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JohnLocke

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Posts posted by JohnLocke

  1. 12 hours ago, Larry T. Spider said:
    12 hours ago, Larry T. Spider said:

    Gsoda: chromebooks mostly. Should be able to start delivery by the end of August but the start date is the 18th. These are the issues that we are working though. Remember that TEA is stating that every parent that wants in person instruction will get it once we are required to go back. The current max of virtual is 4 weeks, with a 4 week add on. Obviously that could change based on the document that came out yesterday. 

    How do we fill a classroom with students but maintain 6 feet of social distancing? 

    How do we do arrival procedures that allows teachers to be in their room to welcome students but enough staff to socially distance and temp check 500+ kids?

    How do teachers get a duty free lunch and conference period with everything being done in the classroom?

    Basically nobody is willing to be a substitute teacher right now. What do we do when teachers are out?

    If we have too many teachers that meet the requirements to stay at home and want to, what are we doing with the kids that show up?

    How do we work with a person that is showing symptoms of covid without them going to the health room, where the most medically fragile students get treatment?

    What do we do with students when their teacher tests positive or has had direct contact with somebody that has? Who teaches them?

    Socially distancing on a bus? Lulz. 

    How many teachers will quit? One AISD school had 5 quit last week. 

    Passing periods for middle/high school?

    Obviously the list goes on and on. 

    The logistics of opening are a nightmare. I don't think there are any real villains here, but those who are insisting we open up should answer these questions. They just haven't thought it through.  I'd like to see us open, but it's just not that simple.  Opening where it is just teachers babysitting your kid doing online work while trying to teach online themselves is just not a good option, but it appears to be where we are headed.

    • Like 1
  2. 8 hours ago, triplehorn said:

    This is damn horrific - study shows almost 8 of 10 infected with covid have persisting cardiac abnormalities irrespective of health status or severity of illness.

    JAMA: Outcomes of Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance Imaging in Patients Recently Recovered From Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)
     

    - 78% of Covid-19 patients had abnormal cardiac markers “independent of preexisting conditions, severity [illness]"

    -Cardiac function remains impaired in most recovered patients, even middle aged people.

    -Lymphocytes can invade the heart, causing edema and fibrosis.  Cardiac fibrosis.

    -Persisting impaired cardiac function nearly as likely in outpatient cases as hospital cases.

     

     

    Well, that's extra horrifying. Thanks for spoiling my day.

    _6311801c-9253-11e9-af8a-d24c1464451a.jp

    spider eating a possum, in case you were wondering.

  3. 5 hours ago, triplehorn said:

    I want to follow up on your Risch interview.  This morning the Yale prof had an op-ed published in NewsweekThe Key to Defeating COVID-19 Already Exists. We Need to Start Using It

    Risch makes a reference to and explains what was recently observed in Switzerland.  France Soir did a story on this .  The graphic explains it pretty clearly:

    20200713_fs_hcq_preuve_final_sw_1.jpg

     

    On big pharma (this case in particular, Gilead😞

    "Now primarily a marketing machine to sell drugs of dubious benefit, this industry uses its wealth and power to co-opt every institution that might stand in its way, including the U.S. Congress, the Food and Drug Administration, academic medical centers, and the medical profession itself."

    - Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the NEJM, The Truth About the Drug Companies

     

    It's good that a guy like Dr. Risch is speaking out; it will have an effect.  I'd hope they fast-tract some studies on Ivermectin.  Those Broward results were really good.

  4. 3 hours ago, triplehorn said:

     

    Your first criticism of the study should be 

     

    There's a LOT of positive studies out: https://c19study.com/   - site is updated with new studies regularly as they become available.  Negative studies are listed as well.

     

    Really helpful conversation about safety, why a drug is OTC or not, off-label prescribing and what it means, and how the invisible hand of business and politics on health care decisions between physicians and patients in this pandemic are making matters much worse.  People are being denied a treatment that many studies show works, that over 2 dozen nations are widely employing with apparent major benefit, all when health side effects are negligible.  This ER doc gets it:

     

     

     

    Yeah, I don't get why people are so closed minded about this. Good video, thanks. It's not just the fringe medical community on this. Here's a Yale epidemiologist saying widespread use could save tens of thousands of lives in the U.S.: https://www.foxnews.com/media/hydroxychloroquine-could-save-lives-ingraham-yale-professor

    We need something better, but HCQ is safe, and appears to be the best we've got right now to take on an outpatient basis.

     

     

  5. Conversation in Chinese construction company board room:

    "We can't meet our schedule because we can't get enough cement for the concrete!"

