NEWS: A group say they have developed five antibodies from the old SARS antibody stocks that with tweaking can now bind well to the SARS-2 novel coronavirus.
An antibody is a long string of molecules that binds only to the exact target (we hope). Wikimedia Bioconjugator
If they get through all the testing phases and ramp up production, in theory, these could be ready for mass use in September (but everything would need to go right). They could be injected into patients and within 20 minutes these antibodies would bind to the virus and stop it entering cells. The protection might last 8 – 10 weeks before someone would need another dose.
This could be a gamechanger, but beware before anyone gets too excited, this is very early days — “protoplasm” days. There are a lot of steps to rush through.This group have searched and evolved the protein with their supercomputer which has a huge library of antibodies. They claim to be certain it binds to the virus — and to exactly the right part of the virus, but they haven’t actually done that yet — they’ll send the antibody to a military secure lab to do that. Then it still needs to be tested in tissue culture, animals, and people, and then more people. We don’t want it to bind to any other cells in our bodies, or trigger the wrong immune response. Side effects can include allergies, anaphylaxis, autoimmune disease, and even their own cytokine cascade.
But don’t write it off — the idea is sound, and if this group haven’t got the right combination, some other group will. It’s another reason to do the serious lock down now because there will be a way of defeating this virus. A tool like this will change the odds, save lives and make tracking and tracing contacts so much more effective, so we can wipe it out.
The hunt for antibodies mimics what our own immune systems do
As soon as a human body gets infected our immune system hunts for the right antibody in the toolkit. We have thousands of different ones circulating. Within days, victims are usually starting to mass produce the antibodies that bind to the virus. Survivors of coronavirus will carry some forms of antibodies, likely for a few months after infection at least. Using their blood plasma is one of the few weapons we have right now. NBL players say they will donate plasma, but there is only so much blood one person can give, and plasma comes with other risks like germs we don’t want to share. Plus recovery to covid-19 takes weeks and many recovering people need their own blood.
It’s also how an antivenom or antivenin works — we collect antibodies from a sheep or horse to a snake venom and have them ready to use in case of snake bite.
The idea here is to find then clone the right antibody and produce it en masse — a monoclonal antibody.
Coronavirus breakthrough: Doctor featured on Netflix’s Pandemic finds COVID-19 ‘cure’
by Ciaran McGrath
Dr Jacob Glanville, CEO of Distribute Bio, has revealed he and his team have adopted a pioneering approach which offered the potential for dramatic results. He tweeted: “After 9 weeks we have generated extremely potent picomolar antibodies that block known #neutralizing #ACE2 #epitopes, blocking the novel #coronavirus from infecting human cells.”
Announced in twitter @CurleyJungleJake
The diagram shows the complicated protein chains that fold into antibodies, which hopefully stick in a lock and key type way to important parts of the virus and stop it getting into cells. Antibodies also act as a flag to other branches of the immune system. This is heavy molecular level chemistry. Is that supercomputer modelling really that good?
Announced in twitter @CurleyJungleJake
Five antibodies that work against SARS were “evolved” to bind to SARS-CoV-2 (Coronavirus).
Speaking to New Zealand Radio’s Checkpoint programme, he added: “I’m happy to report that my team has successfully taken five antibodies that back in 2002 were determined to bind and neutralise, block and stop the SARS virus.
“We’ve evolved them in our laboratory, so now they very vigorously block and stop the SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] virus as well.”
Describing the new virus was a “cousin” of SARS, which emerged in the far east in 2003, he added: “What we’ve done is we’ve created hundreds of millions of versions of those antibodies, we’ve mutated them a bit, and in that pool of mutated versions, we found versions that cross them over.
“You can also give them to doctors, you could give them to the elderly people to prevent them from getting sick.”
Other scientists around the world are also working on developing antibodies, Dr Glanville said, while emphasising his belief that he and his team had a head-start.
In many ways a monoclonal antibody is better than a vaccine, not only might it be available sooner, we don’t have to wait for a person to develop their own antibody response — which can take days or weeks. This could be given to people who are already sick and struggling in hospital. It can also be given to health workers.
Testing antibodies is simpler than vaccine testing, but still has about 5 stages.
They will send it to the US military who can test the antibodies against the whole virus. Glanville’s lab does not have the whole virus (which needs a very high level secure lab). If the antibodies do bind to the virus, then they get tested against human tissue in vitro to make sure they aren’t obviously harmful. Then they probably do animal tests, then human tests, then compassionate trials. But he is still suggesting September as the earliest mass approved use and even that is a compressed timetable.
Some excellent advice from a frontline respiratory doctor at Cornell Medical Centre in NYC. https://vimeo.com/399733860
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Scomo has called in the Printer. That means the “Government” prints money to pay a large part of the economy to keep it “alive”. Weimar Republic writ large. It will take about six weeks of the “Printer” to get to the BIG inflation. Its the point when government knows it can’t turn the “Printer” OFF. Politicians (not the Government) want to be popular. Free money is VERY popular.
Without a decision to return to work soon our economy is doomed.
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Scomo ought to call the mask and test kit manufacturers. Without at least one of these items being manufactured in large quantities and broadly applied, its hard to see how there can be any certainty infectivity will be contained. With no containment, there’s unlikely to be freedom anytime soon. Without freedom, little opportunity for wealth generation.
Printing money has seemed on more than one occasion in the past ten years, the easiest way to fix the problem rather than the right way to solve the problem. A lockdown, albeit belated, is the right first step. But as i posted elsewhere today, where’s the testing of those in mandatory quarantine. Where are the masks to dramatically reduce the likelihood of infection once the lockdown is slowly relaxed, and the shops re-open. Are we going to try to square the circle on this virus and go for near perfect containment by civilian isolation, only to find the cure killed the economic patient as you suggest.
What i notice from over in europe is the lack of savings in Australia and the high levels of private debt. It seems the average person doesn’t have enough in savings to keep themselves going for even a fortnight. Now the government’s hard earned surplus will be fiscally transferred to compensate for the twin moral hazards of high debt and low savings.
The doctor in the video posted talks about empowerment over the virus, by understanding how it can simply jump to a new host and how it finds it very difficult to do so. Scaling this mentality up to a broader level is the urgent next step to recover our freedom. Deferring consumption and investing for the long term is the analogous pathway when it comes to generating wealth. It seems this virus is going to make both absolutely necessary very shortly.
