Class Action Filed Against China Over COVID-19 Outbreak

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 13:48:45 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 13:35, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:

You still don't seem to understand what is going on. Does
anyone know JL on a personal level? Is he one of these old guys
who has hardening of the arteries and literally can't learn new
things?

Sure, we've been friends for a decade or more. He, I, James, and
some others here have just seen this movie too many times.

The virus scare is being used to advance all sorts of
authoritarian measures that may not all go away when it's over,
like the 'temporary' income tax.

This is just pure paranoia. So far you are the only person to
mention this, so don't put it on Larkin. Own this one all by
yourself.

Having seen the movie before? You haven't been reading very closely,
but I knew that already.


It's not as though the projections couldn't be true, but there are
so many adjustable parameters that are exponentially sensitive that
they're a very rough guide at best. That scary ICL study is a case
in point--by changing their assumptions slightly, they made the
results go all over the map.

You can't look at the graph of infections in the US on a log scale
and see it is a straight line??? You seem to want to make this
complicated so you can just deny how bad it's going to be if we don't
lock down most of the country.

Of course I can. But I also read the chloroquine papers I posted in the
other thread. YCLIU. Very hopeful stuff that if proven true, will
knock this thing on the head very soon.



I've stocked up on nonperishable food and some medicines, I wash
my hands a lot, use dilute bleach on counters and door knobs at the
lab, and am keeping out of shops and restaurants. Flattening the
curve is a good idea up to a point, but there is a tradeoff between
short term risk and possible long term poverty from too long a
shutdown.

We are all free to deal with this as we wish... until we aren't. You
only need to look at what happened in China to see what we have to
do. Your short term economic concerns mean nothing to the rest of
the country.

I'm concerned about what sort of country we'd be afterwards, is all.
You plague fiends don't seem to be thinking more than several months to
a year out.



Obviously there is no point in the infection process when it is
"too late to stop it".

Sure there is, if you aren't prepared to weld people's apartment
doors shut.

That's in effect what China did and that is what we will ultimately
have to do here. Don't kid yourself.

It's precisely what China did, not merely "in effect." Nope, won't
happen here. People here have votes, rights, and long memories for some
things at least.


You do know that once the hospitals are overwhelmed, they are
overwhelmed for EVERYONE regardless of the reason you are there. Get
in an auto accident and you are in the same hospital as everyone
else.

Of course. The situation sucks big time, and it could get as bad as the
ICL simulations suggest.



China didn't act until thousands were infected and
many were dying and they have the spread reduced to very small
numbers now and more importantly, the total number of infected
continues to drop. The issue is the extent of the measures
required to stop this disease. China has been hardest hit at
this point but they are also showing the world how to fight it.

By being the lying totalitarians that they are. No thanks.

Lol! Unfortunately COVID-19 doesn't care about your politics.

Or yours, even more fortunately.



If it becomes endemic in the rest of the world, it will in China
too, welders or no welders.

That may or may not be true, but is largely irrelevant.

Far from it. If everybody eventually gets it, that will include the
Chinese, making their draconian response the irrelevancy. I'd far
rather take my chances in a freer country. Flattening the curve to
reduce the death rate is an excellent thing, but can be taken too far.

Lots of social-distancing propaganda is reasonable. Shutting down the
whole economy for an indefinite time, and spending a couple trillion
dollars, isn't.

The usual seasonal flu starts with exponential growth and kills a few
hundred thousand people worldwide. This one has killed a small
fraction as many so far. Why didn't we lock down the world in last
years's flu season, which killed maybe a million people worldwide?

What's diferent this time is the hype.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-03-19 13:35, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:

You still don't seem to understand what is going on. Does
anyone know JL on a personal level? Is he one of these old guys
who has hardening of the arteries and literally can't learn new
things?

Sure, we've been friends for a decade or more. He, I, James, and
some others here have just seen this movie too many times.

The virus scare is being used to advance all sorts of
authoritarian measures that may not all go away when it's over,
like the 'temporary' income tax.

This is just pure paranoia. So far you are the only person to
mention this, so don't put it on Larkin. Own this one all by
yourself.

Having seen the movie before? You haven't been reading very closely,
but I knew that already.

It's not as though the projections couldn't be true, but there are
so many adjustable parameters that are exponentially sensitive that
they're a very rough guide at best. That scary ICL study is a case
in point--by changing their assumptions slightly, they made the
results go all over the map.

You can't look at the graph of infections in the US on a log scale
and see it is a straight line??? You seem to want to make this
complicated so you can just deny how bad it's going to be if we don't
lock down most of the country.

Of course I can. But I also read the chloroquine papers I posted in the
other thread. YCLIU. Very hopeful stuff that if proven true, will
knock this thing on the head very soon.

I've stocked up on nonperishable food and some medicines, I wash
my hands a lot, use dilute bleach on counters and door knobs at the
lab, and am keeping out of shops and restaurants. Flattening the
curve is a good idea up to a point, but there is a tradeoff between
short term risk and possible long term poverty from too long a
shutdown.

We are all free to deal with this as we wish... until we aren't. You
only need to look at what happened in China to see what we have to
do. Your short term economic concerns mean nothing to the rest of
the country.

I'm concerned about what sort of country we'd be afterwards, is all.
You plague fiends don't seem to be thinking more than several months to
a year out.

Obviously there is no point in the infection process when it is
"too late to stop it".

Sure there is, if you aren't prepared to weld people's apartment
doors shut.

That's in effect what China did and that is what we will ultimately
have to do here. Don't kid yourself.

It's precisely what China did, not merely "in effect." Nope, won't
happen here. People here have votes, rights, and long memories for some
things at least.

You do know that once the hospitals are overwhelmed, they are
overwhelmed for EVERYONE regardless of the reason you are there. Get
in an auto accident and you are in the same hospital as everyone
else.

Of course. The situation sucks big time, and it could get as bad as the
ICL simulations suggest.

China didn't act until thousands were infected and
many were dying and they have the spread reduced to very small
numbers now and more importantly, the total number of infected
continues to drop. The issue is the extent of the measures
required to stop this disease. China has been hardest hit at
this point but they are also showing the world how to fight it.

By being the lying totalitarians that they are. No thanks.

Lol! Unfortunately COVID-19 doesn't care about your politics.

Or yours, even more fortunately.

If it becomes endemic in the rest of the world, it will in China
too, welders or no welders.

That may or may not be true, but is largely irrelevant.

Far from it. If everybody eventually gets it, that will include the
Chinese, making their draconian response the irrelevancy. I'd far
rather take my chances in a freer country. Flattening the curve to
reduce the death rate is an excellent thing, but can be taken too far.

However, chloroquine seems to be the silver bullet, so it may just
go away.

We'll see.

