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Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

blogs.sciencemag.org

21–30 of 262 posts

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#21

...but the girl at the dispensary told me oregano oil cures COVID-19 (because "it cures everything!"). Edit: From +4 to -4 and flagged, que serioso! This account will now self-destruct.

You're telling me this https://i.imgur.com/hs9sEi3.png is a thing? I was hopeful it was just a meme.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have met Derek Lowe personally. He's got 35 years in the game as a bench chemist working on theraputics and knows this world inside and out. What are your similarly long-term credentials that give you such definitive knowledge?

This kind of "appeal to authority" argument reminds me of the recent interview with an industry "veteran" (60 years experience in developing combustion engines) and professor where he condemned electric cars and claimed they will not help the climate. Being experienced doesn't mean you can't be foolish/dogmatic or simply wrong. And it doesn't always take an even more experienced researcher to prove someone wrong. I w…

Maybe you and m0zg reading it a little heavy.

m0zg appears to be implying that in the collaboration between Derek Lowe and the professionals he has talked to to write this article, nobody is aware of remdesivir, or, alternatively, that they are aware, that they explicitly chose not to write it / to accord their contribution to the article without requiring that it is mentioned, and that makes them unqualified hacks.

Because if that is not what was implied, I don't get why the words 'epic fail' are used.

And that is an extraordinary claim, at least in the mind of user hprotagonist, given that he is aware of Derek Lowe's expertise levels. Disregarding it without further proof is _NOT_ an appeal to authority.

The point that hprotaganist is making is NOT: "remdesivir is useless; Derek Lowe did not mention it here which is proof enough for me". Their point is simply: "I am not convinced that remdesivir is an obvious answer, because I find it highly implausible that if it is such a slam dunk answer, that Derek Lowe would fail to mention it."

In other words, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence; your claim that remdesivir could be a plausible route to a quick fix for the problem and that Derek Lowe isn't aware of this is extraordinary. Your evidence of basically nothing other than the word of random joe hackernews commenter + the word 'remdesivir' (so, I guess, the wikipedia entry which anybody can search the web for armed solely with the word?) isn't sufficient proof for it.

That's all. This is not an appeal to authority fallacy in my book, simply a request that you provide a little more direct indication that remdesivir is likely to be a panacea here, especially if you start insinuating that the article author has 'epic failed' here.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#23
post #13
post #2

It is interesting to me that people are so laser focused on test kits and vaccines. In my less than humble opinion, people should focus on improving their immune system. You can reduce the load on your immune system by not eating sugar and reducing carbs as much as you can. We also know from history and science that every plague that killed people from respiratory virus infections was due to a lack of vitamin D3 and…

Here are three negative results (all randomized controlled trials) for Vitamin D supplementation during the winter: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2019.0006... failed to show any effect on wintertime supplementation of D (using pre-registered criteria) http://www.vitaminedelft.org/files/art/ling2009.pdf "no benefit" https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2014/fo/c4fo0... "did not lower inc…

Here's a positive result.

https://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.i6583

"Vitamin D supplementation was safe and it protected against acute respiratory tract infection overall. Patients who were very vitamin D deficient and those not receiving bolus doses experienced the most benefit."

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#24

Most comments seemed to be responding to the title, which misses the point. The title is quite editorialized. The real point of the article is that there's no drug or vaccine in the works that will be able to prevent the impending U.S. epidemic, so don't pin your hopes on them. I'd go so far as to suggest a new title of "Get Real - Drugs and Vaccines won't Prevent a U.S. Epidemic".

its too late to prevent an epidemic in most places

there is no star trek solution that will suddenly prevent epidemic anywhere that is apparently free of virus for the time being.

the virus is not so lethal as to justify suspension of safety and efficacy trials. the potential to kill far more people with a mistake than the virus would kill, is very real.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#25
post #15

Yesterday one friend's mom had respiratory failure and got hard - locked jaws. This was Coronavirus She was administered intravenous antibiotics and Cortisol After that she got bit better

I have a hard time believing that both a doctor would administer antibiotics for coronaVIRUS and that antibiotics would be of any use there.

Edit: Children comments are pointing out the antibiotics could be for secondary infections. Fair enough, but the parent comment's implication that the antibiotics helped with coronavirus recovery is what's problematic.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#27
post #15

Yesterday one friend's mom had respiratory failure and got hard - locked jaws. This was Coronavirus She was administered intravenous antibiotics and Cortisol After that she got bit better

I have a hard time believing that both a doctor would administer antibiotics for coronaVIRUS and that antibiotics would be of any use there. Edit: Children comments are pointing out the antibiotics could be for secondary infections. Fair enough, but the parent comment's implication that the antibiotics helped with coronavirus recovery is what's problematic.

I had same reaction, it happened in Torino, Italy. I've no idea why I am being downvoted for reporting simply what she told me.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#28
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time believing that both a doctor would administer antibiotics for coronaVIRUS and that antibiotics would be of any use there. Edit: Children comments are pointing out the antibiotics could be for secondary infections. Fair enough, but the parent comment's implication that the antibiotics helped with coronavirus recovery is what's problematic.

I had same reaction, it happened in Torino, Italy. I've no idea why I am being downvoted for reporting simply what she told me.

No doctor is dumb enough to give antibiotics for a virus.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#29
I know Derek Lowe is an expert. However, sometimes, experts think that because things have always been a certain way throughout their career, they will always be like that. Drug development has been very conservative especially in the US for the past several decades. The FDA is all about making sure they never have a thalidomide incident and would rather lose a lot of good drugs than approve a bad drug. This is the steady state.

However, a global pandemic is more akin to wartime footing. During WWII design and production ramped up to an unprecedented degree. There is a possibility that Covid19 will spark such a global response.

Re: Get Real: no drug or vaccine will avoid a very big coronavirus epidemic

#30
Is it the case that SARS (of many years ago) had a vaccine developed for it, but it had too many side effects or was not effective enough to get past trials?

And that while this virus is different it is similar in many respects... leading me to think that a vaccine may also be difficult to produce.

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