causes of death along with his fellow coroners. And just yesterday(?) a group of 500 doctors sent a letter to the WH on the same non-COVID deaths.

I am just coming off a medical staff meeting for one of the hospitals I cover. I just dont see that happening. We never stopped seeing emergency patients, patients with acute cancer issues, cardiac patients etc. We stopped temporarily doing routine mammograms, most imaging for things like sports injuries joint pain etc. The majority of cancers we pick up with screening are early stage and there is no data to support that diagnosing a cancerous polyp in the colon or a focus of early cancer in the breast two months later affects anyones outcome. Anyone with chest pain still got worked up and taken to the cath-lab, anyone with a breast mass they could feel got plugged in for workup and treatment. Limiting access to primary care was an issue, there are patients whose blood pressure or diabetic control is now out of whack because they were unable to see their doc or nurse practicioner. But then, most primary care docs adapted, moved to video visits and called in changes of prescriptions, so for those patients who either know how to operate a smartphone or have a nephew with a laptop, there was never a complete disruption of the continuum of care.

Now in NY/NJ, the overwhelming crush of covid patients DID paralyse the medical system otherwise, and I would fully expect that there will be patients who were harmed by the non-availability of medical services. But that's the diseases doing, not 'the government'.

Perhaps I'm confused then as that is not what your posts 448, 453, and 461 implied to me at least on face value. I took it as you wanted everyone to mask regardless of circumstance to protect any potential vulnerable individual.

No, I dont, and I am opposed to any politician driven rule that would require such a waste of resources. If you are indoors away from your residence and in a situation where you cannot maintain 6ft (or 2m) distancing from the next human, I want you to wear a mask regardless of whether you think that any of those people are vulnerable. That's all that the science we have at this point requires.

Oh, and wash your hands*. Before you put on a mask (and touch your face) and after you take off your mask (before touching anything else).



Look, I strenuously disagree with how much of this has been managed and there would have been much better ways to manage the counter-measures using data and science. But that would have required leadership at the federal level and full cooperation at the state and local level, and that we did not have. There was never a logical reason to go to full-scale mitigation measures in communities that had yet to reach the state of 'community transmission'. Early on in this, I said 'if a hurricane hits louisiana, we dont tell people in NY to climb on their roof' yet that is pretty much what we did with Covid. But they didn't make me king or even assistant associate deputy state health commissioner, so nobody in the government asked me for my opinion.




* or perform hand hygiene using sanitizer if you are not in an environment where you can wash your hands with soap and water
 
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Covid has done this damage in the span of 2 months while affecting only a minority of states.
I think this a key and important statement that hopefully is being studied at the highest levels.
If this was allowed to spread through all the states at the same rate it spread in the tristate area [...]
But this was one of the fallacies in the modeling and discussion. No? It would not have spread at the same rate as the tri-state area due to differences in population densities. When I was shown the infection rates, by county, it showed a different result than what you propose.

The review I saw was from an area that eclipsed even NYC counties in COVID death rate per capita. The infection rate dropped off considerably once you ventured as little as 50 miles away in some cases. And this was before any state level lock downs. So the regional external R0 reduction was still being maintained even though the specific county/parish high infection rates hadn’t even peaked yet.

So taking this localized infection rate data and adding it to your R0 example, which I fully understand and agree with, the R0 reduction could have been managed by a localized county/parish quarantine vs locking down the entire state? I believe this exact type of travel quarantine was attempted in the tri-state area but didn’t go through mainly due to resistance by the affected states of all people.
Both smoking and obesity kill 'willing participants', Covid kills without regard to participation status.
I partly disagree. I believe the majority of people, given a chance, would have been a “willing participant” in personally dealing with COVID on their own terms vs a lock down. Would this have increased the death count? Probably. Would that higher death count have been considered locally “excessive” when compared the “death rate” of the local economy. Probably not. People have a unique way prioritizing health vs wealth/life. Just like using their last $7 for a pack of cigarettes or getting 3rds at the buffet. While it still doesn’t answer my original question, I respect your reply. Thank you.