Yup.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:48:52 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-03-19 13:35, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:

You still don't seem to understand what is going on. Does
anyone know JL on a personal level? Is he one of these old guys
who has hardening of the arteries and literally can't learn new
things?

Sure, we've been friends for a decade or more. He, I, James, and
some others here have just seen this movie too many times.

The virus scare is being used to advance all sorts of
authoritarian measures that may not all go away when it's over,
like the 'temporary' income tax.

This is just pure paranoia. So far you are the only person to
mention this, so don't put it on Larkin. Own this one all by
yourself.

Having seen the movie before? You haven't been reading very closely,
but I knew that already.

You aren't making sense. Your paranoia is all your own. Larkin is in denial still it seems, but you are the only one here talking about our evil overlords.

It's not as though the projections couldn't be true, but there are
so many adjustable parameters that are exponentially sensitive that
they're a very rough guide at best. That scary ICL study is a case
in point--by changing their assumptions slightly, they made the
results go all over the map.

You can't look at the graph of infections in the US on a log scale
and see it is a straight line??? You seem to want to make this
complicated so you can just deny how bad it's going to be if we don't
lock down most of the country.

Of course I can. But I also read the chloroquine papers I posted in the
other thread. YCLIU. Very hopeful stuff that if proven true, will
knock this thing on the head very soon.

If it proves to be safe and effective it will be great, but even so it will be a while before we have enough to treat a pandemic. Is anyone ramping up production as we speak? How will they make the millions of doses that will be required? Is anyone evening thinking about that until they get finished with the testing?

I've stocked up on nonperishable food and some medicines, I wash
my hands a lot, use dilute bleach on counters and door knobs at the
lab, and am keeping out of shops and restaurants. Flattening the
curve is a good idea up to a point, but there is a tradeoff between
short term risk and possible long term poverty from too long a
shutdown.

We are all free to deal with this as we wish... until we aren't. You
only need to look at what happened in China to see what we have to
do. Your short term economic concerns mean nothing to the rest of
the country.

I'm concerned about what sort of country we'd be afterwards, is all.
You plague fiends don't seem to be thinking more than several months to
a year out.

I don't see anything you have said about the coming years. My main concern is that as many as possible make it to the coming years. Unless the present government uses the virus as a reason to not have elections I think the future looks pretty good.

Obviously there is no point in the infection process when it is
"too late to stop it".

Sure there is, if you aren't prepared to weld people's apartment
doors shut.

That's in effect what China did and that is what we will ultimately
have to do here. Don't kid yourself.

It's precisely what China did, not merely "in effect." Nope, won't
happen here. People here have votes, rights, and long memories for some
things at least.

You don't have the right to put others at risk. The worse outcome is that a weak government doesn't have the stomach to do what is required.

You do know that once the hospitals are overwhelmed, they are
overwhelmed for EVERYONE regardless of the reason you are there. Get
in an auto accident and you are in the same hospital as everyone
else.

Of course. The situation sucks big time, and it could get as bad as the
ICL simulations suggest.

You keep talking about simulations when we can learn from China and other countries. The real world.

China didn't act until thousands were infected and
many were dying and they have the spread reduced to very small
numbers now and more importantly, the total number of infected
continues to drop. The issue is the extent of the measures
required to stop this disease. China has been hardest hit at
this point but they are also showing the world how to fight it.

By being the lying totalitarians that they are. No thanks.

Lol! Unfortunately COVID-19 doesn't care about your politics.

Or yours, even more fortunately.

You are the only one making this a political issue. I'm just trying to understand how best to get through this.

If it becomes endemic in the rest of the world, it will in China
too, welders or no welders.

That may or may not be true, but is largely irrelevant.

Far from it. If everybody eventually gets it, that will include the
Chinese, making their draconian response the irrelevancy. I'd far
rather take my chances in a freer country. Flattening the curve to
reduce the death rate is an excellent thing, but can be taken too far.

You seem to be talking about something you haven't defined. If the Chinese get the virus under control in their country, they won't need to worry about other countries. It's not like they are forced to let the infection back in.

This is a democracy, but in times of distress your rights are put in a bottle and stored on the shelf. Look at what happened to Americans of Japanese decent during WWII. Is that your "freer country"??? You think it won't happen to you, but when you put the rest of us at risk you will be put in jail and that is a place where you can catch the disease and not worry about treatment as you won't be getting any.

However, chloroquine seems to be the silver bullet, so it may just
go away.

We'll see.

Yup.

Yup.

--

Rick C.

-+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 2:14:29 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 13:48:45 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 13:35, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:

You still don't seem to understand what is going on. Does
anyone know JL on a personal level? Is he one of these old guys
who has hardening of the arteries and literally can't learn new
things?

Sure, we've been friends for a decade or more. He, I, James, and
some others here have just seen this movie too many times.

The virus scare is being used to advance all sorts of
authoritarian measures that may not all go away when it's over,
like the 'temporary' income tax.

This is just pure paranoia. So far you are the only person to
mention this, so don't put it on Larkin. Own this one all by
yourself.

Having seen the movie before? You haven't been reading very closely,
but I knew that already.


It's not as though the projections couldn't be true, but there are
so many adjustable parameters that are exponentially sensitive that
they're a very rough guide at best. That scary ICL study is a case
in point--by changing their assumptions slightly, they made the
results go all over the map.

You can't look at the graph of infections in the US on a log scale
and see it is a straight line??? You seem to want to make this
complicated so you can just deny how bad it's going to be if we don't
lock down most of the country.

Of course I can. But I also read the chloroquine papers I posted in the
other thread. YCLIU. Very hopeful stuff that if proven true, will
knock this thing on the head very soon.



I've stocked up on nonperishable food and some medicines, I wash
my hands a lot, use dilute bleach on counters and door knobs at the
lab, and am keeping out of shops and restaurants. Flattening the
curve is a good idea up to a point, but there is a tradeoff between
short term risk and possible long term poverty from too long a
shutdown.

We are all free to deal with this as we wish... until we aren't. You
only need to look at what happened in China to see what we have to
do. Your short term economic concerns mean nothing to the rest of
the country.

I'm concerned about what sort of country we'd be afterwards, is all.
You plague fiends don't seem to be thinking more than several months to
a year out.



Obviously there is no point in the infection process when it is
"too late to stop it".

Sure there is, if you aren't prepared to weld people's apartment
doors shut.

That's in effect what China did and that is what we will ultimately
have to do here. Don't kid yourself.

It's precisely what China did, not merely "in effect." Nope, won't
happen here. People here have votes, rights, and long memories for some
things at least.


You do know that once the hospitals are overwhelmed, they are
overwhelmed for EVERYONE regardless of the reason you are there. Get
in an auto accident and you are in the same hospital as everyone
else.

