Hope you are okay Atocep.

Hope you're good Atocep.

Thanks for the well wishes on the FIL.

MIL says he's better today, but she thinks she has it now. She's a bit of a drama queen though so it could be an act. We'll see.

Wife ended up not getting the quick test. She went with the lab test as well hoping that a negative from both of us allows her to go back to work. I'm at home for 2 weeks regardless.

The only thing I have is some very slight congestion and slightly running nose that I wouldn't think much of otherwise because I do get bad seasonal allergies at times.

As a "seasonal" (read: many times, year round) allergy sufferer, the number of times I have played "COVID or regular allergies?" this year has been way too many.

SI

My test came back negative. Which considering how close I work to the person that tested positive along with the fact that he visited my house last Friday it's likely what I had at the beginning of March was Covid.

Lots of reports trickling out about people getting Covid at Sturgis and bringing it back to their state. Color me surprised.

wow, glad you are "ok" now

Got my haircut recently.

There was a stylist wearing mask (great), face shield (okay) and protective glasses (a little too much IMO). Everyone I saw inside the mall was wearing a mask.

My wife has pretty much perfected my haircut during the last 4 months. She's given me 6 haircuts, saving us about $120. That's one of those things that's definitely changed for me because of the pandemic. I'll probably get a professional haircut every now and then, but why spend the money when the wife can do it for free?

Monitoring worldometers. FWIW, even with increasing cases, it does seem we are "stabilizing" at 1,100 to 1,200 deaths.

Hopefully, this means we are doing a better job treating people and our health system is quite as strained.

My wife gave me one after 6-7 weeks (normally 4 weeks for me) during the height of the crisis. Good enough but not great.

Dola.

Hand sanitizers is one thing I cannot find at Krogers, always empty shelves. My local CVS has sanitizers sitting on tables near the entrance. I've been back a week apart and no problem either time.

That's funny, we've had various kinds of sanitizer at ours, but today was the first day since March that I've seen any kind of liquid hand soap.

Fascinating experiment in progress. Kudos to Leipzigians (?)

The US did the mass get-togethers but unfortunately didn't have any good data to share.

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/g...ntl/index.html

Debatable which thread this belongs in.

If true, probably here. If false, in either the Trump or the Coronavirus political threads.

I'm hoping it's true.

Trump to announce 'breakthrough' coronavirus therapeutic, White House says | TheHill

Color me skeptical. If I would venture a guess I suspect its something that Trump owns a stake in.

Its going to be the My Pillow dude's miracle cure.

I would not even be a little surprised.

That's a possibility. Real medical research is incompatible with surprise announcements from the WH. The question is whether this will be a real, though limited, therapeutic that has data to show efficacy or Dr. Trump's Miracle Oil. I don't think the head of the FDA would do a presser for oleandrin, but who knows?

So yesterday Trump is crushing the FDA and today they are doing a joint press conference? I'm sure its nothing like a scenario where the FDA found something promising but needs more testing and Trump is insisting on bringing it to light the day before the RNC. Can't be anything like that.

Cynical me says this is what's happening. Lower odds but let's hope for some real good news.

I won't begrudge Trump if his business has some interest in it if its a real therapeutic.

This would really suck but yeah, fair chance this is it.

You would think if there was a real promising therapeutic that some news would have leaked by now.

Germans have been into human trials for a long time.

Not really, Kodak, some people say, already cured it, but we're not allowed to talk about it, that's why we're trying to give them nearly a billion dollars for it.

Shhhhh....you can't say hydrox------chloro---stuff without all of social media blocking you forever and then the FDA makes you infertile as punishment. I've knew someone who said it was true.

To be fair, from what I've read this is voluntary human trials.

If Fauci and Birx aren't going to be at the news conference, it probably isn't much of anything.

Those are two of the options but far from the only. I think the most likely candidate is some "drug" he found on OAN with sketchy scientific results, questionable efficacy, and some hidden side effects that he can slap his name on (as mentioned upthread) "Dr. Trump's Miracle Oil", a genuine, bonafide tonic!

I mean, hell, there's a non-zero chance he sterilizes a significant portion of his voting population out of the gene pool, for chrissakes.

SI

We can only hope

Scott Gottlieb thinks it's a plasma product that's already being used on 70000 patients and has some, but limited effect.

