Day 7 in the countdown to an end to the COVID-19 panic.

[Darren]

More success with hydroxychloroquine and zinc. This is in California.

"Dr. Anthony Cardillo said he has seen very promising results when prescribing hydroxychloroquine in combination with zinc for the most severely-ill COVID-19 patients.

"Every patient I've prescribed it to has been very, very ill and within 8 to 12 hours, they were basically symptom-free," Cardillo told Eyewitness News. "So clinically I am seeing a resolution."

Cardillo is the CEO of Mend Urgent Care, which has locations in Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys and Burbank."

https://abc11.com/amp/coronavirus-drug- ... e/6079864/

[Darren]

More good news. Ohio has seen seven days in a row of new cases tracking below the projection.

"A projected curve of new cases from Ohio State University predicted Ohio would have 1,063 new coronavirus cases Sunday. The state reported 304 new cases, putting Ohio below the Ohio State projection curve for seven days in a row."

https://www.whio.com/news/coronavirus-p ... GA6KEMNN4/

[Scooter]

So the most severely ill patients become symptom-free in a matter of hours. Did they find this treatment in Lourdes, or some other fount of miracles?

The odour of bullshit is strong.

[Darren]

More good news. Seven more days to go and more good news on the way. You may return to salivating over the media fear mongering ... or not.

- Overestimation of hospitalizations: 8 times
- Overestimation of of ICU beds needed: 6.4 times
- Overestimation of ventilators needed: 40.5 times

https://twitter.com/NikolovScience/stat ... 9820693505

[Darren]

More good news.

"As many as 4,000 seriously ill coronavirus patients in New York are being treated with the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, state health officials say."

https://nypost.com/2020/04/05/ny-corona ... C_UfWGPAPc

[Lord Jim]

Meanwhile, back at actual scientific reality:

Fauci: no evidence anti-malaria drug Trump pushes works against virus

Donald Trump’s top coronavirus adviser has warned again that there is no scientific evidence to support the use of an unproven anti-malaria drug the president has been pushing as a possible remedy for Covid-19.

In White House briefings on Saturday and Sunday, Trump urged Americans worried about the virus to try hydroxychloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria, arthritis and lupus that has not been extensively tested for other conditions.

“Take it. What do you have to lose?” the president said on Saturday, suggesting that he might do so himself after asking “my doctors”.

On Sunday, Trump said the country doesn’t have time “to take a couple years” to test the efficacy of the drug in treating Covid-19.

But Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top doctor on infectious diseases and a key member of the White House task force, was adamant there was nothing to suggest the medicine had any benefit against coronavirus.

“In terms of science, I don’t think we can definitively say it works,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation.

“The data are really just at best suggestive. There have been cases that show there may be an effect and there are others to show there’s no effect.”

Dr James Phillips, professor of emergency medicine at George Washington University hospital, said Americans could be risking their health if they followed the president’s advice to take a drug for a condition for which it had not been tested.

“We don’t know enough to make medical recommendations,” he told CNN’s Reliable Sources.

“It’s a dangerous message for someone without a medical license to get up there and tell people to try it. You need to listen to physicians, people who understand science, before you go willy-nilly into the medicine cabinet.”

Fauci has been reluctant to directly criticise the president, with whom he speaks regularly, but has found himself repeatedly having to contradict the president over hydroxychloroquine, which has become a hobby horse at White House briefings.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... laria-drug

[Lord Jim]

[Crackpot]

Trump should really get into hawking herbal supplements he could make a killing

[Lord Jim]

Or The Helsinki Formula...

[Crackpot]

Should I point out that Darren can’t count? O is he getting nervous and padding his number?

[RayThom]

Or The Helsinki Formula...

[Darren]

Or The Helsinki Formula...

Looks like Ira Einhorn. Thanks to Pennsylvania for herbalizing the French and parking his ass in prison Too bad they didn't stick him in a trunk.

[ex-khobar Andy]

More good news. Ohio has seen seven days in a row of new cases tracking below the projection.