Of course. The situation sucks big time, and it could get as bad as the
ICL simulations suggest.



China didn't act until thousands were infected and
many were dying and they have the spread reduced to very small
numbers now and more importantly, the total number of infected
continues to drop. The issue is the extent of the measures
required to stop this disease. China has been hardest hit at
this point but they are also showing the world how to fight it.

By being the lying totalitarians that they are. No thanks.

Lol! Unfortunately COVID-19 doesn't care about your politics.

Or yours, even more fortunately.



If it becomes endemic in the rest of the world, it will in China
too, welders or no welders.

That may or may not be true, but is largely irrelevant.

Far from it. If everybody eventually gets it, that will include the
Chinese, making their draconian response the irrelevancy. I'd far
rather take my chances in a freer country. Flattening the curve to
reduce the death rate is an excellent thing, but can be taken too far.

Lots of social-distancing propaganda is reasonable. Shutting down the
whole economy for an indefinite time, and spending a couple trillion
dollars, isn't.

The usual seasonal flu starts with exponential growth and kills a few
hundred thousand people worldwide. This one has killed a small
fraction as many so far. Why didn't we lock down the world in last
years's flu season, which killed maybe a million people worldwide?

What's diferent this time is the hype.

Some people are born stupid and some people just work hard to achieve new heights.

Is there anyone here who agrees with JL that this is all just hype and we don't need to be at all worried?

Does anyone know why JL can't understand exponential growth and keeps talking about the numbers today?

--

Rick C.

+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[David Brown]

On 19/03/2020 20:10, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:48:52 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 13:35, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs
wrote:
On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:

Of course I can. But I also read the chloroquine papers I posted
in the other thread. YCLIU. Very hopeful stuff that if proven
true, will knock this thing on the head very soon.

It is a /long/ way from that, even at the best estimates. It is hopeful
enough to begin some clinical trials (of hydroxychloroquine, rather than
the usual version), since there has been useful results in vitro. At
best, however, it just reduces the level of some symptoms - it is not a
magic cure.

Maybe a great cure will be made, but given our past failure for other
related viruses, I would not hold my breath. Reducing symptom severity
is always good, however, so it is positive news. It is a vaccine that
is needed to beat the virus properly.

The vast quantity of crap that circulates social media and random web
sites makes it difficult to keep track of the real status of testing of
such drugs.

If it proves to be safe and effective it will be great, but even so
it will be a while before we have enough to treat a pandemic. Is
anyone ramping up production as we speak? How will they make the
millions of doses that will be required? Is anyone evening thinking
about that until they get finished with the testing?

I'm sure they are thinking about it. Amongst other things, China is
thinking that limiting USA access to drug raw materials could put
pressure on Trump to stop the insults and blame game. (Not that China
is faultless here either.)

(Meanwhile, Russia is playing silly buggers with oil production and
prices, in the hope of causing more financial trouble for the west
before the virus hits them in force. Why is so much of the world
controlled by such thoughtless gits?)

I'm concerned about what sort of country we'd be afterwards, is
all. You plague fiends don't seem to be thinking more than several
months to a year out.

I don't see anything you have said about the coming years. My main
concern is that as many as possible make it to the coming years.
Unless the present government uses the virus as a reason to not have
elections I think the future looks pretty good.

I'm hoping we'll come out of all this with a habit of travelling less,
consuming less, working more locally, and helping each other a bit more.
That would do the world a lot of good in the long run.

Obviously there is no point in the infection process when it
is "too late to stop it".

Sure there is, if you aren't prepared to weld people's
apartment doors shut.

That's in effect what China did and that is what we will
ultimately have to do here. Don't kid yourself.

It's precisely what China did, not merely "in effect." Nope,
won't happen here. People here have votes, rights, and long
memories for some things at least.

You don't have the right to put others at risk. The worse outcome is
that a weak government doesn't have the stomach to do what is
required.

Um, you are talking about the USA, right? The country where the right
to overthrow your government by armed revolution overrules people's
right not to be shot? For better or worse, personal liberty seems to be
the major right and demand for many Americans, and it will come into
conflict with the government trying to control movement and interaction.

(Hopefully I'm wrong and you'll be able to get a good containment.)

However, chloroquine seems to be the silver bullet, so it may
just go away.

No, not even the most optimistic tests suggest it is a silver bullet.
It appears to be a step above cow urine and garlic, but not a silver
bullet.

We'll see.

Yup.

Yup.

 

[Michael Terrell]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 11:28:36 AM UTC-4,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 07:33:41 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Tuesday, March 17, 2020 at 11:47:30 AM UTC-4, Uwe Bonnes
wrote:
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:
America doing what it does best.

The Berman Law Group, alleged China’s failure to report and
contain the virus more quickly, or disclose the actual number
of cases, created “essentially a giant Petri dish” in the
region near Wuhan, sparking the global COVID-19 outbreak. The
case alleges claims of negligence, emotional distress, public
nuisance and strict liability for “conducting ultrahazardous
activity.”

China started to react soon and brought the numbers down four
weeks ago.

Most other waited for more weeks and now are hit harder.

I think a class action against the Trump adminstration will
have better chances.

... -- Uwe Bonnes
bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik Schlossgartenstrasse 9 64289
Darmstadt --------- Tel. 06151 1623569 ------- Fax. 06151
1623305 ---------

In actual fact, China suppressed reports and spread their virus
unnecessarily in their own country and around the world for
months, from November through January.

If it grows exponentially from a single starting case, what
difference would it make? It wouldn't be noticed or defined or
testable until the infection involved a lot of people, and then
it's too late to stop it.

You still don't seem to understand what is going on. Does anyone
know JL on a personal level? Is he one of these old guys who has
hardening of the arteries and literally can't learn new things?

Sure, we've been friends for a decade or more. He, I, James, and some
others here have just seen this movie too many times.

The virus scare is being used to advance all sorts of authoritarian
measures that may not all go away when it's over, like the 'temporary'
income tax.

It's not as though the projections couldn't be true, but there are so
many adjustable parameters that are exponentially sensitive that they're
a very rough guide at best. That scary ICL study is a case in point--by
changing their assumptions slightly, they made the results go all over
the map.

I've stocked up on nonperishable food and some medicines, I wash my
hands a lot, use dilute bleach on counters and door knobs at the lab,
and am keeping out of shops and restaurants. Flattening the curve is a
good idea up to a point, but there is a tradeoff between short term risk
and possible long term poverty from too long a shutdown.