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There was a time when Australians were accustomed to recession and boom/bust economics, but that ended in the late 1990s when nothing much happened with the Asian financial crisis, nor the tech-wreck collapse that followed. Prior we put aside a provisions for a recession, because if you didn’t your business would not make it through even a downturn, let alone have room to “belt-tighten” during a recession.
Belt-tightening referring to a person losing all their body fat and encumbrances, and becoming lean and fighting-fit into a recovery from recession. Yeah, well, after 1991 that didn’t happen any more. There was 29 years of easy-credit snouts in troughs. So now that every one hasn’t provisioned for a recession for 30 years and is teetering on bankruptcy due to absurd debt loads, Canberra had no choice but to place a gigantic fluffy cushion under our over-achieving bottoms. But some people (in the hindsight of the past 7 days) don’t like even this much of a soft-landing and support approach to too get through an unpredictable global pandemic where steepening died curves are actually occurring. We should let it rip and people die in potentially large numbers? I don’t think so.
People are fine with the alternative, of more Federal debt and modern-money-theory to pay the cost. If we can soften the blow to the federal and private bottom line with some printing now, because we can, I don’t mind that, just easy with the hot-sauce. For the past 10 years Australia (almost alone among major trading countries) traded with giant competitors who were constantly engaging in competitive devaluations, opportunistic currency fixing to bleed us, massive deficit escalations, huge state credit injections, and QE-to-infinity printing.
The USA did it, part of South America did it, China did it (in frankly criminal fashion), so did Japan, the UK and European ECB also. We just accepted it, we still accepted their currency in trade, we disadvantaged ourselves enormously and constantly by not even talking about it much, not responding in kind. We just let everyone bleed us all the time. We lost most of the manufacturing base, but we let the AUD float freely, no QE, no stimulus, decreasing deficits. Who would have thought that was possible in that environment? Yeah, we over did it, we play the nice guy too much for our own good. A we still got accused of everything under the sun by countries and people who claimed to be our friends.
I just looked at the 1 year AUD/USD chart and AUD went up since this QE and deficit spending began, even as the USD was going up.
So I think we have EVERY RIGHT to now ease the fall, to cushion the bottom, to take the edge of the deficit. And certain of our major trading partners on the other continents with glass houses better not start throwing stones about it. We were months away from a budget surplus, in that international environment. I’m proud of Australia for that.
That’s not to excuse debt-growth or QE, And belt tightening in a “business cycle” may come back after this, but right now the AUD and Australia have lots of credibility where others don’t have much at all. We would be fools to not make it easy on ourselves during this pandemic, and the market collapse process, to come out of this ready to get going once again.
Maybe next time we won’t let everyone walk all over us and get away with it, or open their mouths to critique us falsely and hypocritically, and still walk away thinking they’re so ‘special’. Oh well, whatever.
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The problem with biology is simple, nature favors survival of the species over survival of the individual. Genetics has made very sure that there is a wide variance among individual as far as ability to withstand environmental stress. That assures that unless the stress is catastrophic to the whole species, like loss of food, some survive.
I know that you all know that, now here’s what I see…
This diversity in the human species extends to the point where a worldwide cooperative effort is impossible. Our very nature prevents it. We all demand to go our own way, even to the extreme of demanding to have our own cache of experience, wisdom, expert opinion, and we follow what we think best. There can never be agreement on anything.
I’ve been watching this play out during this crisis. If you think I’m wrong, show me where I’m wrong.
It looks like a long siege folks.
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Witness the kind of debate going on in these last few threads. It’s hard to get together and instead goes parochial, Australia has done it better just for example.
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Hi Roy. Good to see you again!
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From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYWWvSTQkNI
COVID-19 Panic Merchants: Lies, Conspiracies, and Statistics (Oh, and Science)
5,810 views
•Apr 3, 2020
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I agree Roy. Sam Vaknin’s video nails that “parochial” observation of yours, as you call it.
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I stayed away from the dishonest aspect of it but that’s certainly a part of the picture.
If you can remember Pogo Possum, that great observer, possibly the greatest observer of politics, was famous for this quote,”We have met the enemy and he is us.”
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Bit like the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, Roy.
Your philosophy is grounded in the Millenia of human existence.
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Good argument Roy, seems so. I look at some comment sections and think how can people possibly think that way? I know I’d never agree with them, or tolerate such a mess of a mind. Such is the nature of limited personal knowledge, experiences, memes, interaction and world-view.
I studied science because I grew tired of reading and watching fiction everywhere, so developed a healthy (obsessive) hunger for facts, then discovered facts are for the most part relative fictions or not constants. PLus the things I thought were fact were not and created delusion. That was a bit horrifying, realizing I can’t ever be sure I’m free of delusions, no matter how carefully I sort the facts. Somehow we (mostly) muddle though our delusions and disagreements. I don’t think I could stand a world where people agreed on everything.
What’s a bit interesting are the skeptics who think they’re more skeptical than me. Now that is positively delusional.
Cheers Roy.
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tI had a reply to you and the system would not accept it. Finally this browser ate the text. Never mind how can someone think the way they do? How can anyone get along with something as touchy as this Chrome Book?
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When you discount fiction you’re threading on the toes of a guy like me who had a story idea and decided to see if he could make a good story out of it. Thou shalt not trespass. 😉
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Being skeptical is to go against ones own automatic conclusions…the chief word here is “automatic ”
A critical mind is as accustomed to being critical of others as it is being critical of ones own “automatic” conclusions.
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To question is both for and against …lets get on with it.
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Sunni
“What i notice from over in europe is the lack of savings in Australia and the high levels of private debt. It seems the average person doesn’t have enough in savings to keep themselves going for even a fortnight. Now the government’s hard earned surplus will be fiscally transferred to compensate for the twin moral hazards of high debt and low savings.”
We surely have two problems? The first is the ‘I want it today’ syndrome, which means that gratification must be instant with little thought for tomorrow and money spent today instead of saved
The second is the extremely poor savings rate now 0.01% over here in the UK. When you can borrow for a mortgage at 2% and consumer goods for little more, we have an entire younger generation who see no point in saving.
We also have an older generation told to save in the past who see very little reward for doing so, as that will mean they can’t get state benefits if needed and that spending will quickly erode their assets
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The thing that absolutely astounded me was the speed at which the gov spent the money compared to the slowness with which they closed the borders.
