COVID-19

astroman said...

Astronomer said...
While I'm pretty much symptom free after having covid for 2 weeks I have had had a cramp in my left calf muscle for 3 days now. I've heard covid can have a clotting effect so I'm going to be calling my doctor Friday morning.

Ive had a lower leg clot. It was not the same feeling as a cramp.

My leg was getting larger diameter and I could no longer push in the muscle with my fingers vs the opposite leg.

In your case of uncertainty, in the meantime having that leg up might be wise.

The doctor wasn't concerned and it's pretty much gone away. I guess I was just being overly concerned since covid can cause clotting problems.

A Cluster-Randomized Trial of Hydroxychloroquine as Prevention of Covid-19 Transmission and Disease
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.20.20157651v1

There was no significant difference in the primary outcome of PCR-confirmed, symptomatic Covid-19 disease (6.2% usual care vs. 5.7% HCQ; risk ratio 0.89 [95% confidence interval 0.54-1.46]), nor evidence of beneficial effects on prevention of SARS-CoV-2 transmission (17.8% usual care vs. 18.7% HCQ).

Hydroxychloroquine for Early Treatment of Adults with Mild Covid-19: A Randomized-Controlled Trial
https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciaa1009/5872589#.XxCYlMdGoJM

No significant differences were found in the mean reduction of viral load at day 3 (-1.41 vs. -1.41 Log10 copies/mL in the control and intervention arm, respectively; difference 0.01 [95% CI -0.28;0.29]) or at day 7 (-3.37 vs. -3.44; d –0.07 [-0.44;0.29]). This treatment regimen did not reduce risk of hospitalization (7.1%, control vs. 5.9%, intervention; RR 0.75 [0.32;1.77]) nor shortened the time to complete resolution of symptoms (12 days, control vs. 10 days, intervention; p = 0.38). No relevant treatment-related AEs were reported.

Hydroxychloroquine in Nonhospitalized Adults With Early COVID-19: A Randomized Trial
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-4207

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).

Effect of Hydroxychloroquine in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19: Preliminary results from a multi-centre, randomized, controlled trial.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.15.20151852v1

Conclusions: In patients hospitalized with COVID-19, hydroxychloroquine was not associated with reductions in 28-day mortality but was associated with an increased length of hospital stay and increased risk of progressing to invasive mechanical ventilation or death.

RCTs almost perfectly control for variation between the tested groups. The only difference between the 2 groups in a good RCT is the treatment. Unlike observational studies that have unmeasured/unobserved confounding factors between the groups. It's why RCTs are the gold standard in research.

Respectfully, if HCQ is so useless or so dangerous, why is it used so commonly in India as a prophylactic against Covid19? Why do so many non-government, non-WHO doctors support its use worldwide. And if it was effective with Sars-Covid1 (CDC REPORT,) why on earth would they try so hard to squash its use against a similar virus when up until 4 weeks ago they had nothing else to offer but ventilators and graves?

Fauci is a proven snake oil salesman. He admitted openly to lying about masks and can't seem to even admit huge protests are bad idea. And we all know that when big tech, the media and politicians go to such ridiculous lengths to squash even discussion about something history proves its usually worth pursuing or knowing.

Frankly I'll take my chances with the HCQ over a government bureaucrats or multi-billion dollar fantasy vaccine any day.

Lapis_29 The steroid and anticoagulant combination makes most sense to me considering what effects the virus has on the body. .

I was concerned about the immunosuppressive effects of hydroxychloroquine so I took atovaquone (mepron) instead. I also took clarithromycin.

It really only took about a day to have an effect. The noticeable effect was an initial flaring of symptoms, something similar to a Herxheimer reaction. I'm guessing this is due to interferon. The coronavirus does something to prevent the normal interferon response, so stopping the virus from doing this would allow the normal immune response to occur.

After this, most of my symptoms resolved in a few days.

I had my antibodies tested about a month later and was negative for coronavirus antibodies. CBC showed that my lymphocytes increased about 50%, and then slowly declined over the next few months.

I get bloodwork done regularly while treating Lyme disease. Usually a herx causes an increase in neutrophils, but not lymphocytes.

Simply put, when the media and politicians scare monger for power and money, and big pharmaceutical smells a hundreds of billions, and big tech censors anything not "approved" but the corrupt commies at the WHO, you don't have a nose if you can't smell a rat

For some reason they seem to skip the basics. None of them have said eat better, loose weight, exercise, eat your veggies and vitamins/supplements if needed. Or heaven forbid have a positive attitude! Pretty sure we all know our outlook going into a disease makes a big difference. How about they switch from "We're all going to die" to "99.9% most of us are going to live."