I had a VA appointment yesterday, in spite of rumors that the VA had closed al of their CBOCs. The largest Walmart in the area is near that clinic, so I went to get a few things. There were row after row of empty isles. All of the packages of lunch meat and cheese were gone, other than a few stray items. I did find one item to eat, and some bottles of the diet soda that I drink. There were workers busy trying to restock, with pallets and pallet jacks all over the place. It looked worse than after all the hurricanes that I've been through. The local media is scaring the hell out of the gullible. Once this passes, the stores will have very low sales for some time until they've used up what the gullible have hoarded.. I slowly built up my foodstocks over time. I rotate it, by using it and replacing it with new items. I try to keep six to ten gallons of distilled water to cook with, since my well water is so hard. Sadly, I was sick the entire time that you were in Florida, so we didn't get to meet up.

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 4:31:20 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:

On 19/03/2020 20:10, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:48:52 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 13:35, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs
wrote:
On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:


Of course I can. But I also read the chloroquine papers I posted
in the other thread. YCLIU. Very hopeful stuff that if proven
true, will knock this thing on the head very soon.

It is a /long/ way from that, even at the best estimates. It is hopeful
enough to begin some clinical trials (of hydroxychloroquine, rather than
the usual version), since there has been useful results in vitro. At
best, however, it just reduces the level of some symptoms - it is not a
magic cure.

It doesn't need to be magic. If it is a cure or even just a treatment, it may well allow us to avoid overloading our medical system and be able to effectively treat victims of this disease. But it is still a ways off. Even if the decided today that it is the right treatment, we would need to drastically ramp up production which will take weeks.

But then the Chinese built entire hospitals in a single week. Maybe we need to sub it out.

Maybe a great cure will be made, but given our past failure for other
related viruses, I would not hold my breath. Reducing symptom severity
is always good, however, so it is positive news. It is a vaccine that
is needed to beat the virus properly.

We only need to flatten the curve and keep people out of hospitals and out of the ICU.

The vast quantity of crap that circulates social media and random web
sites makes it difficult to keep track of the real status of testing of
such drugs.

Yes, but we can all help each other by reporting useful info here.

If it proves to be safe and effective it will be great, but even so
it will be a while before we have enough to treat a pandemic. Is
anyone ramping up production as we speak? How will they make the
millions of doses that will be required? Is anyone evening thinking
about that until they get finished with the testing?


I'm sure they are thinking about it. Amongst other things, China is
thinking that limiting USA access to drug raw materials could put
pressure on Trump to stop the insults and blame game. (Not that China
is faultless here either.)

(Meanwhile, Russia is playing silly buggers with oil production and
prices, in the hope of causing more financial trouble for the west
before the virus hits them in force. Why is so much of the world
controlled by such thoughtless gits?)

I don't see how Russia is hurting anyone by dropping the price of oil. If anything, that would help the current administration by putting more money in people's pockets. Maybe that's the idea. Don't know.

I'm concerned about what sort of country we'd be afterwards, is
all. You plague fiends don't seem to be thinking more than several
months to a year out.

I don't see anything you have said about the coming years. My main
concern is that as many as possible make it to the coming years.
Unless the present government uses the virus as a reason to not have
elections I think the future looks pretty good.


I'm hoping we'll come out of all this with a habit of travelling less,
consuming less, working more locally, and helping each other a bit more.
That would do the world a lot of good in the long run.

While the other things tend to be in reaction to events and revert after the event, I think the work from home thing may persist if you don't work for Charter Communications.

Obviously there is no point in the infection process when it
is "too late to stop it".

Sure there is, if you aren't prepared to weld people's
apartment doors shut.

That's in effect what China did and that is what we will
ultimately have to do here. Don't kid yourself.

It's precisely what China did, not merely "in effect." Nope,
won't happen here. People here have votes, rights, and long
memories for some things at least.

You don't have the right to put others at risk. The worse outcome is
that a weak government doesn't have the stomach to do what is
required.


Um, you are talking about the USA, right? The country where the right
to overthrow your government by armed revolution overrules people's
right not to be shot? For better or worse, personal liberty seems to be
the major right and demand for many Americans, and it will come into
conflict with the government trying to control movement and interaction.

Yeah, this will be interesting to see how that plays out. If there are incidents of people not obeying orders to stay at home, etc. and guns become a factor, that won't help the gun advocates. On the other hand, this is exactly the sort of scenario that some gun advocates say they need weapons for.. I don't see this going the way where anyone needs a weapon, but who knows what others will do to get your toilet paper.

(Hopefully I'm wrong and you'll be able to get a good containment.)

However, chloroquine seems to be the silver bullet, so it may
just go away.

No, not even the most optimistic tests suggest it is a silver bullet.
It appears to be a step above cow urine and garlic, but not a silver
bullet.

I'm not hopeful of it having an impact over the next few weeks until the hospitals are overrun, but something may pan out with one of the drugs before this virus has run its course.

I just hope people start to get the message and stay at home even if they work for Charter Communications.

--

Rick C.

++ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
++ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 4:48:49 PM UTC-4, Michael Terrell wrote:

I had a VA appointment yesterday, in spite of rumors that the VA had closed al of their CBOCs. The largest Walmart in the area is near that clinic, so I went to get a few things. There were row after row of empty isles. All of the packages of lunch meat and cheese were gone, other than a few stray items. I did find one item to eat, and some bottles of the diet soda that I drink. There were workers busy trying to restock, with pallets and pallet jacks all over the place. It looked worse than after all the hurricanes that I've been through. The local media is scaring the hell out of the gullible. Once this passes, the stores will have very low sales for some time until they've used up what the gullible have hoarded.. I slowly built up my foodstocks over time. I rotate it, by using it and replacing it with new items. I try to keep six to ten gallons of distilled water to cook with, since my well water is so hard. Sadly, I was sick the entire time that you were in Florida, so we didn't get to meet up.

Local media is reporting facts... where here they are, I don't know about where you are. Sure, they are going to report shortages, that's news. People are going to respond by buying what they think they will need. But this will out last any fresh food products you buy, so you will be back to the store many times before this is over and purchasing levels will return to normal very soon actually. How much hording can anyone do? Most people don't like the large sizes they sell at Costco!

I want to go to the store to get a few things, but I keep hearing about empty shelves. I guess I should go early in the morning. I'd like to have a few fresh items.

--

Rick C.

--- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 6:06:43 PM UTC-4, John Robertson wrote:

On 2020/03/19 2:47 p.m., Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 16:31, David Brown wrote:

However, chloroquine seems to be the silver bullet, so it may
just go away.

No, not even the most optimistic tests suggest it is a silver bullet.
It appears to be a step above cow urine and garlic, but not a silver
bullet.

Read the French paper.  With hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin,
everyone was cured in a few days.  It's a small study, admittedly, but
how many standard deviations is that from the usual outcome, even in a
small sample?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


Link to the original paper:

https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/hydroxychloroquine-and-azithromycin-as-a-treatment-of-covid-19/

tinyURL version:

https://tinyurl.com/hydroxychloroquine-azithro

Or, give your recipients confidence with a preview TinyURL:

https://preview.tinyurl.com/hydroxychloroquine-azithro

The two drugs seem to be a good way to fight this disease. Now we just need to get them in production in time.

