Guest post by Rud Istvan,
ctm posted my longish scientific commentary written last Sunday on Monday. The situation is still rapidly evolving. Much more is now known than last Sunday. This updates my previous commentary and the general knowledge about Wuhan, adding new factual information plus additional research. For those interested, the WSJ online (paywalled, but I am a subscriber) has added a new coronavirus section tracking Wuhan daily news because of the importance to China and global supply chains. I rely on it here using today’s WSJ noon update.
A special h/t to previous commenters Robert of Texas and Nicolas McGinley, who added much to my previous post with many erudite comments.
Origins and precedents
Wuhan is the third known transmission of a respiratory tract coronavirus infection from bats via an intermediary mammal to humans:
SARS 2003: The following information is derived from a special WHO report. 916 deaths from 8422 total infections, mortality 10.9%. Not transmissible prior to onset of symptoms (cough, fever); main transmission days 4 and 5 after symptom onset. Mode of transmission mainly contact, with an R0 about 3. Bat corona via live civet intermediate to humans in a Chinese wet market.
MERS 2012: 779 deaths from 2229 total infections, mortality 35.5%. Not transmissible prior to symptom onset. Bat corona via live camel intermediate to humans in a Saudi Arabian camel market.
Wuhan 2020: to today at noon (2/13/20), about 1300 deaths in about 59000 diagnosed cases, with about 5000 full recoveries. The implications are discussed below. Bat corona via live pangolin to humans in Wuhan’s Huanan wet market (since permanently closed) in December 2019.
Wuhan transmission and clinical progression
Many more case reports are now giving a clear clinical picture.
Transmission route is either contact or inhalation (of real concern, because more flu like than cold like—even with annual flu shots influenza R0 remains about 2 because of flu vaccine issues covered in the previous post). Based on SARS and influenza, this means the likely Wuhan R0 is 3ish, so very contagious. The significant inhalation route is now shown by both the Diamond Princess cruise ship experiment (more below) and by the fact that ordinary surgical masks proved ineffective in the Wuhan hospital setting (JAMA, previous post).
Incubation period is 7-10 days from initial infection. The good news is that the 14-day quarantine adopted pretty much universally last week should therefore be effective (with a margin of safety) at Wuhan containment. But in most of Southeast Asia outside China, Japan, and Singapore, or in Africa should Wuhan spread there, 14-day quarantine will be difficult or impossible to maintain so the possibility of a pandemic remains.
The bad news is that Wuhan IS transmissible during some later part of the symptomless incubation period. The definitive clinical proof (there was comment debate about the reliability of previous post evidence from Japan and Germany) is an age 50’s UK male who attended an about 100 person sales conference in Singapore 1/20-1/22 2020. A single individual from Wuhan also attended this conference and was–per Singapore Wuhan containment policies– symptomless on arrival (no fever, no cough). That either symptomless or very early symptomatic individual transmitted Wuhan to the UK citizen in Singapore. The UK individual then flew to France for a 4-day family ski vacation 1/24-1/28 at Le Contamines-Montjoie. During the 4-day vacation the UK male remained symptomless (entire incubation time Singapore plus France at most 8 days) but transmitted Wuhan to 11 other individuals, 5 later diagnosed in UK (family and friends), 5 later diagnosed in France, and 1 later diagnosed in Spain. Clearly this case is NOT family close proximity contact transmission. This case may be a “super spreader” outlier, BUT it means a symptomless R0 as high as 11 cannot be ruled out, with a symptomless transmission period of several days. By comparison, the R0 for measles (absent vaccination) is 12-18, so a horrific Wuhan symptomless R0 of 11 is within the realm of actual possibility.
This is VERY bad news, as the formal CDC guidance on URI’s is that transmission risk is highest with peak symptoms (equating to peak virion shedding)–as was the case with SARS. Not so with Wuhan, reinforcing the public health necessity of strict 14-day quarantine.
Disease progression is standard common cold symptoms for 7-10 days with one exception–used since yesterday for clinical diagnosis in Hubei Province, as both the Chinese and the experimental CDC US test kits are showing significant problems with a high rate of false negatives. Common colds from over 120 distinct serotypes from all three viral families (RNA naked Rhino, RNA enveloped Corona, and DNA enveloped Adeno) all evidence the same three symptoms: runny nose, sore throat, and cough. Influenza adds two: fever and muscle ache. Wuhan clinically shows four: runny nose, sore throat, cough, AND fever—but NOT muscle ache. As of today, Hubei switched to clinical diagnosis and today’s ‘new’ diagnosed Wuhan cases were 14840. Yesterday, using only test kits, it was 1638. This is not a leap in cases; it is a leap in diagnostics.
Unfortunately, this new fact means Wuhan has previously (as suspected but now proven) been severely under diagnosed and reported. And that unfortunately means the 1300 attributed deaths were also severely underreported. More on presently inferable mortality comes in a following section.
