COVID-19 Research, Drug trials and Pathophysiology

This is very encouraging. Folks who have been led to believe that Covid vaccination is bad juju are infecting others, overwhelming emergency rooms and intensive care units, and dying unnecessarily.

Merck & Co. said Friday that its experimental COVID-19 pill reduced hospitalizations and deaths by half in people recently infected with the coronavirus and that it would soon ask health officials in the U.S. and around the world to authorize its use.

If cleared, Merck's drug would be the first pill shown to treat COVID-19, a potentially major advance in efforts to fight the pandemic.

Health experts including the top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci have long called for a convenient pill that patients could take when COVID-19 symptoms first appear, much the way the decades-old flu medication Tamiflu helps fight influenza. Such medications are seen as key to controlling future waves of infection and reducing the impact of the pandemic.

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/01/1042247080/merck-drug-pill-covid-death-hospitalization-treat​

 

If it's anything like the Tamiflu con for swine flu then I hope no government buys this so called treatment.

 

If it proves to be ineffective, laboratory research and clinical trials will continue.

 

I bet that drug is based on Ivermectin (originally developed by Merck)

 

Merck Statement on Ivermectin use During the COVID-19 Pandemic:

• 
  
  • No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies;
  • No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and;
  • A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.

https://www.merck.com/news/merck-statement-on-ivermectin-use-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/
​

In striking contrast, Merck has confidence that it has now developed a pill to treat mild and moderate cases of Covid.

 

Of course, we can always trust the fox guarding the chicken nest. Once their new hyperexpensive anticovid drug is released that will be no surprise that they sell Ivermectin under different name.

 

Not only we have good vaccines, but yesterday and today two new studies brought a bright ray of hope: Merck's and Ridgeback's new drug molnupiravir got excellent phase III results, and Regeneron's monoclonal antibody cocktail casirivimab-imdevimab also showed excellent results in a study published by the NEJM. Atea Pharmaceuticals is also working on another antiviral similar to molnupiravir.

The big advantage of molnupiravir is that it hits hard ALL variants... because it targets viral polymerase, an enzyme essential to viral replication, which all variants possess. So, even with mutations, current and future, molnupiravir should continue to work well.

The study on casirivimab-imdevimab:

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2108163

The study on molnupiravir:

https://www.merck.com/news/merck-an...to-placebo-for-patients-with-mild-or-moderat/

This, added to the vaccines, and added to the fact that Delta is finally looking like it has peaked in the US, with new cases dropping 15% over the last two weeks, suggests that we may indeed be in great shape in a few more months.

Merck is applying immediately for EUA for molnupiravir and is also licensing their drug to more than 100 generic makers in low and middle-income countries, a commendable move.

Merck's drug is delivered by the mouth, without all the complications of Regeneron and Remdesivir which require IV administration.

Molnupiravir seems to be the biggest game changer we were waiting for (in addition to the vaccines)... a drug that is taken by the mouth and scores a big blow on the SARS-CoV-2. Also it seems very safe. Only 1.3% of patients in the phase III trial had to interrupt due to adverse reactions, and this rate was actually SMALLER than what happened in the placebo arm of the study.

 

It won't be ineffective. Did you see the result of the phase III trial? Separation from placebo posted a p of 0.0012. It's effective.

 

I like it to a degree. Anti-vaxxers prefer a world where children die of smallpox and look disfigured like the one on the left, while those who believe in science prefer a world that saves its children from this scourge, resulting in the intact child on the right side.

But the last paragraph about masks is utter BS. Yes, surgeons wear masks to avoid contaminating people... but doctors tending to infectious diseases wear masks to protect themselves. The mask doesn't filter only in one direction. It filters in both directions. Aerosolized viruses are tricky because it's not just a question of droplets, but that's why we have stuff like N95, N100, and PAPR respirators, and yes, of course they do protect the wearer as well. The right mask, correctly worn, is protective.

Obviously the person who wrote the text that came with the picture is not a medical doctor or a virologist, otherwise he/she would know that masks ALSO protect the wearer, provided that they are the right kind, and with good facial seal.

 

I think the writer was appealing to their audience to do the right thing, not composing a scientific study.

