Between 1946 and 1989 the Common Cold Research Unit (CCRU) in the UK spent nearly 50 years and a lot of money investigating the causes, possible cures and vaccines for the Common Cold and Influenza. It used volunteers whom it infected with various viruses and tried treatments and vaccines. During its time it produced 1006 published papers and in 1965 discovered the Human coronaviruses responsible for 10% of Colds - but it never found a cure/treatment or safe, effective vaccines and gave up and closed down.
Are we to believe that suddenly the current celebrated coronavirus - which operates and produces the same symptoms as the Common Cold, except for in 99.5% of those infected much milder - and is distinguished from some other coronaviruses by being rather better at cell invasion, has a treatment regime of readily and long available drugs? If so isn’t it the case that if they work on this coronavirus they should work on the others, and why not all the other respiratory viruses whose route and method of infection and reproduction by cell invasion is the same?
We seem to be caught in a trap, the trap of faux-novelty, that THIS virus is an organism completely new in the Universe - it’s a virus Jim but not as we know it - so unlike any other, the only virus on Earth, causing the only disease on Earth, upon which ‘novel’ vaccines, ‘novel’ treatments, ‘novel’ mask use, ‘novel’ mass, quasi-isolation of healthy people can work, whereas they have failed or don’t work on everything else.
We could consider perhaps that the supposed treatments don’t work on THIS coronavirus for all the same reasons they don’t work on all the other coronavirus and respiratory viral infections. A proper blinded, comparative study using volunteers - why not? the CCRU did that and this is not a fatal virus, no more so than others in the most susceptible - is the only way to decide whether we have at long last discovered a cure for the Common Cold.
Meanwhile I’ll stick with hot toddy and feeling sorry for myself during the 5 days coming, 5 days going period normal for these viruses and keep the chemicals out of my body.
This virus was different because it was engineered in a lab with "gain of function" enhancements. I think this is one factor in the extraordinary response to Covid.
If Covid had been purely natural, I don't think governments would have been as determined to stop it - they would have recognized sooner the futility of stopping a natural, biological germ.
The so-called gain of function enhanced the ability of the virus to penetrate cells… an ability other virus have too although not so agressive. If a vaccine can stop it, why can it not stop the other viruses whose same function is not so agressive - would they not be easier to stop?
We are back to: this is NOT a novel virus in the sense there is nothing else like it. It is a coronavirus with an enhanced characteristic the others have. It is ‘novel’ in the same way every mutation of an organism is, in the same way every Human baby is novel.
As for Government behaviour - whether Manmade or natural, this was irrational and evil. It produced disease that in most cases was so mild people didn’t know they had it - giving rise to the asymptomatic spread myth - and in nearly all other cases much less severe than a Cold.
Anyway didn’t Governments for two years deny it was Manmade?
Public response was indeed irrational. CDC did not give policy makers and individuals the information needed for the most cost effective measures to reduce the spread and FDA could have made creation and rollout of the vaccines more rapid. This did indeed cause both unnecessary deaths and unnecessary lost of economic value. Still, I do not think the indictment is strengthened by calling it "evil."
a) I do not think COVID was a designed creation, even if it turns out it escaped from the Wuhan laboratory. b) I do not see why believing it to be a designed virus would have affected the hugely differing public responses to it.
> Are we to believe [COVID, which is really just a cold virus] has a treatment regime of readily and long available drugs?
It would not be shocking if some of these treatments did in fact have some benefit against the common cold. That benefit unlikely to be worth much against a disease that the immune system already has a bead on; though they might work on particularly at-risk patients.
It's possible that such treatments have been sitting under unremarkable rocks all this time, undiscoverable until COVID got people to look under thousands of rocks at random.
They can’t even ‘target’ what they allegedly are supposed to.
And they indeed are, mRNA tech has been around for years so why haven’t they been targeting the other coronavirus, rhinovirus, adenovirus, influenza and parainfluenza virus?
Even the mRNA vaccine trials with 80k people between them could not show a mortality benefit. The same number of people died in the vaccine arm as the control arm* despite the vaccine preventing thousands of infections. If this can’t show a mortality benefit, the effect of Covid on mortality must be pretty small and there would be almost no way to show a benefit for any treatment with even a large effect size, except with a truly massive RCT.
(It is interesting to ask why we choose to ignore some very large RCTs showing no mortality benefit and instead just assume a benefit anyway (eg the vaccine), and yet why we choose to accept other much smaller RCTs showing no benefit as infallible (eg anything other than the vaccine)...)
How does everyone feel about reports that the new version of the mRNA vaccine was tested on eight mice? Is that a sufficient random-controlled trial? It's certainly not a human trial.
Hmm, if this is intended as a response to my comment about a "good Hayakean reason" not to squish heterdox doctors, then I certainly didn't make my argument clear.
