Saturday Night Fight

[David Brown]

On 07/04/2020 04:21, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 22:23:53 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 06/04/2020 22:09, John Larkin wrote:

Some medical types will be hyper-cautious, and some will try to see if
things work. The feds should let multiple people experiment with
volunteers. Now.

You really are clueless, aren't you? You think Trump is your anointed
saviour who can brush aside the evils of rules and regulation with a
sweep of his tiny little godlike hands.

He's our elected President, the CEO of the USA. He has a lot of power
over agencies. He *can* brush aside regulations.

He has a lot of power, yes - but much less than he likes to think and
claim. Most of his followers have the attention span of senile
goldfish, and lap up whatever lies come out of him at the time. He
declares that he is cutting through the FDA red tape - just as he
declared he was building a wall and sending the bill to Mexico, and
beating China in his trade war, and everything else he has come out
with. Then either his claim comes true (usually independently or
despite his words) and he claims credit, or it does not and he blames
the Democrats and the "fake media", then takes credit for saving the USA
from those traitors.

He is amazingly good at taking credit - amazingly bad at doing anything
credit-worthy.

Doctors and medical researchers could already use drugs like
hydroxychloroquine in proper, controlled trials. They are already doing
so in other countries - /real/ trials.

The lets do some here too. Might help.

I have no problem with the USA doing drug trials - that would be great,
and of benefit to people everywhere.

But giving people a drug as a "last hope attempt" is not a trial - you
learn /nothing/ from it. Really - /nothing/. Giving it en masse is not
a trial. Giving it because your idiot-in-chief demands it is not a trial.

Trump should shut up and let the medical experts do what they do best,
and stop interfering. The job of a country's leader in a situation like
this is to ask the medical experts what they need, and give it to them.

What they can't do - and don't want to do, and are not allowed to do
regardless of any trumpeting - is prescribe a drug as a cure for a
disease when no one has any idea if it works or not.

We won't know if we don't try.

You won't know if you don't do /trials/. Trials and drug testing is how
you learn.

 

[whit3rd]

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 1:23:05 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

> We need to find them first. Try things. In parallel.

That's called epidemiology, and the starting point is medical records.
The Mayo Clinic became a world leader by keeping good, consistent records.
Consistency IS a problem, China presumably has a better system than the US
patchwork of latest-and-greatest-softwares. A very large healthcare
system in the US is the Veterans Administration; that's something
they would be good at.

So, building up a body of records certainly IS being done, you just
don't hear about it because (1) the records are confidential and (2)
no great results yet, so it's mainly 'maybe-someday'.

Ultimately we need vaccines and antibodies, but they would take time
to get into production once they work.

Thus the lockdown; to get the time.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 07/04/20 10:33, Martin Brown wrote:

On 07/04/2020 08:32, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 07/04/20 01:33, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-04-06 15:10, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 06/04/20 19:54, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 10:22:19 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 12:27:58 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 06/04/20 16:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 10:58:02 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 06/04/20 09:38, Ricky C wrote:
Seems Peter Navarro has it in for Dr. Fauci and the idea that we might
want
to tread carefully before recommending experimental treatments for this
virus.  In the situation room, Navarro, the trade advisor, was singing
high
praise of the drug hydroxychloroquine and being rather belligerent about
pushing the drug for use on patients with COVID-19.  Dr. Fauci, the
director
of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, tried to
explain that this drug has been studied for many years for use with
respiratory diseases with no results.  It looks good in the lab, but
not in
the real world.

Navarro, who has a reputation for outbursts, did not disappoint and
accused
Dr. Fauci of "opposing Trump's travel restrictions on China" which is not
only untrue (he supported Trump almost alone) but irrelevant! He got
his way
as Trump soon after talked to the press and once again recommended the
use of
the drug in spite of the dangerous side effects.  Why is the trade
advisor
trying to get in the middle of a medical issue?

Oh well.  Another day, another ineffective Presidential move in the
COVID-19
diaries.

I hope the drug pans out, but there is not much expectation.

One thing I read was that some have tried to get Trump to allow his
advisors
to speak, but he wants to do all the talking.  Trump has said the
briefings
give him free airtime and good ratings.  So that's what these
presentations
are about for Trump, rather than a time to share information from his
expert
advisors, air time on TV for promoting his reelection.  CREEP

Hydroxychloroquine might have the same benefits as the
Patriot missiles did in the Gulf war.

The Patriots were ineffective as stopping scuds, but
"we're doing something was being done, so stay onside".
As in "Something must be done. This is something.
This must be done".

In other words, to give people hope, and hence a reason
to stay inside and not go marauding or rioting.

Yesterday's New York Times mocked T for sating that Hydroxychloroquine
"will be a game changer." I recall that he said it might be a game
changer.