But it's something magical he's never heard of (what's a plasma?) so he can easily be duped into it as a cure-all

SI

"So I asked Bill a question some of you are thinking of if you're into that world, which I find to be pretty interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous Plasma blast, whether its very powerful light or just standing in front of your TV, and I think you said, that hasn't been checked but you're gonna test it. And then I said, supposing it brought the Plasma inside the body, which you can either do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're gonna test that too, sounds interesting. And now they tested it and it works. I tested it too, i sit before my TV a lot and didn't get the Virus as you know."


Seriously, there is not a shred of a chance he or anybody in the White House has exclusive access to results from a properly done and properly reviewed study of anything. So either it is some random annecdotal study done with twisted parameters or sth everybody already knows about but also knows it is a small part of the puzzle of treatment.

Following the crumb trails, I wonder if it is around this topic the FDA Released mid last week: Recommendations for Investigational COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma | FDA


Would make sense that Trump didn’t necessarily get around to bashing the FDA until 3 days later since he was pre-occupied trying to blame Obama for his shortcomings as the DNC was going on.

And that was as easy as it gets. The obvious answer is always the answer with this clown. He does not play 4-D chess.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/healt...nt-plasma-okay

Watched first 20 min or so and heard the FDA guy speak. He seemed genuinely positive about the plasma treatment and reduction in 35% mortality while cautioning "if the data holds up".

Unlike hydroxychloroquine which many panned early-mid-late, there has been historical success with plasma treatment and a quick google doesn't show much "it won't work" but more "could work, we need more data".

My layman's mind assumes it will help significantly (e.g. 35%), maybe not the magic bullet we all want, but another tool in the arsenal as other therapeutics (and vaccines) come on line.

Futures had small negative losses but after the speech the market is up .20% so guess that shows some optimism.

Dr. Hahn seriously misstated the data when he said if 100 people got COVID 35 would get better with plasma. The study says that the 7 day death rate dropped 35% from around 11% to around 7%. Hard to imagine someone at that level not understanding the numbers.

What it shows is idiocy of both individuals and the system of "the market" as currently structured.


Right now with the data available (if you can call it that) i could not tell you if this ends up any more sustainable as any of the other breakthroughs and i doubt anybody in any way involved in "the market" can either. Many will be banking on the hype alone, others cynically and rightly asuming that duping half (well, more like 1/3) of the country is enough to keep things rolling.

35% as a result sounds cool, but right now there is no way to check the actual parameters of who in what condition was given the treatment at what stage and what else they were given (there was a Hydrochloroquine study showing great success which turned out to coincide with the Hydrochloroquine group also mostly getting a steroid, which the controll group largely did not get, that was actually proven effective a few weeks earlier). Or what happened after those 7 days ... Or what number the 35% is derived from (the smaller the total, the less valid).

He probably doubles down after every lost round of blackjack as well.

My understanding that 35% number against another type of plasma, not a control group. They are still a long way from showing if it is really effective at all.

These things are so underpowered, it is anyone's guess.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/24/busin...rnd/index.html

Another thing covid has taken away from us.

Saw that. Pretty stupid reason (if that really is the reason).

556 cases at Alabama after the first week of classes.

It states right in the article that it's a clever marketing campaign. Kudos to whoever came up with it.

Still gonna have SEC football though.

CDC changes guidelines to say you shouldn't get tested unless you have symptoms, even if you have known exposure to someone with COVID.

I never would have thought we'd just ignore a catastrophe like this.

People want to get back to doing stupid shit outside.

And Trump wants the number of cases to go down heading into the election.

I believe there's also a shortage of tests due to the next stimulus sitting in limbo. I know where I work has significantly cut testing due to a shortage. Anyone that claimed to have contact was able get tested. Now you have to show symptoms.

Here you can just drive in without symptoms or referral.
Ive had 3 done for work purposes.
They also give you results in 20 minutes while you wait.

Any holdup or shortage in test funding is going to directly affect the hospital I work at since it's a federal facility. They also only offer lab testing there. My wife, however, was able to go to urgent care and easily get tested with no symptoms. it took her 4 days to get the results back, though, compared to the roughly 20 hours it took me to get notification.

We have work clients who are requiring tests results to allow us on site (these are medical facilites so it makes sense)
The local urgent care is "free" for 7-10 day or '$200 and we will not even attempt to file insurance' for rapid results.
Due to the nature of our needs we've been using rapid. Between me and my guys they've made about $5k off me this month..

FIL is much worse today. You can tell while talking to him on the phone that he is struggling to breathe. BIL is an EMT so, he is going to check on him in person and likely take him.

This a few days after he said he was feeling better.

Ugh. Hoping for the best.