Wuhan then makes a now well-established clinical bifurcation. In 75-80% of cases, by symptom day 10 there is a normal ‘corona cold’ recovery lasting a few days. (In my own case last week, 3 recovery days in total, days 9-12 from symptom onset.)
In 20-25% of cases, by symptom day 10 Wuhan progresses to lower respiratory tract pneumonia, where death may occur with or without ICU intervention. The percentage of these deep pneumonias that are viral as opposed to a secondary bacteria infection is not known, but the NEJM clinical case report from Washington State discussed in the following paragraph strongly suggests viral (like SARS), not secondary bacterial treatable with antibiotics.
The new NEJM case report is so important it is summarized here because it leads to a hopeful culminating section below. The Seattle Wuhan case evidenced x-ray diagnosed lower respiratory tract pneumonia from days 9-11 from symptom onset. Supplemental oxygen was started day 9. IV antibiotics were started day 10 to no effect, so discontinued after one day. Importantly (more below), experimental antiviral remdesivir started day 11 by IV under a compassionate use exception, and the deep viral pneumonia fully resolved (per x-ray diagnosis) within 24 hours!
Diamond Princess ‘lab’ experiment
On Sunday, reported cases were 69 out of about 3700 total ship passengers and crew. Japan was removing people from the ship to hospital isolation as soon as symptoms (fever) showed, so the cruise ship became a somewhat artificial (close quarters) symptomless R0 experiment.
As of today, the ship’s website reports that 218 passengers have been positively diagnosed from 713 tested, all removed to hospital isolation. About 3500 passengers and crew remain on board as the ‘experiment’ continues. This suggests symptomless Wuhan R0 is greater than 2 (37 new cases per day for four days among a symptomless about 3500- 3600) and could be, like SARS, 3ish. Except SARS transmission was after symptom onset; this is before.
Per its website, ship offered today to begin removing symptomless passengers to shore quarantine at their expense, or to remain quarantined on the ship at Princess expense. In either event, full cruise refunds have been made.
Inferable Mortality
The news here is not good. We have mostly very poor data; both Hubei incidence and mortality were now provably severely under reported. But we do have one piece of usable comparable information. 1300 mortalities and 5000 recoveries amongst those who tested positive from the false negative test kits used until yesterday (the majority of cases have not yet resolved one way of the other). In the end, when the disease has run its course, there are only two outcomes: recovery or death. On the test kit basis, the mortality could be as high as 26%. That is horrible but not impossible since MERS was almost 36%.
My own ‘hunch’ is that Wuhan in the end will come in about 10% mortality; the mechanism is lower respiratory tract viral pneumonia just like 2003 SARS and the 1918 ‘Spanish flu’. There is no reason to think the mortality outcome would differ greatly from a very similar clinical mechanism.
Vaccine possibility
For sure, not any time soon.
The degree of difficulty is explained by the structural nature of Wuhan and its reproduction method. It is an enveloped non-segmented positive sense single strand RNA of about 30kb (the largest of any virus). The genome reads from the 5’ end. It first codes for (along about 20kb) the RNA protease ‘polyprotein’ that hijacks the host cell and causes replication. The remaining ~10kb code for 4 viral proteins separately needed to finally reassemble viable Wuhan virions: S, the pronounced spike from the envelope that gives the corona virus its generic name and enables further cell infection; N, the nucleocapsid (the capsid protein around the RNA core); M, the envelope membrane protein, and E, the envelope protein that protrudes from M but not nearly as far as S.
The obvious vaccine antibody targets are primarily S and secondarily E. That is no different than H and N in influenza. Unfortunately also like influenza, in SARS it has been shown that both S and E undergo RNA transcription error mutation, and at higher rates than one might suspect from the specifics of RNA coronavirus. Thus, like influenza, it may not be possible to develop a general Wuhan vaccine, only one of limited effectiveness against circulating virus that Wuhan will then mutate around.
Drug therapy
Here, the very new news is hopeful. Gilead Science developed remdesivir for enveloped non-segmented negative sense single strand Ebola virus. In emergency human clinical trials in Africa, it proved safe but not effective. It has shown good in vitro efficacy against SARS and MERS. And the single NEJM case report above has a definite positive proof of principle human outcome.
Based on this, China has announced a full-scale random double blind placebo controlled trial in 761 patients. As of this writing China reports successful synthesis of sufficient remdesivir active, so human testing begins today.
Of note for potential future Gilead/China intellectual property conflicts, China announced yesterday that it has applied for a patent to use remdesivir to treat human Wuhan. WUWT?
Updated WUWT conclusions
Is Wuhan a serious public health concern? Yes.
Is Wuhan a serious pandemic threat? Not yet.