He's done a lot more than that. Don't trust me, listen
to the man himself (if you can disentangle his barely
coherent ramblings):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTXpRNIDpy0

And at the end his medical advisor (Dr Fauci) is at the
podium and is asked a medical question about
hydroxychloroquine. Trump butts in and stops him answering.

Disgraceful.

It's not disgraceful, the president was absolutely correct -- the
question has been asked and Dr. Fauci has answered it over, and
over, and over.  It's petty, we're all sick of it, and it's
wasting everyone's time.

The president's mortal sin was highlighting a possible treatment.
We also announced, Jan. 20th, that NIH was already working
on a Coronavirus vaccine. And, the first U.S. patient was treated
with an anti-viral, remdesivir, expedited trials of which are
on-going.

Rather than deliver useful information to the American public all
the press can do is try to play a childish, vicious game of 'gotcha,'
rather than jump on board and try to suggest, discover, root out,
and otherwise look for other possibly life-saving treatments.

Proving the Orange Man is Bad is more important to them than doing
their actual job (informing the public), or, heaven forfend, helping.

That's the disgraceful thing.

They're petty, mean-spirited, small-minded, nasty little
virtue-signalers, not particularly bright.

Cheers,
James Arthur


DT said "stop being a bunch of helpless sissies" and a lot of people
don't want to.

Boris Johnson took the same attitude, and look where he is now.


And look at how sympathetic you are.

Er, no.

BoJo is a warning that "stopping being a helpless sissy"
is a stupid ineffective attitude.

I wouldn't wish a covid death on my worst enemy.

Having said that, BoJo's behaviour over Brexit (he
voted to leave as a tactical decision towards becoming
the next leader of his party), and in too many other
ways is pretty despicable. If this kills him it would
finally get the seriousness of the situation through
to some twats.

In that case his obituary could channel that of the thane
of Cawdor: "Nothing in his life became him like the
leaving of it".

I am no fan of Boris Johnson but I do think he has pretty much listened to and
acted upon the scientific advice he has been given by experts. This is in itself
quite impressive since he got into power using a team that denigrated experts
quite routinely in their election campaign.

It is difficult to be sure, but it does look that way.

I'd be more inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt
if he hadn't made those long-term destructive statements
in order to be elected.

We're all in this together.  Some are contributing, others just throw rocks
and complain.

Some people's actions /and inactions/ contributed to the
state we find ourselves in. A prime minister is in a unique
position in that respect.

IMHO it is a few years too early to make a final judgement,
but the initial evidence contains some damning elements.

I think you should give Boris the benefit of the doubt on this one.

Personally I think he has overreacted to the Imperial paper and applied a
national lockdown because London and Birmingham needed one. You can't accuse him
of ignoring the problem. It is sad that it has now for him become a personal
battle for his own survival against the virus.

Difficult to judge (S. Wales isn't looking good either), and yes.

But at least he was taking the threat seriously unlike President Trump who
denounced Covid-19 as "the sniffles" that would just go away until things really
started to turn ugly. As a result of Trumps prevarication USA will do pandemic
bigger and better than any first world country.

Agreed. But that is faint praise.

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 07/04/20 10:18, David Brown wrote:

The job of a country's leader in a situation like this is to ask the medical
experts what they need, and give it to them.

That is true in many other cases too, e.g. managers should
give competent employees whatever is necessary for the
employees to succeed. Then get out of the way and let them
succeed.


> You won't know if you don't do /trials/.  Trials and drug testing is how you learn.

Exactly.

I don't see why some people don't understand that.

The concept that someone could let other people /randomly/
change circuits on a production line /without recording/
the change, and expect to learn much seems bizarre to me.

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 8:25:10 PM UTC+10, Tom Gardner wrote:

On 07/04/20 10:18, David Brown wrote:
The job of a country's leader in a situation like this is to ask the medical
experts what they need, and give it to them.

That is true in many other cases too, e.g. managers should
give competent employees whatever is necessary for the
employees to succeed. Then get out of the way and let them
succeed.


You won't know if you don't do /trials/.  Trials and drug testing is how you learn.

Exactly.

I don't see why some people don't understand that.

The concept that someone could let other people /randomly/
change circuits on a production line /without recording/
the change, and expect to learn much seems bizarre to me.

When I worked at EMI Central Research I managed to avoid working for C.A.G.LeMay who was a very clever man but very difficult to work with. It took some effort.

He'd invented the "back projection" reconstruction algorithm that made the brain scanner practical with the computing power around at the time, which gave him more credibility than he deserved.

The team who did get stuck with working with him had to spend every morning going over the machine that they were developing to find all the undocumented changes that he'd made after they'd gone home the previous night. I hadn't had that particular sort of bad behaviour in mind when I'd got out from under, and it made me even happier about my choice.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 11:18:38 +0200, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 07/04/2020 04:21, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 22:23:53 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 06/04/2020 22:09, John Larkin wrote:

Some medical types will be hyper-cautious, and some will try to see if
things work. The feds should let multiple people experiment with
volunteers. Now.