I hope things turn for the better soon, Spleen.

This still sucks and I'm surprised at how terrible testing is. How do we not have a test that can get results in hours like most other countries? Those saliva tests seem to work well.

The rapid test results are 15-20 minutes.
What do you mean?

Shit Spleen, I hope things turn around fast :(

An article explaining how Hahn misrepresented the 35% reduction in mortality.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

I get the difference but a 35% relative risk reduction is still pretty significant isn't it?

It's crazy how long that goddamn article is, and how complicated the explanation is, without mentioning the actual figures in question. I'm just going off of memory, but I believe that the treatment resulted in reducing the mortality rate from 11 percent to 8 percent, FWIW.

And it might well be those patients receiving less plasma (everybody in the study got treated with Plasma !) had a lower risk anyway. They literally and by design did not test if Plasma has X or Y positive effect compared with other forms of treatment or no treatment. They tested if it was safe to use and if there might be potential positive difference in higher dosages.

Efficacy of medication is a bitch to figure out, much less prove. That's the reality. It's understandable that this is frustrating and that the only proven method is offputting (taking many, many patients* and half get the new treatment and half get nothing or, by now, a different treatment regiment where we already have a baseline). But without that literally all is guesswork. Especially when your parameter is mortality. It's like measuring the quality of a sports team purely based on the end result in a single day tournament with 3 games against random opponents, without watching the games or even looking up any statistics beyond the score. Afterwards you can say with confidence who won that day, but that is it. But you can't really judge how the same team would do over the next 100 Games.
Maybe they got the perfect opponents. Maybe they won despite playing terrible.

* Because individually you just don't know beforehand what a persons risk of dying is.

This is pretty cool.

Some big news out of the University of Arizona (@uarizona):

UA scientists & staff found a coronavirus outbreak on campus *before it happened* — and seem to have snuffed it out.

How in the world do you do that?

You use wastewater testing.

— (((Charles Fishman))) (@cfishman) August 27, 2020

So, both in laws were admitted to the hospital on Wednesday. MIL was confirmed to have COVID.

FIL was doing better last night when we talked to him, but Wed night and yesterday morning things were kind of scary. Dude has COVID, pneumonia, and a blood clot in one of his lungs. They treat the clot with blood thinners which made his temp drop to 93. He could barely say 2-3 words without having trouble breathing. They are also treating him with an antibiotic that I assume is for the pneumonia.

Talked to him around 5pm last night and he wasn't struggling to breathe and they had his temp under control. He sounded almost normal on the phone.

Today, they are both getting blood that has COVID anti-bodies.

I appreciate the well wishes. Thanks, guys.

Yikes that's terrifying! Glad to hear your FIL is getting better. Hope there are no more scares!

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

Glad things seem to be getting better. So scary.

So good to hear.

Either my Kroger is getting a lot more efficient the last month or the number of people doing grocery pick up is dwindling a lot.

I get my groceries at almost the same time every week (12:30-1 after lunch) though on variable days. Into June, you sometimes couldn't find a spot (mainly because some jackasses refused to pull all the way up in their 2-deep parking spots, but that's beside the point here). But the last month, I've been by myself or 1 of 2 cars there.

Anyone else seeing this where they are at?

SI

My Walmart has actually added 5-10 more parking spots because so many people use it-almost always a lot of cars in them when driving by.

Our pickup has had a lot more items in stock. Fewer substitutions. Our Kroger did add like double the spots as well earlier this year, bit it seems things are well stocked when they weren't before.

Stock on certain items is finally picking back up to normal. Like I wanted a tow behind garden cart for the last several months and was SOL. On Monday I checked and there were like 6-8 options.

Haven't had problems finding stuff at local Kroger's other than hand sanitizers (which I've found in abundance at CVS).

My wife has told me to stop buying toilet paper. We are definitely stocked up for the in-progress or forthcoming second wave!

FYI this doesn't seem to be the case in my area. The only difference I've noticed is more professional shoppers as the fallout from reduced unemployment continues.

Seeing random weird stuff missing from Kroger and other stores in our area. For instance, slow cooker pulled pork seasoning packets. Haven't seen one in over a month. Check every time we go to a grocery store. Coke Zero and all of their flavors have been missing for months. Windex - can't find it anywhere. Things like that.

I'm not sure what this data tells. Would have been nice if there were % also. With Influenza and pneumonia listed as #1, I guess that's why there is a push to get people to get flu shots this year.