FWIW: I did ask a local State admin type once COVID ran its course if they plan to ban all tobacco products within the state to reduce the numbers of state tobacco related deaths, or if not were the tobacco deaths not as important as COVID deaths? Still waiting on that answer, hence the reason I ask this type question here.
I am just coming off a medical staff meeting for one of the hospitals I cover. I just dont see that happening. [...] there was never a complete disruption of the continuum of care.
That’s provided the person shows up at the hospital? This must be dependent on region or demographics then. Aside from the letter I posted, there have been several interviews of several docs where they express their concern that people are not only personally delaying regular exams but also ER visits. One doc stated they normally saw 240 non-COVID cases per 24 hr period in the ER but haven’t seen any non-COVID in a 5 day span at the time.

This same situation is evident here. My friends son has noted an increase in certain non-COVID deaths that have doctors concerned people are staying home instead going to the ER due to COVID fears. Same with elective or non-emergency procedures. My granddaughter works insurance at a Gastro clinic and they’re on reduced hours and testing. I’ve been nursing a torn MCL since December but when something else broke loose in April I was told short of going to the ER no options until Phase 1 started. Thankfully it did 5 days ago.
There was never a logical reason to go to full-scale mitigation measures in communities that had yet to reach the state of 'community transmission'.
That’s what I find ironic. In talking to an array of people within your skill set, they all said the same. One even showed me local/state/CDC protocols and even the federal Influenza Pandemic Plan which also called for isolating at the local level, then State level, with the CDC/feds providing support. Granted there were missteps and shortages, but the overall plan was local based. Which is exactly opposite what some people wanted and still want at any cost. My concern is what happens when SARS-CoV-3 pops up?

Appreciate the discussion. And yes, I wash my hands before and after masking.;)
 
Unless you have a full blown PPE outfit or a N95 mask at a minimum; the mask requirements in most places is not about protecting you. It is about protecting others from you. And this does basic fact does not change if you are in bum **** nowhere or downtown **** hole.


Tim

Sent from my HD1907 using Tapatalk
And that fabric home made mask does nothing in that respect.
 
That’s what I find ironic. In talking to an array of people within your skill set, they all said the same. One even showed me local/state/CDC protocols and even the federal Influenza Pandemic Plan which also called for isolating at the local level, then State level, with the CDC/feds providing support. Granted there were missteps and shortages, but the overall plan was local based. Which is exactly opposite what some people wanted and still want at any cost. My concern is what happens when SARS-CoV-3 pops up?

Appreciate the discussion. And yes, I wash my hands before and after masking.;)

The local level isolation requires testing/tracing and "surveillance" programs in place so locals can react. With our abysmal testing; we started at least two to three months late. The result, the only solution was a sledge hammer when a scalpel would have been better. The only positive note on the late testing; as states start to reopen, we are into summer where people are outdoors more. Outdoors tends to reduce transmission rates; which may give us more time to get testing fixed.

Tim
 
I think this a key and important statement that hopefully is being studied at the highest levels.

Its going to turn out to be just a result of timing. Based on mutation patterns, it looks like most of the NYC outbreak was imported from europe. It just got there first, was allowed to propagate without restraint and spilled out from there into the metro area.

But this was one of the fallacies in the modeling and discussion. No? It would not have spread at the same rate as the tri-state area due to differences in population densities. When I was shown the infection rates, by county, it showed a different result than what you propose.

Population density doesn't seem to be it. Plenty of cases in the suburban counties in NJ, CT and PA. Just a factor of time and exposure. There is no data to support the magical belief that people in Amarillo, TX are somehow different from those in Berks Co, PA.

