26251 replies to this topic

[Mike K.]

And as I predicted, social distancing is not being enforced in the restaurants and pubs I’ve visited. Business owners/staff started out reminding patrons to respect the rules and now they couldn’t be bothered.

[North Shore]

^ Fatigue.  Hardly anyone knows anyone who's had C19, fewer still anyone who's died, and there are all of these over-the-top restrictions/procedures in place.  People are simply sick of it, and thus not taking things seriously.  Wolf has been cried, and a small chihuahua showed up.  (Not to say that the wolf isn't still out there..)

[amor de cosmos]

Hospitals failed to flag 700 positive COVID-19 tests to Ontario's public health units
https://www.cbc.ca/n...cases-1.5593572

New Ebola outbreak flares up as measles, COVID-19 rage in DRC
https://arstechnica....19-rage-in-drc/
 

HOUSTON-(June 2, 2020) - The country's first convalescent plasma transfusion trial results have been peer-reviewed and published, showing 19 out of 25 patients improving with the treatment and 11 discharged from the hospital. On March 28, Houston Methodist became the first academic medical center in the nation to transfuse plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients into two critically ill patients.

With no adverse side effects caused by the plasma transfusion, the study concluded that convalescent plasma is a safe treatment option for patients with severe COVID-19 disease. To date, this is the largest cohort worldwide assessed for outcomes pertaining to convalescent plasma transfusion for COVID-19. The findings are described in a paper appearing in press May 26 (online May 28) in the American Journal of Pathology. This is the first peer-reviewed publication on convalescent plasma use in the U.S.

https://www.eurekale...sfc_1060120.php
 

Johns Hopkins radiologists have found that a deep learning algorithm to detect tuberculosis in chest X-rays could be useful for identifying lung abnormalities related to COVID-19. These findings, published online in the Journal of Thoracic Imaging, suggest that deep learning systems could potentially assist clinicians in triaging and treating these high-risk patients, as well as help overcome the scarcity of COVID-19 images available for machine learning development.

The study was based on the observation that chest X-ray abnormalities from COVID-19 appear very similar to those of TB patients. Chest X-rays have been proposed as a potentially useful tool for assessing COVID-19 patients, especially in overwhelmed emergency departments and urgent care centers, but the research team hypothesized that a deep learning model already trained to identify TB in X-rays would also work well to identify signs of the novel coronavirus.

"We found good generalization of our TB model toward COVID-19," says radiology resident Paul Yi, co-director of the Radiology AI Lab and affiliate faculty of the Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare. "Our goal was to demonstrate the ability of a deep learning model that had never 'seen' a case of COVID-19 to identify these cases. Because COVID-19 is a new infection, large datasets are not currently available to train deep learning models. We hypothesized that images of other infections with similar appearances to COVID-19 could be used to train models capable of identifying this new disease."

https://medicalxpres...est-x-rays.html

Strong public health response in China slowed coronavirus transmission, study finds
https://medicalxpres...oronavirus.html
 

Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin have identified 27 protein biomarkers that could be used to predict whether a patient with COVID-19 is likely to become severely ill with the disease.

People infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19, respond differently. Some do not develop any symptoms, some need to be hospitalised and, for some, the disease is fatal.

In this study, published in Cell Systems, researchers found 27 potential biomarkers that are present in different levels in patients with COVID-19, depending on the severity of their symptoms. The markers could help doctors to predict how ill a patient will become and provide scientists with new targets for drug development.

The researchers refined an analysis method called mass spectrometry to rapidly test for the presence and quantity of various proteins in the blood plasma. This platform was developed at the Francis Crick Institute and applied to analyse serum of 31 COVID-19 patients at the Berlin University hospital Charité. Their results were further validated in 17 patients with COVID-19 at the same hospital and in 15 healthy people.

https://medicalxpres...tients-ill.html
 

Regular readers of Techdirt will be all too familiar with the problem of corporate sovereignty -- the ability of companies to sue entire countries for alleged loss of profits caused by government action. Also known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), there have been indications that some countries are starting to drop ISDS from trade and investment treaties, for various reasons. But a worrying report from Corporate Europe Observatory suggests that we are about to witness a new wave of corporate sovereignty litigation. Hard though it may be to believe, these cases will be claiming that governments around the world should be reimbursing companies for the loss of profits caused by tackling COVID-19:
 

In the midst of a crisis like no other, the legal industry is preparing the ground for costly ISDS suits against government actions that address the health and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. In written alerts and webinars law firms point their multinational clients to investment agreements' vast protections for foreign investors as a tool to "seek relief and/or compensation for any losses resulting from State measures"

https://www.techdirt...ave-lives.shtml
 

Fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic will shrink the size of the U.S. economy by 7.9 trillion U.S. dollars over the next decade, according to new projections released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on Monday.