The table
https://fox8.com/wp-content/uploads/...esize=768,1347

Looks like India is in a world of hurt. There's likely more and its under reported (just like other countries). Wonder what the "excess deaths" are as compared to 2019 equivalent months.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53969118

Article also talked about the potential influence on decision making. Regardless, I think its a good thing to do especially with the comment below about 150 test cases.

Wouldn't want to be in the first batch and will wait for 4-6 weeks I think to see if any negative reactions pop up.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/30/healt...eua/index.html

Pepsi Zero has been missing around here but no issues on Coke Zero. My theory on that is that your guy that delivers either Coke or Pepsi delivers either a tiny bit of Zero or none at all and absolutely fills the shelves with the top couple of sellers. I don't know that it's a real shortage but a delivery choice based on what your store sells. If you complain to the store, you might have a shot at getting it fixed.

Well there are signs all over the shelves about Coke shortages, and it's not just Kroger. Meijer/Target haven't had any either.

In the last 2 weeks, a bit more Zero is showing up along with Zero Cherry Vanilla. Still no Zero Cherry, Orange Vanilla or Fresca. And very little diet Dr. Pepper, no creme soda of any kind.

OK, well that's weird then.

I think the same is happening with Pepsi Zero but I don't drink Pepsi so I haven't paid much attention.

We actually prefer Pepsi Zero to Coke Zero, but would prefer Coke to Pepsi if I drank full sugar soft drinks. I have full sugar Coke maybe 4 times a year or something like that.

I appreciate the well wishes from everyone. Thanks a ton you guys.

My in-laws went home yesterday. FIL says everything changed about an hour after he started getting the blood therapy. He felt 100 times better.

I don't know if this sort of thing works for everyone, but it is refreshing to hear that they have some therapies that help with this thing.

Great news!

One of the possible silver linings to this horrible horrible disease is that we are learning a lot about therapies and vaccines and the like.

It would be great if, after COVID-19 is under control, we end up being able to treat and prevent future diseases better than we would otherwise because of the crash course we had to take due to COVID-19.

Yay Spleen!, great news about the therapy helping

Globally we aren't at the point of tracking that effectively. Based on what's happened in other large cities around the world though, by year's end excess mortality will likely be in the low tens of millions.

Excess deaths are at 214,000 this year which is sort of right in line with the data. Especially when you figure we missed a bunch early on due to testing.

I can't say anything that specifically other than this seems to be regional to a degree - different areas have different relative levels of demand and so forth. Dr. Pepper for example has been fine where I am, but some of the Zero products have been gone for extended stretches. Fresca waved bye for a while, but it is now sometimes back.

Paper towel has replaced the original outage of toilet paper for reasons I can't decipher.

Do you have a link for this. Want to send to a friend who is trending towards the hoax camp. He plays drums in one of the biggest cover bands in the east coast so his livelihood has really taken a hit basically having no gigs over the summer, so I get his frustrations. Would like some data to show him.

I still haven't seen an Lysol/Clorox wipes on the shelves since like April, so I've been using bleach spray and paper towels for kitchen disinfectant. I can't imagine I'm the only one...so that maybe explains the paper towel shortage.

And find it anywhere and I really want to have some to send to school.

I still owe my 4th grader's teacher the 3 containers of wipes I was supposed to send on the first day of school.

It'll occasionally show up for ship to home on the Kroger app. But, it's pretty darn rare.

SI

My wife was just complaining that she can't find Lysol wipes, bathroom scrubber, or Windex. We checked 4 stores this weekend, nothing. Wipes was a biggie early on but things seem to be getting worse, not better.

No problems with any Coke & Pepsi products in Atlanta suburbia (no surprise I guess), don't look for Fresca so can't say.

Plenty of Charmin and Bounty paper products also.

Glad he is trending upward.

If you don't mind telling us, what is the "blood therapy"?

They gave my MIL 2 pints of blood with COVID anti-bodies and my FIL 3 pints.

On the wipes, there was a thing from Lysol or Clorox saying they didn't expect to be stocked back to normal levels until at least early next year. That one is pretty consistent I think. Isopropyl alcohol is another, for similar reasons.

Happy for your in-laws spleen. Glad things turned around.

News on the rapid test. Not perfect or as accurate as the other test but still pretty good.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/he...?mod=home-page

I'd love the idea, but, c'mon:



A test group of 102?!? Like, that's one large hospital's worth of COVID patients. Could we try something a little more rigorous before running it to market?

I will be shocked(!) when it turns out it's more like 85% accurate, which is kindof a big damn deal.



SI