I mean, Slo Mo was throwing $1500 welfare cheques at people weeks before he closed the international border.
The cynic in me thinks perhaps this Whole thing was allowed to get out of control in an economic set-up. How will the chips land (globally)? Who will end up making billions?
21
Nope, AP.
I think you need to think about it a little more deeply.
There’s no fat tail to the PM’s spending, unlike that undertaken on previous occasions. When the acute phase of this infection is over and Australians get back to work, the expenditure will taper very quickly. It sounds like they’ve committed billions (and they have) however, it automatically winds back as the peak of the isolation passes.
Think of it as an automatic stabilizer. When the rough bit has passed you quickly wind them back in. There’s no big lag. No fat tail. That’s the genius of what the PM has done. It sounds huge. But it’s not huge, because the economy will recover very quickly as the peak subsides.
There no massive long-term infrastructure expenditure that goes on for decades – we’re still paying for some school halls from the last lot, for example. The funding goes directly to those in need. When the need stops, so does the funding.
That’s the difference here. The Labor boyos hate it. Hate it. The left wing media are besides themselves, staggered at the audacity and perspicacity of the Governments foresight.
In five years time we’ll be back in surplus – provided we stick with ScoMO.
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You need a maths lesson, son. They have spent $200 Billion with new spending announced almost daily. That’s an entire years’ income tax take. It will take decades to pay off.
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Instead of a relatively painless international border closure in Feb, we had a few more weeks of Chinese student and tourism arrivals, followed by an absolutely reckless March spending spree – which will not save the economy. Watch this space.
This is not about Lib/Lab. These “two” parties are two sides of the same coin. The uniparty as it is known. The social and economic carnage under Lib just occurs at a slightly slower rate than under Lab (normally) due to thorough infiltration by LINOS. This time, the pace of the reckless spending has been astonishing.
If they really wanted to stimulate the economy, they would immediately:
-End all taxes on employment, such as stamp duty and payroll tax
-Immediately reduce federal income tax to a top marginal rate of 25%
-Immediately reduce the corporate tax rate to 20%
-Immediately remove all duplicative red tape such as the Commonwealth EPBC Act
-Immediately cease all subsidies to unreliables which are all economically destructive
-Immediately withdraw from all international treaties that are not in Australia’s interests such as Paris
-Remove all barriers to new fossil-fuel power stations
We see Slo Mo’s natural political leanings by his response to the crisis. More spending, more regulation, police-state lockdowns, stupid nanny state rules that make no sense.
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You should read this and consider it … carefully.
http://www.politicaleconomy.org/speindex.html
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I was wrong. The total stimulus is now over $300 billion in reckless spending. All for the sake of keeping the borders open for a few weeks. That’s now the equivalent of a years’ personal income tax take, plus capital gains plus taxes on dividends.
Given our system never returned to surplus following the last splurge, it is tough to see how this will ever get paid off.
There are roughly 12 million taxpayers, so that means that in the past few weeks, SloMo has burdened each of us with an additional IOU of $25,000. Interest at 4% is $12 Billion per annum or $1,000 per taxpayer annually. Add that to the bill.
Did we vote for any of this?
Where/who exactly is my $25,000 going to?
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I don’t need a lesson AP. I think you do.
You see, they haven’t spent it yet. That’s the point.
If they get this under control the spend will reduce accordingly.
Do you always burn your bridges before you cross them?
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“There is no massive long-term infrastructure expenditure that goes on for decades – ”
Tell that to Shane Jones . That is precisely the plan in Godzone , to deal with non-essential people during the coming economic event. This time around the farms don’t need labour , but that’s another story.
Picks , shovels , and wheelbarrows,from where?
Who makes all the diggers now?
Does Caterpillar still exist?
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Seems to me Morrison’s starting to feel just a little bit too good about having the whole country waiting and hanging on his announcements about giving away other people’s money…ie our own.
We have to hope his taste for being the great white knight…redistributing OPM from each according to ability [unless they’re public servants…TV talking heads or politicians]….to each according to need [ or want] …doesn’t morph into Labor’s longed-for Socialism…ripe for CAGW’s macabre redistribution under Global Socialism.
He and Turnbull have been doing not much else but Labor policy over the last five years after all…and the only thing he’s said about restoring the economy after this nightmare ends …has been to deliver the great news that the $200[?]billion subs deal will definitely go ahead….as if we won’t be needing the billions we could save by canning it instead and buying off-the-shelf American or British nuclear subs….and buying in the nuclear expertise if lacking.
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It is a reasonable assumption , I think , that the main political parties are bought and paid for, and individual politicians may be “compromised”, if not actually on the take.
So they all carry out the same policy, just with different window-dressing.
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The NZ Reserve Bank is run by “Visiting Professors” from the World Bank. We don’t have any say …
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Godzone has long been the social laboratory of the mad professors.
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We are also very useful in spreading the news.
Tell a lie in the City of London at 5 p.m. and it will simultaneously broadcast at 5 a.m. the following day in Godzone.
This ensures that the lie is already more than half way around the world before anyone gets out of bed.
Works a treat.
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… indeed, ever since Roger the Dodger Douglas.
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Agreed excellent information.
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Thanks Sunni. The man’s a natural born teacher. Very clear; interesting about masks.
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TedM and Doc,
Glad someone in the neighbourhood watched it! It’s by far the best info i’ve seen; and from somebody with eminent battlefield experience. It also highlights the level of misinformation and hysteria in the media. The information in the video really needs to be disseminated.
The issues he raised that really stood out, that have not been properly understood until now;
– Zero medical personnel are being infected in a hospital that is now 100% full of Covid-19 patients despite staff only wearing masks and gloves for procedures that don’t explicitly involve spitting and coughing.
– Those medical personnel who were being infected was due mostly to “very long sustained contact” i.e. 20-30 minutes, with a patient whilst not wearing protective equipment.
– The only time doctors are wearing higher level PPE is when expurgation procedures are being carried out. Procedures that deliberately involve a lot of coughing and spitting. Its worth noting this is an illness that causes a lot of involuntary dry coughing.
– The attribution of aerosolised virus transfer as infection vector is vastly overemphasised. The doctor states the hand to face vector via settled droplets is almost exclusively the means by which the virus is spread. A mask and very regular hand washing is more than sufficient to entirely remove this vector.