You really are clueless, aren't you? You think Trump is your anointed
saviour who can brush aside the evils of rules and regulation with a
sweep of his tiny little godlike hands.

He's our elected President, the CEO of the USA. He has a lot of power
over agencies. He *can* brush aside regulations.


He has a lot of power, yes - but much less than he likes to think and
claim. Most of his followers have the attention span of senile
goldfish, and lap up whatever lies come out of him at the time. He
declares that he is cutting through the FDA red tape - just as he
declared he was building a wall and sending the bill to Mexico, and
beating China in his trade war, and everything else he has come out
with. Then either his claim comes true (usually independently or
despite his words) and he claims credit, or it does not and he blames
the Democrats and the "fake media", then takes credit for saving the USA
from those traitors.

He is amazingly good at taking credit - amazingly bad at doing anything
credit-worthy.


Doctors and medical researchers could already use drugs like
hydroxychloroquine in proper, controlled trials. They are already doing
so in other countries - /real/ trials.

The lets do some here too. Might help.

I have no problem with the USA doing drug trials - that would be great,
and of benefit to people everywhere.

But giving people a drug as a "last hope attempt" is not a trial - you
learn /nothing/ from it.

Except how many people die, or don't. It is a good idea to keep a
record of which patients got the drug and which didn't.

Really - /nothing/. Giving it en masse is not
a trial.

What moron suggested giving chloroquine in mass? That would use up the
supply we need for controlled trials.

> Giving it because your idiot-in-chief demands it is not a trial.

When did he demand it? You're making up stuff to disapprove of. Which
is easier than thinking.

Trump should shut up and let the medical experts do what they do best,
and stop interfering. The job of a country's leader in a situation like
this is to ask the medical experts what they need, and give it to them.

Allowing a drug to be tried off-label, on dying patients, is not
interfering, it's enabling. It's sensible and humane and unusual.

What Trump said about this drug is that it might work and we have
nothing to lose by trying it. That's not exactly true, because it
might hasten the deaths of a few volunteers, but the potential upside
could be big.

What they can't do - and don't want to do, and are not allowed to do
regardless of any trumpeting - is prescribe a drug as a cure for a
disease when no one has any idea if it works or not.

We won't know if we don't try.


You won't know if you don't do /trials/. Trials and drug testing is how
you learn.

Of course. Do trials now, and maybe save a few lives. Or a great
number of lives.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 08:36:58 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 07/04/20 03:21, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 22:23:53 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 06/04/2020 22:09, John Larkin wrote:

Some medical types will be hyper-cautious, and some will try to see if
things work. The feds should let multiple people experiment with
volunteers. Now.

You really are clueless, aren't you? You think Trump is your anointed
saviour who can brush aside the evils of rules and regulation with a
sweep of his tiny little godlike hands.

He's our elected President, the CEO of the USA. He has a lot of power
over agencies. He *can* brush aside regulations.


Doctors and medical researchers could already use drugs like
hydroxychloroquine in proper, controlled trials. They are already doing
so in other countries - /real/ trials.

The lets do some here too. Might help.


What they can't do - and don't want to do, and are not allowed to do
regardless of any trumpeting - is prescribe a drug as a cure for a
disease when no one has any idea if it works or not.

We won't know if we don't try.

And if people just go out and buy hydroxychloroquine without
supervision, we still won't know after they try.

One needs a prescription from an MD here. Movie stars can get that,
and praise the drug, but the statistics are poor for experiments like
that. They would probably have recovered anyhow.

You need supervised studies.

Of course. We need to allow usefully large medical studies to use
various meds that might work. See what happens. But don't require
2-year research protocols and peer reviewed studies if people are
dying now.


> Full stop.

Why do people say "Full stop" ? I think it means that they are
probably wrong but out of rational arguments.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 11:25:05 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 07/04/20 10:18, David Brown wrote:
The job of a country's leader in a situation like this is to ask the medical
experts what they need, and give it to them.

That is true in many other cases too, e.g. managers should
give competent employees whatever is necessary for the
employees to succeed. Then get out of the way and let them
succeed.

Or fail. Multiple, almost random, experiments are sometimes
appropriate and have had huge payoffs. That has happened (so many
times!) in medicine.

Managers should also stop runaway trains.

You won't know if you don't do /trials/.  Trials and drug testing is how you learn.

Exactly.

I don't see why some people don't understand that.

The concept that someone could let other people /randomly/
change circuits on a production line /without recording/
the change, and expect to learn much seems bizarre to me.

Then don't do that.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 02:27:08 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 1:09:54 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 20:18:10 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

[about shotgun-style testing of drugs for COVID-19]

How would you react if, when you were grossly overloaded
creating a product, a politician told you to include parts
that you've previously rejected as being a poor fit?