The PA dept of health has an interesting animation that shows how geography and time relative to the social distancing efforts determine the level of penetration in a particular community (should post as an animated gif, if it doesn't animate, below is the link to the health dept website):

newmap.gif


https://www.health.pa.gov/topics/disease/coronavirus/Pages/Data-Animations.aspx

Its not 'magic' that caused that ink-spill to stop progressing at some point, it is the measures that forced people to reduce their face-face interactions. And those measures dont take an immediate effect, it seems to take 3-4 cycles before any changes can be seen in the data. Without drastic and unpleasant intervention, there is no reason to believe that this would not have just continued to grow and expand into the counties that remained 'yellow' or 'light orange' on the animated map.

So taking this localized infection rate data and adding it to your R0 example, which I fully understand and agree with, the R0 reduction could have been managed by a localized county/parish quarantine vs locking down the entire state? I believe this exact type of travel quarantine was attempted in the tri-state area but didn’t go through mainly due to resistance by the affected states of all people.

There was simply zero leadership at the federal level, but even if there had been a competent CDC director at the helm of the federal task-force, if had he advised the states to do 'A' they would have done 'Z' just to spite the feds. We were forked from the get-go.

I partly disagree. I believe the majority of people, given a chance, would have been a “willing participant” in personally dealing with COVID on their own terms vs a lock down. Would this have increased the death count? Probably. Would that higher death count have been considered locally “excessive” when compared the “death rate” of the local economy. Probably not. People have a unique way prioritizing health vs wealth/life. Just like using their last $7 for a pack of cigarettes or getting 3rds at the buffet.

You dont see the fundamental difference between smoking or over-eating (which only affects the individual) and contributing to the propagation of a virus (which affects others) ?

That’s provided the person shows up at the hospital? This must be dependent on region or demographics then. Aside from the letter I posted, there have been several interviews of several docs where they express their concern that people are not only personally delaying regular exams but also ER visits. One doc stated they normally saw 240 non-COVID cases per 24 hr period in the ER but haven’t seen any non-COVID in a 5 day span at the time.

Much of that displacement is not the result of some evil government conspiracy but the fact that there is a virus out there that causes people to get sick. What I have mainly seen in terms of ER volume is a reduction in the obvious ******** visits. The 'positivity rate' on imaging studies has definitely gone up as people apparently decided that maybe this wasn't 'the worst headache of their life' and that it can resolve with some tylenol rather than the 10th head CT in the last year.

Our main hospital took aggressive action early on to be ready for the 'wave' once it got to us. We are part of a large university health system and the anticipation was that the metro area we are tied into would experience a similar resource strain as NY leading to 'overflow' into the affiliated hospitals. Thankfully, that never happened and while we do see a steady stream of covid patients, it has never strained the available resources.

This same situation is evident here. My friends son has noted an increase in certain non-COVID deaths that have doctors concerned people are staying home instead going to the ER due to COVID fears. Same with elective or non-emergency procedures. My granddaughter works insurance at a Gastro clinic and they’re on reduced hours and testing. I’ve been nursing a torn MCL since December but when something else broke loose in April I was told short of going to the ER no options until Phase 1 started. Thankfully it did 5 days ago.

GI is a difficult specialty to practice in the face of a infection that can be spread by droplets and aerosols. While I am not familiar of any specific clusters associated with endoscopy facilities, it is a significant concern. From what we believe to be true about the adenoma-->carcinoma pathway in the colon, there is no reason to believe that deferring a colonoscopy by a few months until the level of community transmission has decreased would cause anyone harm.

That’s what I find ironic. In talking to an array of people within your skill set, they all said the same. One even showed me local/state/CDC protocols and even the federal Influenza Pandemic Plan which also called for isolating at the local level, then State level, with the CDC/feds providing support. Granted there were missteps and shortages, but the overall plan was local based. Which is exactly opposite what some people wanted and still want at any cost. My concern is what happens when SARS-CoV-3 pops up?

The data and direction should come from the CDC, unfortunately they have been caught completely flat-footed with inept leadership, an encrusted buerocracy and ancient data collection and visualization tools. Its a virus, it doesn't stop at a state-line, the response should be be guided by the data and known control practices, not by the color of the party flag flown by the responsible local official.

What will happen if the chinese release SARS-Cov3 ? Same ****-show.
 