In response to a request from Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, CBO Director Phillip Swagel said in a report that cumulative real output in the United States from 2020 to 2030 will be 7.9 trillion dollars less than what the agency projected in January due to the pandemic. That represents a 3 percent decline in cumulative real gross domestic product (GDP) over the next decade.

"Business closures and social distancing measures are expected to curtail consumer spending, while the recent drop in energy prices is projected to severely reduce U.S. investment in the energy sector," the report said, adding recent congressional legislation will partially mitigate the deterioration in economic conditions.

The report also noted that "an unusually high degree of uncertainty" surrounds these economic projections, particularly because of uncertainty about how the pandemic will unfold this year and the year to come.

"Additionally, if future federal policies differ from those underlying CBO's economic projections -- for example, if lawmakers enact additional pandemic-related legislation-then economic outcomes will necessarily differ from those presented here," the report said.

http://www.ecns.cn/n...pi8642452.shtml

Boeing confirms elimination of 12,000 US jobs, and more in “coming months”
https://en.mercopres...n-coming-months
 

Project cancellations, spending cuts, well shut-ins: the problems and dilemmas plaguing onshore oil producers have also spread to offshore. And while the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on onshore drilling may already be wearing off here and there where drilling is cheap, they may linger for longer offshore.

Despite major progress made by oil companies in the cost department, offshore drilling often remains more expensive than onshore drilling, not least because the process of extraction is more complex. These are costs that one can’t cut or forgo. What this means in the current environment, is that offshore oil may suffer more than onshore oil.

In the North Sea, almost a third of the oil left on the UK continental shelf is no longer economical to extract, a recent study found. According to it, with Brent crude at $45 a barrel, 28 percent of the oil was uneconomical. But Brent hasn’t traded at $45 a barrel for months and is unlikely to reach even $40 a barrel by the end of this year if we are to believe oil analysts. This means that more oil will become uneconomical, and not just in the North Sea.

In the U.S. section of the Gulf of Mexico, Baker Hughes reported a rig count of just 12 in its latest weekly rig count report. That’s down from 22 in March and 19 in April. Forbes’ Scott Carpenter notes this was the lowest weekly rig count in ten years. And it is not unlikely the rig count will continue to fall if prices stay where they are. Meanwhile, production platforms are shutting down, too.

https://oilprice.com...f-Collapse.html

More than 200 soldiers just tested positive for COVID-19 at Army basic training sites
https://taskandpurpo...virus-outbreaks
 

The number of Palestinians living below the poverty line could more than double this year, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to exacerbate the existing financial crisis in the West Bank, the World Bank warned in a report June 1.

“Going forward, the outlook for the Palestinian economy looks grim especially after the COVID-19 outbreak,” the Washington-based bank said. “At this point, it is not possible to say how long it will take for the economy to recover from the current containment measures."

The Palestinian Authority (PA) faces a financing gap of more than $1.5 billion this year, due in part to years of decreased donor support, declining revenues and increased spending on health care, the World Bank report said.

The World Bank further warned the Palestinian economy is expected to shrink by at least 7.6% in 2020, and in the event of a slower recovery, up to 11%. The economy grew by just 1% in 2019.

Rampant unemployment has worsened amid the COVID-19 crisis in the Palestinian territories, where a lack of tourism and other coronavirus-related restrictions have left many without an income for months. More than 100,000 Palestinians are no longer crossing into Israel for work.

https://www.al-monit...on-economy.html
 

MOSCOW, June 2. /TASS/. Molecular biologists from Germany confirmed that the novel coronavirus is capable of penetrating human heart cells and discovered that it can reproduce there, causing breaks in heartbeat rate, the researchers say in their study, published at the bioRxiv online library.

"SARS-CoV-2 can infect human cardiomyocytes in culture as well as in two different models of cardiac tissue," the researchers write. "Viral infection was associated with cytotoxic effects and inhibition of beating of cardiomyocytes in our in vitro cultures and cardiospheres suggesting a potential detrimental effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection on the human heart."

