Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Project Covalence

blog.samaltman.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 33 posts

Re: Project Covalence

#11

Post by hairytrog »

It is now clear that Covid-19 is not as dangerous as was thought and hyped by media and governments worldwide, and that the prescribed shutdown cure has been and will be much worse than the disease itself. Please see (https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/) for a pretty clear summary or follow Aaron Ginn. Covid-19 vaccine development is nearly useless at this point. That said, we need countermeasures and resilience to such events in the future.

The expectation is we may be well be in 50% to 100% infection rate if serology yield is 1/5. Pretty scary. This means the disease was extremely rapid, and we would've been absolutely trashed if it had been significantly more lethal. We need to invest massively on R&D against such potential threats. Covid-19 shows that state control wouldn't have done much to prevent global devastation, and that state control can itself cause the devastation. We need technological countermeasures such as one week vaccine development and deployment or transition to more separate economic spheres with permanent and complete travel bans and highly controlled trade between countries or geographic regions.

Re: Project Covalence

#12

Post by memexy »

akiselev wrote: post #10
memexy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked at the site > Participate in a clinical trial at no cost to you or your health insurance. Why would health insurance be involved when running medical trials and why would it cost anything? The pitch doesn't make sense to me. I always assumed medical trials were free for the participants. No idea who their target demographic is which makes me suspicious already.

The FDA forbids charging for any medication or medical device that isn't approved so medical trials are free by definition, but the Affordable Care Act requires health insurers to cover routine cost of care incurred during qualified trials. In a Phase I trial under medical supervision, for example, might not cost the patient's insurance anything but a Phase 3 trial for chemotherapy might cost a ton just to deal with…

Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation. I had a narrow view of what "trial" meant. So it sounds like as soon as approved treatments are involved then insurance gets involved.

Re: Project Covalence

#13

Post by [deleted] »

hairytrog wrote: post #11

It is now clear that Covid-19 is not as dangerous as was thought and hyped by media and governments worldwide, and that the prescribed shutdown cure has been and will be much worse than the disease itself. Please see ( https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ ) for a pretty clear summary or follow Aaron Ginn. Covid-19 vaccine development is nearly useless at this point. That said, we need countermeasures and res…

[deleted]

Re: Project Covalence

#14

Post by dzink »

Why set up a separate brand to funnel COVID trial business to TrialSpark? From their own site, TrialSpark is a VC-backed company which primarily runs trials for major drug companies to recruit more patients with painful chronic conditions (like Astma, COPD, Diabetes, inflammatory, skin problems etc, but not cancer)for drug studies. The highly profitable medical areas are clearly attractive for Pfizer, but the sales pitch of TrialSpark is to identify high cluster areas of a disease in small communities, recruit community doctors and incentivize them to attract patients to drug studies with 1.9x higher than usual conversion rate.

So why the separate brand?

Re: Project Covalence

#15

Post by nostromo »

hairytrog wrote: post #11

It is now clear that Covid-19 is not as dangerous as was thought and hyped by media and governments worldwide, and that the prescribed shutdown cure has been and will be much worse than the disease itself. Please see ( https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ ) for a pretty clear summary or follow Aaron Ginn. Covid-19 vaccine development is nearly useless at this point. That said, we need countermeasures and res…

Just today I was reading that vaccinations in many countries were stopped to prevent Covid-19 transmission, and now children are starting to die.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/health/coronavirus-vaccin...

Re: Project Covalence

#16

Post by ryanseys »

sudhirj wrote: post #4
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #3

Hmm, sounds more like a PR statement rather than the usual (insightful) posts that Sam writes. Anyway... > Project Covalence’s platform, powered by TrialSpark, is uniquely optimized to support COVID-19 trials, which are ideally run in community settings or at the patient’s home to reduce the burden placed on hospitals and health systems. What's a "platform" in this case? I'd love to read simpler words. Is it a... pie…

> supports trial execution, 21 CFR Part 11 compliant remote data collection, telemedicine, biostatistics, sample kits for at-home specimen collection, and protocol writing. Does that not make sense to people in this field?