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GI is a difficult specialty to practice in the face of a infection that can be spread by droplets and aerosols. While I am not familiar of any specific clusters associated with endoscopy facilities, it is a significant concern. From what we believe to be true about the adenoma-->carcinoma pathway in the colon, there is no reason to believe that deferring a colonoscopy by a few months until the level of community transmission has decreased would cause anyone harm.

Nit pick :) Time can matter. If I remember stats correctly, it will matter to one or two a month.
Actually, my mom had stage 4 colon cancer when it was caught. Now, she had a very rare form of cancer, and they initially thought they had a couple months to start treatment after the colonoscopy so my mom could go on the planned cruise. When the biopsy came back, she had to cancel her planned trips, they started chemo the same day. Survival to one year was less then a few percent, five years was not measured due to such a low rate. That was seven years ago. Doc said if they were lucky to catch it so "early". (Oncologist can have interesting definition of early being stage 4)

Funny story about it. My mom was assigned a palliative care doc. Who my mom really liked, after six years, the palliative care doc discharged her. Only then did my parents catch on that a palliative care doc is about helping terminal patients be comfortable for the remainder of their life. :)

Tim
 
Nit pick :) Time can matter. If I remember stats correctly, it will matter to one or two a month.
Actually, my mom had stage 4 colon cancer when it was caught. Now, she had a very rare form of cancer, and they initially thought they had a couple months to start treatment after the colonoscopy so my mom could go on the planned cruise. When the biopsy came back, she had to cancel her planned trips, they started chemo the same day. Survival to one year was less then a few percent, five years was not measured due to such a low rate. That was seven years ago. Doc said if they were lucky to catch it so "early". (Oncologist can have interesting definition of early being stage 4)

Right, but that's not the average 51 year old who gets badgered by his wife to finally schedule that colonoscopy. The intent of screening colonoscopy is not to find the person who presents with stage 4 disease, the intent is to find polyps that are known/suspected to progress to invasive colon cancer. And that squence takes years.

Funny story about it. My mom was assigned a palliative care doc. Who my mom really liked, after six years, the palliative care doc discharged her. Only then did my parents catch on that a palliative care doc is about helping terminal patients be comfortable for the remainder of their life. :)

Some years back, one of my techs dad was diagnosed with a advanced form of brain cancer. He was in his late 80s and given the dismal options decided not to do anything about it. So the options of palliative and hospice care were brought up with him and it seemed to be right along what he wanted. A few days later, his daughter tells me laughing that he came back from the VFW where his buddies advised him 'don't go to hospice, everyone we knew who went there is now dead !'
 
Some years back, one of my techs dad was diagnosed with a advanced form of brain cancer. He was in his late 80s and given the dismal options decided not to do anything about it. So the options of palliative and hospice care were brought up with him and it seemed to be right along what he wanted. A few days later, his daughter tells me laughing that he came back from the VFW where his buddies advised him 'don't go to hospice, everyone we knew who went there is now dead !'

lmao. that is funny, and somehow worse than my parents!

Tim
 
From Weilke's post above: "it is the measures that forced people to reduce their face-face interactions"

Forced or measures that were taken voluntarily?

Or perhaps didn't actually have any effect at all?

It is easy to assume that "Social Distancing" had an impact but certainly not fully proven.

After all, one large focus was on continuous hand washing and disinfecting of areas and, within the past few days, the CDC has revised their stance and now feels that surface transfer is not likely.
 