    "We can meet our schedule and save millions if we use 10% clay in place of cement!!"

    "That's a great plan...nobody will every know..........unless.........well, we don't have time to worry about that"

     

    • Like 4
  6. 46 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    Empiricism is dead. 

    On 7/16/2020 at 11:08 PM, Anastasis said:

    Maybe we finally move on...

    Early intervention, North America-based, HCQ RCT, writing on the wall for a while, finally hits the press. 

    I admit to a bias here. I'd like to believe there is a low cost, safe, readily available drug that I can take to help keep me out of the hospital if I get covid.  However, I do live in reality, and if HCQ doesn't help, so be it.  But I'm tired of people dismissing it based on studies that appear to be designed to fail.

  7. 16 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

    Maybe the effect is actually attributable to the Zn supplementation, and has nothing to do with HCQ.

    Changing endpoints mid stream would typically make me throw the study in the garbage, but in the case of a study rolled out during early phase of a global pandemic I'll let it slide. The sample size justification makes sense. 

    That's not how this works. 

    Granted, it failed to show the effectiveness of HCQ, but it did not prove that it doesn't work either. It isn't being reported that more studies are needed to draw conclusions. It is being reported that it HCQ isn't effective. It did NOT show that.  You can't design a study that will give you statistically insignificant results, and then claim you have proven something. The last criticism I have of this study is that it didn't go past 14 days.

    As for Zinc, the claim is that HCQ opens up pathways to the cell, and makes it more effective. A totally different study would be needed to prove or disprove that.  That's really the starting point. Not a study that uses HCQ by itself.

     

  8. 11 hours ago, Anastasis said:

    If you are referring to the data in ST2, I don't think that you are reading it right.  The ~20% is the relative between-group difference (HCQ v PBO) among those not taking zinc.  The result favored HCQ over PBO among those not taking Zn (0.46 absolute difference on a 10 pt visual analog symptom severity scale).  The suggestion here is that NOT taking Zn was associated with greater level of reduction in symptom severity associated with HCQ, relative to PBO. Among those taking HCQ, there does not appear to be any effect associated with Zn (interaction term NS, but numerically favors no Zn). Same for Vit C (except the interaction term is statistically significant). You shouldn't read too much into these subgroup analyses though, as they break randomization and are unadjusted. 

     

    As far as Zinc goes generally, I am a fan.  I take a supplement every day (chelated Zn picolinate) and have the whole family taking Zicam lozenges and spray. 

    Thanks,  I get it now.  After a quick read through, here's the problems I see with the study. First, already mentioned,  no zinc with the hydroxychloriquine. Everyone claiming good results with hydroxychloriquine gives it with zinc, and a very specific form.  Second, they started the study with the intent of measuring hospitalizations and deaths.  The good news was that the hospitalization rate was much lower than expected, but it was so low that the sample size was too low to give statistically significant results. They calculated they needed a sample size of 6000 people to give valid results but they had fewer than 500.  So they switched midstream to the much more subjective measure of overall symptom severity.  In those taking hydroxychloriquine, they had 4 hospitalizations and 1 death. In those taking the placebo, they had 10 hospitalizations, (2 of which were not Covid) and 1 death.  So taking hydroxychloriquine cut the hospitalization rate in half, but the sample size was too small to have statistical significance.   A few tantalizing clues that hydroxychloriquine helped those that need it most-the biggest reduction in symptom severity occurred in those over 50, but that was only 23% of the participants-too few to draw conclusions.  I don't see this study disproves the effectiveness of taking hydroxychloriquine early; it just highlights the need for a bigger study with more participants who are at higher risk for hospitalization.  The headline could have been "Study shows 50% reduction in hospitalizations for those taking HQC"  or "No statistical significance in hospitalization and death rate for those taking HQC"  Both would have been technically correct.

  9. 10 hours ago, Anastasis said:

    Additional post hoc analyses showed that self-reported use of zinc or vitamin C in addition to hydroxychloroquine did not improve symptoms over use of hydroxychloroquine alone (Supplement Table 2).

    Only 63 people took zinc with hydroxychloroquine and 53 took it without.  What we don't know is what kind they took. 220 mg Zinc sulfate is what I have seen recommended; I doubt many took that.  If I read this right, those that did not take zinc reported increased severity of symptoms by 20%.  For a frame of reference that's about the difference between the 18-35 age group vs. the over 50 age group. Vitamin C had an even bigger effect. 