– Know what you are touching and where your hands are. Wash your hands relentlessly.
– Wearing a basic mask is very important to neutralise the droplet infection vector created by touching the face. Far more so than stopping aerosolised virus spread from coughing.
– Anything other than a basic mask is not more effective except in a hospital setting where certain specific procedures are being carried out.
– There is Covid-19 in most communities now. This is no longer a distribution issue. Distribution of the virus is widespread and uniform. Only density of saturation of the infectious population can potentially increase now. The doctor provided example where the density of saturation is at the extreme level i.e. a hospital.
– Home and family transmission is invariably the setting in which the virus spreads. The larger the family group, the greater the likelihood of infection due to network multiplier effect.
– Only those short of breath should go to a hospital.
– Wiping down groceries is not necessary in most circumstances where there is limited handling of food before purchase.
– It’s not necessary to wash your clothes after being out in public.
The above information brings virus transfer vectors sharply back to a personal level. We are all likely to have multiple interactions with infected surfaces/persons every day that we are in public places.
FAR FROM NOT BEING EFFECTIVE. WEARING A MASK IS NOW SEEN TO BE, ALONG WITH HAND WASHING THE MOST IMPORTANT PROPHYLACTIC MEASURE THAT CAN BE TAKEN. IT IS A COMPLETE PUBLIC HEALTH FAILURE TO NOT BE EMPOWERING PEOPLE WITH THIS KNOWLEDGE.
My humble view is when public health restrictions are lifted, we’ll all be wearing masks in public places on a mandatory basis for several months. As is the case in countries where the virus has been contained. Not only is it better to start wearing a mask now, it provides assured virus protection and confidence to circulate in public spaces.
Leaders in our respective communities need to envision what life will be like in the next few weeks when this virus is contained, and explain to their citizenry how they can go about their lives confidently without living in unnecessary fear of dying. If they don’t, civil unrest will set in and the level of ensuing chaos may not be easily manageable.
Here’s the video link again – https://vimeo.com/399733860
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innocence is a profound defense. but whether airlines can fly you there is less certain.
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/04/airlines-infect-world-and-mediawho-back.html
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Read a post by Willis Eschenbach on “Do Lockdowns Work??”. Make your own judgements.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/01/do-lockdowns-work/
Regards
Climate Heretic
40
Was posted by farmerbraun on the previous thread. I’ll just make the same response.
It’s always nice to have hindsight to see what we should have done. For now it’s too early to tell what approach is best. Some say we haven’t acted hard enough while others say we have over-reacted. Perhaps it’s a little of both depending on the specific restriction in question. In any case the damage has been done and we now have to start the rebuilding process. Let’s hope PM Morrison comes up with the right plan that will avoid Australia keep going down the tubes. One thing was for sure for some time. We were going down the tubes well before the pandemic hit. It just accelerated the process. The shock should wake a lot of people up. Time will tell if it works.
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‘We were going down the tubes well before the pandemic hit.’
We were almost in the black, so I’m confident Morrison already has plans for ‘the other side of this …’
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If you really believe that then you have a lot to learn about the economics. We as a nation were getting further and further into debt at break neck speed. The so called budget surplus spoken of before the crisis was a drop in the ocean. Our economy was stalling. Sales were down. More small businesses in trouble than ever before. We were heading over the cliff. Now we are over the cliff but we don’t knwo as yet how far down the bottom of the cliff is. Let’s hope it’s just a small drop but there is another much bigger cliff not far away. If we go over that one it’s all over. If the current crash is not so bad and we recover somewhat we better get on board the right trolley and get as far away from the next cliff edge as possible.
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You draw a dark picture of the future, young Peter.
The whole world is printing money at break neck speed, quantitive easing is a delight. Its not all bad, social revolution has begun.
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I’m a realist. Simples. No point pretending it’s all OK.
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In the PM’s song book he believes its possible to lead us out of the wilderness.
‘Scott Morrison has compared himself to Moses in leading Australia through the coronavirus pandemic as the nation’s number of infections near 5000 and death toll hits 22.’ The Hun
There will be winners and losers in this social revolution, everything will change. Women have been told to stop nagging their husbands during this pandemic, divorce rate will spike.
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I’m calling fake news on that one.
Where and when did he say that?
It sounds like a typical statement from a rabid left-wing hater. Lower than low.
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Buy physical assets.
Stocks – no good.
Cash – no good.
ETFs – no good.
Bitcoin – ha ha! You are joking, right?
Super funds – no good (unless self-managed)
Collectibles – bad idea.
Real estate – good
Bullion – good
Volatility (up and down) in the sharemarket is bad, unless you know precisely what you are doing, watch the market like a hawk and like to gamble.
A large global financial calamity is coming now. I’d bet my house on it.
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You make an interesting point PeterS.
There is little doubt that the Australian economy is in a parlous situation.
As you mentioned the signs are there. The government knows that there is a problem and has been trying to stimulate the economy by reducing income tax rates; accelerated write offs for businesses buying new equipment; reducing official cash rates; enormous handouts to various groups(read “cargo cult”), to mention a few. The supposed budget surplus will easily disappear. It is of little consequence, as it was a drop in the ocean anyhow.
We are in serious trouble with consequences that will not be remedied in a year or so. Our problems have been accumulating over decades.
We then have to ask the question; how have we arrived at the point?
The sending of our manufacturing and businesses overseas to create wealth in non sovereign countries.
The self delusion about the unemployment rate. The real rate is more like 10%+, not the 5.6% as claimed.
The squandering of public money on the so called green energy which has done nothing more than encourage our industries offshore, because of cost. We have gone from having one of the lowest energy costs to having one of the highest.
The “cargo cult” mentality. Why risk your money when one can get “manna from Heaven”?
The submarine debacle, just more public money being wasted.
The country is now grossly overloaded with debt with little hope that it will ever be drawn down.
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Government debt is only part of the problem and only one of the potential catalysts for recession.
Personal debt levels are at all-time highs, too. Much of today’s ‘standard of living’ has been funded by debt, and not just huge mortgages for houses way larger than most people need, but also cars with expensive badges on the front, the boat and caravan in the drive, the gigantic widescreen TVs, smartphones. Even evenings in a restaurant often go on the third credit card.