If containment mainly to China via travel restrictions and 14-day quarantine can be enforced, it is probably not a pandemic threat ever to North America or Western Europe or Australia. Africa and Southeast Asia outside China, Japan, and Singapore need careful watching. And as with 2009 Swine flu, South America will be hit or miss.
Is 14-day quarantine effective? Yes.
Is a vaccine on the horizon? No.
Is a drug therapy on the horizon? Yes.
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Personally, for about 50 years I have been using “Osha root” ( Ligusticum porteri) for repiratory tract problems (in China there are species of Ligusticum). I always try to have some on hand; either as dried roots, homemade extracts or commercial tincture.
Taken at on-set of flu/cold malaise, for me, Osha root stops things in their track. If I let symptoms get started it still notably quickly (helps) gets me better.
As for Osha root’s deep respiratory tract relevance: I have given it to individuals with chronic bronchitis that seemed unresponsive to physician’s treatment. Resolution of the bronchitis seemed almost linearly prompt.
Pneumonia is not something I’ve ever administered Osha root for. Although I would not recommend it as an “alternative” treatment for pneumonia, based on seeing respiratory tract responsiveness to it then probably it could be an adjunt at some point.
This comment about an additional early immunological tactic. Osha root is not easy to find & in commercial preparations can be considered pricey.
Maybe some readers would like to have something on hand as a 1st step for self defense if/when a pandemic threat arises in their area. I dose it by squirting a few drops of the tincture deep onto the back of my throat (instead if drinking it down), tastes fairly lousy.
Thanks Rud. Are you fully recovered now from your bout with non-Wuhan viridae? If not, I hope you recover soon.
“I sense a degree of Western Superiority Complex at play here”
It appears that my above statement has rattled some cages.
1: Should the virus be of contact transmission only then clearly hygiene has a major part to play. But this virus can infect through being airborne.
2: Why should cats and dogs be more capable of carrying a virus transmittable to humans than pigs or chickens? The are all in part carnivores
3: Does Western hygiene result in a smaller percentage of people catching flu each year than compared with developing countries?
4: Are immune systems in developed countries more robust than the rest? I recall on 2 occasions when a staff member of mine in West Africa was sweating more than usual and looked a bit crook at work. On asking if they were OK they replied ” I’v got a bought of malaria”. One was the cook. They were told to go home.
5: Western hygiene? I recall a study where someone tested finger food laid out at a party once the party was well swinging. Peanuts in particular were contaminated with human urine
I’ll rest my case there
M
Stupidity does get a reaction around here.
I have been restraining myself with great effort.
These threads are what some might call a “target rich environment”.
Why bother…I did not see anything personally insulting, although obviously there is much attempt at condescension.
I suspect that this heretofore unrecognized mental affliction known as Western Superiority Complex is about as wide spread as the white nationalist white supremacist alt right “movement”.
There is plenty of it going around perhaps…who knows?
One thing I am pretty sure it…it mostly exists in the minds of people who are casting it as an aspersion on others.
Diseases and how they spread and how deadly they are has nothing to do with hygiene?
Nothing to do with nutrition?
Or keeping wild animals of all description out of the butcher shop, and not have the butcher shops, slaughterhouses, exotic pets store, and the restaurant kitchens all under one roof?
Nothing to do with it?
Shooting a dear and eating is the same as eating wild rodents and bats?
It is all dumb luck.
Like it is all a coincidence that some places have most or all of the new drugs and cures invented, and some places have all the new and terrible diseases.
Maybe over the next 50 years they will invent all the new stuff in the places where so many new diseases have been popping up, and instead of inventing stuff and coming up with cures, the next 187 LassaEbolaMarburgChikungunyaWestNileHantaRhabdo Eye Bleed Fevers will come from here instead of those other places.
After all, it is just random.
One of these days our incredible run of luck with staying healthy and living longer than ever is gonna come back and bite us in the ass, and then we’ll be sorry for the whole staying clean and eating wholesome foods BS.
I estimate that China experiences 20-30 million pneumonia cases each year with over 300,000 deaths (hard to get real numbers). The Coronavirus is responsible for 1% of that. Of course, now that testing is not required for diagnosis and the government will pay all health care costs for those diagnosed with coronavirus based on clinical symptoms (pneumonia), look for Coronavirus to be diagnosed more often, especially among serious cases. This will keep mortality rate higher, since mild cases wont be diagnosed based on clinical symptoms (only tests and they are not reliable and in limited supply so only more serious cases get tested).
So the fact is most people infected just get a bad cold and don’t get tested or counted. Those deaths are mainly in the over 60 population and those with other diseases. Almost 15% of Chinas population is over 60 and many cities have serious air pollution. Also China is a smoking nation, everyone (men) seems to smoke. And then you have high population density. All of these factors taken together mean easy spread, and more severe lung symptoms due to age and environmental factors.