Since the earliest days of the coronavirus outbreak in China, the scientists know that the coronavirus damages not only lung cells, but it can also infiltrate certain bodies in other body tissues, including mucous membranes of nose, esophagus, blood vessels and heart, as well as other organs.

This feature of the virus, scientists say, might explain why many COVID-19 patients suffer not only from respiratory issues, but also lose the sense of smell, have digestion issues and problems with cardiovascular system.

https://tass.com/science/1163215

Biomedical scientists working with COVID-19 have a new tool to help them better understand the virus and feel confident about the structural models they are using in their research.

Wladek Minor, Ph.D., of the University of Virginia School of Medicine, and other top structural biologists have led an international team of scientists to investigate the protein structures contained in the virus—structures that are vital to developing treatments and vaccines. The team has created a Web resource that provides scientists an easy way to see the progress of the structural biology community in this area. It also includes the team's assessment of the quality of the individual models and enhanced versions of these structures, when possible.

"We have carefully analyzed the available models of SARS-CoV-2 proteins and present the results with the aim of helping the broad biomedical community. Structural models are ultimately the interpretation of the original researchers and sometimes are suboptimal. This is why a second set of eyes to validate important structures is so crucial," said Minor, of UVA's Department of Molecular Physiology and Biological Physics. "In most cases, only minor corrections could be suggested. However, in several cases, the revisions were significant, especially in the sensitive area of protein-ligand complexes that are critical for follow-up research, like drug discovery work. The current health crisis demands that all SARS-CoV-2 structures are of the highest quality possible."

https://phys.org/new...s-vaccines.html

Michael H. Peters, Ph.D., a professor in VCU's Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering, is using powerful supercomputers at NASA's Ames Research Center in California to investigate the "spike" protein of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

Through advanced computer simulations, Peters hopes to determine the mechanistic action of the spike protein, which plays an important role in attaching to human cells and infecting the body. He has identified a possible factor that may be able to restrict an important action of this key protein.

"We are trying to more fully understand how this protein functions," Peters said. "You have to understand your enemy before launching into battle."

Peters conducts experimental and theoretical research in the field of protein engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University's College of Engineering. He is working with a former graduate student, Oscar Bastidas, Ph.D., now a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Minnesota's College of Biological Sciences. They are studying the dynamics of how the spike protein changes between active and inactive states. The protein's receptor binding domain has an "up" position, in which it can bind to epithelial cell molecules. But in the "down" position, it appears to be incapable of binding, Peters said.

"What is remarkable is that the up domain configuration is molecularly tethered to the main structure of the protein like a tethered balloon. There are two molecular tethers that are stabilized or 'tied down' by so-called beta strand structural motifs in the central part of the protein. That is why I have called this virus the "It' virus," he said, referring to the shape-shifting creature in author Stephen King's horror tale.

https://phys.org/new...ke-protein.html

Combating coronavirus: Recruitment firms in UAE offer to up-skill local talent for free
https://www.khaleejt...talent-for-free

Migrants who crossed over to Yemen from the African continent now face a triple threat of conflict, humanitarian catastrophe and the novel coronavirus, The Guardian reported.
https://english.alar...ach-gulf-states

[Matt R.]

And as I predicted, social distancing is not being enforced in the restaurants and pubs I’ve visited. Business owners/staff started out reminding patrons to respect the rules and now they couldn’t be bothered.

Indeed! We are playing by all the rules, and in fact with the cook shortage I’m glad to as we couldn’t serve a normal customer base anyways... but one place I know started out last week with the tables 2 m apart, but as they got into the weekend they decided not to bother and everything is back to normal!

I’ve got my phone interview with Worksafe tomorrow to go over my covid safety plan etc.

Matt.

[Mike K.]

Worksafe needs cash so be careful!

[spanky123]

And as I predicted, social distancing is not being enforced in the restaurants and pubs I’ve visited. Business owners/staff started out reminding patrons to respect the rules and now they couldn’t be bothered.

 

The BS coming from the City and Province is deafening. Ok to protest with 300 of your kin but not ok to have a beer with your next door neighbour.  Mayor Helps today claiming that Dr. Henry states that kids are not a major transmission source for the virus so ok to open playgrounds yet Universities can only deliver content by video and your kid can't go to a drive-in movie (aside from the fact that of course kids are a major transmission vector for viruses).

 

This has become more about trying to enact social agendas then it is a health issue. There hasn't been a single positive test for Covid-19 on the south Island since mid-March.

[Matt R.]

Worksafe needs cash so be careful!