It is this, IMO, that will precipitate the recession if Covid-19 doesn’t and will, when households run out of credit and/or banks finally have to turn the taps off, turn any slowdown into a vertical descent. It could get very ugly indeed.
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Looks like someone with a captured audience trying to find relevance before they drift off.
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Lack of relevance is something you would be personally well aware of.
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Willis has evolved from “let it rip” to wearing masks will prevent deaths. Now a 2nd order dingbat. At least he is learning. When the hospitals around him are stressed he will be saying lock downs are necessary.
Australia is still under his threshold of 10 deaths per 10 million so is not even included. Canada is just over his threshold so would not show in the cluster at the bottom left of his chart.
The scatter plot is useful in indicating that governments get increasingly desperate as the CV19 death toll rockets into the thousands and hospital are stressed:
https://i0.wp.com/wattsupwiththat.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/corona-deaths-vs-social-interventions.png?w=713&ssl=1
Wilis mistakenly interprets this as government interventions do not work.
I am grateful that the Australian governments woke up to the threat early enough to so far delay a catastrophic situation. I guess ScoMo did not have impeachment concerns – but then there are plenty of dingbats in the press talking about fires being caused by global warming while Jo Nova was saying Australia needed to close its borders.
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Willis would be very good with figures if he knew what they meant.
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Jo stay away from biology and stick with your AGW story which is valid https://ourworldindata.org/births-and-deaths
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Eliza, Anytime you want to ask good questions or post evidence that disagrees, be my guest. I’m still the same skeptic I always was, and an ad hom is still an ad hom. c’mon. you are better than that.
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Eliza. That’s an attempted put down with no specified complaint to answer. It reflects everything wrong with modern, computerised discourse, and its becoming increasingly prevalent in just about
any field of discussion these days.
To attack the host of her own blog, attempting to tell her what topics she can proffer is, frankly, weird. Presumably, the readers here are asked to take it that you are an hyper expert in the field of biology such that you qualify to write what you did.
Sorry, but that’s something you have to prove, and even then the only right you have is to debate points raised and open yourself to criticism. Show your brilliance because there are a few harsh and educated critics attending – and I don’t include myself – that test anyone’s metal. If you do that then you’ll find you are welcome to join the fray and take your chances like the rest of us.
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Well said DOC
Eliza: your attempted put down of Jo is the sort of thing we expect from teenagers and the ignorant juveniles, not from adults. Most of us here know and respect Jo’s qualifications; she’s not been shy and hidden them from us.
Now it’s your turn: please enlighten us and list your qualifications.
If you ignore this request, and refuse it, you will say to us that that you are an ignorant juvenile and your opinions will be given the weight they deserve: zero.
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In search of the antibodies.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-scientists/chinese-scientists-seeking-potential-covid-19-treatment-find-effective-antibodies-idUSKBN21J4QW
20
Based on tne above we stil have a long way to go.
Therefore more of this to endure
Andrew Forrests devotion to China is sickening he is helped by today show hosts of course.
They have time to reaffirm tbeir TDS, this country is in a bad state of affairs.
41
Andrew Forest? The WA iron ore magnate who helped buy through the Minderoo Foundation 90 tonnes of medical supplies from Chinese suppliers to distribute throughout Australia.
Before anyone points fingers at anyone else, especially China (who admittedly have deliberately kept the virus outbreak secret for too long and should do more than just apologise for it – but most likely won’t) we as a nation need to look in the mirror. We were too lazy and took advantage of China to grow our nation through commodity exports, and relied too much on their exports while letting our industries close down. The current economic crisis was bound to happen regardless of the cause. It just happened to be a pandemic from China. It could have been any one of a number of other causes from any other nation, or simply just of our own making. So, now let’s get on with the business of rebuilding this nation before it’s too late and we end up becoming a Province of China. I hope for all our sakes PM Morrison is listening. First port of call is to dump that stupidly insane energy policy and get on with he business of building new coal fired pwoer stations. That’s with the assumption our energy needs will go back up once the dust has settled. If not then we can just sit back and let China take over.
[Edit, corrected typo – Jo]
90
Good Lord I meant to say “to distribute throughout Australia”.
30
That’s better.
20
Yes. I will have to write a note and stick it on all three of my monitors. Proof read my posts before hitting the Post Comment button 🙂
30
PeterS,
Good idea . . I should do the same.
Came across this article describing some of what’s taking place in the states with all that money that’s being made available and thought it might be of interest.
30
And then I forgot the link! Maybe I need another note to remind me to include the links!
https://www.sovereignman.com/trends/the-small-business-administration-is-now-bigger-than-walmart-27604/
20
Yes indeed there is a lot happening in the US. Did you know the US Federal Reserve isn’t printing money per se but creating digital dollar credits that are as good as cash and lending them to the US government? The government then “deposits” them in other banks as well as the federal bank itself so it can draw on it and spend it as they like. It also helps the retail banks to lend money at low interest rates to individuals and companies although it’s going to be harder this time around. The government has to pay back the money at some stage but in reality they don’t. The federal reserve keeps re-issuing the loans. It’s like a Ponzi scheme that will one day come to a crunch as people lose confidence in the US currency. We are not there yet by a long shot. The amount of digital money they are generating is for the purpose of trying to inflate the economy and avoid a depression. I think it will work one more time but after that who knows. They can’t keep doing it forever.
20
Been there, done that, but discovered it’s not wholly reliable. It’s why I changed browsers. Sometimes the comment was posted without hitting the `postcomment’ button. I left Firefox and went to Vivaldi. YMMV
00
Perhaps an update on Twiggy might help at this stage. He has purchased about 90 tonnes of medical supplies and chartered Chinese planes to fly the much-needed medical supplies to WA, including ventilators. I’m sure the WA medical folks have a different opinion about Twiggy right now.
20
Need to be a careful of checking the product before buying from China. According to a
TV news report last night the quality of some China manufactured masks were not up to scratch.
40
It will also pay to be very careful checking for any masks manufactured in India. You could get much more than you pay for!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=–pwI4E9tsk
10
G4, yes. Some of us have had previous experiences with Twiggy.
“….he used his Chinese contacts to secure $160 MILLION worth of desperately-needed medical supplies for coronavirus victims”.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8178031/Andrew-Twiggy-Forrest-used-Chinese-contacts-secure-160MILLION-worth-medical-supplies.html
Do you really think he’s donating $160 million of medical supplies? Donating? From his own fortune?
