COVID-19/Coronavirus Information and Support Thread (see OP for useful links)

[Danoff]

So, no doctor has prescribed an untested experimental drug. They don't do that. So what is there to worry about?

Seriously? I've literally just quoted Trump's statement for you. Here's what he said again:

It's in this post, which started this discussion.

He is straight up asking why the drug needs to be tested in a test tube - in vitro. I'm not assuming anything, I'm answering the question of why we don't just give some drugs to people without doing the test tube bit.

The answer is because you don't have a drug at all until you have done that, and you can't administer random quantities of random compounds you think might work, because you'll kill people.

It's acceptable because all the pre-clinical testing that Trump wants to skip has already been done. We've done the in vitro testing, we know what's an effective dose, we know what's a lethal dose, we've done the non-human in vivo testing, we know it's safe to give to humans. Once that's all been done, we can give it to humans in a controlled, double-blind, clinical trial. And then, if it works, we can call it a treatment for that disorder and prescribe it as such.

What's the disconnect here? Trump is asking why we can't skip all the stuff where you do research into a drug and just give it to sick people because they're sick and why not experiment on them. The answer is because that stuff is where the drug actually comes from - without even touching the ethics of the second half of it.

 

[Dotini]

I guess there is nothing to worry about then.

 

[Danoff]

I guess there is nothing to worry about then.

If you don't worry about the President advocating for clearly unethical practices during a pandemic then... what do you worry about?

 

[Dotini]

If I worried about every unethical idea Donald Trump had, my whole life would consist of nothing but worry. I would literally have Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Whenever Trump scratches his hemorrhoids and has a brainfart in public, what's unusual?

No, doctors will not prescribe untested experimental drugs. This is not to worry about. It's more like sensationalism.

I made a mistake yesterday that I worry about. I allowed a stranger into my home, the first time since the mid February anyone but myself has been in my house. I worry only about the things I control and that affect me. And I sleep like a baby.

 

[Danoff]

If I worried about every unethical idea Donald Trump had, my whole life would consist of nothing but worry. I would literally have Trump Derangement Syndrome.

He is POTUS, it's not just some crackpot with crazy ideas, he's got a fair amount of ability to execute these things, and is supposedly coordinating the federal response to the pandemic. I'm surprised you can't be bothered by this.

 

[ryzno]

He is POTUS, it's not just some crackpot with crazy ideas, he's got a fair amount of ability to execute these things, and is supposedly coordinating the federal response to the pandemic. I'm surprised you can't be bothered by this.

TBH considering he has no idea what he's talking about Trump should just shut up and let the professionals and his minions under him deal with it.
I don't get why some people are still calling itout as if they expect him to change. It's less than a year till election.
Sitting around complaining about something you know you really have no say in every day is the definition of TDS IMO...

 

[strela]

Dude...

... they don't have a drug to give if there is no initial drug development. You can't skip "the test tube" because there would not be a drug to give. The "background" you refer to is the "test tube" stage that Trump wants to skip. It's where "the chain" starts.

You really need to listen to the video and read what I transcribed for you. Trump asked why we need to test "in a test tube" when we could just give drugs to "very, very sick people". It's because the "test tube" is where the drug comes from. No "test tube" stage, NO DRUG. It doesn't exist without it. How are you not following this?

Dude...
...did you watched the video? Because I can clearly hear something about some medicine being sent.
You keep talking about skipping the whole process. The test tube have different stages. If you skip the latest stages you would still skip some test tube. Why everything must be black or white with you?

 

[CTznOfTime]

If I worried about every unethical idea Donald Trump had, my whole life would consist of nothing but worry. I would literally have Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Whenever Trump scratches his hemorrhoids and has a brainfart in public, what's unusual?

No, doctors will not prescribe untested experimental drugs. This is not to worry about. It's more like sensationalism.

I made a mistake yesterday that I worry about. I allowed a stranger into my home, the first time since the mid February anyone but myself has been in my house. I worry only about the things I control and that affect me. And I sleep like a baby.

Worrying about the things you can control and that could directly affect you is essentially what everyone is doing (or should be doing). Nothing to argued about here.

It is no mystery that trump is doing everything for sensationalism, and because that, everyone single one of us including all news network should be calling him out for it... he is in the highest office of the land, and for him to disrespect it, make a joke of it and (unintentionally and cluelessly) diminish the value of the position is sacrilege... he is a joke. As @TBH said below, he should just shut up and let the profesionnal take over, but he is not... and that's problem... Being a true real leader is to have honest humility, which he does not have a single clue or hint of it...

He is a disgrace as a human being...

