Archive for the 'Medical' Category

I’ve noticed that the video I embedded in this post is no longer up at YouTube.  Really folks, we’ve going to have to find another medium or have to rely on YouTube and Google.

So at Zerohedge one of the commenters noted that it has been uploaded again (or perhaps the URL has changed).  This happened as well to another video I embedded from Joshua Philipp of Epoch Times.  It had received more than 5 million views, and then suddenly it disappeared.  I hunted for it again and the URL had changed.  Not by chance, I suppose.

Here they are again, both of them. They’ll be up until Google takes these new uploads off of YouTube. The same thing happened with the video of George Soros confessing that he helped the Nazis round up Jews and other enemies of the state and had no regrets for his participation (until enough users kept uploading the video until YouTube eventually gave up). If you keep the raw source, you can upload it once a day if you want.

Two additional points needs to be made about the smart video the two doctors made in the video embedded in the last post.

First, let’s make sure everyone understands how this is all going to go down.  Not even the professional bureaucratic medical community made the claims early on that a lockdown, social distancing, use of PPEs, and all of the other onerous controls they have gotten the American people to adopt, would change one iota the total number of people who were exposed to Covid-19.  Because if they had made that claim, they would have been lying.

Even if no one attributes anything nefarious to their goals (I think that’s a very gracious assumption), the goal from the very beginning was merely to change the rate at which the virus propagates through society in order to prevent burdening the health care system beyond its capabilities.  If you believe that your social distancing and use of PPE is going to prevent forever your being exposed to this and other viruses, you don’t understand how this works.

You stop by the gas station to fuel with petrol.  You touch the nozzle handle.  You make contact with various pathogens.  If you use napkins to touch the nozzle handle, you swipe your card in a reader that has pathogens deposited on it.  You stop in at Lowes or Home Despot to pick up something related to plumbing, or air filters.  You are around two hundred other people, many of whom have been exposed to Coronavirus.  You pick up a part to examine it to see if it fits your needs.  You touch pathogens.  Even if you’re wearing gloves, you swipe your card in a reader that has pathogens.

If you use cash to prevent having to touch the card reader, that cash has been handled by people who have been exposed to Coronavirus.  If the store gives you the part because you complain about something or other, you are still breathing the air around you, much of which is recycled air from people who have been exposed to Coronavirus.

The delivery man who drops off the Amazon package leaves a box on your doorstep, and he has been exposed to Coronavirus.  Listen carefully.  Unless you live in the deepest part of Idaho and never visit the doctor or dentist, never have to order packages, grow your own food and slaughter your own meat, never go to the post office, and never receive mail, you are going to be exposed to Coronavirus.  Many millions of people have already been exposed.

The second point pertains to number of deaths (especially when compared to number of deaths from flu or any other pathogen).  In order for that ratio to mean anything, you must know the numerator and denominator.  The denominator is number of people who have been exposed.  We know that it’s a lot (millions), but the value is not reliably accurate.

The numerator is a complete joke.  Doctors never logged number of patients who died with flu, or strep, or any other pathogen, if in fact it wasn’t the direct cause of death.  Comparison of these ratios for Coronavirus and any other pathogen, you must formulate very strict definitions and boundary conditions for your study.  Those very strict boundary conditions do not obtain.

One final thought about this.  Recall from the previous video that the doctors have talked to colleagues who were pressured to find Covid-19 the cause of death?  I discussed this with my daughter a day or two ago.  Sure enough, where she works, “Presumed Covid-19 Diagnosis” is a formal diagnosis that can now be selected.

Consider that: Presumed Covid-19 Diagnosis.

As a practicing engineer, do you think I’d be able to use that summary statement on calculations rather than actually completing the work?  “Presumed accurate and error-free calculation.”

Finally, from reader BRVTVS, these two papers show promise with the use of Hydroxychloroquine.

preprints202004.0381.v1.

2020.04.15 journal manuscript final.

You can read them at your leisure.  In both papers the authors recommend the use of Hydroxychloroquine and also find it safe.  It’s safe if you administer it to patients under the right conditions – we’ve known for a long time not to give it to patients with heart conditions.

And yet … the bureaucracy still opposes this safe and effective therapeutic, favoring instead forced ventilation.  Note that nearly 90% of patients in New York who were put on ventilators died.

That’s your medical establishment.  This is one of professional medicine’s darkest hours, and they aren’t doing their reputation any favors with the public.

Concerning Covid-19: All Of Your Models Are Wrong

Concerning Covid-19: All Of Your Models Are Wrong, Part II

Concerning Covid-19: All Of Your Models Are Wrong, Part III

Concerning Covid-19: All Of Your Models Are Wrong, Part IV

Concerning Covid-19: All Of Your Models Are Wrong, Part V

Prior:

All Of Your Models Are Wrong

All Of Your Models Are Wrong, Part II

All Of Your Models Are Wrong, Part III

All Of Your Models Are Wrong, Part IV

News from New York.

New York may have 13.9% of its population infected with coronavirus, meaning 2.7 million residents could have had the virus, preliminary state results Thursday showed.

[ … ]

Started last Sunday, the state did a random selection of 3,000 people at various locations across the state, including at grocery stores and big-box stores, to help understand who has built up an immunity to the virus …

This can be added to the more than half a million in LA plus one large urban area in Massachusetts.

PJM.

The study itself acknowledges that “hydroxychloroquine, with or without azithromycin, was more likely to be prescribed to patients with more severe disease.” In such a small study that isn’t representative of the entire population, this would likely impact the results. For starters, there is a direct correlation between advanced age and the severity of side effects. If more severe cases were more likely to be prescribed the drug, it’s possible that these patients were more likely to be fatal cases regardless of the treatment, and perhaps the drugs weren’t administered early enough to alleviate the symptoms to result in recovery. “The findings should not be viewed as definitive because the analysis doesn’t adjust for patients’ clinical status and showed that hydroxychloroquine alone was provided to VA’s sickest COVID-19 patients, many times as a last resort,” a spokeswoman for the Department of Veterans Affairs told Fox News.

That’s enough to do it for me.  The claim that this therapeutic is helpful hasn’t been made in a vacuum.  The claim is that it is helpful when administered early.  It’s ridiculous that the researchers can’t seem to build the proper boundary conditions for the study.

Look, I’m not personally and emotionally committed to this therapeutic.  But we still don’t have evidence that it doesn’t work – while we do have evidence that it does work.

If it does, then prove it with studies with the right boundary conditions.  If it doesn’t, prove it with studies with the right boundary conditions and then move on to something that shows more promise.

NYT.

To this consideration you can add a large urban area in Massachusetts and Los Angeles, where it is estimated that more than a total of half a million people have already been infected with Coronavirus in just three urban areas.