Think again. Read the article.
Ask for them and you’ll need to reimburse Mindaroo for every dollar. Or the state governments will have to.
No skin off Twiggy’s bank account. Rest assured.
On the other hand, it was just a bit over a week ago that the great Queensland ogre, Clive Palmer, donated $1.0 million of his own money to a clinical trial of drugs which scientists say may be able to effectively treat coronavirus. The left wing media had conniptions. Killed the story dead.
00
From:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6MZy-2fcBw
“Perspectives on the Pandemic | Dr John Ioannidis of Stanford University | Interview
135,209 views
•Mar 26, 2020
“Perspectives on the Pandemic: Dealing with Coronavirus, a fiasco in the making? As the coronavirus pandemic takes hold, we are making decisions without reliable data.”
30
“Military scientists work with the virus itself, Dr Glanville stressed, as he did not want either COVID-19 or SARS in his lab.”
The smoking gun is at the Chinese military Wuhan Institute of Virology. Now you might ask the question why the military are working with directly with the virus and why Dr. Glanville does not want MERS and SARS and COVID 19 in his laboratory.
And why the Institute of Virology is in Wuhan in the first place.
60
Dr. Peter Hotez on Joe Rogan https://youtu.be/Q9Q53KWZFMU
This is a better explanation of all the factors like age, smoking etc than you will read on mainstream media
71
Ran out of time to see the whole lot but generally engaging. Some questions posed and thoughts:
1. Will vaping increase risk of bad outcome.
2. Houston population has a lot in common with New Orleans with regard underlying health issues.
3. With current strategies in place, best estimate is 84k US citizens succumb to CV19.
4. Convalescent antibody trials under way.
5. 10% of infants in the US with CV19 are getting very sick.
Much better spending the time to listen (about 1 hour) to this guy than reading anything Willis E posts on WUWT.
60
your number 4 is what Jo is talking about in this post.
Some others
6. There appears to be a genetic component in terms of the effect
7. The vaccine is a long way away
8. So is the use of the anti Malarial – but possible little or no real effect.
9. There is no money to be made in producing a vaccine when there is no pandemic
31
Reference please!
10
Peter
It is a statement made by the professor in the video. He referred to clinical trials on SARS1 with no merit. He was doubtful that proper trials would show any benefit. It was one of the possibilities he discussed. It may work in combination with other drugs.
00
That’s not what Didier Raoult’s Marseilles study showed:
https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/COVID-IHU-2-1.pdf
Or Xueting Yao’s:
https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa237
10
“1. Will vaping increase risk of bad outcome.”
What was his answer?
00
Now that I watched it, he advised not to vape, on general principles—that it might be bad for the lungs.
00
Yeh, um what’s with Jo Rogan’s logo?
00
And for surreal comic relief the Guardian is scaring people that climate change is making nightingales wings shorter. Now I’m worried about Climate Change.
50
And you wonder why climate change has become utterly irrelevant.
Here we have an absolute really serious situation with COVID-19, and all the Guardian’s climate change spruikers can come up with is something like this.
Next they’ll be giving the Gold Walkley to Pixie Anne Wheatley.
Tony.
130
Well climate change story was always irrelevant for most of us here. We now wait with great anticipation for PM Morrison to change his tune and also treat it in like manner. Should I hold my breath?
10
Are they having to walk everywhere now, instead of flying?
Whatever you do, don’t tell the cats …
20
I’m hoping climate change might bring in the `Sixth Great Extinction’ and drive all the Crapologists including ER and the Guardian over the cliff.
It may be a futile wait, but what the heck?
20
That certain night
The night we met
There was magic abroad in the air
There were angels dining at the Ritz
And a nightingale sang in Berkeley square
20
Those Guardians are cruel clipping wings like that.
Maybe they wanted to stop them leaving so there’d always be song there
10
I somehow don’t think we will ever know. If it was meant to be an April Fool’s Day hoax, it was pretty pathetic … but that describes the Guardian rather well.
10
This might be a game changer.
This is a longer interview, by CNBC, of the same researcher from the US company, ‘Distributed Bio’s, discussing the new antibody, covid, and covid protection strategies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvfulLdrND0
‘Synthetic Engineering’
Bio Tech companies have apparently developed and are now using synthetic engineering techniques to optimize bioengineering choices which are currently be made by trial and error and to develop more effective biological systems to produce drugs, including antibodies. A synthetic biologic technique is to test all possibilities in a computer to find the optimum microbiological design choice rather than trial and error.
These techniques of optimizing microbiological design and using the optimized engineered microbiological system to produce drugs/antibodies is called Synthetic Engineering’
Distributed Bio say they have developed an optimized anti-body for covid which increases its effectiveness and reduces the chances of side effects, a trial and test random antibody development.
This work is being funded by a Bill Gates foundation and the US military group that runs the US level four research facility that currently has live covid virus.
The US military are going to test the new Distributed Bio’s antibody on live virus, in starting in April.
If the results are good, a test on 600 patients that have the virus is planned in July.
For a single use, there is less risk of side effects and as there is a risk of dying if the person has the virus, if the July test is successful…
.. antibody production and the use of the new antibody on covid patients could start as soon as September.
If I remember correctly, there is less risk of side effects for use on covid patient, as that is single use. The risk of side effect increase with multi-use and time.
If the antibody is to be used on health care professionals, they would need an injection every 8 weeks. A better approach might be to only give them the antibody if they get sick.
50
Face down but…
In the treatment I was taught the head had to be down well below the hips. The percussion had to be gentle but prolonged until my brother was able to cough.
No indication of elevation just flat face down in that photo.
What about percussion is that included?
20
“Is that supercomputer modelling really that good?”
Probably. Supercomputers can have many 10’s of thousands of processor cores and this kind of application is well suited for massive parallelism where each core works on one antibody at a time.
Molecular interactions are mostly a consequence of the force of charge, which is well known, simple to calculate and there aren’t a lot of knobs and dials that can tweak the results. Plus, there’s no ‘preferred direction’ leading to modeling bias, as there is with climate modeling where no amount of processor cores will make them any better.
10
Protein folding is horribly complicated though. It’s not just charges of parts of molecules, it’s also disulphide bridge strength, hydrophobic, hydrophilic, hydrogen bonding, peptide bonding, …
60
Jo,
Aren’t all of these macroscopic effects still just the consequences of the force of charge?