"A projected curve of new cases from Ohio State University predicted Ohio would have 1,063 new coronavirus cases Sunday. The state reported 304 new cases, putting Ohio below the Ohio State projection curve for seven days in a row."

https://www.whio.com/news/coronavirus-p ... GA6KEMNN4/

Well yes. That's the nature of projections. I will be thrilled if the projections are too pessimistic. But don't look at these numbers and conclude that the projections are off by a factor of 3.5 . It's possible that the projections are off by a couple of days - in other words the curve has just moved a little out to the right.

We won't know until it's all over and I hope that there is someone competent enough to write the books and that I am still here to read them.

The book that I am most looking forward to is the one about the testing. Partly because that's my own area of expertise although I know almost nothing about the techniques for virus testing, and partly because I think that this is one area which is unexplainable. If S Korea had a functioning test early on, why didn't we buy the technology from them? Did anyone ask? Did they say no it's a secret we're not telling? It's a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test using a primer sequence specific to the CoVID-19 virus genome. PCR is certainly an American-developed technique and I'm not sure who were the driving forces behind the RT modification. A phone call to Seoul - tell us the primers -and you're in business.

There is no excuse for not having a test. Were there commercial reasons?

[Darren]

More good news. Ohio has seen seven days in a row of new cases tracking below the projection.

"A projected curve of new cases from Ohio State University predicted Ohio would have 1,063 new coronavirus cases Sunday. The state reported 304 new cases, putting Ohio below the Ohio State projection curve for seven days in a row."

https://www.whio.com/news/coronavirus-p ... GA6KEMNN4/

Well yes. That's the nature of projections. I will be thrilled if the projections are too pessimistic. But don't look at these numbers and conclude that the projections are off by a factor of 3.5 . It's possible that the projections are off by a couple of days - in other words the curve has just moved a little out to the right.

We won't know until it's all over and I hope that there is someone competent enough to write the books and that I am still here to read them.

The book that I am most looking forward to is the one about the testing. Partly because that's my own area of expertise although I know almost nothing about the techniques for virus testing, and partly because I think that this is one area which is unexplainable. If S Korea had a functioning test early on, why didn't we buy the technology from them? Did anyone ask? Did they say no it's a secret we're not telling? It's a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) test using a primer sequence specific to the CoVID-19 virus genome. PCR is certainly an American-developed technique and I'm not sure who were the driving forces behind the RT modification. A phone call to Seoul - tell us the primers -and you're in business.

There is no excuse for not having a test. Were there commercial reasons?

Animal testing of a vaccine is already underway in the US.

""The vaccine has progressed into animal testing in the US and, once we confirm it is safe and effective, will then be advanced into human trials," says Professor Petrovsky - stressing expectations shouldn't be elevated until all testing is completed.

The latest cloud-based technology provided by Oracle enabled the team to "dramatically speed up our ability to analyze the COVID-19 virus and use this information to design the vaccine candidate"."

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200 ... ccine.aspx

[Bicycle Bill]

-"BB"-

[Darren]

" Democratic State Rep. Karen Whitsett of Detroit credits Trump for touting hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug, which she says saved her in a battle with the coronavirus, Paul Egan of the Detroit Free Press reports.

Whitsett tested positive for Covid-19 and started taking hydroxychloroquine on March 31, which was prescribed by her doctor after both she and her husband sought treatment for a range of symptoms.

"It was less than two hours" before she started to feel relief, the paper reports. She said she had been experiencing shortness of breath, swollen lymph nodes and sinus discomfort. She still has headaches.

Had it not been for Trump promoting the drug, the legislator says she wouldn't have known to ask for it, nor would her doctor have likely prescribed it."

https://www.deadlinedetroit.com/article ... saving_her

[Darren]

"BATON ROUGE, LA – At a press conference today with Governor John Bel Edwards in Baton Rouge, Attorney General Jeff Landry announced he and his team at the Louisiana Department of Justice have secured additional medications for use by Louisiana patients during the COVID-19 pandemic response.