 

If you prefer to seek medical advice from a few quacks, media entertainers, and politicians with no credentials in health care, that is your choice.

Pretending that a drug company unequivocally refuting the efficacy of its own drug to treat Covid is an indication of its deceit and treachery exposes a fanaticism that has strayed far from coherence and sensibility.

Merck clearly states, regarding its own product, that

• No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies;

• No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and;

• A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.

​

A failed casino operator telling you otherwise is a silly excuse to cling to a crackpot belief.

 

I agree that it is very encouraging development, and promises to significantly reduce the number of serious cases and deaths of the unvaccinated who are overwhelming the nation's ICUs and endangering others.

“This Delta wave just rips through the unvaccinated,” said Howard Markel, a medical historian at the University of Michigan.
The deaths that have followed the wide availability of vaccines, he added, are “absolutely needless.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/us/us-covid-deaths-700k.html
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We must hope the ignorant whose heads have been filled with steaming barnyard stuff by frauds and media entertainers can comprehend the medical reality.

Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey (R) lashed out at her unvaccinated constituents"...

“Let’s be crystal clear about this issue,” Ivey said. “The few cases of COVID are because of unvaccinated folks. Almost 100 percent of the new hospitalizations are with unvaccinated folks. And the deaths certainly are occurring with unvaccinated folks.”...

“"The vaccine is the greatest weapon we have to fight COVID. There’s no question about that.”

https://nypost.com/2021/07/23/alabama-gov-kay-ivey-blasts-unvaccinated-residents/​

​

 

I do not know man.
If government forces people to get vaccinated even though those people already had COVID, it is much worse then casino operator.
It is all about control that has zero relationship to studies and science.

 

The notion that individuals should be free to spread suffering and death - Typhoid Maryism - has been hyped by some asocial ideologues, but our government of, by, and for the People has a duty to protect the People from such folks.

You can flaunt your alienation from society by driving on the left side of the road or refusing to cover your private parts in public, but the democratic will, expressed through our government, is that you be required to do so.

 

It sound like you want me to surrender to insanity promoted by the government.

 

If you resent our government of, by, and for the People requiring you to respect the People by driving on the right side of the road, covering your tallywhacker in public, and taking precautions against infecting the public with deadly viruses, so be it.

 

The key question will be how real is the new investigation.
WHO announces team to reinvigorate battle to understand covid-19’s biggest mystery: How did it first infect humans?
By Adam Taylor

 

Lied to by whom? For what purpose?

Our numbers are inaccurate because...?

They do in Europe, Canada, Australia, Taiwan, Korea, Japan... a lot of countries. We don't come off well compared to them. Canada has one-third our covid death rate.

Canada has recovered all the jobs lost since the start of covid and we're millions short. Why? Because we've had too much covid circulating compared to them.

 

Consider and excess deaths study:

"Between March 1, 2020, and January 2, 2021, the US experienced 2 801 439 deaths, 22.9% more than expected, representing 522 368 excess deaths (Table). The excess death rate was higher among non-Hispanic Black (208.4 deaths per 100 000) than non-Hispanic White or Hispanic populations (157.0 and 139.8 deaths per 100 000, respectively); these groups accounted for 16.9%, 61.1%, and 16.7% of excess deaths, respectively. The US experienced 4 surge patterns: in New England and the Northeast, excess deaths surged in the spring; in the Southeast and Southwest, in the summer and early winter; in the Plains, Rocky Mountains, and far West, primarily in early winter; and in the Great Lakes, bimodally, in the spring and early winter (Figure). Excess deaths were increasing in all regions at the end of 2020. The 10 states with the highest per capita rate of excess deaths were Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Arizona, Alabama, Louisiana, South Dakota, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Ohio. New York experienced the largest relative increase in all-cause mortality (38.1%). Deaths attributed to COVID-19 accounted for 72.4% of US excess deaths.