Haha yes I’m emotionally prepared for the shakedown. Thankfully we are all up to date on all bills and expenses, including Worksafe premiums.

Matt.

[spanky123]

Haha yes I’m emotionally prepared for the shakedown. Thankfully we are all up to date on all bills and expenses, including Worksafe premiums.

Matt.

 

Great to hear but a word of advice is to answer every question with the minimum amount of detail you need to provide. 

[Matt R.]

I’m not worried. They can come look anytime they want.

Matt.

[RFS]

^ Fatigue. Hardly anyone knows anyone who's had C19, fewer still anyone who's died, and there are all of these over-the-top restrictions/procedures in place. People are simply sick of it, and thus not taking things seriously. Wolf has been cried, and a small chihuahua showed up. (Not to say that the wolf isn't still out there..)

There has been a total paradigm shift since the riots. Every social media post about the virus and social distancing is now met with accusations of karen-ism and white privilege. Quite the change from a week ago when it was racist to question the shutdowns. Silver lining!

[Victoria Watcher]

’s a similar situation in Ottawa, where the city has reported new cases in the single digits for the last week and, although there are 18 institutional outbreaks in the city, only 187 confirmed cases out of 1,969 resulted from community transmission.




see community transmission is tiny now that we are taking precautions.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 03 June 2020 - 03:34 AM.

[amor de cosmos]

Fear of COVID-19 keeping more than half of heart attack patients away from hospitals
https://www.alphagal...y/ItemId/193406
 

The UN on Tuesday raised only around half the required $2.41 billion in humanitarian aid for Yemen, ravaged by war and coronavirus, at a donor conference co-hosted by Saudi Arabia in the fifth year of its military intervention.

Some $1.35 billion were raised at the emergency virtual conference, which came as aid groups warned the virus could wreak havoc in Yemen after years of conflict and amid crippling funding shortages.

"We are in a race against time," United Nations Secretary General Guterres said in his opening speech.

"Aid agencies estimate they will need up to $2.41 billion to cover essential aid from June until December, including programmes to counter Covid-19."

Without the required funding, more than 30 out of 41 major UN programmes in Yemen could close in the next few weeks, Guterres warned, calling for "urgent action".

https://english.alar...-required-2-4bn

UK PM Johnson has had control from start of coronavirus crisis, says spokesman
https://www.reuters....n-idUSKBN23A25Z

INTERESTING

Sweden’s top epidemiologist has admitted his strategy to fight Covid-19 resulted in too many deaths, after persuading his country to avoid a strict lockdown.

“If we were to encounter the same illness with the same knowledge that we have today, I think our response would land somewhere in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done,” Anders Tegnell said in an interview with Swedish Radio.

Tegnell is the brains behind Sweden’s controversial approach to fighting the virus, and the government of Stefan Lofven has deferred to the epidemiologist in its official response to the pandemic. Gatherings of more than 50 people continue to be banned, but throughout the crisis Swedes have been able to visit restaurants, go shopping, attend gyms and send children under 16 to school.

The laxer approach to containing the virus has drawn both praise and condemnation from across the globe. What is beyond debate, however, is the effect the strategy has had on the country’s death toll.

At 43 deaths per 100,000, Sweden’s mortality rate is among the highest globally and far exceeds that of neighboring Denmark and Norway, which imposed much tougher lockdowns at the onset of the pandemic.

“Clearly, there is potential for improvement in what we have done in Sweden,” Tegnell said.

https://www.bloomber...me-things-wrong
https://www.business...rictions-2020-6
https://medicalxpres...eden-virus.html
 

U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that the Republican party was "forced" to choose another location for its presidential nominating convention, as North Carolina rejected its demand for a full-fledged gathering amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump said on Twitter that because of North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper's refusal to accommodate a fully-attended 2020 Republican National Convention in the Spectrum Arena in Charlotte, "we are now forced to seek another State."

"The people of North Carolina do not know what the status of COVID-19 will be in August, so planning for a scaled-down convention with fewer people, social distancing and face coverings is a necessity," Cooper said in a letter to the Republican National Committee on Tuesday.

"We are happy to continue talking with you about what a scaled down convention would look like and we still await your proposed plan for that," Cooper wrote.

The Republican National Committee sent Cooper a letter on Saturday, demanding a 19,000-person convention in his state. Trump reportedly told Cooper in a phone call on Friday that he wanted the convention to be held without requirements for masks and social distancing.

http://www.ecns.cn/n...pi8642960.shtml

Coronavirus pandemic spurring mental health crisis, especially in the young
https://medicalxpres...tal-health.html

[spanky123]

I’m not worried. They can come look anytime they want.