Some medical types will be hyper-cautious, and some will try to see if
things work

In aircraft design, you want to go with hyper-cautious types. The
'try to see if things work' folk get fired (or worse, are cited in
the subsequent suits).

Even the best aerodynamic calculations and simulations miss things,
because air flow is chaotic. That's why we have wind tunnels and
flying test beds.

Most airframe design includes a lot of try-and-see-what-works. Most
engineering does, in general.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 08:37:45 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 06/04/20 23:37, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 22:59:58 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 06/04/20 21:34, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 22:06:13 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 06/04/2020 21:04, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 18:49:15 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 06/04/20 18:23, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 17:27:53 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 06/04/20 16:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 10:58:02 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 06/04/20 09:38, Ricky C wrote:
Seems Peter Navarro has it in for Dr. Fauci and the idea that we might want
to tread carefully before recommending experimental treatments for this
virus. In the situation room, Navarro, the trade advisor, was singing high
praise of the drug hydroxychloroquine and being rather belligerent about
pushing the drug for use on patients with COVID-19. Dr. Fauci, the director
of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, tried to
explain that this drug has been studied for many years for use with
respiratory diseases with no results. It looks good in the lab, but not in
the real world.

Navarro, who has a reputation for outbursts, did not disappoint and accused
Dr. Fauci of "opposing Trump's travel restrictions on China" which is not
only untrue (he supported Trump almost alone) but irrelevant! He got his way
as Trump soon after talked to the press and once again recommended the use of
the drug in spite of the dangerous side effects. Why is the trade advisor
trying to get in the middle of a medical issue?

Oh well. Another day, another ineffective Presidential move in the COVID-19
diaries.

I hope the drug pans out, but there is not much expectation.

One thing I read was that some have tried to get Trump to allow his advisors
to speak, but he wants to do all the talking. Trump has said the briefings
give him free airtime and good ratings. So that's what these presentations
are about for Trump, rather than a time to share information from his expert
advisors, air time on TV for promoting his reelection. CREEP

Hydroxychloroquine might have the same benefits as the
Patriot missiles did in the Gulf war.

The Patriots were ineffective as stopping scuds, but
"we're doing something was being done, so stay onside".
As in "Something must be done. This is something.
This must be done".

In other words, to give people hope, and hence a reason
to stay inside and not go marauding or rioting.

Yesterday's New York Times mocked T for sating that Hydroxychloroquine
"will be a game changer." I recall that he said it might be a game
changer.


He's done a lot more than that. Don't trust me, listen
to the man himself (if you can disentangle his barely
coherent ramblings):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTXpRNIDpy0

And at the end his medical advisor (Dr Fauci) is at the
podium and is asked a medical question about
hydroxychloroquine. Trump butts in and stops him answering.

Disgraceful.

Not trying all feasible anti-virals ASAP is disgraceful

So when are you going to emulate the two possibilities
advocated by other countries leaders, e.g...

Some leaders from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu
nationalist party have advocated cow urine or cow dung
for its "medicinal" properties.
https://www.dw.com/en/hindu-group-hosts-cow-urine-drinking-party-to-ward-off-coronavirus/a-52773262

Or the Indian prime minister from the 70s:
https://www.freepressjournal.in/cmcm/morarji-desai-the-former-indian-prime-minister-who-practiced-urine-therapy


You are being obnoxious on purpose. Dumb too.

If anything is a potential anti-viral, and is known to be reasonably
safe, it should be tried on sick people immediately, enough to have
some statistical value. At a small risk of harming a small number of
people, we have a decent chance of saving thousands (or billions?)

No.

First, the drug is known /not/ to be safe. It has a lot of
side-effects, and in particular is not recommended for people with
diabetes and heart conditions - exactly the kind of people with the
biggest risk of being in danger from Covid-19 in the first place.

So there is a definite risk that it will make at least some people
worse, not better.

Of course there's risk. But given a choice that a) might harm a few
critically ill people or b) might save a few million, what's the moral
path?

Life is risky. Optimize our chances of living.

Reintroduce blood letting.

High blood pressure is a known risk factor with covid,
removing sufficient blood (via letting) will reduce
the pressure.

Let's trumpet that from the pulpits and lecterns.


Please stop being stupid. It doesn't help.

Mirror!

You might stop being childish too.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 11:25:12 +0200, David Brown
<david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 07/04/2020 00:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 00:21:49 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 06/04/2020 22:34, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 22:06:13 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

Of course there's risk. But given a choice that a) might harm a few
critically ill people or b) might save a few million, what's the moral
path?

Life is risky. Optimize our chances of living.

Given the choice of a) might help a few people or b) might kill or have
long-term detrimental effects on a few million, what's the moral path?

We don't know if the drug actually helps anyone. We don't know if the
side-effects make things worse on more people. We don't know who it
would help, and who it would harm.

We do know two things. One is that "trial and error" is not an ethical
strategy for human drug testing. The other is that a shotgun approach
to giving drugs will ensure that we will continue not to know anything -
and thus miss finding treatments that are /really/ helpful.


