For WHOm the Bell Tolls - Covid-19 #11

[Heartofice]

Quote

Giesecke is very Swedish  -- quite phlegmatic.

Well quite! I’d say if an English scientist had said the things he’d said in the same way then well, there would be hell to pay. 
 

Even then he is agreeing with the earlier British position which we backed away from quite quickly ( and which still makes a lot of sense to me)

[JoannaL]

12 hours ago, Triskele said:

 

Wish I knew more about pharmacology (I know virtually nothing), but how wild would it be if a drug developed for Ebola that didn't work for it just happened to be more effective against Disease X which  is now COVID-19?  Maybe just maybe that's going to be the case (but we should all hold off for the huge NIH trial results to come in).  

It makes a lot of sense, that a drug like remdesivir could work against SARS-COV-19. Remdesivir is an antiviral drug, developed against a weakness only viruses possess. So the mode of action should also work against other viruses. Additionally, though not very effectiv against EBola, there were enough trials done to determine that Remdesivir  is safe to take. A problem could be availability, no idea if you could make a big amount of it quickly

edited:

just checked because I really wanted to know: Synthesis of Remdesivir takes at least 6 month. The producer claims that they could (with cooperations and so on, and if they get all the ingredients -so not sure) make the amount necessary for half a million treatments by October. This is something, but definitly NOT the wondorous solution for everyone for the next year. On a longer time frame (2-3 years) that could be our way to live with the virus though, if it really works.

[mcbigski]

12 hours ago, Ran said:

Giesecke is very Swedish  -- quite phlegmatic.

 

Is Mike Gesicki, TE Miami Swedish?  Or is it that just one of those bizarre Jynnan tonnyx like homonyms?

[Ran]

5 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Is Mike Gesicki, TE Miami Swedish?  Or is it that just one of those bizarre Jynnan tonnyx like homonyms?

The surname Giesecke is of German origin, actually, and there's a town in Germany of that name which is probably the source. OTOH, Gesicki appears to be an anglicized version of the Polish Gęsicki. Whether the Polish name shares an origin with the German name and town, I'm not strictly sure, although one random thread I found on Google claimed some US Census records from 1900 had at least one family of Gesickis claiming they were originally German (while other families named Poland and Russia). 

[williamjm]

19 hours ago, Raja said:

I don't know whether to laugh or to cry - from the article

In addition, more here

There's a federal trial going on atm - I'd wait for that. I'm very skeptical of the one being carried out by the pharma company.

I was intending to sound more sceptical than maybe I came across in that post, although I had also missed the bit where they didn't even have a control group.

Do we know when the results from the federal trial are likely to come in?

[Aemon Stark]

19 hours ago, Triskele said:

 

@Aemon Stark - With all the caveats that we don't have that much more data now do you have any updated thoughts on Remdesivir?  thanks

I'm by no means an expert on it, but we're still lacking robust randomized trials or even many things with adequate control groups. So I don't know. It's more likely that, if any efficacy is shown, it will be more like Tamiflu - modest improvement on disease course. As ever, what we need are vaccines. 

[Bonnot OG]

The us is beyond fucked 

[Impmk2]

2 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Do they just mean that while they think that this will still likely be the case there's a certain threshold of evidence that they just don't have yet so they're being careful?  

If you read the actual quotes from the press conference, yes that's pretty much it. This is largely because upper respiratory viruses often give a less protective / reduced adaptive immune (ie antibody) response than viruses in other niches, as well as a generally shorter lived one. This is as it's a very exposed area and an overactive immune response to stimuli could lead to pathology in itself. It's also one of the hurdles to overcome with regards to a vaccine - though one which hopefully isn't insurmountable.

They're basically warning against giong for an immunity passport / herd immunity strategy before the data is in. Which is imo the responsible thing to do.

[williamjm]

I noticed on the Worldometers site that Mauritania is claiming to be the first country to become free of coronavirus. I'm very sceptical they've done enough testing to be confident of this, but it's not impossible since the cases they reported seem to have been in quarantined travellers and if they locked down their borders early enough maybe they managed to stop it getting into the community. There are advantages to being a country that probably doesn't get many visitors.