You and i Dotini we may be able to easily ignore his silliness to say the least, but a lot of people out there are blindly taking every single letter and words out of his rear as the gospel, and that is the biggest issue here, it's what's killing me: the fact that people can be so ignorant or worse yet choose to be ignorant and other being complicit by allowing him to behave such a way, juvenile at best...

trump unfortunately is the president, but if he has any common sense left, he should not be behaving as you described above...
As Shame to be American right now... those Footballers who kneeled down during the Anthem were more patriotic than him...

When and anytime anyone kneel down, it is always an act of honor... never a disgrace to kneel down.

i will bet that trump does not know and cannot know kneel down... how petty and little of his poor soul.

TBH considering he has no idea what he's talking about Trump should just shut up and let the professionals and his minions under him deal with it.
I don't get why some people are still calling itout as if they expect him to change. It's less than a year till election.
Sitting around complaining about something you know you really have no say in every day is the definition of TDS IMO...

yes i hear you... it does get old to call him out each and every single time, no person ever is acting like he does and this is amazing (in a very negative way)... but we have to keep pointing it out but at the same time, not make him think that he is right in doing so...

With silence, comes acceptance...

We all deserve a better President, not a joke, enough is enough...

 

[Famine]

Dude...
...did you watched the video?

I reposted it for you and transcribed it for you, since you seemed not to notice it was what started the conversation.

You keep talking about skipping the whole process. The test tube have different stages. If you skip the latest stages you would still skip some test tube. Why everything must be black or white with you?

If you skip out any of the part where a synthesised compound is tested for effectiveness against a known agent and go right to putting it into humans, you miss out the entire process of finding out what a therapeutic dose is, what a fatal dose is, and how effective it is when introduced to a living cells within a living being, and what the side effects are - even if you've done the very first bit and found out it works; loads of stuff works in vitro and fails miserably in vivo (which is why drugs are expensive - the hundreds of drugs you tested but failed, at every stage, cost money to research, not just the one that passes all stages and works). You go right from having a chemical to putting it into a human without any knowledge of whether it'll work, how much of it you need to make it work, whether it will cause significant, life-changing effects (and if they can be passed on to your future children), or if it will kill them.

The process exists for that reason. Humans, and unwell humans more so, are not the first step in testing drugs. The in vitro stage is. Skip that and you have no drug.

I cannot fathom how anyone can have any mental stumbling block with this, or need it explaining so many times. What Trump is asking is simply not possible.

 

[Sander 001]

No CEO or senior staff bonuses, raises, dividend payments or share buybacks allowed for companies using government's coronavirus support schemes

This is the way it should be. Hopefully they make it stick!

 

[Jezza819]

What Trump is suggesting is that we take random compounds that a researcher thinks might work and give them to patients to see what would happen. It might cure them, it might kill them, or it might just cause life-altering side effects like cancer, cardiovascular issues, etc. This is not an OK thing to do, even in an emergency situation.

That reminds me of the Three Stooges episode where they are mixing up "medicine" and pouring everything into a big beaker then it starts to bubble and smoke, sparks fly out of it and what spills out eats right through the table.

 

[strela]

Look I will just say one last thing. Because it is hard for me to keep a conversation any longer.
I know what you are saying @Famine. I wonder myself why you keep explaining the same things over and over. But even if I think that it's immortal, unethical, unjust, unacceptable, I have hope. Luckily I'm not a doctor. But if I were sick and someone proposed an experimental cure when there's no cure I would accept it. And I hate talking about Trump. It's not about Trump.

 

[Famine]

I wonder myself why you keep explaining the same things over and over.

Largely because you keep making the same bizarre statements that show you've not paid any attention to what Trump said or my explanation as to why it isn't possible.

But if I were sick and someone proposed an experimental cure when there's no cure I would accept it.

Cool beans. Irrelevant to what he said and the entire conversation thereafter, but cool beans.

Once more, this is what he said:

"Why should we be testing it in a test tube for a year and a half when we have thousands of people that are very sick - they're very, very sick - and we can use it on those people."

The answer is because you don't have a drug of any kind unless you do, and you can't know how much you need to give or how much is too much without out it.

 

[Dotini]

And I hate talking about Trump. It's not about Trump.

Agreed. This and most every thread on the forum regularly stops and pays ritual obeisance to Trump. It's like he's got everybody by the nads and won't let go! When the day comes that Trump is more important, more interesting and more dangerous than the pandemic, then we can declare the pandemic thread useless and closed, and focus 100% on Trump. I can barely wait for him to go (oh he will) and the nightmare of TDS to end.