"Shotgun" is a technique widely used in DNA sequencing. It's analogous
to performing many drug tests. Some great drugs have been developed by
testing hundreds of improbable candidates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_sequencing

The general idea is to try a lot of different things in parallel, even
if experts doubt that any one of them is useful. Analyze out after you
have a lot of data. The bigger premise is that experts don't always
know everything.


Sure - but you might notice one /tiny/, almost negligible little
difference here.

Or you might double survival rates. Let's see.

This "Shotgun sequencing" - and other such mass
trial-and-error experiments are done in labs, testtubes, simulators, and
the like. It doesn't matter if 99.9% of the results are failures and
are poured down the drain in the search for the useful 0.1%. Most of us
prefer a different attitude when were are talking about human lives!

The choice is to conduct in parallel a bunch of moderate-scale trials
that have a small chance of hastening the deaths of a few very sick
volunteers, but have some probability of saving thousands or millions
of lives. We might discover treatments for the next coronavirus.

If all human lives are valuable, we should do the math to save as many
as we can. You seem to be arguing against any medical trials, because
they could kill someone.

I was talking to my MD, a wonderful and very smart lady. I can blow
things up, accidentally or on purpose, and get another one from the
stockroom. She can't operate that way.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[Tom Gardner]

On 07/04/20 14:48, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 02:27:08 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 1:09:54 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 20:18:10 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

[about shotgun-style testing of drugs for COVID-19]

How would you react if, when you were grossly overloaded
creating a product, a politician told you to include parts
that you've previously rejected as being a poor fit?

Some medical types will be hyper-cautious, and some will try to see if
things work

In aircraft design, you want to go with hyper-cautious types. The
'try to see if things work' folk get fired (or worse, are cited in
the subsequent suits).

Even the best aerodynamic calculations and simulations miss things,
because air flow is chaotic. That's why we have wind tunnels and
flying test beds.

Aerodynamic calculations and simulation can miss things, but
the air turbulence isn't the reason.

Airframes are very carefully designed to be laminar flow, i.e.
zero turbulence. Why? Because turbulence = drag = inefficiency.

The only time there is turbulent flow over a wing is when
it is stalled, and an airliner should never be anywhere near
that.

Gliders are different, and it is fun stalling them at 1000ft

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Wednesday, April 8, 2020 at 12:00:31 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 11:25:12 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 07/04/2020 00:47, John Larkin wrote:
On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 00:21:49 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:
On 06/04/2020 22:34, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 22:06:13 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

Of course there's risk. But given a choice that a) might harm a few
critically ill people or b) might save a few million, what's the moral
path?

Life is risky. Optimize our chances of living.

Given the choice of a) might help a few people or b) might kill or have
long-term detrimental effects on a few million, what's the moral path?

We don't know if the drug actually helps anyone. We don't know if the
side-effects make things worse on more people. We don't know who it
would help, and who it would harm.

We do know two things. One is that "trial and error" is not an ethical
strategy for human drug testing. The other is that a shotgun approach
to giving drugs will ensure that we will continue not to know anything -
and thus miss finding treatments that are /really/ helpful.


"Shotgun" is a technique widely used in DNA sequencing. It's analogous
to performing many drug tests. Some great drugs have been developed by
testing hundreds of improbable candidates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_sequencing

The general idea is to try a lot of different things in parallel, even
if experts doubt that any one of them is useful. Analyze out after you
have a lot of data. The bigger premise is that experts don't always
know everything.


Sure - but you might notice one /tiny/, almost negligible little
difference here.

Or you might double survival rates. Let's see.

This "Shotgun sequencing" - and other such mass
trial-and-error experiments are done in labs, testtubes, simulators, and
the like. It doesn't matter if 99.9% of the results are failures and
are poured down the drain in the search for the useful 0.1%. Most of us
prefer a different attitude when were are talking about human lives!

The choice is to conduct in parallel a bunch of moderate-scale trials
that have a small chance of hastening the deaths of a few very sick
volunteers, but have some probability of saving thousands or millions
of lives. We might discover treatments for the next coronavirus.

If all human lives are valuable, we should do the math to save as many
as we can. You seem to be arguing against any medical trials, because
they could kill someone.

The argument isn't against medical trials, but rather against poorly constructed medical trials which aren't anything like as informative as properly constructed trials with a double blind design (and other helpful features).

I was talking to my MD, a wonderful and very smart lady. I can blow
things up, accidentally or on purpose, and get another one from the
stockroom. She can't operate that way.

Medical ethics is all about not killing people unnecessarily.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 11:48:50 PM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 02:27:08 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 1:09:54 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 20:18:10 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

[about shotgun-style testing of drugs for COVID-19]

How would you react if, when you were grossly overloaded
creating a product, a politician told you to include parts
that you've previously rejected as being a poor fit?