I’ve done simulations of atomic charge interactions for the purpose of modeling molecular collisions and it works quite well, even on my laptop. The attachment of an antibody to a virus is like a collision, except that the shapes of the E-fields pulls them together as they get closer, rather than push them apart. Even how the shape of atomic electron clouds and molecules morphs as the charge distribution of another molecule comes close is a function of the force of charge. The force of charge is basically why VSEPR can predict the shapes of molecules.
While the E-fields of the molecules involved are intricately complicated, superposition applies to the force of charge, so a brute force approach works, where calculating the net forces acting on the molecules is the linear vector sum of the contributions from each pair of atoms among the interacting molecules where atomic nuclei are modeled as point positive charges and their electron shells are modeled as negative charge distributions.
If they’re modeling the macroscopic effects heuristically, then the veracity of the models is definitely suspect. The advantage of using supercomputers is to enable very low level simulations and if they’re doing the simulations at the atomic level based on first principles, then the simulations will be pretty good. Based on the size of the problem and the power of modern computers, I see no good reason to simulate these kinds of interactions any other way.
No doubt that the abject failure of climate models on supercomputers led you to question veracity of these molecular simulations. Climate simulations on supercomputers are quite different since they’re still no where near powerful enough to model the Earth with first principles at the atomic level, so many heuristics must be applied to get results. BTW, superposition also applies to W/m^2 (i.e. Joules are fungible), but the IPCC’s self serving consensus ignores this most basic first principle and is how they rationalize the next W/m^2 as being so much more powerful at warming the surface than the average W/m^2.
00
no idea what your conclusion from all that is… protein structure can be predicted from amino acid and nucleic acid sequence.
00
O/T
BUT IMPORTANT!
Are those poor souls in ICU and on Ventilators being killed by their treatment???
A message from the past!
In 1944 my infant brother contracted flu and got pneumonia was not expected to survive.
Maternal Grandmother taught me how to treat him. She visited every Sunday.
Goose fat applied to front then back of chest.
Then the all important part.
Brother across my knees face down and gentle percussion to his back encouraging coughing.
This percussion had to be stopped after he had expelled gobs of phlegm and he could be put back to bed.
By the next Sunday visit my brother was no longer in distress and the percussion no longer needed.
He lives in Worcestershire.
Being in an ICU bed head elevated and on a respirator, is a position that does not help the patient cough!
Our bodies natural need to cough and expel fluid build-up in the lungs.
That fluid is probably dead virus killed off by the patients immune system!
It is no wonder why so many people die with pneumonia if percussion is no longer used.
Looking up the medicinal qualities of Goose Fat is also interesting.
71
My understanding is that there are reasonably clear protocols for treating ARDS – I think there is a JoNova thread on it. One aspect includes having patients face down at some stage of the treatment. You can see that in the photo in this report:
https://www.dailyexaminer.com.au/news/chilling-photos-of-italys-virus-patients/3963843/
My son told me a week ago that there is valuable treatment information being disseminated to English speaking countries now coming out of New York. That was before the hospitals were inundated.
ICUs have a huge armoury at their disposal but knowing what is likely to be effective and having the time to apply it are essential to good outcomes. Death rates skyrocket once triage decisions become the prime driver of treatment options.
30
Watch the ICU doc talk here. I don’t think a pat on the back will do it. Though prone positions did reduce the death rate.
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/03/69670/
By the time lungs are suffering deadly inflammation even the act of breathing and the tidal shear forces is damaging the alveoli. The ICU is the only way people can get oxygen into their blood without their lungs doing much movement.
They must be paralyzed to stop them breathing to save them.
30
Hi Jo,
My 1944 e4xperience of a single case of pneumonia is hardly indicative of better treatment, but….
The MedCram people wont respond and I won’t pay them to give them my information.
The face down, bum up and GENTLE percussion to get the patient coughing, before they need ICU, is essentially what I was doing to my infant brother.
The natural impulse to cough and get the fluid out the lungs is key to letting the immune system defeat the virus. You cannot get a cough response from a paalized patiend and hard to get from one on a ventilator and restrained.
All the videos and hype about recent research has buried the old tried and true workable solutions!
Prone position Head down, Bum up, and percussion worked for my brother why not try it?
40
I have a vague memory of someone with cystic fibrosis who had daily treatment of the type described by Slithers. It brought out a lot of gunk.
10
Percussion is contraindicated in CoVid-19 patients. I dont know why bit that is according to a practising Physio I asked about it.
00
From: https://www.globalresearch.ca/open-letter-professor-sucharit-bhakdi-german-chancellor-dr-angela-merkel/5708004
“COVID-19, Urgent Reassessment, Diagnosis and Basic Principles of Infectiology: Open Letter from Professor Sucharit Bhakdi to German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel
By Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi
Global Research, March 30, 2020
“An Open Letter from Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, to the German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel. Professor Bhakdi calls for an urgent reassessment of the response to Covid-19 and asks the Chancellor five crucial questions. The letter is dated March 26. This is an inofficial translation; see the original letter in German as a PDF.”
“1. Statistics
In infectiology – founded by Robert Koch himself – a traditional distinction is made between infection and disease. An illness requires a clinical manifestation. [1] Therefore, only patients with symptoms such as fever or cough should be included in the statistics as new cases.
“In other words, a new infection – as measured by the COVID-19 test – does not necessarily mean that we are dealing with a newly ill patient who needs a hospital bed. However, it is currently assumed that five percent of all infected people become seriously ill and require ventilation. Projections based on this estimate suggest that the healthcare system could be overburdened.
My question: Did the projections make a distinction between symptom-free infected people and actual, sick patients – i.e. people who develop symptoms?
“2. Dangerousness
A number of coronaviruses have been circulating for a long time – largely unnoticed by the media. [2] If it should turn out that the COVID-19 virus should not be ascribed a significantly higher risk potential than the already circulating corona viruses, all countermeasures would obviously become unnecessary.
The internationally recognized International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents will soon publish a paper that addresses exactly this question. Preliminary results of the study can already be seen today and lead to the conclusion that the new virus is NOT different from traditional corona viruses in terms of dangerousness. The authors express this in the title of their paper “SARS-CoV-2: Fear versus Data“. [3]
My question: How does the current workload of intensive care units with patients with diagnosed COVID-19 compare to other coronavirus infections, and to what extent will this data be taken into account in further decision-making by the federal government? In addition: Has the above study been taken into account in the planning so far? Here too, of course, “diagnosed“ means that the virus plays a decisive role in the patient’s state of illness, and not that previous illnesses play a greater role…..”