Depends what you mean. I'm a software engineer working on clinical study software and it makes sense to me. Though, I'm sure there are plenty of problem spaces that I don't work in whose jargon wouldn't make sense to me.

Here's a brief breakdown of the various terms though:

> trial execution

The act of running the clinical study.

> 21 CFR Part 11 compliant remote data collection

21 CFR Part 11 compliance is a set of standards that must be adhered to when running clinical studies. To be compliant means you meet these standards and people or businesses that want to run studies can be sure that you're following the rules.

> Telemedicine

Medical visits typically done over video chat / phone calls or other digital means as opposed to going physically somewhere to be tested or evaluated.

> Biostatistics

Data science + medical data

> Sample kits for at-home specimen collection

Like 23&Me but for collecting other stuff from people at their homes. E.g. stool samples, COVID-19 swabs, etc. You mail the participant a kit, they collect their sample, mail it back to you, you process the sample, and that informs the data in your study.

> Protocol writing

Writing and codifying the procedure of how the clinical study will be run. Covers everything from enrollment, inclusion / exclusion criteria for the study, study running, and study closing and archiving.

Re: Project Covalence

#17

Post by shoyer »

hairytrog wrote: post #11

It is now clear that Covid-19 is not as dangerous as was thought and hyped by media and governments worldwide, and that the prescribed shutdown cure has been and will be much worse than the disease itself. Please see ( https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/ ) for a pretty clear summary or follow Aaron Ginn. Covid-19 vaccine development is nearly useless at this point. That said, we need countermeasures and res…

This is actively dangerous misinformation.

In places where the pandemic is not under control, there have been vast numbers of excess deaths: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...

We are still far from the peak in most parts of the world.

New York City has a population about 8 million, with 24,000 [1] excess deaths and an antibody positive rate of about 20% [2]. Do you really think it would be acceptable to let another 50,000 people in New York die (0.6% of the population) to reach herd immunity?

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-11/new-york-... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/20/antibody-testing-shows-coron...

Re: Project Covalence

#18

Post by Shank »

jxramos wrote: post #5

I've actually been wondering as covid19 winds down and people's lived experiences no longer perceive it as the doom and gloom threat it once held sway with, if given that perception whether the market rewards will continue to stand and attract massive investments in pursuit of a vaccine where the rewards may not outweigh the risks. I would think that would be a pretty strong signal that covid is not as large a risk i…

> I've actually been wondering as covid19 winds down and people's lived experiences no longer perceive it as the doom and gloom threat it once held sway with, if given that perception whether the market rewards will continue to stand and attract massive investments in pursuit of a vaccine where the rewards may not outweigh the risks.

This is an extremely long (56 word) and complex sentence. I fear that your point may be lost because of its length. Do you mind restating your thesis?

Re: Project Covalence

#19

Post by cinntaile »

jxramos wrote: post #5

I've actually been wondering as covid19 winds down and people's lived experiences no longer perceive it as the doom and gloom threat it once held sway with, if given that perception whether the market rewards will continue to stand and attract massive investments in pursuit of a vaccine where the rewards may not outweigh the risks. I would think that would be a pretty strong signal that covid is not as large a risk i…

Most of the big pharma companies are developing a vaccine. [0] The ones that aren't specifically mentioned by name are probably funding some of the smaller biotech companies instead.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccine

Re: Project Covalence

#20

Post by curryst »

memexy wrote: post #9
type0 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would health insurance be involved when running medical trials and why would it cost anything? To cover for the possible adverse effects

Yes. That's not my question. Are you saying drug trials don't cover such costs and that this is standard? Because that's the pitch the company is making and it sounds odd > We put the patient in the driver’s seat before, during, and after a trial. Because it’s not just doctors who help build a healthier future. It’s patients. And it’s time to do right by them. It sounds like they're saying, "patients are treated very…

If they did, there's always going to be a debate over whether something was caused by the trial. You get a rash and have to go see a dermatologist, was it a result of the trial or unrelated? Or more seriously, you develop cancer. Was it from the trial, or from an unrelated issue? Other people might show symptoms, but it would still take time you don't have for them to sort out whether other participants have cancer, and whether that's a result of the trial or if they just had a higher than average number of people with risk factors.
Post reply on HN