The financial and emotional stress of quarantine measures and food shortages, not to mention lack of access to healthcare services due to the focus on coronavirus (people have been turned away with pneumonia if they tested negative or required to pay for service (50% copay I believe with insurance, no socialized health care in China) will increase mortality in China. One way to solve overpopulation-especially among the older population. Come October there should be a nice Baby Boom due to quarantine.
My understanding: Death rate growth factor (change from one day to the next) spiked up to 1.5 on Feb. 12. Down to 0.8 on Feb. 13. The spike on Feb. 12 is due to a spike in the number of deaths, “improved” reporting, relying on clinical symptoms more than blood test. Decrease on Feb. 13 presumably follows the new method. If growth factor stays below 1, this is a sign of decline, “with the quantity eventually becoming zero.” https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/
Until Feb. 12, there was a clear downward trend in the growth factor from Jan. 26. Deaths consistently under-reported, but could the trend not be real?
True or false: viruses generally mutate in the direction of less virulence, even if greater infectiousness, over time. Everyone gets a cold, no one dies except Liz Taylor in The Last Time I Saw Paris. Viruses are a kind of pure parasite, so a survival strategy would be: in a population of wild birds, that may not come in close contact, high infectiousness, low virulence. Killing a host could mean the end of the party. Birds and other animals jammed together: a spike in deaths in a kind of post-Lenten feast, then settling back to high infectiousness, low virulence.
2009 swine flu from Mexico: by the time we heard about it, the worst was over. There was a rush to make vaccine available, and suddenly people didn’t want it.
Only the kind of people “with higher education” that (allegedly) would never vote for Trump are fans of the flu vaccine, probably one of the one patently ridiculous and indefensible vaccination program in the US or in Europe.
Just noticed an interesting fact about the current flu season scroll across a news feed. It gave the numbers, but the last bit was that more children have died this year than since the 2009/10 season. In other words, since the last solar minimum when it was in its final year. Which is exactly where we are at right now. The sun should spark up sometime between July to September, imo.
Seems not possible to contain the virus. Is like trying to contain common cold. People use masks but touch surfaces with hands. Children especially touch their eyes, nose, mouth. For toddlers you can’t stop them. Hopefully the Gilead drug works. People also must work. The whole economy cannot shut down, that would be disaster as well. In poorer countries you have to work for food. We can’t lock down every city. I expect to get this virus maybe not this year but next or the year after.
Also I read immunity to existing coronaviruses only lasts for a few years and then you can catch same one again.
Also the virus has already mutated. Not by much but a little. More people that get it the more mutations we will see.
One thing people can do is to get in good cardio vascular condition so the body is more efficient user of oxygen.
Staying healthy is never a bad idea.
Reminds me of one evening at college, a bunch of people were planning to go out for a night at some downtown club, but at the last minute the person who was gonna get the tickets for us told us it would have to be a different night.
This one guy gets all irritated, and blurts out “You mean I took a shower for nothing?”!
Anywho…getting plenty of sleep may be the most important single thing a person can do to keep the immune system strong.
Although making sure one does not have any vitamin or micronutrient deficiencies is hard to argue with as a first priority. I think someone already mentioned zinc, but all of the trace elements, like selenium, chromium, magnesium and manganese, calcium, iron, folate…hell all the B vitamins…there is not one necessary nutrient that it is a good idea to ever run low on.
Masks are not meant to keep a person from getting something from someone else…they are meant to keep a person from spreading germs to others. A full face shield would probably help…but if someone becomes do widespread you need to try to keep peoples breath and droplets off your body, the disease has broken out and will become endemic if it is going to. Which means there may first be a pandemic.
Or not.
Many diseases are terrible afflictions in other countries, and then they turn up here, either the bug that acts as a vector, or someone actually comes down with it and there are fears it is here now…And then nothing happens. Over the past 20 years there has been one disease after another that did not spread once it got to the US.
Zika, Ebola, Dengue, Chikungunya…the list is long.
Avoid sick people.
Be averse to the body fluids of all but…well almost everyone.
Do not go out if you are sick…it is easier to get something worse while you are ailing.
Do not walk in crap, or frequent pig sty’s, or get bird poop on you…
You know…stuff we already do not do much of to begin with.
Do not touch wild animals unless you know how to tell if one is sick.
Better yet just don’t.
I never do.
If my cats bring something in that is alive…I never touch it with my hands…ever!
Why would anyone?
I was reading the other day about that girl in Wisconsin who got rabies and somehow lived.
She had picked up a bat off the ground, and it bit her.
She went home, her parents washed it out…they never even thought of worrying about it.
First of all…what? Why?!
Picked up a bat off the ground?
What kind of bats are on the ground…in daylight?
Sick ones!
But even still…
“Do you know where that things has been?”
We say that to children and are astonished we have to.