Matt.

 

I am sure you are. When I was young and foolish I mistook the old "we are from the Government and we are here to help" as something that was sincere. What I failed to realize was that the person being helped was the 'auditor' who had a quota and a new car payment to make!

[Mike K.]

Looks like the “infallible” Lancet has done it again. Researchers are questioning the ethics and verdict of a massive hydroxy study (among others) that just a couple of days ago was valiantly upheld as unquestionably sound science.

Fast forward a few days, and the Lancet is wishing it had never published it.

The Lancet and another medical journal, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), each issued an “Expression of Concern” on Wednesday for studies coauthored by Dr. Sapan Desai, founder of Surgisphere. Desai’s company claims to manage a database with information on 96,000 patients in 1,200 hospitals around the world.

...

“The authors have not adhered to standard practices in the machine learning and statistics community. They have not released their code or data,” the letter says. “There was no ethics review.”

...

Desai claims his company employs 11 people, but Surgisphere’s LinkedIn page listed six employees last week, then just three employees on Wednesday. Two of those employees are a known science fiction writer and an adult content model. Several of the employees listed had no scientific or statistical experience, according to The Guardian.

- https://www.dailywir...roxychloroquine

If that’s what constitutes peer reviewed medical data in 2020, God help us.

[tanker]

Only backward Hicks question the conclusions of settled science. Once it's published that's it, debate over.

[spanky123]

^^ This is what I warned about weeks ago. Instead of focusing on sound research and science, various groups with political interests are sabotaging studies and trials for their own gain. It is more about bashing Trump or trying to undermine China then it is about savings lives.

[Ismo07]

And as I predicted, social distancing is not being enforced in the restaurants and pubs I’ve visited. Business owners/staff started out reminding patrons to respect the rules and now they couldn’t be bothered.

 

Hmm I've been thinking most are doing alright...

[amor de cosmos]

Perhaps the most damaging blows to efforts to obtain a certain answer as to the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 “outbreak” have been the pronouncements by Trump, Pompeo, and their echo chambers. But they and their remarks are not the measure by which the question of the possibility that a laboratory escape began the pandemic should be examined. Trump’s diversionary ranting comes from a president who did nothing for two months in the face of an oncoming lethal pandemic, actively denied and denigrated intelligence warnings of the imminent danger, and said that SARS-CoV-2 would “just go away … like a miracle” and that “within a couple of days is going to be down close to zero.” All this has been widely and thoroughly chronicled.1

But long before Trump, Pompeo and Co. sought a Chinese scapegoat for the president’s gross and willful incompetence, researchers understood that the possibility of laboratory escape of the pathogen was a plausible, if unproven, possibility. It is most definitely not “a conspiracy theory.”

The circumstantial evidence for a lab escape. By way of introduction, there are two virology institutes in Wuhan to consider, not one: The Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (WHCDC) and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). Both have conducted large projects on novel bat viruses and maintained large research collections of novel bat viruses, and at least the WIV possessed the virus that is the most closely related known virus in the world to the outbreak virus, bat virus RaTG13. This virus was isolated in 2013 and had its genome published on January 23, 2020. Seven more years of bat coronavirus collection followed the 2013 RaTG13 isolation.

long
https://thebulletin....-very-possibly/
 

A team of scientists from Stanford University is working with researchers at the Molecular Foundry, a nanoscience user facility located at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), to develop a gene-targeting, antiviral agent against COVID-19.

Last year, Stanley Qi, an assistant professor in the departments of bioengineering, and chemical and systems biology at Stanford University and his team had begun working on a technique called PAC-MAN - or Prophylactic Antiviral CRISPR in human cells - that uses the gene-editing tool CRISPR to fight influenza.

But that all changed in January, when news of the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. Qi and his team were suddenly confronted with a mysterious new virus for which no one had a clear solution. "So we thought, 'Why don't we try using our PAC-MAN technology to fight it?'" said Qi.

Since late March, Qi and his team have been collaborating with a group led by Michael Connolly, a principal scientific engineering associate in the Biological Nanostructures Facility at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry, to develop a system that delivers PAC-MAN into the cells of a patient.