Joinpoint analyses revealed an increase in weekly mortality from non–COVID-19 causes, including heart disease from March 15 to April 11, 2020 (APC, 4.9 [95% CI, 0.7-9.3]), and from October 11, 2020, to January 2, 2021 (APC, 1.1 [95% CI, 0.8-1.4]); Alzheimer disease/dementia from March 15 to April 11, 2020 (APC, 7.1 [95% CI, 2.4-12.0]), from May 31 to August 15, 2020 (APC, 1.2 [95% CI, 0.7-1.6]), and from September 6, 2020, to January 2, 2021 (APC, 1.3 [95% CI, 1.1-1.5]); and diabetes from March 8 to April 11, 2020 (APC, 6.5 [95% CI, 2.8-10.3]), from May 31 to July 11, 2020 (APC, 2.6 [95% CI, 0.2-5.0]), and from October 18, 2020, to January 2, 2021 (APC, 2.2 [95% CI, 1.6-2.8])."​

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778361

We've lost a lot of people to covid.

 

Heres the long and short of it
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Out of 7.5 billion people globally, the US makes up 360 million of those people yet the US reports we have 9.7 million active cases.
The total active cases globally, 17.8 million.
So 4% of the worlds population has over 50% of all infections globally?
Not even mathematically possible. You have to have a population large enough to make the exponential numbers works. Covid doesn't work differently here than it does everywhere else on the planet. Its BS.

And what do we have to show for it?
Mandates that ignore individuals who have better immunity than the vaccine.
Airline employees and air traffic controllers walking off the job
Thousands of federal works leaving their jobs
47 closed hospitals with another 300 on their way out due to mandates closing their profit centers like elective surgeries
Medical staffs who took the brunt of this up front, already had Covid, walking off the job by the thousands.
Cargo ships sitting off shore at ports for weeks that can't unload because we are short 10s of thousands of truckers that were treated like s*** when this pandemic hit.
Hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens being released into the US

 

Because most countries are not continually testing and most people don't even bother reporting a positive test to the authorities. The answer is blooming obvious!

 

And you would know this how? lol

 

I'd go with other some other countries understating their covid cases rather than a nefarious scheme of overstating ours.

But ... Canada is not way understating its covid cases, so how come our civid death rate is about one-third of ours?

Are you referring to people who have tested positive on a PCR test? Some don't have much protection.

In Canada, soon everyone on the airplane will have to have two shots.

Citizens shouldn't have to go to a federal office as part of our laws and regulations and risk catching covid from a government employee. The same applies to your kid getting covid from a teacher or student, cop, or hospital employee.

They're still taking it ... mostly from the unvaccinated.

Here are some numbers from British Columbia in Canada since you don't trust ours:

Past two weeks cases hospitalized (Sept. 28-Oct. 11) – Total 346

• Not vaccinated: 229 (66.2%)
• Partially vaccinated: 25 (7.2%)
• Fully vaccinated: 92 (26.6%)

Past week, cases per 100,000 population after adjusting for age (Oct. 5-11)

• Not vaccinated: 278.3
• Partially vaccinated: 80.5
• Fully vaccinated: 32.1

Past two weeks, cases hospitalized per 100,000 population after adjusting for age (Sept. 28-Oct. 11)

• Not vaccinated: 36.7
• Partially vaccinated: 10.7
• Fully vaccinated: 2.1

​

https://news.gov.bc.ca/releases/2021HLTH0061-001968

There are plenty of moving parts to the problem including a shift in consumption patterns because people are spending more on stuff and less on services where their purchase puts them at for them risk of catching covid--restaurants, bars, clubs, theaters, malls, airplanes, hotels, etc.

Employment. People are staying away from jobs where they're more likely to get covid. Childcare is at a premium because schools close.

Covid is still damaging the economy, and the more around, the greater the impact. Unless you convince people they can avoid the virus, their consumption and life patterns won't us use the capital and workforce investments we have across this country. A lot of people will continue choosing to stay away from restaurants, bars, clubs, gyms, malls, etc. Some, some or all of the time. My barber says his business dropped 20%. He says he has all his regulars, just less often. Do you understand the connection and how covid is bad for business?

A lot of vaccinated people appear to hold unvaccinated people responsible for keeping the pandemic going. Are they right? Should vaccinated people be prepared to see the pandemic continue as you exert a presumed right to circulate aa you please and spread the virus?

 

The state of the question:
The Mysterious Case of the Covid Lab-Leak Theory

Carolyn Kormann, The New Yorker

 

My niece is a middle school principal in Oregon and "going crazy" describes the reaction of one-third of her parents to covid circulating in the school.