Some medical types will be hyper-cautious, and some will try to see if
things work

In aircraft design, you want to go with hyper-cautious types. The
'try to see if things work' folk get fired (or worse, are cited in
the subsequent suits).

Even the best aerodynamic calculations and simulations miss things,
because air flow is chaotic.

Only if the Reynolds number is high enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reynolds_number

The flow is then usually described as turbulent, rather than chaotic.

The problem for real airframes is that they are complicated objects. The fact that the airflow around them is usually turbulent isn't what makes life difficult.

> That's why we have wind tunnels and flying test beds.

And still get surprises.

Most airframe design includes a lot of try-and-see-what-works. Most
engineering does, in general.

Up to a point. Simulation is a lot cheaper.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 15:17:41 +0100, Tom Gardner
<spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 07/04/20 14:48, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 02:27:08 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 1:09:54 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 20:18:10 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

[about shotgun-style testing of drugs for COVID-19]

How would you react if, when you were grossly overloaded
creating a product, a politician told you to include parts
that you've previously rejected as being a poor fit?

Some medical types will be hyper-cautious, and some will try to see if
things work

In aircraft design, you want to go with hyper-cautious types. The
'try to see if things work' folk get fired (or worse, are cited in
the subsequent suits).

Even the best aerodynamic calculations and simulations miss things,
because air flow is chaotic. That's why we have wind tunnels and
flying test beds.

Aerodynamic calculations and simulation can miss things, but
the air turbulence isn't the reason.

Airframes are very carefully designed to be laminar flow, i.e.
zero turbulence. Why? Because turbulence = drag = inefficiency.

The only time there is turbulent flow over a wing is when
it is stalled, and an airliner should never be anywhere near
that.

Gliders are different, and it is fun stalling them at 1000ft

I'm pleased to hear that you do sometimes have fun.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

Science teaches us to doubt.

Claude Bernard

 

[whit3rd]

On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 6:48:50 AM UTC-7, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 02:27:08 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com
wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 1:09:54 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

Some medical types will be hyper-cautious, and some will try to see if
things work

In aircraft design, you want to go with hyper-cautious types. The
'try to see if things work' folk get fired (or worse, are cited in
the subsequent suits).

Even the best aerodynamic calculations and simulations miss things,
because air flow is chaotic. That's why we have wind tunnels and
flying test beds.

Yeah, but every human is one of the deliverable products. We test
COVID-19 treatments on mice, and stuff bridge models into
wind tunnels that couldn't hold the whole thing, We test cars
with dummies.

The try-everything-on-patients approach is a very slow, uncertain testing plan.
Laboratory experiments CONTROL all the pesky variables, including subjects,
for good and sufficient reasons.

 

[John Larkin]

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 02:37:36 -0700 (PDT), whit3rd <whit3rd@gmail.com>
wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 1:23:05 PM UTC-7, John Larkin wrote:

We need to find them first. Try things. In parallel.

That's called epidemiology, and the starting point is medical records.
The Mayo Clinic became a world leader by keeping good, consistent records.
Consistency IS a problem, China presumably has a better system than the US
patchwork of latest-and-greatest-softwares. A very large healthcare
system in the US is the Veterans Administration; that's something
they would be good at.

So, building up a body of records certainly IS being done, you just
don't hear about it because (1) the records are confidential and (2)
no great results yet, so it's mainly 'maybe-someday'.

Ultimately we need vaccines and antibodies, but they would take time
to get into production once they work.

Thus the lockdown; to get the time.

Some expert on the radio this morning (heard while driving to work)
said that we can gradually relax the lockdown over the next year or
year-and-a-half when a vaccine is available.

As if no cold or flu ever went away without a vaccine.

As if nobody would starve to death.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
picosecond timing precision measurement

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

 

[David Brown]

On 07/04/2020 15:43, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 11:25:05 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 07/04/20 10:18, David Brown wrote:
The job of a country's leader in a situation like this is to ask the medical
experts what they need, and give it to them.

That is true in many other cases too, e.g. managers should
give competent employees whatever is necessary for the
employees to succeed. Then get out of the way and let them
succeed.

Or fail. Multiple, almost random, experiments are sometimes
appropriate and have had huge payoffs. That has happened (so many
times!) in medicine.

Managers should also stop runaway trains.

Let's put this all in terms of electronics, which you might understand.
Imagine Trump is the boss of the electronics development department, and
you are working with a difficult analogue card. It has been challenging
getting it to work reliably, partly because the customer is using it in
a wide variety of circumstances and haven't told you the details of the
use-cases, and don't give you much feedback. But you make a lot of
money from each success, so you are trying to find different
combinations of resistor values that have a better chance of success on
more customer sites.

Your manager walks in.

Trump: "I've heard of a guy in a different company who had success with
blue resistors."

You: "The colour doesn't matter - it's the value that is important."