 

[RacingGrandpa]

Look I will just say one last thing. Because it is hard for me to keep a conversation any longer.
I know what you are saying @Famine. I wonder myself why you keep explaining the same things over and over. But even if I think that it's immortal, unethical, unjust, unacceptable, I have hope. Luckily I'm not a doctor. But if I were sick and someone proposed an experimental cure when there's no cure I would accept it. And I hate talking about Trump. It's not about Trump.

But that's the whole point. There is no experimental cure, because the scientists still haven't had time to make one. A vaccine might take 18 months, if lucky. So suggesting to use something that is not even at the point of experimental is the equivalent of drinking drain cleaner if you are constipated. But there is no need to worry,no doctor would administer it anyway

 

[Famine]

Agreed. This and most every thread on the forum regularly stops and pays ritual obeisance to Trump. It's like he's got everybody by the nads and won't let go! When the day comes that Trump is more important, more interesting and more dangerous than the pandemic, then we can declare the pandemic thread useless and closed, and focus 100% on Trump. I can barely wait for him to go (oh he will) and the nightmare of TDS to end.

This conversation started with Trump clearly demonstrating his cluelessness about the safety and ethics of drug development...

Apparently this is also something more widely confusing than just the current inhabitant of the oval office.

 

[Dotini]

But there is no need to worry, no doctor would administer it anyway

Agreed.

 

[GBO Possum]

The data scientist who designed Florida's COVID-19 dashboard — a mobile friendly, intuitive display of the outbreak — has been removed from her position because she refused to censor data and manipulate numbers to generate support for reopening.

The data is being fudged in states which are opening up to con people into believing it's safe.

Here's Florida. https://srv1.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/

And I see that there's been a sudden drop in the numbers from Texas.

The USA ranks really high on Active Cases per Million People

 

[Biggles]

No CEO or senior staff bonuses, raises, dividend payments or share buybacks allowed for companies using government's coronavirus support schemes

This is the way it should be. Hopefully they make it stick!

Maybe that's OK for foreigners ... but it sounds suspiciously un-American to me.

 

[Blitz24]

He is POTUS, it's not just some crackpot with crazy ideas, he's got a fair amount of ability to execute these things, and is supposedly coordinating the federal response to the pandemic. I'm surprised you can't be bothered by this.

To be fair, it could be viewed that he's both, but that's neither here nor there.

 

[Joey D]

The data is being fudged in states which are opening up to con people into believing it's safe.

Here's Florida. https://srv1.worldometers.info/coronavirus/usa/florida/

And I see that there's been a sudden drop in the numbers from Texas.

The USA ranks really high on Active Cases per Million People


View attachment 922196

In Utah, we just started purging cases that are older than three weeks and assuming the person has recovered if they aren't in the hospital. Our graph here looked similar around May 1st with that weird dip. My hunch is Florida is doing something similar. How much the numbers are being fudged is another story though. It's very believable that some states would skew the numbers to make infections look better than they are. While it's on my mind that we're doing that in Utah, the data I'm seeing from work and the data that's being published by our health department seems to be really close (within 5%) so I'm hopeful our numbers are as accurate as they can be.

 

[Chrunch Houston]

IHMO, I am a fervant proponent of shutting down the country as of early Feb...

In early February there had not been one known case of person to person spread. Every case was from someone who had traveled from an infected area. In early February there had not been a single death in the US.

A decision to shut down the US, given those circumstances, would have required much more political capital than even the President wields. It would have been impossible.

Hell, on February 24th, Nancy Pelosi was asking people to visit San Francisco's Chinatown.

On March 11th, Here is what the Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio was saying.



There was absolutely no political will to call for a shutdown in early February.

 

[Joey D]

In early February there had not been one known case of person to person spread.

The CDC confirmed the person-to-person spread of COVID-19 on January 21st.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0130-coronavirus-spread.html

 

[Chrunch Houston]

The CDC confirmed the person-to-person spread of COVID-19 on January 21st.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0130-coronavirus-spread.html

I stand corrected. I guess that is what I get for relying on a timeline from Al Jazeera.

 

[Biggles]

In early February there had not been one known case of person to person spread. Every case was from someone who had traveled from an infected area. In early February there had not been a single death in the US.

A decision to shut down the US, given those circumstances, would have required much more political capital than even the President wields. It would have been impossible.

Hell, on February 24th, Nancy Pelosi was asking people to visit San Francisco's Chinatown.

On March 11th, Here is what the Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio was saying.



There was absolutely no political will to call for a shutdown in early February.

I think this is unquestionably true ... & the same is true for most countries in Europe (& the UK) too. Few political figures wanted to believe that what was happening in the first effected countries would happen in their own country, so they lost the opportunity to limit the spread early on. In that respect, Trump & his administration have been no worse than others. What is particular to Trump is the way he has injected himself into the medical discussion with a continuing stream of incorrect information, mixed messages, & conflicting policy announcements. It's why he's a terrible leader to have in a crisis.

 

[CTznOfTime]

In early February there had not been one known case of person to person spread. Every case was from someone who had traveled from an infected area. In early February there had not been a single death in the US.

A decision to shut down the US, given those circumstances, would have required much more political capital than even the President wields. It would have been impossible.

Hell, on February 24th, Nancy Pelosi was asking people to visit San Francisco's Chinatown.

On March 11th, Here is what the Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio was saying.



There was absolutely no political will to call for a shutdown in early February.

As I said in my previous posts, whether there were or were no death in the USA in early February, but by the end of January, we already knew well and clear that:

1) people are already dying and are dead in other countries
2) there is an infectious disease spreading rapidly across continents

I understand as you do that the implications of shutting down a whole country is monumental, and very much unprescedented.

But Aren't we doing it right now...

By then I already knew that we will eventually have to close all borders.

Containments and protection was his number one job...
He simply failed.

Did he think that the disease would check itself at our door, and not get in because lack of visa authorization?

Did we all think that the disease would check itself out at our borders and not get in...

What kind of stupidity runs in the white house for the past few years....

I know that you think I have the benefits of hindsight...but

God and my carpool buddy are my witnesses... I called it out many many times then, even my carpool buddy didn't believe me, he called me a fool for saying it, he didn't think that this country would ever shut down... Look who is wrong now..
Our country would have been looking better now had we done the right thing.... And I am sure there many other people who called out... Unfortunately we are where we are because of common dumbness and greedy numbness driving this country ...

I just wanted to release my frustrations, that's all I can do at my level.

Edit: I also wanted to make sure I am pointing out, no where in this post am I blamming a specific party, but rather at the current authority, regardless of its party... This decision to shut down or not shutdown should not (even if it was) have been a bi-partisan thing... The common good was at stake, and the politicians Totally failed the people of this country, by not setting aside their differences when it was and still is necessary.

 

[Danoff]

In early February there had not been a single death in the US.

A decision to shut down the US, given those circumstances, would have required much more political capital than even the President wields. It would have been impossible.

I think it would have been a bad idea. We'd be facing the prospect of attempting to quarantine the country from the rest of the world. The only way that works is if all of the major countries of the world achieve containment together. In this case that just wasn't in the cards.

 

[CTznOfTime]

I think it would have been a bad idea. We'd be facing the prospect of attempting to quarantine the country from the rest of the world. The only way that works is if all of the major countries of the world achieve containment together. In this case that just wasn't in the cards.

Fair enough...

And here we are, with a president who clearly doesn't want to play nice with anyone but the bad guys (well at least he try to win them over).

If we can't even agree with other major countries and the WHO, if trump was going down that route, then he absolutely had the choice to isolate himself (ourselves) from everyone else... What's different from the image he wants to project?

That's what I don't get.... The guy is all over the place and don't seem to have a coherent plan... He contradict himself at every corner...

How can anyone trust that ?


EDIT: If i have to be frank, i think the other major countries wanted to shut down, but they didn't feel they were big enough to do so until they have to, but they were more looking forward to the leader of the world, expecting USA to shutdown first so that the rest of the world can immediately follow suit... unfortunately we failed to show the way, and we had to wait for each other saying:
no after you, no, after you, no after you... until Italy said: Mama Mia, Ciao Bella..

The only time trump was supposed to show how fearless he is, he didn't do it... doing everything in reverse...

 

[Danoff]

EDIT: If i have to be frank, i think the other major countries wanted to shut down, but they didn't feel they were big enough to do so until they have to, but they were more looking forward to the leader of the world, expecting USA to shutdown first so that the rest of the world can immediately follow suit... unfortunately we failed to show the way, and we had to wait for each other saying:
no after you, no, after you, no after you... until Italy said: Mama Mia, Ciao Bella..

The only time trump was supposed to show how fearless he is, he didn't do it... doing everything in reverse...

I don't think anyone wanted to shut down. It meant taking an enormous, catastrophic financial hit and they were all hoping to avoid it (us too). People didn't really take it that seriously until Italy. And by then it was too late.

Shutting down prior to the spread would have taken basically nothing short of the largest worldwide coordinated effort humanity has ever undertaken. Every country wanted to do it a little differently (and they have).

 

[Dotini]

The question now is when and how to reopen the economy. I can certify as an absolute fact that in Washington State the decision is based on politics and has nothing to do with health. Our Governor is scared spitless if he opens up a day too soon and the numbers go south, he will pay a political price at the polls in November. State employees have not missed any pay even while quarantining, and public health officials are reveling in their newfound power and authority. We are sick, and not just with virus.