"Mylan expects to be in a position to begin supplying product by mid-April, and with the active pharmaceutical ingredient that we currently have available, will be able to ramp up manufacturing to provide 50 million tablets to potentially treat a total of more than 1.5 million patients."

By mid-april there will be well over 1 million infected and may be as many as 10 million if the isolation measures are not effective. Our hospitals will be overwhelmed before this drug is available in sufficient quantities to treat the numbers needed.

The affected areas of this country need to be in lock down, NOW.

--

Rick C.

-+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-03-19 16:31, David Brown wrote:

However, chloroquine seems to be the silver bullet, so it may
just go away.

No, not even the most optimistic tests suggest it is a silver bullet. It
appears to be a step above cow urine and garlic, but not a silver bullet.

Read the French paper. With hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin,
everyone was cured in a few days. It's a small study, admittedly, but
how many standard deviations is that from the usual outcome, even in a
small sample?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 2020-03-19 16:48, Michael Terrell wrote:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 11:28:36 AM UTC-4,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 07:33:41 -0700 (PDT),
dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com wrote:

On Tuesday, March 17, 2020 at 11:47:30 AM UTC-4, Uwe Bonnes
wrote:
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:
America doing what it does best.

The Berman Law Group, alleged China’s failure to report
and contain the virus more quickly, or disclose the
actual number of cases, created “essentially a giant
Petri dish” in the region near Wuhan, sparking the global
COVID-19 outbreak. The case alleges claims of negligence,
emotional distress, public nuisance and strict liability
for “conducting ultrahazardous activity.”

China started to react soon and brought the numbers down
four weeks ago.

Most other waited for more weeks and now are hit harder.

I think a class action against the Trump adminstration
will have better chances.

... -- Uwe Bonnes bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik Schlossgartenstrasse 9 64289
Darmstadt --------- Tel. 06151 1623569 ------- Fax. 06151
1623305 ---------

In actual fact, China suppressed reports and spread their
virus unnecessarily in their own country and around the world
for months, from November through January.

If it grows exponentially from a single starting case, what
difference would it make? It wouldn't be noticed or defined or
testable until the infection involved a lot of people, and
then it's too late to stop it.

You still don't seem to understand what is going on. Does
anyone know JL on a personal level? Is he one of these old guys
who has hardening of the arteries and literally can't learn new
things?

Sure, we've been friends for a decade or more. He, I, James, and
some others here have just seen this movie too many times.

The virus scare is being used to advance all sorts of
authoritarian measures that may not all go away when it's over,
like the 'temporary' income tax.

It's not as though the projections couldn't be true, but there are
so many adjustable parameters that are exponentially sensitive that
they're a very rough guide at best. That scary ICL study is a case
in point--by changing their assumptions slightly, they made the
results go all over the map.

I've stocked up on nonperishable food and some medicines, I wash
my hands a lot, use dilute bleach on counters and door knobs at the
lab, and am keeping out of shops and restaurants. Flattening the
curve is a good idea up to a point, but there is a tradeoff between
short term risk and possible long term poverty from too long a
shutdown.


I had a VA appointment yesterday, in spite of rumors that the VA had
closed al of their CBOCs. The largest Walmart in the area is near
that clinic, so I went to get a few things. There were row after row
of empty isles. All of the packages of lunch meat and cheese were
gone, other than a few stray items. I did find one item to eat, and
some bottles of the diet soda that I drink. There were workers busy
trying to restock, with pallets and pallet jacks all over the place.
It looked worse than after all the hurricanes that I've been through.
The local media is scaring the hell out of the gullible. Once this
passes, the stores will have very low sales for some time until
they've used up what the gullible have hoarded.. I slowly built up my
foodstocks over time. I rotate it, by using it and replacing it with
new items. I try to keep six to ten gallons of distilled water to
cook with, since my well water is so hard. Sadly, I was sick the
entire time that you were in Florida, so we didn't get to meet up.

Yeah, that was too bad. Maybe next year.

Cheers

Phil


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[David Brown]

On 19/03/2020 22:10, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 4:31:20 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 19/03/2020 20:10, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:48:52 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs
wrote:
On 2020-03-19 13:35, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs
wrote:
On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:


Of course I can. But I also read the chloroquine papers I
posted in the other thread. YCLIU. Very hopeful stuff that if
proven true, will knock this thing on the head very soon.

It is a /long/ way from that, even at the best estimates. It is
hopeful enough to begin some clinical trials (of
hydroxychloroquine, rather than the usual version), since there has
been useful results in vitro. At best, however, it just reduces
the level of some symptoms - it is not a magic cure.

It doesn't need to be magic. If it is a cure or even just a
treatment, it may well allow us to avoid overloading our medical
system and be able to effectively treat victims of this disease.

Sure - an effective treatment would be great. My point is just that it
doesn't appear to be the snake-oil Trump and a few others would have us
believe. It looks like it might significantly reduce the hospital time
of non-ICU corona patients, and that would be marvellous news.

But
it is still a ways off. Even if the decided today that it is the
right treatment, we would need to drastically ramp up production
which will take weeks.

Yes, indeed.

Chloroquine is a currently available drug, used for malaria, some kinds
of rheumatism, and perhaps other things - so it is widely available. I
don't know if that applies equally to Hydroxychloroquine, and I don't
know if there are differences in the form (tablet, injection, mix with
gin and lemon). I doubt if production is up to the demands of the
expected numbers of corona patients, but at least it is not starting
from scratch.

But then the Chinese built entire hospitals in a single week. Maybe
we need to sub it out.

Yes, but apparently they forgot that they'd need medical staff for it,
so it is empty. Still, this is definitely something the world should be
working together on.

Maybe a great cure will be made, but given our past failure for
other related viruses, I would not hold my breath. Reducing
symptom severity is always good, however, so it is positive news.
It is a vaccine that is needed to beat the virus properly.

We only need to flatten the curve and keep people out of hospitals
and out of the ICU.

That is what we /need/, as a minimum. But what we /want/, is to keep
the hospitalisation and ICU cases low enough until a vaccine is made and
given to most of the world. That way we keep a flat curve then nothing,
rather than a very low flat curve.

The vast quantity of crap that circulates social media and random
web sites makes it difficult to keep track of the real status of
testing of such drugs.

Yes, but we can all help each other by reporting useful info here.

We might feel it is nice to discuss it here, but I doubt if we are
helping very much. The readership of a newsgroup like this is not very
high!

If it proves to be safe and effective it will be great, but even
so it will be a while before we have enough to treat a pandemic.
Is anyone ramping up production as we speak? How will they make
the millions of doses that will be required? Is anyone evening
thinking about that until they get finished with the testing?