Attorney General Landry announced that Teva Pharmaceuticals is making available 8,000 packs of azithromycin and 75,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine sulfate. This in addition to the 400,000 tablets of hydroxychloroquine directly donated by Amneal Pharmaceuticals last week."

https://bossierpress.com/additional-cov ... -patients/

[Lord Jim]

[Lord Jim]

Oh looky...

Some actual, reputable, broad based survey data:

Government watchdog: Hospitals face severe shortages of medical gear, confusing guidance from government

WASHINGTON — Hospitals across the country face dire shortages of vital medical equipment amid the coronavirus outbreak — including testing kits and thermometers — and fear they can't ensure the safety of health care workers needed to treat patients with COVID-19, according to an internal government watchdog report released Monday.

The alarming findings, based on interviews conducted from March 23 to March 27, represent the first government assessment of how the country's hospitals are coping with the outbreak and confirm previous media reports and warnings from health workers that the medical system is under unprecedented strain.

Hospital administrators also said conflicting guidance from federal, state and local governments on how to use personal protective gear and other issues has led to "a greater sense of confusion, fear and distrust among staff that they can rely on hospital procedures to protect them," according to the report from the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS.

Despite the bleak outlook conveyed by the inspector general’s report, President Donald Trump on Saturday said hospital administrators speaking to his administration were “thrilled” about their situation.

“Many hospital administrators that we've been in touch with, even in the really hotspots -- you know what they are — are communicating directly with us that their level of supplies are meeting essential needs. And at the current time, they're really thrilled to be where they are,” Trump told reporters.

The report, which is based on interviews with administrators from 324 hospitals and hospital networks of varying sizes, said that equipment provided to hospitals from the federal government fell far short of what was needed and was sometimes not usable or of low quality.

According to the report, one hospital received two shipments from the Federal Emergency Management Agency with protective gear that had expired in 2010. Another hospital system received 1,000 masks from federal and state governments, even though it expected a much larger delivery, and he report said. Elastic on N95 masks from one state government reserve had "dry-rotted" and could not be used, it said.

NBC News found its own examples of problems with the federal government's emergency national stockpile similar to those detailed in the report.

State officials in Alabama, South Carolina and Pennsylvania said they had received expired medical supplies.

In Michigan, hospitals were surprised to have made orders with suppliers only to find that they were diverted to the national stockpile, according to Ruthanne Sudderth, senior vice president for the Michigan Health & Hospital Association. "Vendors have told us that they need to send whatever they have to the national stockpile," Sudderth said.

According to the inspector general's report, hospitals told investigators that thermometers were in short supply, undermining hospitals' ability to check temperatures of staff members and patients for indicators of the coronavirus.

One hospital resorted to screening patients, staff members and vendors at random because it did not have enough thermometers, according to the report. Another hospital with more than 700 staff members reported having one or two thermometers and therefore was "unable to take employee temperatures," the report said.

Diagnostic testing kits to identify patients or staff members with the virus were also in short supply, according to the inspector general. Hospitals said they were struggling with "a severe shortage of test kits," limiting their ability to monitor the health of patients and staff members, the report said. There were also problems with incomplete testing kits missing nasal swabs or reagents to detect the virus.

"Across the industry millions are needed and we only have hundreds," a hospital administrator was quoted as saying.

The shortage of testing kits was aggravated by delays in testing results, straining hospital resources and bed capacity as doctors waited for the results, the report said. One hospital reported test results' taking as long as eight days, it said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/go ... e-n1177256

ETA:

Now to balance off this story our resident Trumpist Propagandist, Darren The Dissembler, will regale us with a story of personal success written by a ufologist blogger in South Suckatash Idaho...

[Darren]

That's old info and now irrelevant, Jim. That was explained by the admiral in the briefing. I'll post the video later.

Meanwhile cases in the NYC region have flat lined.

"The mounting number of New York's coronavirus deaths has stayed "effectively flat" over the past two days, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Monday, offering a glimmer of hope that the state may be at a peak even as the country braces for what the Trump administration is calling the "toughest week" yet in the fight against the pandemic."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ne ... k-n1177626