“Reminds me of one evening at college, a bunch of people…”
I doubt you went to college, maybe, “in the front door and out the back door”… but lets for argument’s sake say you did go to college McGinty.
“[…] a bunch of people […]”
A bunch of people, tell me Nicho, how many in a bunch of people — a bunch of bananas could be 3-20 tiers, if we are talking about a bunch of grapes, well we’re into a number of dozen.
We could use the word group, or as in your case cluster, as in..Can we break even and say…” a considerable amount”.
“I was reading the other day about that girl in Wisconsin who got rabies and somehow lived.”
” What kind of bats are on the ground…in daylight?
Sick ones!”
Nick me ole son your not the sharpest tool in shed in the shed are you?
Oh, wait…you are the guy who claims that bacteria cause viral illnesses, right?
I can understand that it must be very embarrassing to be corrected when you spew nonsense in a discussion thread of a science website.
But your emotional inability to deal with your embarrassment in some rational way, like just admitting you misspoke or did not know what the hell you are talking about is no reason to call attention to yourself by acting out like this.
You are apparently as humorless as you are ignorant and poorly educated.
Do not get me wrong…lack of education is nothing to be ashamed of per se.
But lack of humor, now that is unforgivable.
It is of course predictable that stories such as this one bring out a whole fresh crop of people with all manner of strange ideas.
Like your mélange of made up crap in this comment, and repeating stuff you know full well has been debunked and in fact withdrawn by the author, is a collection of various flavors of bullshit:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/02/14/wuhan-coronavirus-wuwt-update/#comment-2916646
And again, nothing wrong with looking critically at what is going on in the world, but people like you, posting the same discredited nonsense many days after first posting it and having not one but several people point out that the whole thing was withdrawn with apology by the author well over two weeks ago, and yet you post it again and again and again.
Why would you do this Michael?
Do you take people for fools?
Why do you take possession of bullshit written by others and make it your own and then swear to it?
So I just want to ask again, why you have reposted the retracted study by Pradhan et al?
It was thoroughly debunked.
The author has withdrawn it, weeks ago, and links to all of this were posted in that last thread.
You were not wrong to criticize Michael Carter, but then you went of on an entirely different tangent
This is not the kind of place where you can get away with that sort of nonsense.
You obviously do plenty of reading, but you mix up facts and bullshit way too much.
Try just sticking to facts.
It would not matter if I dropped out of school if I finished last in my class in Kindergarten.
It does not take the brightest bulb on the tree to spot a bullshitter,
So stop being one.
Question the antecedents of the coronavirus outbreak or suggest there’s anything awry with the situation and the MSM believers scream ‘conspiracy theory’ and start the usual tide of personal abuse and targetting.
But the Science is suggesting the virus at the centre of the recent infections is MAN MADE! At a guess, at the level 4 biolab in Wuhan. i.e. something they developed got away from them, either accidentally or on purpose.
This paper suggests someone used sequences from HIV to enhance the coronavirus and make it more effective in attacking humans.
Here’s the abstract:
“Abstract:
We are currently witnessing a major epidemic caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV).
The evolution of 2019-nCoV remains elusive.
We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses.
Importantly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag.
Interestingly, despite the inserts being discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding site.
The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature.
This work provides yet unknown insights on 2019-nCoV and sheds light on the evolution and pathogenicity of this virus with important implications for diagnosis of this virus. ”
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1.full.pdf
Interesting. Thailand has claimed success using HIV drugs against the virus. Also the way China went after the doctor that first reported the spread is very suspicious to me.
This paper was retracted weeks ago.
The who!e premise was false.
Try to spread more up to date bullshit.
Thanks.
Mark, the problem is you’re raising questions coming out of the science community, especially top Chinese virologists. There is always some portion of the population that not only doesn’t understand the science, but attributes magical or conspiratorial thinking to those that do. They prefer to regurgitate what they heard on CNN as unimpeachable truth and get pretty agitated about their opinions.
Right now there are a couple of theories about the origins and transmission of COVID-19… that this is a bio-engineered chimera virus that was accidentally released from the Wuhan BSL-14 is a viable hypothesis, in fact, the more likely explanation. Eventually we’ll know for sure.
Vitamin C to fight the infection.
https://twitter.com/CheerfulReader/status/1227694577240461312?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1227694577240461312&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fchiefio.wordpress.com%2F2020%2F02%2F12%2F11-feb-2019-ncov-sars-cov-2-corona-virus-outbreak%2F
Yep, and a long list of other natural things will kill the virus. Not to mention interior terrain is far more important than any virus. I’m not the least bit worried about this or any other virus. I’m worried about the idiot humans who lack awareness on how to prevent or defeat it. This absurd talk about a vaccine is pathetically stupid, too. Cures all around them and they cry for some fantasy man made miracle pill.
Give me a break.
Who are you…Linus Pauling?