I'm sure they are thinking about it. Amongst other things, China
is thinking that limiting USA access to drug raw materials could
put pressure on Trump to stop the insults and blame game. (Not
that China is faultless here either.)

(Meanwhile, Russia is playing silly buggers with oil production
and prices, in the hope of causing more financial trouble for the
west before the virus hits them in force. Why is so much of the
world controlled by such thoughtless gits?)

I don't see how Russia is hurting anyone by dropping the price of
oil. If anything, that would help the current administration by
putting more money in people's pockets. Maybe that's the idea.
Don't know.

You don't live in a country that sells a lot of oil! But whether you
are a buyer or a seller, wild variations in oil prices destabilises
economies somewhat.

I'm concerned about what sort of country we'd be afterwards,
is all. You plague fiends don't seem to be thinking more than
several months to a year out.

I don't see anything you have said about the coming years. My
main concern is that as many as possible make it to the coming
years. Unless the present government uses the virus as a reason
to not have elections I think the future looks pretty good.


I'm hoping we'll come out of all this with a habit of travelling
less, consuming less, working more locally, and helping each other
a bit more. That would do the world a lot of good in the long run.


While the other things tend to be in reaction to events and revert
after the event, I think the work from home thing may persist if you
don't work for Charter Communications.

We'll see - I can hope, but I am not making any bets.

Obviously there is no point in the infection process when
it is "too late to stop it".

Sure there is, if you aren't prepared to weld people's
apartment doors shut.

That's in effect what China did and that is what we will
ultimately have to do here. Don't kid yourself.

It's precisely what China did, not merely "in effect." Nope,
won't happen here. People here have votes, rights, and long
memories for some things at least.

You don't have the right to put others at risk. The worse
outcome is that a weak government doesn't have the stomach to do
what is required.


Um, you are talking about the USA, right? The country where the
right to overthrow your government by armed revolution overrules
people's right not to be shot? For better or worse, personal
liberty seems to be the major right and demand for many Americans,
and it will come into conflict with the government trying to
control movement and interaction.

Yeah, this will be interesting to see how that plays out. If there
are incidents of people not obeying orders to stay at home, etc. and
guns become a factor, that won't help the gun advocates. On the
other hand, this is exactly the sort of scenario that some gun
advocates say they need weapons for. I don't see this going the way
where anyone needs a weapon, but who knows what others will do to get
your toilet paper.

I'm glad I am observing this from the other side of the ocean. We've
got a lockdown here in Norway, but things are going smoothly. There's a
shortage of anti-bac in the shops, but plenty of bog roll, and only very
sporadic hoarding.

(Hopefully I'm wrong and you'll be able to get a good
containment.)

However, chloroquine seems to be the silver bullet, so it
may just go away.

No, not even the most optimistic tests suggest it is a silver
bullet. It appears to be a step above cow urine and garlic, but not
a silver bullet.

I'm not hopeful of it having an impact over the next few weeks until
the hospitals are overrun, but something may pan out with one of the
drugs before this virus has run its course.

I just hope people start to get the message and stay at home even if
they work for Charter Communications.

 

[John Robertson]

On 2020/03/19 2:47 p.m., Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:31, David Brown wrote:

However, chloroquine seems to be the silver bullet, so it may
just go away.

No, not even the most optimistic tests suggest it is a silver bullet.
It appears to be a step above cow urine and garlic, but not a silver
bullet.

Read the French paper.  With hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin,
everyone was cured in a few days.  It's a small study, admittedly, but
how many standard deviations is that from the usual outcome, even in a
small sample?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Link to the original paper:

https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/hydroxychloroquine-and-azithromycin-as-a-treatment-of-covid-19/

tinyURL version:

https://tinyurl.com/hydroxychloroquine-azithro

Or, give your recipients confidence with a preview TinyURL:

https://preview.tinyurl.com/hydroxychloroquine-azithro

John

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 5:55:57 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:

On 19/03/2020 22:10, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 4:31:20 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 19/03/2020 20:10, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:48:52 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs
wrote:
On 2020-03-19 13:35, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs
wrote:
On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:


Of course I can. But I also read the chloroquine papers I
posted in the other thread. YCLIU. Very hopeful stuff that if
proven true, will knock this thing on the head very soon.

It is a /long/ way from that, even at the best estimates. It is
hopeful enough to begin some clinical trials (of
hydroxychloroquine, rather than the usual version), since there has
been useful results in vitro. At best, however, it just reduces
the level of some symptoms - it is not a magic cure.

It doesn't need to be magic. If it is a cure or even just a
treatment, it may well allow us to avoid overloading our medical
system and be able to effectively treat victims of this disease.

Sure - an effective treatment would be great. My point is just that it
doesn't appear to be the snake-oil Trump and a few others would have us
believe. It looks like it might significantly reduce the hospital time
of non-ICU corona patients, and that would be marvellous news.

I don't know what Trump says about it because I'm pay attention to credible sources. If it only helps, that is actually huge because it can help relieve the overloading the hospitals are going to see. That alone would make a huge difference in the number dying and potentially those who would otherwise be permanently harmed.

But
it is still a ways off. Even if the decided today that it is the
right treatment, we would need to drastically ramp up production
which will take weeks.

Yes, indeed.

Chloroquine is a currently available drug, used for malaria, some kinds
of rheumatism, and perhaps other things - so it is widely available. I
don't know if that applies equally to Hydroxychloroquine, and I don't
know if there are differences in the form (tablet, injection, mix with
gin and lemon). I doubt if production is up to the demands of the
expected numbers of corona patients, but at least it is not starting
from scratch.

That's the point. It will still be weeks and our ICUs are going to be overloaded in two or three weeks, tops unless the social distancing starts to work.

But then the Chinese built entire hospitals in a single week. Maybe
we need to sub it out.

Yes, but apparently they forgot that they'd need medical staff for it,
so it is empty. Still, this is definitely something the world should be
working together on.

Perhaps we are talking about something different. The ones I heard of were plural in the Wuhan area and were full of patients in quarantine even if they received no care.

Maybe a great cure will be made, but given our past failure for
other related viruses, I would not hold my breath. Reducing
symptom severity is always good, however, so it is positive news.
It is a vaccine that is needed to beat the virus properly.

We only need to flatten the curve and keep people out of hospitals
and out of the ICU.


That is what we /need/, as a minimum. But what we /want/, is to keep
the hospitalisation and ICU cases low enough until a vaccine is made and
given to most of the world. That way we keep a flat curve then nothing,
rather than a very low flat curve.

I think you are splitting hairs here. Ideally the disease will simply be ended through isolation. We'll see what happens.

