Article in the paper today says the medical community is having huge problems with people who believe the shit they read on social media. And of course it reminded me of a lot of the stuff we see on this site. The Covid hoax ideas, the refusal to acknowledge the usefulness of masks, the advocates for failed medicine ( eg bleach, Trump's drug recommendations, quack doctors trying to make a buck ), the insistence on claiming that Covid is a political issue not a medical one, the natural herd immunity ideas, ... . At some point, the US has to accept what us going on at face value and deal with it as most countries have. I suppose a big chunk of your country already has; one would hope so. But we do still have idiots like Buy1Sell2 pushing advice that is frankly dangerous to the public and negligent on his part. One has to ask is an internet site like this one liable to some degree to censor some of these ideas. Facebook and other sites have done so already.
Yes of course it did. Like we are going to take medical advice from some degenerate Canadian of dubious extraction. Please. Your opinion of yourself is all out of whack with the opinions of you held by everyone else here. Any of the adults anyway. Fuck off.
You are delusional and irrelevant. I'm not offering medical advice dimwit. You are a big part of the problem; thanks for illustrating that again and again and again ... . Because that's what America needs, dumb asses like you and their misinfomed opinions. That's EXACTLY my point.
On one hand I understand your concern that spreading misinformation online is dangerous. On the other hand, very little is being done to explore alternative research. I posted a bioarxiv (pre-release peer reviewed paper repository) article on oleandrin's effect on coronaviridae. It looks promising, however it's being blackholed by the media. There's two things I don't like about the current approach to COVID that appear to be anti-science: 1. If it doesn't come from Fauci (the political head of disease) it doesn't exist 2. If its not a vaccine, it's fake news Both of these things are highly politically driven. Having done enough actual research in my life (albeit, in computer science) you should take every possible idea as plausible until proven otherwise through careful, meticulous, research. In our current anti-science environment people seem to only believe what Fauci says. This is through both politics and ignorance. Ignorance of the actual scientific process, and politics because they choose to only believe what a figurehead says. This works both ways. The left tends to believe Fauci unconditionally, and the right tends to believe Trump unconditionally. Of course this doesn't mean I am condoning injecting bleach, or being able to buy oleandrin or hydroxychloroquine over the counter. But we should be exploring these options (well...except the bleach) as serious possibilities as alternative/last-line treatments. I do not like the current anti-science trend. It reminds me a lot of reddit where a simple "you got a source for that" is used to dismiss a scientific inquiry because the layperson does not have the experience reading actual scientific papers to draw any form of conclusion. If we followed this trend on our way to space we would've never made it to the moon because strapping liquid oxygen to a missile and pointing it at space would've been seen as "fake news" and "insane".
Everyone's racing to find therapeutics or a "cure". There's likely a hundred medications showing "promise" in the literature. The problem's the WH w/o a scintilla of medical knowledge pushing the latest flavor of the day "cure" because a lobbyist is polishing Donnie's knob on FOX that day. People take Fauci seriously because he's aware of what's showing actual promise and what isn't. Or at least that's the impression of most reasonable people who leave the vetting to the experts. If the med isn't at a certain stage of development/trials why even bring it up and distract from the race to something further along showing actual promise? People are retarded and they'll buy their colloidal silver and neglect sound medical advise because "the studies" showed promise and great leader said so. Cliffnotes: someone with money and reach to the WH went on google and read about the "latest cure" showing some promise. Now we're supposed to take them seriously because they align with my political party.
Quackery has existed for a long time. It's unfortunate that people unconditionally accept it as true yes. The cure shilling from Trump is excessive. The language he uses is the problem. I'd be much more apt to defend him if he would call it what it is, "promising research", and not sound like an early morning conservative radio commercial with "THIS IS THE CURE THEY ARE KEEPING FROM YOU!" I agree, again. As OP had posted social media is a problem but not really because of unproven conspiracy theories. Rather, jumping to conclusions. As you pointed out a promising drug could be at nearly any stage of development. It would be nice to see someone say "olenadrin showed promise with invitro coronavirus samples and should be investigated" rather than, again, sounding like a goldbug commercial on conservative radio. Unfortunately, as we all know too well, those internet points are worth their weight in gold in mental masturbation.
I'll admit that scientists are not great about communicating their work to the general public (or even to their peers), but in reality pretty much every lab that does work that could be even remotely related to covid has started new projects in this direction. I'm an active researcher in molecular/computational biology, and I personally know of several labs/companies that have shifted focus to covid, including some that are quite far fetched. I accept that the embrace of Fauci by many on the left is political reactionism. However, it's important to have a point person coordinating the response. There will always be conflicting opinions by legitimate experts, but that doesn't mean people should feel free to chose a view that has a small minority of scientific support when they don't have the ability to judge for themselves the merits of the claims. Even for experts in biology, it's quite difficult to make an informed decision on something that isn't in their exact subfield. For example, I don't have enough knowledge of immunology to even venture a guess about how long immunity might last (as much as I would like to be able to). Getting to that point would require weeks of reading the literature and discussion with experts. The only practical way to make policy decisions here is to follow a consensus of experts, while continuing to explore alternate directions of research. I also arrived at biology from a hard-sciences background and have seen many others make the jump professionally. I don't want this come off as paternalistic, but a nearly universal feature is not appreciating how different the research process is in biology and as a result being overconfident in making judgments about it. It's not a system governed by simple rules or a compartmentalized hierarchy, and the number of "unknown unkowns" is daunting. For an idea that seems logical to actually work out is the exception. Which leads me to: This appears to be one of the cases I mentioned of every company under the sun trying to apply themselves to covid. It's funded by a company working on oleander-based drugs for other purposes. They should certainly continue pursuing it, but I wouldn't characterize it as "promising." Research at this stage goes nowhere 99% of the time, and in normal times a lot more work would be needed before you could even think of trying to commercialize it. If you want to learn about work like this by all means read biorxiv or specialized industry news, but I don't think something at this stage is worth reporting on more broadly. In the other thread you wrote: While you didn't explicitly advocate it, we're far from the point where it would be responsible for a hospital to try it. This isn't something where you can judge from the outcome of a few anecdotal cases. It really requires a larger clinical trial, which first requires a lot of work establishing safety and treatment protocols and a lot more preliminary work to justify that there is even a chance of it working. The Times recently had a good article about the pitfalls of the urge to give something a try in dire circumstances rather conduct proper trials, and how much the demand for hydroxychloroquine among patients and even practicing doctors has set us back on figuring out if even works and under what conditions.
Trump is pushing magical medical cure nonsense again... 'Outrageous': Trump Announcement on Convalescent Plasma Blasted by Scientists https://www.newsweek.com/outrageous...onvalescent-plasma-blasted-scientists-1527081 President Trump announced on Sunday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has allowed for the emergency use of an unproven treatment known as convalescent plasma therapy for COVID-19 patients, stating it can reduce the chances of dying in some by 35 percent. But scientists were quick to cast doubt on the claim, with one calling it "outrageous." Convalescent plasma therapy involves extracting blood from people who have been infected with the coronavirus, and removing components including red and white blood cells and platelets to leave behind a straw-coloured liquid which contains antibodies. It is hoped that injecting this liquid into COVID-19 patients could help them recover. Trump said during a press conference regarding the FDA's emergency use authorization (EUA) that a study on the treatment launched by the Mayo Clinic and the federal government had "proven to reduce mortality by 35 percent." Health Secretary Alex Azar told the briefing: "We saw about a 35 percent better survival in the patients who benefited most from the treatment, which were patients under 80 who were not on artificial respiration. "I just want to emphasize this point, because I don't want you to gloss over this number. We dream in drug development of something like a 35 percent mortality reduction. This is a major advance in the treatment of patients. This is a major advance." The EUA did not indicate where the 35 percent figure originated from. The USCovidPlasma.org website for the program states: "COVID-19 convalescent plasma has not yet been demonstrated to provide clinical benefit in patients affected by this disease. It's not known if this treatment will or will not help those with COVID-19 or if it will have any harmful effects, but this is one of the only treatments that we have at present." In May, the FDA deemed convalescent plasma an "investigational product" so it could be used in clinical trials and administered to seriously ill patients. In June, the Mayo Clinic released a safety report involving 20,000 people that suggested the treatment was safe. This was followed by a study released as a pre-print on the server medRxiv earlier this month which indicated that giving convalescent plasma to patients with severe COVID-19 within three days of them being diagnosed could lower their risk of death. Submitting data as a pre-print means it hasn't been through the rigorous peer review process required to publish in scientific journals. Releasing data this way enables scientists to prompt debate on a topic, and it is useful in a fast-moving situation like a pandemic. The study did not have a placebo group and was not a randomized clinical trial, the gold standard for testing treatments are safe and effective, leading experts to express skepticism about the data and the rationale behind issuing an EUA. Last week, top federal health officials called for the FDA to put its EUA for the treatment on hold, arguing the data was too weak, The New York Times first reported. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, tweeted after the EUA was issued that to claim based on a pre-print, observational (not randomized control trial) study that the therapy improved mortality rates by 35 percent was "outrageous." "There's no evidence to support any survival benefit," he wrote. On Sunday, Dr. Thomas M. File president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America said in a statement that while the data shows "some positive signals" that it could be helpful in treating COVID-19 patients, particularly those in the early stages of the disease, "we lack the randomized controlled trial data we need to better understand its utility in COVID-19 treatment." "For this reason, IDSA supports the continued collection of data in randomized clinical trials to better understand the benefits of convalescent plasma treatment before authorizing its wider use in patients with COVID-19," he said. Duncan Young, a professor of intensive care medicine at the University of Oxford, U.K., told Newsweek: "The biggest problem with an EUA for convalescent plasma therapy is that we will not know if it works, as the EUA essentially causes clinicians to give the treatment rather than entering patients in clinical trials. There may also be a rationing problem as it may be in short supply." Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, tweeted that "sadlyy" the FDA "took [a] big hit to credibility in the manner in which they announced EUA for plasma." "To be clear, FDA has the authority & data might even meet the criteria. But manner of role out: hyperbole, mischaracterization of evidence by @SteveFDA [FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn] very disappointing." He said: "Bottom line for EUA is this: if you end up hospitalized, your doctor won't know if plasma is helpful or not. That's why we do science. And EUA sets us back. Makes it harder to do science right." Echoing their concerns, the Journal of the American Medical Association tweeted an explainer article on the treatment, alongside the message: "People who've had #COVID19 develop anti-#SARSCoV2 antibodies in plasma, the yellow liquid portion of blood. This convalescent plasma can be transfused into COVID19 patients, but the effectiveness of the treatment hasn't yet been shown in RCTs [randomized control trials]." A spokesperson for NHS Blood and Transplant, which manages blood donation services in England and transplant services across the U.K., said in a statement that the "observational studies coming from America are promising" but "they are not conclusive. "Randomised control trials are the gold standard for determining the effectiveness of a new treatment." A White House spokesperson told Newsweek the FDA commissioner addressed the concerns raised in this article on Sunday. Newsweek has contacted the FDA, HHS, and Mayo Clinic for comment.
Let's walk through the math with charts showing Trump's miracle cure claim is false. Trump Misleads the Nation Yet Again About COVID-19 Miracle Cure https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-d...nation-yet-again-about-covid-19-miracle-cure/ With the Republican convention imminent, President Trump wants some good news. So he bullied the FDA into issuing an emergency approval for a COVID-19 treatment: Calling it “a truly historic announcement,” U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday hailed a federal government emergency authorization for use of convalescent blood plasma that he declared would “save countless lives” of coronavirus patients. Trump and his health secretary, Alex Azar, at a briefing for reporters, noted a 35% decrease in mortality among those younger than 80 who were not on a respirator, a month after receiving the treatment early in the course of their disease. “We dream in drug development of something like a 35% mortality reduction,” Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, said alongside the president. A “senior administration official” expanded on this: “If you’re one of the 35 people out of a hundred who survive severe COVID symptoms because of convalescent plasma, this is certainly a breakthrough,” the official said. Ahem. The treatment involves infusing patients with blood plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19. This is very much a legitimate line of research, but it most certainly doesn’t save 35 lives out of a hundred or anything close to it. I know you count on me for chart-based versions of data like this, so here you go: Among a subset of seriously ill patients, researchers produced several preliminary results: 7-day mortality. Survival rates were about 3 percentage points better with the plasma treatment if transfusion was done quickly after diagnosis. 30-day mortality. Survival rates were about 5 percentage points better with the plasma treatment if transfusion was done quickly after diagnosis. 7-day mortality with high IgG plasma vs. low IgG plasma. Survival rates were about 5 points better with high IgG plasma. 30-day mortality with high IgG plasma vs. low IgG plasma. Survival rates were about 7 points better with high IgG plasma. Needless to say, none of these are anywhere close to what most people think of when they hear about a 35 percent difference. So where did that come from? Well, if you cherry pick one of the results—7-day high vs. low—and calculate the death rate instead of the survival rate, you get 8.9 divided by 13.7. This equals 0.65, which means the high-plasma group died at a rate 35 percent lower than the low plasma group on a relative basis. This is a number that might be of importance to a researcher or a statistician, but not to anyone else. For the lay public, the basic result is that plasma treatment might improve your survival rate by four or five percentage points. In other words, the plasma treatment is promising but unlikely to make a huge difference. It’s certainly light years away from “historic” and in no way does it save 35 lives out of a hundred. Four or five is more like it. Nonetheless, Trump implied tremendous results; Azar confirmed it; FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn stayed silent; and a senior administration official then retailed an even more ridiculous version of the whole thing. None of this was an accident. It was carefully designed to mislead the lay public into thinking that Trump had decisively ripped a miracle treatment out of the hands of the stupid doctors and made it available to everyone. He didn’t. Tens of thousands of people have already received plasma treatment and that will continue with little change. Eventually more careful studies will be done and we’ll have a better idea of just how well this treatment really works. In the meantime, as usual, never listen to anything that Donald Trump says about it.