This is why "they" can't be trusted and like lyme, you need to chart your own course and make your own choices.

There have been testimonies - covid patients taking HCQ and getting better soon after.
(Sorry don’t have any links etc)
But maybe they would have gotten better anyway?

I say this because of what happened to my husband.

When he had Covid - at first they said his symptoms didn’t line up - an then a few days later they said he did (no testing) have it.

He got really bad a few days after that - had trouble breathing - felt like an elephant was sitting on his chest.

I had read something about green tea being helpful.
He was having a horrible time - so I “made” him drink a few cups and take vitamin C.

Just before going to bed he took some pharmacy drugs (Tylenol and a decongestant ... etc) that we had bought in case we got covid.

The next morning he was much much better -

If he had taken HCQ - we would have been telling everyone that HCQ cured him... right?

But he wouid have gotten better anyway (because he DID)

Just because you took HCQ and your covid got better - doesn’t mean it was because of the HCQ.
Have to go by the studies with proper controls.

If I had covid and Dr Zelenko treated me with HQC instead of steroids and anticoagulants I would sue for malpractice.

BTW I read thru Zelenko's study and it doesn't even have a control group! Without a control group it means nothing, zero. Its just a study about giving patients HQC and most of them recovered, well yeah! Most patients recover, thats not a surprise, even ones who never had a drop of medicine. Its also a preprint and hasn't been peer reviewed. Its not really much of anything to base treatment on. Every study with a control group has clearly shown no effect.

Post Edited (Lapis_29) : 8/3/2020 12:27:30 PM (GMT-6)

dcd2103 said...
Yes, it coming. 1000%. Global BOND markets, which sniff these things out very accurately IMO, are extremely extremely nervous. Maybe more nervous than I’ve ever seen since 2008. Theyre pricing in fed cuts on this thing.

I follow a bunch of epidemiologists on twitter and they all saying this is going to be BAD. Harvard is estimating the R_0 to be as high as 3.8. That is thermonuclear bad. It means it transmits very easily. 1.3 is typical flu. 1.8 is the 1918 Spanish flu that killed millions. At a 3.8 you’d need to catch 72% of all cases before they contaminate someone else for the disease to stabilize. No way.

Order your N95 masks while you can. The 3M N95 mask is what you want, don’t trust a cheap brand. I’d also stock some non perishable food while you can.

I’m very nervous because I live in NYC. I have nowhere to store food as I don’t own the apartment and the fridge is small and all the closet space is take. I’m considering just piling it in my office. I also cannot leave the city when it makes its way here because I have this autoimmune issue and MUST have my weekly infusions. Plus I’m a sitting duck w my weak immune system. A disruption of the medical supply chain is all I need.

I was thinking about it. My drs all agree that my autoimmune condition was caused by an infection (either lyme or the bad strep throat I had in 2012, or possibly a virus I don’t know about). A lot of the people who survive this corona virus are going to develop similar problems, i can’t even imagine the kind of havoc corona wreaks on the immune system.

Ahhhh, gotta pat myself on the back and say, this was a great call. The fed cuts, the autoimmune complications, stocking up on food, the n95, all of it. Seems obvious now but there wasnt even a case in the US at that point, some people hadnt heard of it yet. Had been of this view since late January too.

Post Edited (dcd2103) : 8/3/2020 2:02:56 PM (GMT-6)

Was like middle of march. Things really took off pretty quickly in early march. Sounds like you were pretty early too then!!!! 😊

I remember the weekend of the super bowl I had watched the markets start to pay attention to it, so that weekend I started to really read about it, and after a few hours of reading I realized I needed to take it seriously. I started following a couple epidemiologists on twitter and they were pounding the table how bad this was gonna be. As soon as I learned what an R_0 was and how high it was for covid, I was sold.

To be honest, it took longer to get to NYC than i thought. I honestly thought some dude was gonna step on a plane from Wuhan, land at JFK and there was going to be a headline "first case in NYC" in early february.

Post Edited (dcd2103) : 8/3/2020 2:34:23 PM (GMT-6)

Atovaquone has a similar binding energy (-8.4159 Kcal/mol for Mpro, see https://doi.org/10.26434/chemrxiv.12003930.v4). My experience with it was that it does exactly what you'd expect in preventing SARS-CoV-2 from down-regulating the anti-viral interferon response.

The standard dose for atovaquone is 750mg (one 5mL spoonful of mepron). The standard dose for ivermectin is 200ug/kg, so 15 mg for a person that weighs 75 kg. The question is, is that enough ivermectin? It's 50x less.