The vast quantity of crap that circulates social media and random
web sites makes it difficult to keep track of the real status of
testing of such drugs.

Yes, but we can all help each other by reporting useful info here.


We might feel it is nice to discuss it here, but I doubt if we are
helping very much. The readership of a newsgroup like this is not very
high!

I like to research things like this and then share with everyone I know. The fact that I can cite sources and actually have info rather than what I simply heard from someone else I know means my friends listen to me. So I think getting the sort of accurate info we tend to exchange here is useful for a lot more people than just those posting here.

If it proves to be safe and effective it will be great, but even
so it will be a while before we have enough to treat a pandemic.
Is anyone ramping up production as we speak? How will they make
the millions of doses that will be required? Is anyone evening
thinking about that until they get finished with the testing?


I'm sure they are thinking about it. Amongst other things, China
is thinking that limiting USA access to drug raw materials could
put pressure on Trump to stop the insults and blame game. (Not
that China is faultless here either.)

(Meanwhile, Russia is playing silly buggers with oil production
and prices, in the hope of causing more financial trouble for the
west before the virus hits them in force. Why is so much of the
world controlled by such thoughtless gits?)

I don't see how Russia is hurting anyone by dropping the price of
oil. If anything, that would help the current administration by
putting more money in people's pockets. Maybe that's the idea.
Don't know.


You don't live in a country that sells a lot of oil! But whether you
are a buyer or a seller, wild variations in oil prices destabilises
economies somewhat.

Actually, the US does sell a lot of oil. We are a net exporter and a huge consumer. The drop in price means the shale oil production will end since it would cost them more than they can sell it for.

I'm concerned about what sort of country we'd be afterwards,
is all. You plague fiends don't seem to be thinking more than
several months to a year out.

I don't see anything you have said about the coming years. My
main concern is that as many as possible make it to the coming
years. Unless the present government uses the virus as a reason
to not have elections I think the future looks pretty good.


I'm hoping we'll come out of all this with a habit of travelling
less, consuming less, working more locally, and helping each other
a bit more. That would do the world a lot of good in the long run.


While the other things tend to be in reaction to events and revert
after the event, I think the work from home thing may persist if you
don't work for Charter Communications.


We'll see - I can hope, but I am not making any bets.

Not all companies are like Charter Communications and are willing to try new things. Now they have a taste of it companies are much more likely to see the benefits. A friend works at home and they don't pay for an office for her. That is no small savings. Companies will see the benefits once they get a taste of it.

Obviously there is no point in the infection process when
it is "too late to stop it".

Sure there is, if you aren't prepared to weld people's
apartment doors shut.

That's in effect what China did and that is what we will
ultimately have to do here. Don't kid yourself.

It's precisely what China did, not merely "in effect." Nope,
won't happen here. People here have votes, rights, and long
memories for some things at least.

You don't have the right to put others at risk. The worse
outcome is that a weak government doesn't have the stomach to do
what is required.


Um, you are talking about the USA, right? The country where the
right to overthrow your government by armed revolution overrules
people's right not to be shot? For better or worse, personal
liberty seems to be the major right and demand for many Americans,
and it will come into conflict with the government trying to
control movement and interaction.

Yeah, this will be interesting to see how that plays out. If there
are incidents of people not obeying orders to stay at home, etc. and
guns become a factor, that won't help the gun advocates. On the
other hand, this is exactly the sort of scenario that some gun
advocates say they need weapons for. I don't see this going the way
where anyone needs a weapon, but who knows what others will do to get
your toilet paper.

I'm glad I am observing this from the other side of the ocean. We've
got a lockdown here in Norway, but things are going smoothly. There's a
shortage of anti-bac in the shops, but plenty of bog roll, and only very
sporadic hoarding.

I don't think it is a huge cluster-crap here either. You are just hearing all the bad news. Other than the hand cleaner dispenser not working at Walmart I haven't heard much bad news other than we still aren't in lock down and a fair number of people are still working.

--

Rick C.

--+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 22:55:52 +0100, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 19/03/2020 22:10, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 4:31:20 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 19/03/2020 20:10, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:48:52 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs
wrote:
On 2020-03-19 13:35, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs
wrote:
On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:


Of course I can. But I also read the chloroquine papers I
posted in the other thread. YCLIU. Very hopeful stuff that if
proven true, will knock this thing on the head very soon.

It is a /long/ way from that, even at the best estimates. It is
hopeful enough to begin some clinical trials (of
hydroxychloroquine, rather than the usual version), since there has
been useful results in vitro. At best, however, it just reduces
the level of some symptoms - it is not a magic cure.

It doesn't need to be magic. If it is a cure or even just a
treatment, it may well allow us to avoid overloading our medical
system and be able to effectively treat victims of this disease.

Sure - an effective treatment would be great. My point is just that it
doesn't appear to be the snake-oil Trump and a few others would have us
believe. It looks like it might significantly reduce the hospital time
of non-ICU corona patients, and that would be marvellous news.

But
it is still a ways off. Even if the decided today that it is the
right treatment, we would need to drastically ramp up production
which will take weeks.

Yes, indeed.

Chloroquine is a currently available drug, used for malaria, some kinds
of rheumatism, and perhaps other things - so it is widely available. I
don't know if that applies equally to Hydroxychloroquine, and I don't
know if there are differences in the form (tablet, injection, mix with
gin and lemon). I doubt if production is up to the demands of the
expected numbers of corona patients, but at least it is not starting
from scratch.


But then the Chinese built entire hospitals in a single week. Maybe
we need to sub it out.

Yes, but apparently they forgot that they'd need medical staff for it,
so it is empty. Still, this is definitely something the world should be
working together on.



Maybe a great cure will be made, but given our past failure for
other related viruses, I would not hold my breath. Reducing
symptom severity is always good, however, so it is positive news.
It is a vaccine that is needed to beat the virus properly.

We only need to flatten the curve and keep people out of hospitals
and out of the ICU.


That is what we /need/, as a minimum. But what we /want/, is to keep
the hospitalisation and ICU cases low enough until a vaccine is made and
given to most of the world. That way we keep a flat curve then nothing,
rather than a very low flat curve.


The vast quantity of crap that circulates social media and random
web sites makes it difficult to keep track of the real status of
testing of such drugs.

Yes, but we can all help each other by reporting useful info here.


We might feel it is nice to discuss it here, but I doubt if we are
helping very much. The readership of a newsgroup like this is not very
high!


If it proves to be safe and effective it will be great, but even
so it will be a while before we have enough to treat a pandemic.
Is anyone ramping up production as we speak? How will they make
the millions of doses that will be required? Is anyone evening
thinking about that until they get finished with the testing?


I'm sure they are thinking about it. Amongst other things, China
is thinking that limiting USA access to drug raw materials could
put pressure on Trump to stop the insults and blame game. (Not
that China is faultless here either.)