Trump: "No, blue resistors are great. Great. I don't really know,
maybe they are maybe they're not. But if looks good. Looks great. I
like them."

You: "I can't see how blue resistors would help. I'm not even sure if
we have any resistors that happen to be blue."

Trump: "Well, get the blue resistors. I'm authorising full use of blue
resistors now. I want blue resistors on all the cards, delivery to
customers by tomorrow morning. This will be great. We have it all
under control. I'm not sure - you know, I'm no electronics engineer.
But I've a gut feeling about these things. Call it intuition. But we
have the best engineers working on this - these are really great guys.
And we'll put blue resistors everywhere. It'll be great."


Fortunately, it seems that at least some of your medical establishment
is managing to ignore Trump. And hopefully he won't find out and fire them.

 

[David Brown]

On 07/04/2020 15:39, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Tue, 7 Apr 2020 11:18:38 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 07/04/2020 04:21, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 22:23:53 +0200, David Brown
david.brown@hesbynett.no> wrote:

On 06/04/2020 22:09, John Larkin wrote:

Some medical types will be hyper-cautious, and some will try to see if
things work. The feds should let multiple people experiment with
volunteers. Now.

You really are clueless, aren't you? You think Trump is your anointed
saviour who can brush aside the evils of rules and regulation with a
sweep of his tiny little godlike hands.

He's our elected President, the CEO of the USA. He has a lot of power
over agencies. He *can* brush aside regulations.


He has a lot of power, yes - but much less than he likes to think and
claim. Most of his followers have the attention span of senile
goldfish, and lap up whatever lies come out of him at the time. He
declares that he is cutting through the FDA red tape - just as he
declared he was building a wall and sending the bill to Mexico, and
beating China in his trade war, and everything else he has come out
with. Then either his claim comes true (usually independently or
despite his words) and he claims credit, or it does not and he blames
the Democrats and the "fake media", then takes credit for saving the USA
from those traitors.

He is amazingly good at taking credit - amazingly bad at doing anything
credit-worthy.


Doctors and medical researchers could already use drugs like
hydroxychloroquine in proper, controlled trials. They are already doing
so in other countries - /real/ trials.

The lets do some here too. Might help.

I have no problem with the USA doing drug trials - that would be great,
and of benefit to people everywhere.

But giving people a drug as a "last hope attempt" is not a trial - you
learn /nothing/ from it.

Except how many people die, or don't. It is a good idea to keep a
record of which patients got the drug and which didn't.

That's part of it - but by no means all of it. Drug testing means
randomising who gets the drug, not just taking notes. If you have a
drug that happens to work well (and there are no signs that
hydroxychloroquine is more than marginally helpful) this means some
people who might have been saved, might die because of the toss of a
coin. It is ethical because the end result is many more people saved.

Really - /nothing/. Giving it en masse is not
a trial.

What moron suggested giving chloroquine in mass? That would use up the
supply we need for controlled trials.

Your moron-in-chief.

Giving it because your idiot-in-chief demands it is not a trial.

When did he demand it? You're making up stuff to disapprove of. Which
is easier than thinking.

He declared that it works, and is approved, and has pushed for its use.
As always, he coated his demands in weasel-words so that he can later
deny everything.

Trump should shut up and let the medical experts do what they do best,
and stop interfering. The job of a country's leader in a situation like
this is to ask the medical experts what they need, and give it to them.

Allowing a drug to be tried off-label, on dying patients, is not
interfering, it's enabling. It's sensible and humane and unusual.

What Trump said about this drug is that it might work and we have
nothing to lose by trying it. That's not exactly true, because it
might hasten the deaths of a few volunteers, but the potential upside
could be big.

It is not /remotely/ true, because it has big side-effects and very
little evidence of doing anything useful. He has hugely exaggerated
both sides here.

What they can't do - and don't want to do, and are not allowed to do
regardless of any trumpeting - is prescribe a drug as a cure for a
disease when no one has any idea if it works or not.

We won't know if we don't try.


You won't know if you don't do /trials/. Trials and drug testing is how
you learn.

Of course. Do trials now, and maybe save a few lives. Or a great
number of lives.

Yes, do trials. /Only/ trials - real, coordinated scientific trials.

 

[Ricky C]

On Tuesday, April 7, 2020 at 5:33:40 AM UTC-4, Martin Brown wrote:

On 07/04/2020 08:32, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 07/04/20 01:33, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-04-06 15:10, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 06/04/20 19:54, John Larkin wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 10:22:19 -0700 (PDT), dagmargoodboat@yahoo.com
wrote:

On Monday, April 6, 2020 at 12:27:58 PM UTC-4, Tom Gardner wrote:
On 06/04/20 16:42, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Mon, 6 Apr 2020 10:58:02 +0100, Tom Gardner
spamjunk@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

On 06/04/20 09:38, Ricky C wrote:
Seems Peter Navarro has it in for Dr. Fauci and the idea that
we might want
to tread carefully before recommending experimental treatments
for this
virus.  In the situation room, Navarro, the trade advisor, was
singing high
praise of the drug hydroxychloroquine and being rather
belligerent about
pushing the drug for use on patients with COVID-19.  Dr. Fauci,
the director
of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
tried to
explain that this drug has been studied for many years for use
with
respiratory diseases with no results.  It looks good in the
lab, but not in
the real world.