Having deficiencies of any necessary nutrient makes a person less healthy.
But no vitamins are curse for any diseases, except for a diseased caused by lack of that vitamin.
Vitamin C cures scurvy, that is for sure.
People who get plenty of all the vitamins will tend to be healthier than people who do not get proper nutrition.
I have been taking vitamins, sometimes in megadoses, since the 1960s, when my mom was the original health food enthusiast. About since I was born.
They are to maintain proper nutrient content of the body. You need them, all the time, to be healthy.
But they will categorically not cure anything caused by infectious organisms.
There have been more studies of this than anyone can shake a stick at.
All came up empty.
Some showed that people who take vitamins every day have more of certain ailments.
But mostly it is just as one would suspect…people who take vitamins every day have less chance of getting sick from certain infectious diseases…notably colds. And they may not last as long if they do get one.
But no study, properly administered, has ever been able to show that taking them will cure anything…not the cold, not flu…and it sure aint from lack of trying.
If you have something bad enough that it is not going to go away on it’s own, you best not be thinking that vitamins cure it.
What next…pot cures cancer people gonna show up?
A big picture (less technical) look at the coronavirus epidemic.
Amazing but hidden news about coronavirus.
Summary: The coronavirus epidemic provides amazing news. About the epidemic, about the barrage of fake news (that we love), about the fear it creates (that we love), and the wonderful hidden news that makes this a milestone in history.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2020/02/15/amazing-but-hidden-news-about-coronavirus/
Good link – good information
Nature may be about to add another tweak to this ongoing story. Over the last month or so much of China had temps above average, mostly along the coastal areas but also penetrating into the center at times. Well that just changed with surface winds pouring south from Mongolia, and cold surface winds moving east out of the Himalayas. The result is that temps in China just dropped to their lowest point for this winter, and this is in the middle of the day, … https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=127.30,34.89,1019/loc=94.312,32.534
4 segments of amino acids, found in lots of other viruses and organisms, but none of which are in any other corona virus member.
Those 4 segments total 27 amino acids, coded by 81 DNA bases. The 4 segments match to HIV and specifically to two proteins involved in recognition and binding to a host cell.
By random chance, the corona virus mutated 81times with the correct choice out of 4 bases, to correctly code these 27 amino acids (out of 20 possibilities) that match the specific portion of 2 proteins involved in finding and attaching to a cell to infect.
But yeah, it came from bats in a meat market.
The Indian preprint was withdrawn, so devastating was the criticism of its shamelessly shoddy, baseless assertion.
Better to get real info from science sites rather than fake news from ZH:
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/02/baseless-conspiracy-theories-claim-new-coronavirus-was-bioengineered/
It’s impossible to publish nearly anything remotely critical of vaccines. There is a taboo in the so called science world, actually a religious world.
Why would you rely on those buffoons?
Do you deny the explosion of MS following hep B vaccination in France?
Paranoia is rampant in this one.
There is no taboo on publishing papers critical of vaccinations.
There is a taboo against publishing papers that have no basis in fact or science.
Yes, I do deny this explosion of MS.
Your source on that?
How many critical studies have been published? Under what conditions?
A critical study needs to say the vaccine is beneficial to be published!
What is your basis to deny the cases of MS after mass vaccination?
NG,
If papers questioning the safety or efficacy of vaccines can’t get published, then upon what do you base your assertion of MS caused by vaccines?
Surely studies finding that conclusion must have been published. In fact, at least one was, although it’s not convincing.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4266455/
“If papers questioning the safety or efficacy of vaccines can’t get published, then upon what do you base your assertion of MS caused by vaccines?”
They get published in less reputable journals and with the intro saying that the benefits of the hep B vaccine still hold, whereas:
– these benefits are unproven
– even if they existed, the fact the vaccine can cause MS overwhelms those benefits in almost all cases of prevention of an hypothetical risk.
And that was more than a decade ago, vaxxism derangement syndrome got exponentially worse.
Everything I wrote would be known by anyone remotely connected to what matters in the real world, of course. Ergo, you live in a cave.
NG,
The NIH is less reputable?
You, sir, are either a delusional loon or bold-faced liar.
What part of the NIH is less reputable than what?
What the hell are you trying to say?
NG sez: “Your source on that?
How many critical studies have been published? Under what conditions?
A critical study needs to say the vaccine is beneficial to be published!
What is your basis to deny the cases of MS after mass vaccination?”
But, he himself never once has provided a single source for HIS nutty paranoid delusions.
He cites no studies but asks for other people to do HIS homework instead.
In fact nothing has been more stringent than the US FDA approval process, and the standards and protocols used in the clinical trials process are the most rigorous that can be devised.
He knows nothing of any of this, apparently.
He is a textbook case of people who demand information while providing none, and then never even glances at it. He just moves on to the next lie in his Gish Gallop.