    It's frustrating to me that all of these studies just seem designed to not really test what some doctors are touting.  Hydroxychoroquine, zinc,  & Vitamin C.  It just seems to me that you need to do something before you arrive at the hospital, because at that point, a good number of people are screwed.  At the least, I don't see any downside to that regimen. 

     

  10. 1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

    Maybe we finally move on...

    Early intervention, North America-based, HCQ RCT, writing on the wall for a while, finally hits the press. 

    https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-4207

    EdEY-74XoAADC8W?format=png&name=medium

     

    Abstract

    Background:

    No effective oral therapy exists for early coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

    Objective:

    To investigate whether hydroxychloroquine could reduce COVID-19 severity in adult outpatients.

    Design:

    Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted from 22 March through 20 May 2020. (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04308668)

    Setting:

    Internet-based trial across the United States and Canada (40 states and 3 provinces).

    Participants:

    Symptomatic, nonhospitalized adults with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 or probable COVID-19 and high-risk exposure within 4 days of symptom onset.

    Intervention:

    Oral hydroxychloroquine (800 mg once, followed by 600 mg in 6 to 8 hours, then 600 mg daily for 4 more days) or masked placebo.

    Measures: Symptoms and severity at baseline and then at days 3, 5, 10, and 14 using a 10-point visual analogue scale. The primary end point was change in overall symptom severity over 14 days.

    Results:

    Of 491 patients randomly assigned to a group, 423 contributed primary end point data. Of these, 341 (81%) had laboratory-confirmed infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) or epidemiologically linked exposure to a person with laboratory-confirmed infection; 56% (236 of 423) were enrolled within 1 day of symptoms starting. Change in symptom severity over 14 days did not differ between the hydroxychloroquine and placebo groups (difference in symptom severity: relative, 12%; absolute, −0.27 points [95% CI, −0.61 to 0.07 points]; P = 0.117). At 14 days, 24% (49 of 201) of participants receiving hydroxychloroquine had ongoing symptoms compared with 30% (59 of 194) receiving placebo (P = 0.21). Medication adverse effects occurred in 43% (92 of 212) of participants receiving hydroxychloroquine versus 22% (46 of 211) receiving placebo (P < 0.001). With placebo, 10 hospitalizations occurred (2 non–COVID-19–related), including 1 hospitalized death. With hydroxychloroquine, 4 hospitalizations occurred plus 1 nonhospitalized death (P = 0.29).

    Limitations:

    Only 58% of participants received SARS-CoV-2 testing because of severe U.S. testing shortages.

    Conclusion:

    Hydroxychloroquine did not substantially reduce symptom severity in outpatients with early, mild COVID-19.

    The doctors that swear by hydroxychloroquine say that it acts in concert with zinc.   So why no zinc in this study?

    • Like 1
  11. 1 hour ago, Chet Steadman said:

    I know a lot (and perhaps most?) were likely discussing this going back several months, but I am truly shocked so many administrators and districts seemingly just started this planning-for-contingency process within the last few weeks instead of way back in March/April.  

    At the very least, some of the better alternatives could have been floated out to the general public sooner so both administrators and parents could provide feedback and start planning accordingly. 

    What a mess this has become. 

    They have been planning since May at least.  The reason it seems like they haven't is just nobody has a solution that includes social distancing and contact tracing that will make anyone happy.  We've been repeatedly told by "experts" that the most risk is from being in a crowded indoor space for long periods of time i.e., a classroom. Is it any wonder teachers are worried?  Oversimplifying, It just kind of boils down to it's business as usual,  or you go virtual.  When you try to combine social distancing, contact tracing,  daily well checks,  and a significant number of teachers who are very concerned about putting themselves at risk, the logistics just get overwhelming, and you realize you will just be opening and closing constantly.  Nobody is happy with the schools because there is no good answer.  We were told summer and heat would mitigate the effect of the virus. That didn't happen. Will it be worse in the fall/winter? Nobody knows.

     

     

    • Like 2
  12.  I just can't see any scenario where this turns out well.   Most people don't really care what buildings are named and such.  But caving to a list of demands will set a bad precedent and in and of itself be divisive.  It's not that I even care that much about the Eyes of Texas, but most folks like the tradition and are saying to themselves. "When the heck did that become racist".  Giving a set % of revenue to BLM will be a non-starter for many folks and will be extremely controversial since the money actually goes to ActBlue which mainly goes to democrat campaigns.  Controversy just isn't good for recruiting or programs.  I'm all on board for police reform, but I'm sorry this has played out this way.

    • Like 1
    • Haha 1
    • Fuck You 2
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