The point is not that we (society) should weigh the evidence from a clinician higher than an RCT. The point is that we (society) don't always need to. Unless there's some reason to believe that clinician's protocol is actively dangerous, then the doctor and the patients can be left alone do what they find works works for them - even if it is just a fluke.
It's a complex world, and only a tiny fraction of the truths about the world are visible to science, measurable by a standard good enough to form a consensus opinion.
The distinguishing feature of Covid is it is a mild disease. So mild that it was circulating for months in the 2nd half of 2019 and no one noticed. Today, Covid is noticed only due to ongoing testing.
The real pandemic was social awareness and the masking, testing and mandate protocols. The real health crisis was the government and media scaring people to death and care-workers adopting destructive treatment protocols, first of these telling sick people to do nothing until they couldn't breathe, then come to the hospital. How many people suffered badly from Covid because they isolated in misery with no care at all?
So how do you prove the efficacy of any treatment for a disease that 9995 out of 10000 survive? How do you do this when the normal mortality rate is the same, or greater? It is very difficult which is why the standards of efficacy for the jabs did not use mortality as an endpoint!
I think therapies for Covid are helpful, for the simple fact that treating symptoms is sensible. If Covid elevates the risk of clotting than blood thinners are helpful. If Covid creates inflammation in the lungs than a steroid should help. If the virus propagates and attacks more cells than an anti-viral should help. This is common sense
How much do therapies help? I don't know. But while I would never claim chicken soup cures a cold, I know chicken soup makes getting through a cold easier. Why treatments for Covid got smeared informs me our society lacks common sense, and our public health officials have a skewed moral compass.
The issue of controlling for co-morbidities is quite correct (Would also need to control for vaccinations/previous illness).
I do not see why with frequent testing "infection" could not also be useful. The economic cost of COVID are not well measured by deaths. And ultimately we want information on prevention treatments to reduce costs (including costs of sub-optimum preventions and treatments),
Testing that results in removing workers and students from their jobs and education creates a great economic and social cost with an imaginary benefit.
Between 1946 and 1989 the Common Cold Research Unit (CCRU) in the UK spent nearly 50 years and a lot of money investigating the causes, possible cures and vaccines for the Common Cold and Influenza. It used volunteers whom it infected with various viruses and tried treatments and vaccines. During its time it produced 1006 published papers and in 1965 discovered the Human coronaviruses responsible for 10% of Colds - but it never found a cure/treatment or safe, effective vaccines and gave up and closed down.
Are we to believe that suddenly the current celebrated coronavirus - which operates and produces the same symptoms as the Common Cold, except for in 99.5% of those infected much milder - and is distinguished from some other coronaviruses by being rather better at cell invasion, has a treatment regime of readily and long available drugs? If so isn’t it the case that if they work on this coronavirus they should work on the others, and why not all the other respiratory viruses whose route and method of infection and reproduction by cell invasion is the same?
We seem to be caught in a trap, the trap of faux-novelty, that THIS virus is an organism completely new in the Universe - it’s a virus Jim but not as we know it - so unlike any other, the only virus on Earth, causing the only disease on Earth, upon which ‘novel’ vaccines, ‘novel’ treatments, ‘novel’ mask use, ‘novel’ mass, quasi-isolation of healthy people can work, whereas they have failed or don’t work on everything else.
We could consider perhaps that the supposed treatments don’t work on THIS coronavirus for all the same reasons they don’t work on all the other coronavirus and respiratory viral infections. A proper blinded, comparative study using volunteers - why not? the CCRU did that and this is not a fatal virus, no more so than others in the most susceptible - is the only way to decide whether we have at long last discovered a cure for the Common Cold.
Meanwhile I’ll stick with hot toddy and feeling sorry for myself during the 5 days coming, 5 days going period normal for these viruses and keep the chemicals out of my body.
This virus was different because it was engineered in a lab with "gain of function" enhancements. I think this is one factor in the extraordinary response to Covid.
If Covid had been purely natural, I don't think governments would have been as determined to stop it - they would have recognized sooner the futility of stopping a natural, biological germ.
The so-called gain of function enhanced the ability of the virus to penetrate cells… an ability other virus have too although not so agressive. If a vaccine can stop it, why can it not stop the other viruses whose same function is not so agressive - would they not be easier to stop?
We are back to: this is NOT a novel virus in the sense there is nothing else like it. It is a coronavirus with an enhanced characteristic the others have. It is ‘novel’ in the same way every mutation of an organism is, in the same way every Human baby is novel.
As for Government behaviour - whether Manmade or natural, this was irrational and evil. It produced disease that in most cases was so mild people didn’t know they had it - giving rise to the asymptomatic spread myth - and in nearly all other cases much less severe than a Cold.