Navarro, who has a reputation for outbursts, did not disappoint
and accused
Dr. Fauci of "opposing Trump's travel restrictions on China"
which is not
only untrue (he supported Trump almost alone) but irrelevant!
He got his way
as Trump soon after talked to the press and once again
recommended the use of
the drug in spite of the dangerous side effects.  Why is the
trade advisor
trying to get in the middle of a medical issue?

Oh well.  Another day, another ineffective Presidential move in
the COVID-19
diaries.

I hope the drug pans out, but there is not much expectation.

One thing I read was that some have tried to get Trump to allow
his advisors
to speak, but he wants to do all the talking.  Trump has said
the briefings
give him free airtime and good ratings.  So that's what these
presentations
are about for Trump, rather than a time to share information
from his expert
advisors, air time on TV for promoting his reelection.  CREEP

Hydroxychloroquine might have the same benefits as the
Patriot missiles did in the Gulf war.

The Patriots were ineffective as stopping scuds, but
"we're doing something was being done, so stay onside".
As in "Something must be done. This is something.
This must be done".

In other words, to give people hope, and hence a reason
to stay inside and not go marauding or rioting.

Yesterday's New York Times mocked T for sating that
Hydroxychloroquine
"will be a game changer." I recall that he said it might be a game
changer.


He's done a lot more than that. Don't trust me, listen
to the man himself (if you can disentangle his barely
coherent ramblings):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTXpRNIDpy0

And at the end his medical advisor (Dr Fauci) is at the
podium and is asked a medical question about
hydroxychloroquine. Trump butts in and stops him answering.

Disgraceful.

It's not disgraceful, the president was absolutely correct -- the
question has been asked and Dr. Fauci has answered it over, and
over, and over.  It's petty, we're all sick of it, and it's
wasting everyone's time.

The president's mortal sin was highlighting a possible treatment.
We also announced, Jan. 20th, that NIH was already working
on a Coronavirus vaccine. And, the first U.S. patient was treated
with an anti-viral, remdesivir, expedited trials of which are
on-going.

Rather than deliver useful information to the American public all
the press can do is try to play a childish, vicious game of 'gotcha,'
rather than jump on board and try to suggest, discover, root out,
and otherwise look for other possibly life-saving treatments.

Proving the Orange Man is Bad is more important to them than doing
their actual job (informing the public), or, heaven forfend, helping.

That's the disgraceful thing.

They're petty, mean-spirited, small-minded, nasty little
virtue-signalers, not particularly bright.

Cheers,
James Arthur


DT said "stop being a bunch of helpless sissies" and a lot of people
don't want to.

Boris Johnson took the same attitude, and look where he is now.


And look at how sympathetic you are.

Er, no.

BoJo is a warning that "stopping being a helpless sissy"
is a stupid ineffective attitude.

I wouldn't wish a covid death on my worst enemy.

Having said that, BoJo's behaviour over Brexit (he
voted to leave as a tactical decision towards becoming
the next leader of his party), and in too many other
ways is pretty despicable. If this kills him it would
finally get the seriousness of the situation through
to some twats.

In that case his obituary could channel that of the thane
of Cawdor: "Nothing in his life became him like the
leaving of it".

I am no fan of Boris Johnson but I do think he has pretty much listened
to and acted upon the scientific advice he has been given by experts.
This is in itself quite impressive since he got into power using a team
that denigrated experts quite routinely in their election campaign.

What? "Boris Johnson said he was shaking hands with coronavirus patients just weeks before he tested positive for Covid-19"

So where is the taking "scientific advice he has been given by experts"???


> I think you should give Boris the benefit of the doubt on this one.

I would if there were any doubt. Unless you believe the virus is transmitted by emails, it is pretty clear he gave himself this virus.

Personally I think he has overreacted to the Imperial paper and applied
a national lockdown because London and Birmingham needed one. You can't
accuse him of ignoring the problem. It is sad that it has now for him
become a personal battle for his own survival against the virus.

I don't know what he acted on. I know he was being an idiot by shaking anyone's hand much less CV-19 patients.

But at least he was taking the threat seriously unlike President Trump
who denounced Covid-19 as "the sniffles" that would just go away until
things really started to turn ugly. As a result of Trumps prevarication
USA will do pandemic bigger and better than any first world country.

I'm pretty sure if he took the coronavirus as seriously as he should have, he would not be in the ICU.

What have you heard that doesn't support this?

--

Rick C.

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