Anyone can read all about how every single idea of the anti vaccination nutbags have been thoroughly investigated and disproven.
Because unlike people who just make stuff up, the people responsible for safety and saving lives take concerns seriously and address them, no matter how lacking in merit they are.
The anti-science crowd pay no attention to facts…their audience is not people who pay attention to actual data, but to people who reflexively believe anything dumb and illogical, and reject anything proven and factual…in fact never even considering anything like data and facts.
Making up out of thin air nonexistent cause and effect but never actually looking at if there is any objective reason for believing it to be so, seems like something no serious person would do, and it is not.
But it is what N.G. and his ilk do every day.
Just look back at the totality of his commentary on this and any other thread he has commented on to see how he operates.
In fact there was no anti vaccination movement until it was invented out of thin air in the 1990s by a guy who was a proven and admitted liar, whose claims have been thoroughly and repeatedly shown baseless, and has himself come clean about making it up from whole cloth.
But the unfortunate fact of such ideas is, there is a mass market of credulous and gullible people ready to latch onto any such baseless idea and make it their own cause.
Evidence and facts have nothing to do with it, because it is a psychological malady, reinforced by an emotional inability to ever examine their own believes in a critical way.
Feel sorry for these people, and show they are wrong…but give them no heed.
OK_FBI_MOST_WANTED_ENABLER
NG:
“Less reputable” was your phrase to describe journals publishing negative articles on vaccine effects.
The NIH is a reputable publisher, so yet again, as always, you’re wrong.
“The NIH is a reputable publisher,”
What’s that supposed to mean?
Did I say that all articles creating doubt on a vaccines were published in totally crap fake journals?
As usual you can’t read and can’t reason.
And you don’t know the most important study on that subject!
1. I wish to thank Mr McGinley for his infinite patience in dealing with trolls here. These are the people who refused to do a minute of homework during biology class and instead disrupted it, because they resent those with a work ethic.
2. Mods, it’s time to permaban “niceguy”, who is a troll. Let the self-proclaimed genius come back when he has developed, tested and distributed a 90% or better cure for this bug.
Mr Crooked Pharma Apologist, do you have any evidence that recommended vaccine is actually useful?
Do you deny the horrible damages done by the polio vaccine in the US?
Do you deny the change of concept of “polio” disease?
Do you support research done by FBI MOST WANTED people?
Mr. McGinley: you’ve too many posts to acknowledge them all, here and on the other threads. Would, though, like to say thanks for the information on the old Brit and American studies as to cold transmission. And for the practical explanation of virus life on surfaces. Useful information, even if this one turns out to be slightly out of bounds.
I know they always say ‘don’t feed them’ but…. you’re a one-man-band on troll suppression too.
@ur momisugly Nicholas Ginley
“People like me?”
Like what Nick. You brand me a troll because I contest the consensus on this. That so easy. Never embarrassing to be corrected. But you don’t correct. You land in this conversation then expect people to be nice to you, how about you quite propagandizing the conversation, with you obvious bias.
We get bombarded every day with the bullshit of the world and sift through it to find any nuggets of truth that move one to a more knowledgeable understanding of a subject.
But here’s you arrogantly consuming the oxygen in the debate.
Personally, I think out of the box nick — on my own.
It seems you can be wrong yourself, but let me be the one to say there is no shame in not knowing what you are talking about Nick — granted in the beginning I was the first in responding to quickly and misusing the word viral pneumonia, in this matter and I did write it as a quick response to ongoing research I was entangled in quite deeply, it was in response to Mr. Carter.
Common sense only suggests that to seek the visceral in one of the 6,016,075 English articles in some 49,634,015 on Wikipedia is a fool’s paradise for any kind of enlightenment on a subject. And although a serious gathering of some quality information of the sake of the trivial seeking laymen is there, its an overview and far from complete.
“The clinical trial in COVID19 patients is due to wrap up in April, but if other patients respond like the one in Washington, expect them to discontinue the study and give [real] drug to everyone.”
It is not a drug! it is a prodrug, a totally different beast, one of the world’s new medicines that aim to revolutionize the old paradigm of drug treatment. Something that5 has been seen before…and Gilead is not known for giving anything away. In fact, they charge outrageous amounts for drugs as a $1,000 a pill for what…?
There is theoretically possible that with a healthy immunity this new prodrug, Remdesivir is a wonder as it works with gut microbiota I believe, I’m sure you will correct me. What if that backfires in unhealthy immunities like the type we find in Wuhan who are lung compromised and a usually benign bacteria works against the body instead.
The first matter in this prodrug trial would be an absolute ‘placebo washout’…
Was Remdesivir not reported as an overnight recovery?
There is a lot more to this than people getting sick, the aspect of economy I know small in the minds of the fearful but the is a sizable loss of economy somewhere around a 17% loss. Suppliers are off, in my end till the 21st of February, this whole thing stinks.