[Fragile Bird]

23 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I noticed on the Worldometers site that Mauritania is claiming to be the first country to become free of coronavirus. I'm very sceptical they've done enough testing to be confident of this, but it's not impossible since the cases they reported seem to have been in quarantined travellers and if they locked down their borders early enough maybe they managed to stop it getting into the community. There are advantages to being a country that probably doesn't get many visitors.

I had mentioned last week that Greenland seemed to be the first to reach that status...

[Paxter]

Greenland is not a country though right? Just sayin’...having a cool/weird flag makes not a nation state.

Go Mauritania!

[The Mance]

25 minutes ago, Paxter said:

.having a cool/weird flag makes not a nation state.

Eeerrmm.... pretty sure this is the opposite of true

[Bonnot OG]

Looks like that reopen bs going on in the US is some gigantic astroturf campaign going on. 
https://www.reddit.com/r/maryland/comments/g3niq3/i_simply_cannot_believe_that_people_are/fnstpyl/

 

[Fragile Bird]

19 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Some Israeli doctor says that the virus follows the same pattern regardless of social distancing measures in all countries ergo distancing is pointless.  This seems to be making the rounds in the US in Trumpworld.  

Uh huh. But Israel has 19 deaths per million and the US has 118,

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

21 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Uh huh. But Israel has 19 deaths per million and the US has 118,

Chosen people loophole. Helps to fear the plague during the time of year you annually celebrate defeating the plague. 

Also, the Egyptians clearly had more game than the Nazis. 

[Raja]

7 hours ago, williamjm said:

I was intending to sound more sceptical than maybe I came across in that post

Yeah, sorry. I quoted you but I was speaking more of the general tone of the posts in the thread regarding the drug and that article. Your post contained the warranted skepticism! My bad.

7 hours ago, Aemon Stark said:

 it will be more like Tamiflu - modest improvement on disease course.

Honestly, I'm waiting for the rest of the world to catch up to the absolute shit show that led to national governments spending billions of dollars stockpiling tamiflu. If one ever needs an illustration of big pharma & drug trials, and why we should be wary, Tamiflu would be the perfect example.

[Bonnot OG]

There's a reason all these asinine protests in the US popped up almost at once.

There's an imperial ton of astroturfing going on, and it's quite visible in how those groups popped up literally overnight (hint-hint). The thing is that they targeted groups who were... how does one say... more receptive to the message who wouldn't be inclined to look any deeper into what they were joining.

As an example, right now, this is happening in Los Angeles.

Now, here's a screenshot of the description of the "Operation Gridlock Los Angeles" group when it was first spotted by Buzzfeed News.

Concurrently, here's a screenshot of the description of the "Operation Gridlock Tennessee" group.

But, hey... it's Buzzfeed News right? Cool-cool-cool-cool-cool...

Here's a link to the group "Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine" - sitting 55,281 members deep at the time of this post.

Okay...

Now here's a link to the group "Minnesotans Against Excessive Quarantine" - presently with 18,938 members.

Why do these groups have the exact same description?

Let's not stop there. Following their own links: one is from the "Pennsylvania Firearms Association", and the other is from the group "Minnesota Gun Rights" - both with the exact same layout.

Both of these domains are registered with the same registrar and were registered on the exact same day at the same time.

[ ~]$ whois reopenmn.com [Querying whois.verisign-grs.com] [Redirected to whois.godaddy.com] [Querying whois.godaddy.com] [whois.godaddy.com] Domain Name: reopenmn.com Registry Domain ID: 2512322197_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com Updated Date: 2020-04-08T14:39:18Z Creation Date: 2020-04-08T14:39:17Z Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2021-04-08T14:39:17Z [ ~]$ whois reopenpa.com [Querying whois.verisign-grs.com] [Redirected to whois.godaddy.com] [Querying whois.godaddy.com] [whois.godaddy.com] Domain Name: reopenpa.com Registry Domain ID: 2512322050_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com Updated Date: 2020-04-08T14:37:30Z Creation Date: 2020-04-08T14:37:29Z Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2021-04-08T14:37:29Z

The rest of the whois information is obscured by a proxy organization that provides privacy for whois records (I even use them myself as do many others for privacy reasons), so I cannot tell who owns these domains.

Following the pattern of their sites, I checked for "reopenmd.com", but it never resolved to anything. That said, the DNS lookup itself didn't result in a NXDOMAIN error which tells me the domain does exist.

