They literally have a trial on Forsythia. If I recall this was the snakeoil peddled as a miracle cure in the plotline to the movie Contagion.
I mean it makes sense. We already know Forsythia is safe-ish to eat, has antiviral properties, and it's probably growing within a couple blocks of wherever you live. If it works for COVID-19 then that's kind of the ideal scenario. ~80% of people recover on their own, so a treatment doesn't even need to work that well if it's something that's safe enough for people to just start taking as soon as they get symptoms but before they're sick enough to warrant seeing a doctor, if at that point it can actually make a difference in clinical outcomes.
Something that slows down viral growth by 10% isn't going to do anything if you start taking it a week after you get sick, but if you start taking it at t=0 it could make an enormous difference.
> Another study — a 300-person controlled trial — will test serum from COVID-19 survivors. The bare-bones strategy, based on the idea that the antibodies one person steadily builds up to fight a virus can rapidly help someone freshly infected to fight it off, has had modest success when used to treat other viruses in decades past
I’m surprised we don’t see this type of treatment more often. It might be worth it to set up infrastructure to do this type of treatment at scale everywhere, since it presumably works in most recoverable viral infections.
I'm responding to the paper you linked, where you assert "this has happened before". The story with the Reddit link is similar: at the time of the posting, only ~6 data points actually mattered for R^2, so you would expect R^2 to be very high. (The fit is extremely poor for the first ~6 data points, but that doesn't affect R^2 at all.) After the last date on the chart shown, the R^2 begins to plummet. This is also ex…
I would say the numbers deviating from the model after it has been publicized and discussed online are still evidence against the data being fabricated, but weaker than it could have been because there were definitely Chinese people watching those discussion on social media, and so the idea that they might have corrected the mistake and started adding more variation isn't that unlikely.
wow you make it sound like someone is sitting in front of a computer, watching reaction of foreigners on reddit, and tweaking the numbers on an excel sheet. Really? You know, Chinese ppl online really hoped it wasnt a quadratic curve. If the government was just making up the numbers and trying to hide the problem, why not make it linear, or square root? why pick quadratic, such terrifying curve...why say its cornavirus at all? just say its flu, its pneumonia, its a terrible flu season. If all the government cares about is money and economy, why shut down the cities at all and destroy the economy in the processes. When economy is down, business will go bankrupt, people will be pissed, and maybe they will revolt. Why go through all this trouble and not deflect the issue or take no responsibility at all. Isn't all about protecting people and keep people from getting sick? oh btw, now that model doesnt fit anymore, the reported number is higher than the predicted model
They literally have a trial on Forsythia. If I recall this was the snakeoil peddled as a miracle cure in the plotline to the movie Contagion.
I mean it makes sense. We already know Forsythia is safe-ish to eat, has antiviral properties, and it's probably growing within a couple blocks of wherever you live. If it works for COVID-19 then that's kind of the ideal scenario. ~80% of people recover on their own, so a treatment doesn't even need to work that well if it's something that's safe enough for people to just start taking as soon as they get symptoms but…
> ~80% of people recover on their own, so a treatment doesn't even need to work that well...
20% of people needing hospitalization and 5-10% needing mechanical ventilation in an ICU does NOT mean treatments don't need to be very effective. ...unless you assume your in the 80% and you don't care about anyone else.
This is crazy fast. Usually hit to target takes almost a year, and they are doing this all in less than a month.
Quite sure they had a Zika virus vaccine completed within a few months after the outbreak. Obviously getting regulatory approval takes much, much longer but people would probably be surprised how quickly such things can be developed.
> Another study — a 300-person controlled trial — will test serum from COVID-19 survivors. The bare-bones strategy, based on the idea that the antibodies one person steadily builds up to fight a virus can rapidly help someone freshly infected to fight it off, has had modest success when used to treat other viruses in decades past I’m surprised we don’t see this type of treatment more often. It might be worth it to se…
It has many of the same risks as cannibalism - there are lots of unknown viruses and proteins that normally don't get transferred from person to person, but could cause harm, and if you start distributing them widely, you're gonna have problems.
> Another study — a 300-person controlled trial — will test serum from COVID-19 survivors. The bare-bones strategy, based on the idea that the antibodies one person steadily builds up to fight a virus can rapidly help someone freshly infected to fight it off, has had modest success when used to treat other viruses in decades past I’m surprised we don’t see this type of treatment more often. It might be worth it to se…
It has many of the same risks as cannibalism - there are lots of unknown viruses and proteins that normally don't get transferred from person to person, but could cause harm, and if you start distributing them widely, you're gonna have problems.
This is crazy fast. Usually hit to target takes almost a year, and they are doing this all in less than a month.
Quite sure they had a Zika virus vaccine completed within a few months after the outbreak. Obviously getting regulatory approval takes much, much longer but people would probably be surprised how quickly such things can be developed.
In China they could probably do the regulatory bit quickly but it still takes a while to test if vaccines are safe and work. I don't any of the stuff being tested in the article are vaccines.
> Another study — a 300-person controlled trial — will test serum from COVID-19 survivors. The bare-bones strategy, based on the idea that the antibodies one person steadily builds up to fight a virus can rapidly help someone freshly infected to fight it off, has had modest success when used to treat other viruses in decades past I’m surprised we don’t see this type of treatment more often. It might be worth it to se…
This has been reported to work:
>China National Biotec Group has been using this plasma, which contains highly potent antibodies, to treat more than 10 seriously ill patients since Feb 8,
> It claimed that those receiving the treatment improved within 24 hours, with reduced inflammation and viral loads along with better oxygen levels in the blood.