There is no data to support the magical belief that people in Amarillo, TX are somehow different from those in Berks Co, PA.
There's localized data that does. But it has to do with lifestyle not biology. In various "rural" areas along the GOM to include TX normal daily lifestyles were keeping the spread in check. The lock downs had minimal if no effect on these groups of people daily routines. Perhaps it's an outlier statistically but several universities are collecting this data as I've been told.
You dont see the fundamental difference between smoking or over-eating (which only affects the individual) and contributing to the propagation of a virus (which affects others) ?
The context has zero to do with the "propagation" of the virus. It's merely a body count comparison vs cause vs priority. Worse case models showed 2-3M dead from COVID which was rightfully unacceptable. Yet in the past 3 years over 3M people have died from other preventable diseases which while just as tragic their type of death is not given the same priority as the "forced" mitigation steps used to stop COVID deaths, i.e., is one death more important than another? Regardless, society will always prioritized which deaths are acceptable and which are not based on the topic du jour.
What I have mainly seen in terms of ER volume is a reduction in the obvious ******** visits.
In this region, the concern is more on visits of an acute nature, like chest pains and infections. Most of the work up on these patients is showing they had symptoms but due to lock down and/or fear they stayed home vs go to the ER. Unfortunately, the results are not ending well with some of these individuals who waited. Perhaps it's different in your area.
unfortunately they have been caught completely flat-footed with inept leadership, an encrusted buerocracy and ancient data collection and visualization tools.
I believe this will be proven the root cause to the cascade of failures with SARS2 especially when it comes to testing and lab work. There are number of former CDC people who are speaking their mind on the same topic to include the one I met in April. Seems this same discussion was brought up during the last few national health issues as well.
 
that's not the intent of the drug.....it does provide anti-inflamatory action and helps while the body fights the infection. Remember the virus is a "clotting" agent and affects everyone differently.
So what does it do for those who aren't infected?
Apparently, not very much whether or not one is infected.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext

TL; DR:
"We were unable to confirm a benefit of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, when used alone or with a macrolide, on in-hospital outcomes for COVID-19. Each of these drug regimens was associated with decreased in-hospital survival and an increased frequency of ventricular arrhythmias when used for treatment of COVID-19"
 
Why were there only 4 death's due to COVID in Hong Kong vs. NY City.....populations similarly sized?

https://www.sfgate.com/science/article/How-Hong-Kong-kept-COVID-19-at-bay-15254007.php

Hong Kong, a city of 7.5 million, has had just four confirmed COVID-19 deaths. The last one occurred two months ago.

By comparison, New York, population 8.4 million, has lost 13,938 people to the pandemic (as of May 6), with another 5,359 deaths likely caused by the disease, according to NYC Health.
 
Apparently, not very much whether or not one is infected.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext

TL; DR:
"We were unable to confirm a benefit of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, when used alone or with a macrolide, on in-hospital outcomes for COVID-19. Each of these drug regimens was associated with decreased in-hospital survival and an increased frequency of ventricular arrhythmias when used for treatment of COVID-19"

OK. I have already read the attached report. Besides not being randomized, I understand there were a few "critiques" of the study. But I did not catch them.

Tim
 
OK. I have already read the attached report. Besides not being randomized, I understand there were a few "critiques" of the study. But I did not catch them.

Tim
It probably isn't a "perfect" study. However, it is one of the larger scale studies to date, with enough subjects (over 1000 in each group) to be able to see some useful statistics. It doesn't contradict the more recent studies suggesting little benefit.
 
Thankfully the POTUS said yesterday that if there is a second wave the country won't shut down again. Good to see a little sanity in this sea of insanity.
 
Any idea what laws he will use to implement that policy?
 
Any idea what laws he will use to implement that policy?
FWIW: He could use the Defence Production Act to keep things rolling or if it falls more under a constitutional issue he can have the DOJ file suit to keep things open.
 
FWIW: He could use the Defence Production Act to keep things rolling or if it falls more under a constitutional issue he can have the DOJ file suit to keep things open.
DPA will be rather limited in that regard.
And DOJ has even less power.
The real answer, solve the frocking testing problems. And then states will be surgical instead of using sledge hammers.
Been pretty basic from the start.

Tim

Sent from my HD1907 using Tapatalk
 
It probably isn't a "perfect" study. However, it is one of the larger scale studies to date, with enough subjects (over 1000 in each group) to be able to see some useful statistics. It doesn't contradict the more recent studies suggesting little benefit.
Actual it stated harmful. As in more people die or have cardiac issues.

Tim

Sent from my HD1907 using Tapatalk
 
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