Like all CRISPR systems, PAC-MAN is composed of an enzyme - in this case, the virus-killing enzyme Cas13 - and a strand of guide RNA, which commands Cas13 to destroy specific nucleotide sequences in the coronavirus's genome. By scrambling the virus's genetic code, PAC-MAN could neutralize the coronavirus and stop it from replicating inside cells.

https://www.eurekale...l-sag060420.php

Poll: Nearly Three-Fourths of Americans Would Get Coronavirus Vaccine
https://www.nextgov....vaccine/165873/
 

The United Nations warned Wednesday that its programs to fight the coronavirus in war-torn Yemen might have to stop by the end the month unless they get an immediate injection of cash.

The warning comes a day after a UN appeal for countries to fund emergency aid in the Arab world's poorest nation fell a billion dollars short of what aid agencies needed - $2.41 billion - to cover essential activities from June to December.

"This will severely handicap efforts to contain the outbreak, which is already spreading rapidly," said Hayat Abu Saleh, a spokesperson for the UN Officer for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

At least 31 major UN programs in Yemen, covering essentially every sector, from food to health care and nutrition, were at a "serious risk of significant reduction or closure," she said.

The coronavirus is threatening to decimate Yemen's health care system, already ravaged by more than five years of civil war. Abu Saleh predicted the UN would likely start winding down some of its disease outbreak and control programs next month, including efforts to contain cholera, malaria and dengue fever, among other diseases.

https://english.alar...-by-end-of-june

Sweden to ease travel curbs despite signs of rising coronavirus infections
https://www.reuters....s-idUSKBN23B20T
 

The largest number of COVID-19 supercomputing projects involves designing drugs. It’s likely to take several effective drugs to treat the disease. Supercomputers allow researchers to take a rational approach and aim to selectively muzzle proteins that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, needs for its life cycle.

The viral genome encodes proteins needed by the virus to infect humans and to replicate. Among these are the infamous spike protein that sniffs out and penetrates its human cellular target, but there are also enzymes and molecular machines that the virus forces its human subjects to produce for it. Finding drugs that can bind to these proteins and stop them from working is a logical way to go.

I am a molecular biophysicist. My lab, at the Center for Molecular Biophysics at the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, uses a supercomputer to discover drugs. We build three-dimensional virtual models of biological molecules like the proteins used by cells and viruses, and simulate how various chemical compounds interact with those proteins. We test thousands of compounds to find the ones that “dock” with a target protein. Those compounds that fit, lock-and-key style, with the protein are potential therapies.

https://theconversat...onavirus-139539

[Greg]

Looks like the “infallible” Lancet has done it again. Researchers are questioning the ethics and verdict of a massive hydroxy study (among others) that just a couple of days ago was valiantly upheld as unquestionably sound science.

Fast forward a few days, and the Lancet is wishing it had never published it.

- https://www.dailywir...roxychloroquine

If that’s what constitutes peer reviewed medical data in 2020, God help us.

 

 

Only backward Hicks question the conclusions of settled science. Once it's published that's it, debate over.

 

 

^^ This is what I warned about weeks ago. Instead of focusing on sound research and science, various groups with political interests are sabotaging studies and trials for their own gain. It is more about bashing Trump or trying to undermine China then it is about savings lives.

 

As noted earlier in the thread, the Lancet report doesn't stand alone, it is part of numerous publications that are all starting to point in the same direction, including a study published yesterday in the NEJM (https://www.nejm.org...6/NEJMoa2016638) which reported that:

 

"The incidence of new illness compatible with Covid-19 did not differ significantly between participants receiving hydroxychloroquine [...] and those receiving placebo [...]. Side effects were more common with hydroxychloroquine than with placebo..."

 

It's pretty embarrassing for Lancet to have to print the "expression of concern" (although note they haven't said the data was inaccurate yet), and we may see more information being retracted or revised given the incredible rush to publish in the middle of a pandemic. It is certainly worth noting, but it doesn't actually change the story that is emerging.

 

I'd be far more likely to attribute the error to rushing to be first to publish, than to politics. It is actually a lot more desirable for scientists to publish positive results than it is negative results. A positive publication has significantly more impact, and gets cited far more often and for a much longer time. 

[Rob Randall]

Researchers read the Lancet article and spotted some inconsistencies in the way the data was compiled. Apparently the company the authors hired to compile the data used in the study did a bad job and were uncooperative with the independent auditors. That's when the authors contacted the Lancet and asked that their article be withdrawn. 

 

https://www.statnews...-malaria-drugs/

 

But like Greg says, that doesn't change the bottom line; that drug has little if any benefit in most cases and definitely should not be used the way Trump encourages.