[ ~]$ whois reopenmd.com [Querying whois.verisign-grs.com] [Redirected to whois.godaddy.com] [Querying whois.godaddy.com] [whois.godaddy.com] Domain Name: reopenmd.com Registry Domain ID: 2515645280_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com Updated Date: 2020-04-17T04:19:17Z Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:19:16Z Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2021-04-17T04:19:16Z Registrant Organization: Registrant State/Province: Florida Registrant Country: US Registrant Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=reopenmd.com Admin Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=reopenmd.com Tech Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=reopenmd.com

Registered a little more than week later with the same registrar. The thing is, they didn't actually complete their whois information this time, and whoever set it up cheaped out or forgot to pay for the Domains by Proxy service. Although whois information is literally a public record, I'm not inclined to place my account at risk by opening myself up to accusations of doxxing. That said, anyone who feels inclined to can go to https://whois.godaddy.com and search for reopenmd.com. I myself would be personally curious as to why someone in Florida is registering domains claiming to be gun rights organizations in other states.

Seriously, even without that information - who or whomever is responsible for this astroturfing couldn't make this more obvious if they tried. It honestly took me longer to type all of this up to present here than it did for me to find this all. Yet people have taken the bait hook-line-and-sinker.

Meanwhile, the President then starts tweeting "LIBERATE MINNESOTA", "LIBERATE VIRGINIA...", and "LIBERATE MICHIGAN"; and one of the major forces behind the group in Michigan was a political group that has direct ties to and has historically been heavily funded by the family of the Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (though said family denies direct involvement in last weeks protest)?

In that regard, I'm not alleging some major conspiracy here, but l-o-fucking-l.

Edit: for the record, reopenva.com also exists and has the exact same registry info as reopenmd.com.

[ ~]$ whois reopenva.com [Querying whois.verisign-grs.com] [Redirected to whois.godaddy.com] [Querying whois.godaddy.com] [whois.godaddy.com] Domain Name: reopenva.com Registry Domain ID: 2515650132_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com Updated Date: 2020-04-17T04:43:47Z Creation Date: 2020-04-17T04:43:46Z Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2021-04-17T04:43:46Z Registrant Organization: Registrant State/Province: Florida Registrant Country: US Registrant Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=reopenva.com Admin Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=reopenva.com Tech Email: Select Contact Domain Holder link at https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=reopenva.com
 

Billionaires funding protests to serve some sort of idea that people want to just get back to work even during a pandemic, something that serves the billionaires interests over the workers they piss on and put in harms way. 


The Michigan group was funded by either the Devos family or those linked to that pos. 

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/salvadorhernandez/coronavirus-quarantine-protests-facebook-groups

[The Anti-Targ]

3 hours ago, Triskele said:

Some Israeli doctor says that the virus follows the same pattern regardless of social distancing measures in all countries ergo distancing is pointless.  This seems to be making the rounds in the US in Trumpworld.  

It's a pity when doctors priorities political and economic interests over public health to the point of lying. Whatever measure a govt takes is a balance between public health and economy, but for a medical doctor to say that there is no effective public health measure is straight up unethical.

[Hereward]

9 hours ago, williamjm said:

I noticed on the Worldometers site that Mauritania is claiming to be the first country to become free of coronavirus. I'm very sceptical they've done enough testing to be confident of this, but it's not impossible since the cases they reported seem to have been in quarantined travellers and if they locked down their borders early enough maybe they managed to stop it getting into the community. There are advantages to being a country that probably doesn't get many visitors.

Mauritania couldn't lock down their borders even if they wanted to, and the significant numbers of nomads (and jihadis) in their population wouldn't take any notice anyway. 

[Werthead]

The situation in Sweden is bad, and now we know how the situation in care homes there is impacting the situation.

10 hours ago, williamjm said:

I noticed on the Worldometers site that Mauritania is claiming to be the first country to become free of coronavirus. I'm very sceptical they've done enough testing to be confident of this, but it's not impossible since the cases they reported seem to have been in quarantined travellers and if they locked down their borders early enough maybe they managed to stop it getting into the community. There are advantages to being a country that probably doesn't get many visitors.

I was wondering if they'd made a mistake and had meant to say Mauritius, which is at least semi-plausible (small island nation relatively easy to cut off from the rest of the world). But apparently not.