(Meanwhile, Russia is playing silly buggers with oil production
and prices, in the hope of causing more financial trouble for the
west before the virus hits them in force. Why is so much of the
world controlled by such thoughtless gits?)

I don't see how Russia is hurting anyone by dropping the price of
oil. If anything, that would help the current administration by
putting more money in people's pockets. Maybe that's the idea.
Don't know.


You don't live in a country that sells a lot of oil! But whether you
are a buyer or a seller, wild variations in oil prices destabilises
economies somewhat.

Central banks playing the stock markets destabilize a lot more.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, March 20, 2020 at 4:48:52 AM UTC+11, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-03-19 13:35, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:

You still don't seem to understand what is going on. Does
anyone know JL on a personal level? Is he one of these old guys
who has hardening of the arteries and literally can't learn new
things?

Sure, we've been friends for a decade or more. He, I, James, and
some others here have just seen this movie too many times.

The virus scare is being used to advance all sorts of
authoritarian measures that may not all go away when it's over,
like the 'temporary' income tax.

This is just pure paranoia. So far you are the only person to
mention this, so don't put it on Larkin. Own this one all by
yourself.

Having seen the movie before? You haven't been reading very closely,
but I knew that already.

The meaning of the movie is in the eye of the beholder. James Arthur - in particular - is a past master at seeing just what he wants to see in any set of facts.

<snip>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, March 20, 2020 at 5:14:29 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 13:48:45 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 13:35, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 1:18:51 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 12:54, Rick C wrote:

<snip>

Far from it. If everybody eventually gets it, that will include the
Chinese, making their draconian response the irrelevancy.

That's a tautology. The Chinses draconian response has worked, and there's no obvious reason why it won't keep on working. It has also worked in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

> > I'd far rather take my chances in a freer country.

Of course you would. The US isn't all that free unless you are in the top 1% of the income distribution, but if you are you are in clover.

Flattening the curve to
reduce the death rate is an excellent thing, but can be taken too far.

How?

Lots of social-distancing propaganda is reasonable. Shutting down the
whole economy for an indefinite time, and spending a couple trillion
dollars, isn't.

Hubei Province seems to have been in lockdown for two months, and has no new cases. That's a pretty definite time. Trump loves spending trillions of dollars - it gets the attention of his audience. There's less evidence that it is cost-effective.

The usual seasonal flu starts with exponential growth and kills a few
hundred thousand people worldwide. This one has killed a small
fraction as many so far. Why didn't we lock down the world in last
years's flu season, which killed maybe a million people worldwide?

What's different this time is the hype.

What's different this time is that Covid-19 kills a much larger proportion of the people it infects than seasonal flu - at least a factor of ten more.

This inconvenient fact does get a lot of media attention, even if it hasn't registered with you yet.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, March 20, 2020 at 2:28:36 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 07:33:41 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Tuesday, March 17, 2020 at 11:47:30 AM UTC-4, Uwe Bonnes wrote:
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:

<snip>

In actual fact, China suppressed reports and spread their virus
unnecessarily in their own country and around the world for months,
from November through January.

Perhaps for one month. Wikipedia dates the first case to the 1st December 2019, and it wasn't recognised as new infection for a couple of weeks.

Lower level authorities resisted recognising the problem for a couple of weeks, until the cases got numerous enough to make that stance impractical.

If it grows exponentially from a single starting case, what difference
would it make? It wouldn't be noticed or defined or testable until the
infection involved a lot of people, and then it's too late to stop it.

Hubei Province demonstrates that his is wrong. China has no new cases today.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[David Brown]

On 19/03/2020 22:47, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:31, David Brown wrote:

However, chloroquine seems to be the silver bullet, so it may
just go away.

No, not even the most optimistic tests suggest it is a silver bullet.
It appears to be a step above cow urine and garlic, but not a silver
bullet.

Read the French paper.  With hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin,
everyone was cured in a few days.  It's a small study, admittedly, but
how many standard deviations is that from the usual outcome, even in a
small sample?

It's a small study on a few patients in a hectic environment with little
knowledge of the "normal" course of progression for the patients and no
control, comparison, blind testing, etc. The treated patients were
released from hospital after a shorter time than previous cases - we
don't even know what influence crowding in the hospital had on that.
Untreated patients probably get sent home sooner now than they did
previously, to make room for more needy people.

It's enough to say it is worth looking at properly and doing real
studies. It is not enough to say "we have a cure".

The way drug testing has to be done is with double-blind studies with
control patients. Then we /know/ what works and what doesn't, and can
treat the next patients better. And we don't go down blind allies,
thinking we've got the best treatment available. But you cannot do this
with anecdotes - small numbers of cases where a drug was given. You
need a proper study, and that takes time.

What is important is that we get these trials done as soon as possible,
in several places. It's fine to skimp a bit on safety procedures such
as toxicology and side-effect monitoring, due to the urgency of the
pandemic and previous known use of the drug - we don't need months of
animal tests, then months of tests on health volunteers. But skimping
on the actual effectiveness tests might happen to save a few lives now,
but could cost countless lives afterwards.

 

[Martin Brown]

On 19/03/2020 15:28, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 07:33:41 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Tuesday, March 17, 2020 at 11:47:30 AM UTC-4, Uwe Bonnes wrote:
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred@gmail.com wrote:
America doing what it does best.

The Berman Law Group, alleged China’s failure to report and contain
the virus more quickly, or disclose the actual number of cases,
created “essentially a giant Petri dish” in the region near Wuhan,
sparking the global COVID-19 outbreak. The case alleges claims of
negligence, emotional distress, public nuisance and strict liability
for “conducting ultrahazardous activity.”

China started to react soon and brought the numbers down four weeks ago.

Most other waited for more weeks and now are hit harder.

I think a class action against the Trump adminstration will have better
chances.

...
--
Uwe Bonnes bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik Schlossgartenstrasse 9 64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 1623569 ------- Fax. 06151 1623305 ---------

In actual fact, China suppressed reports and spread their virus
unnecessarily in their own country and around the world for months,
from November through January.

If it grows exponentially from a single starting case, what difference
would it make? It wouldn't be noticed or defined or testable until the
infection involved a lot of people, and then it's too late to stop it.

If you can find the single cases before they infect anyone else and then
contact trace them the exponential growth can be prevented.

The UK did pretty well at this until mid-February with more detected
cases than in Italy but the Italian numbers were misleading. You can be
pretty sure that the true line for Italy is rising exponentially from
7th Feb. USA doesn't have a clue what its infection rate actually is so
you are basically on the Italian track for exponential growth now.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51858987

UK held it to the baseline of under a dozen until March when community
transmission became too much for the contact tracing to handle.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown