It seems like great news. In USA#1 we have more than half the country who won’t take a vaccine and we likely get completely steamrolled by Covid in the next few months before something like this would be available but I will take any good news these days.
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Cut her some slack, bro. There’s no way to have known that states would open prematurely, despite her boss tweeting out LIBERATE MICHIGAN on, uh, April 17th.
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It seems like to the first step to getting this under control is to actually have the number of new cases diminish. That not only isn’t happening but the 7DMA for new cases has gone straight up for over a month. We aren’t really doing anywhere near what we need to be doing to reduce cases most places. And even if we are there is still 6-8 weeks of increasing death and then months more of residual death to look forward to once we finally top this mountain and start going down.
I really can’t wrap my head around the idea we are just going to let this rage for another 6 months until we might have a vaccine. But that seems to be the game plan.
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I’d like to see the preprint, and better yet, some commentary from people who know about this better than I do, but this study checks some important boxes: [x] randomized control trial, [x] sample size is pretty decent but could be better, [x] observed effect is large, diminishing the need for a larger sample, and [x] mechanistic explanation for efficacy is pretty reasonable. What is my semi-educated guess for the biggest caveat here is that any therapudic based on a protein, as opposed to a small molecule, is that production is difficult and expensive, so millions of treatments worldwide in the next few months may be a pipe dream.
Interferon beta is apparently used to treat multiple sclerosis, and doses of those drugs go for $7-8k, at least in shithole countries.
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Czech Republic now has more active covid-19 cases than it did at anytime this year. Towns in the south and east are dealing with local breakouts. It’s like covid whack-a-mole.
In positive news:
EDIT: Slow pony
In other Czech news, Americans aren’t the only ones bitching about restrictions to protect people against covid-19
Gist: New restrictions were placed on the Moravian-Silesian Region (administrative region in northeast CR) due to outbreaks throughout the region and a bunch of people are planning a demonstration against them.
There was also a sit-in at a pub to protest the closing hour changing from 3 AM to 11 PM in Ostrava (largest city in M-S Region). Cops had to be called to get them out.
Markets up though! Working hard! Rich middle aged whites’ inheritances will be fantastic once their parents die of covid!
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So that’s where Jeets moved the home run sculpture.
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I legit LOL 
Yeah, these are the types of things that could slowly but surely improve the risk vs. reward ratio as we proceed. What I’d like to see is essentially a current risk table for like heart damage, lung damage, brain damage, etc, based on the best available research… so that when they say something reduces the risk of a severe case by X% then we can look at the corresponding chart. Maybe that’ll be my next project, since the hospital capacity thing became too gloomy to look at every day. I should still update that once a week, or so.
The big question from this, which I’m afraid we won’t answer for a while, is whether or not it reduces the risk of side effects enough to where there’s ~no/low risk with mild/asymptomatic cases. I think I’d need to feel like if I caught it there was < 10% chance of permanent damage to start significantly changing my behavior.
Single payer would be a pretty huge campaign issue to run on in a pandemic. I think Bernie and Biden probably fare similarly well against Trump in terms of national polling in the current situation, but Biden probably has more electoral college votes on average. Like Bernie would run up bigger margins in CA, NY, etc, but Biden is in play in Texas.
At the end of the day, though, if it doesn’t give you more paths to victory, it doesn’t impact your odds of winning the election much. Like Biden is never winning Texas as a tipping point state. I guess the benefit is that forcing the GOP to spend time/money in typically bright red states spreads them thinner.
It would be typical 2020 (more like early 2021) if we just start to turn the corner as a country and like a week later all sorts of vaccines and treatments become available. It’s been pretty clear for a while that early 2021 is a pretty big inflection point as far as treatments/vaccines go. Like by mid to late February, I expect to know whether the worst is already/about to be behind us or this is more like a 5 year to rest of our lives thing.
I’m really curious to see what happens in the fall/winter in the northeast. Relative to the rest of the country, we’ve done a pretty good job up here, but only the greater NYC area (including about half of NJ) and to a lesser extent Massachusetts has really been hit hard. It seems like in USA#1 having that kind of direct lesson has been essential to then formulating and maintaining a good response.
Likewise, will the South learn from this? Given that they’re still just letting it rip through, it seems unlikely until ~everyone has had a loved one have a brush with death.
This’ll definitely get parents on board with you
https://twitter.com/stltoday/status/1285199041417158663?s=21
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My coworker still going to universal studios park in Florida in a few days, he says they’ll be fine
Friday I found out my coworker who was walking maskless around the office all week is now quarantined as she was babysitting a family member that tested positive. The other two girls in my division were also maskless and hang out with her socially all the time so if she has it they have it too. Our admin quarantined last week, she has tested positive. Our other division manager was exposed a week ago and is struggling to Breathe today, running a fever and working from home. He too was maskless all last week at work.
My manager still is telling me it’s a hoax and refuses to wear a mask in the office. The lengths to which the cult causes these people to deny reality is still managing to surprise me
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Science bros gonna save the world but sadly after several more months of death and destruction of the economy in USA#1.
Nate says pessimistic in short and mid-term, optimistic in the long term. Can’t argue with that assessment.
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Let us know when HnH ends up on a vent. Not that I’m rooting for it or anything…
The good thing about all this is that we’re all learning a great deal about how the immune system works.
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