“Gilead has been doing this sort of thing for a long time, and they do it better than any other company in many cases.”
You sound like a spokesman Nick, putting out fires, are you?
What was the case for the retraction of Remdesivi as a failed ebola cure, a new prodrug with a lot of research behind it? Huge money invested in R&D. Now it is looking for a disease to cure? BTW who is ‘they’ Nick?
“They give away massive amounts of these drugs for free to people in need.”
Bless their hearts. The more I read this rant, of yours the more I realize you have a dog in this race, Nick.
“They tested remdesivir against [corona viruses] starting years ago, and applied for patents for this use…in the US and also IN CHINA!”
Your telling porky pies buddy and that smoke you are blowing. Gilead Sciences a drug company with a heart, pull my other leg, Nicholas.
“[…] and the reason was not exactly [that] it was ineffective, but that two other new treatments were proven to be more effective […]”
Nick!…you do have a dog in this race.
“[…] so remdesivir may yet have at least some usage against Ebola.
Remdesivir was pushed through and fell flat on it’s facing the Congo Health officials pushed hard for the use of mAb114 a monoclonal and REGN-EB3 in combination.
What about those class-action suits over the tenofovir, Nick? And you claim they give massive amounts for free.
After all this long-winded diatribe against the nice, and the diarist entry on your thoughts on the uselessness of my words we get to your conclusion on this…
“Let put them suckers to work…give them a job so they can do something useful with their half-assed so-called lives!”
“Shooting a [dear] and eating is the same as eating wild rodents and bats?”
Hilarious, truly funny Nicholas… and you correct me?
“One of these days our incredible run of luck with staying healthy and living longer than ever is gonna come back and bite us in the ass, and then we’ll be sorry for the whole staying clean and eating wholesome foods BS.”
“Why do you take possession of bullshit written by others and make it your own and then swear to it?”
I was going to ask you the same thing, Nick
“Try just sticking to facts.”
Like your kind of facts about Gilead Sciences? How much were they charging for Sofosbuvir? $1000 a pill, $84,000 for an 84-day course of treatment.
Gilead needs to mea culpa a few thousand times for their sins champ, the restrictions they put on lucrative markets, VLA’s???
Fanconi syndrome??? How about those side and permanent effects from what HIV medication Tenofovir and Didanosine — a double cluster between Gilead and Bristol Myers. They both made out like bandits.
But hell that was back then, and Remdesivir is new ground to plough. I don’t trust you or the drug company, they couldn’t care less for dying people, they care and invest in the largest bottom line they can gain.
“In fact, nothing has been more stringent than the US FDA approval process.”
The FDA is famous for fast-tracking larger Big Pharma drugs through, ramming them through and allowing for their own lab’s (Big Pharma labs) to run there own research on new drugs whither they are fit of the consumer or not… Don’t give me any of this horse pucky about their honesty. There are well over 70,000 deaths a year from prescription drugs pushed through.
The FDA suggests ways to speed the process, of drug approval. They are definitely not working for the public of the United States of America.
Give drugs away…nice try Nicholas. They will not stand for competition and violate the rule incessantly.
“According to Marcia Angell, the former head of the New England Journal of Medicine, “The United States is the only advanced country that permits the pharmaceutical industry to charge exactly what the market will bear.”
“The largest pharmaceutical companies and their two trade groups, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and Biotechnology Innovation Organization, [lobbied on at least 1,600 pieces of legislation between 1998 and 2004.] According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, [pharmaceutical companies spent $900 million on lobbying between 1998 and 2005, more than any other industry.] During the same period, they donated $89.9 million to federal candidates and political parties, giving approximately three times as much to Republicans as to Democrats.[1] According to the Center for Public Integrity, from January 2005 through June 2006 alone, the pharmaceutical industry spent approximately $182 million on [Federal]lobbying.[2] The industry has 1,274 registered lobbyists in Washington D.C.”
Let’s get this straight now…$900 million on lobbying… 1600 pieces of legislation 1998-2004… $89 million donated to federal candidates and parties…………………….. 1,274 registered lobbyists. What and you claim honesty?
You’re the troll here, trolling for the drug company, here to put the fire and brand the heretics.
Burn them… Burn them you say.
I have done the research, I know the corruption, the above quote is an overview.
Pull my other leg, Nick.
I won’t be part of this Asch Conformity experiment.
You think I am stupid and a troll, a bullshitter and a fool. You have no clue who I am Nicholas?
let the stones fly!
Might have chosen another word to use in my post, since it’s possible anyone who’s found themselves disagreeing with McGinley might suspect I was lumping all of them under the same heading. Should have been more specific, as in saying ‘niceguy’.
That said… when a thread shows up devoted to Big Pharma and it’s sins, I suspect the people interested in it will be the only ones reading it.