Anyway didn’t Governments for two years deny it was Manmade?
Public response was indeed irrational. CDC did not give policy makers and individuals the information needed for the most cost effective measures to reduce the spread and FDA could have made creation and rollout of the vaccines more rapid. This did indeed cause both unnecessary deaths and unnecessary lost of economic value. Still, I do not think the indictment is strengthened by calling it "evil."
a) I do not think COVID was a designed creation, even if it turns out it escaped from the Wuhan laboratory. b) I do not see why believing it to be a designed virus would have affected the hugely differing public responses to it.
> Are we to believe [COVID, which is really just a cold virus] has a treatment regime of readily and long available drugs?
It would not be shocking if some of these treatments did in fact have some benefit against the common cold. That benefit unlikely to be worth much against a disease that the immune system already has a bead on; though they might work on particularly at-risk patients.
It's possible that such treatments have been sitting under unremarkable rocks all this time, undiscoverable until COVID got people to look under thousands of rocks at random.
Actually, with the ability to micro target mRNA vaccines, this time it may be different.
They can’t even ‘target’ what they allegedly are supposed to.
And they indeed are, mRNA tech has been around for years so why haven’t they been targeting the other coronavirus, rhinovirus, adenovirus, influenza and parainfluenza virus?
You are wasting your time, John.
Yes, you are of course right. As the man said, there are none so blind as those who cannot see.
Becasue, I suppose, they do not use CBA to prioritize vaccine research.
Even the mRNA vaccine trials with 80k people between them could not show a mortality benefit. The same number of people died in the vaccine arm as the control arm* despite the vaccine preventing thousands of infections. If this can’t show a mortality benefit, the effect of Covid on mortality must be pretty small and there would be almost no way to show a benefit for any treatment with even a large effect size, except with a truly massive RCT.
(It is interesting to ask why we choose to ignore some very large RCTs showing no mortality benefit and instead just assume a benefit anyway (eg the vaccine), and yet why we choose to accept other much smaller RCTs showing no benefit as infallible (eg anything other than the vaccine)...)
*eg for Pfizer see table s4 here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2021/07/28/2021.07.28.21261159/DC1/embed/media-1.pdf?download=true
How does everyone feel about reports that the new version of the mRNA vaccine was tested on eight mice? Is that a sufficient random-controlled trial? It's certainly not a human trial.
Hmm, if this is intended as a response to my comment about a "good Hayakean reason" not to squish heterdox doctors, then I certainly didn't make my argument clear.
The point is not that we (society) should weigh the evidence from a clinician higher than an RCT. The point is that we (society) don't always need to. Unless there's some reason to believe that clinician's protocol is actively dangerous, then the doctor and the patients can be left alone do what they find works works for them - even if it is just a fluke.
It's a complex world, and only a tiny fraction of the truths about the world are visible to science, measurable by a standard good enough to form a consensus opinion.
The distinguishing feature of Covid is it is a mild disease. So mild that it was circulating for months in the 2nd half of 2019 and no one noticed. Today, Covid is noticed only due to ongoing testing.
The real pandemic was social awareness and the masking, testing and mandate protocols. The real health crisis was the government and media scaring people to death and care-workers adopting destructive treatment protocols, first of these telling sick people to do nothing until they couldn't breathe, then come to the hospital. How many people suffered badly from Covid because they isolated in misery with no care at all?
So how do you prove the efficacy of any treatment for a disease that 9995 out of 10000 survive? How do you do this when the normal mortality rate is the same, or greater? It is very difficult which is why the standards of efficacy for the jabs did not use mortality as an endpoint!
I think therapies for Covid are helpful, for the simple fact that treating symptoms is sensible. If Covid elevates the risk of clotting than blood thinners are helpful. If Covid creates inflammation in the lungs than a steroid should help. If the virus propagates and attacks more cells than an anti-viral should help. This is common sense
How much do therapies help? I don't know. But while I would never claim chicken soup cures a cold, I know chicken soup makes getting through a cold easier. Why treatments for Covid got smeared informs me our society lacks common sense, and our public health officials have a skewed moral compass.
The issue of controlling for co-morbidities is quite correct (Would also need to control for vaccinations/previous illness).
I do not see why with frequent testing "infection" could not also be useful. The economic cost of COVID are not well measured by deaths. And ultimately we want information on prevention treatments to reduce costs (including costs of sub-optimum preventions and treatments),
Testing that results in removing workers and students from their jobs and education creates a great economic and social cost with an imaginary benefit.
Agree. I was referring to testing in the context of a RCT to be able to detect infections, not just deaths.
Testing can be used to design less restrictive protocols. Test to stay rather than close schools and workplaces completely.