00
but think of the geese!
02
Make a good Sunday dinner.
11
Yum 🙂
00
Wal in Footrot Flats had a right evil gander … it was a one bird army.
10
Most patients on ventilators are sedated and paralysed. The tube is not tolerated otherwise and I gather there are different rhythms of ventilation required in ARDS patients. The secretions are
sucked out by fine catheters and posturing is used to encourage drainage. CPAP masks are a different
thing but requirements in the very sick are beyond their capabilities. This is why so many nursing are needed for ICU care, especially in these cases.
30
See my reply above, prone Head down Bum up and percussion before ICU or ventilation required.
20
Wouldn’t argue with you Slithers. It’s the domain of the physiotherapists, but it’s
all part of the continuum of a worsening disease leading to artificial ventilation.
The prone, head down position in a ventilated patient can be a nightmare, both from
cardiac problems and the increased pressures required to ventilate the lungs. The other
part of this is, generally, a bacterial pneumonia is localised in just part of one lung (or two) and the patient can breathe reasonably well and ‘your position’ is part of clearing the lung by the physiotherapist. Viral pneumonia can be both lungs extensively involved and when severe becomes a much more difficult disease to treat, which is what happens as this disease gets worse.
20
It’s virii in the lungs which are the issue here, aerosol antivirals are the obvious answer (to an engineer anyway). It seems to me you should administer an antiviral into the patients air. Alcohol for example, they might get drunk and blood alcohol and liver function would need to be closely monitored but the virus load is probably going to be lowered and for sure the patient will be less infectious.
As I said before cineole the antiseptic in tea tree oil and Eucalyptus oil could work as an aerosol antiviral should someone care to test it.
At the very least filter the air with a HEPA filter, using some HEPA media. Make one for your air-con intake with cardboard and a vacuum cleaner HEPA filter…. here’s why
https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/can-air-purifiers-filter-out-the-coronavirus/
20
PS you can make an air filter with a fan, a HEPA filter, some cardboard and sticky tape.
I’d use one of those 12v 120mm computer fans and a car cabin HEPA air filter ( which I already have hanging around ) along with a 12v power pack or a car battery + charger for power.
10
Since most of us have lots of time now, Willis Eschenbach has a long article on the range of measures several nations have deployed along with their impact “on bending the curve”.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/01/do-lockdowns-work/
At a minimum, he’s enumerated a long list of measures take with only two nations where what they did (doing) seem to have worked.
11
It is a fail. He is not looking at countries like Taiwan, Canada and Australia because they do not meet his death threshold. His interpretation of his scatterplot is wrong. It simply shows that most countries are reactive; applying increasingly severe controls as their death rates soar. All US states will eventually do the same with total lock down being enforced.
40
Question for people more up to date knowledge on the virus than me. Our son said he was reading on a few medical sites that this virus seems to affect people with blood Type A more than those with other blood types. Is there any factual basis to this? I cannot think of any logical reason why this should be –but I certainly have no expertise in the area.
40
google “why are there blood types” and proceed from there. here is one popsci example-
you wont find specific mechanistic links between viruses and particular blood factors but it will help your thinking and make you a better evolutionary biologist.
22
It seems to be a fact of life that specific population groups with a preponderance of one blood type can be found to have particular physiological responses to stimuli.
e.g. One blood type seems to be particularly unable to deal with alcohol.
30
That would have to be O + 😀
10
?
It was A.
🙂
10
Host blood type was discussed by the professor in the video linked at post #8 above. In fact the blood type of certain populations reflect the diseases those populations have been exposed to over generations. There are papers written on the topic.
However no one is superhuman and COVID19 is debilitating and even deadly to a significant portion of the any population.
20
Here’s an Off Topic.
A curly one !
Last night driving home in the rain
I had a collision with another car.
I was tuning right and the other car had no head lights on.
The other driver said afterwards that he had installed driving lights
On his vehicle and had got the wires crossed somehow.
So when he turned off his driving lights so did his headlights !
( Unroadworthy in my opinion & should not have been on the road. )
There were police, ambulance and a fight truck all there at the scene
As the two vehicles were blocking a main road.
All were pleasant & helpful
If a little puzzled how I did not give way when making a right turn
But I noticed that no one practised ‘social distancing’
Not the Ambos who checked me out for injuries ( one minor one )
Not the police who checked my license and other details
Not the Firefighters who cleaned up the road.
I put a mask on but was told by police woman that they did not work when wet.
Does any one have any thoughts on this situation ?
40
No good about the accident Bill , I always check lights after playing around with them .
As for masks being useless when wet I have no idea but surely better than no mask .
50
Are you insured?
An important question is whether the police issued a penalty notice to the driver of the car without lights. If they did then you have a reasonably easy case to avoid loss of no claim and paying excess. Your insurer may chase the other driver or their insurer. The time of day and weather conditions should be factors that work in your favour with regard to your culpability.
My last bingle was while I was stationary at a set of lights and a parked car rolled back on to me. It was a funny situation because I though the clown was simply backing out so I was furiously beeping the horn trying to get the driver’s attention. All that happened was a guy came running out of the newsagent to watch his car damage the left rear door of my car. The repair for my car was $2500, which cost me nothing; no loss of no claim and no excess payment. A photo was enough to prove my case. The other guy was uninsured and was buying lottery ticket at the time. I doubt my insurer bothered chasing him.
If there was no penalty notice issued to the other driver then you may need other proof that the vehicle had no lights. Typically the story of someone at fault changes in the light of day. When I drove company cars, I was always advised never to admit anything in the event of an accident.
If you are uninsured then good luck trying to get money from someone driving around without lights on. They would be a rare individual if they cover your costs.
Were you issued with a warning or penalty notice?
I would tell the police woman the mask is there to remind me not to touch my face. Then be very careful not to fiddle with the mask.
10
Rob & Rick, Yes I am insured with comprehensive insurance.
And I will drop by the local police station to enquire if they are charging him.
Also very good is that there was a another car behind me waiting to turn right as well.
The driver of that car got out and gave me her contact details as a witness to the fact that he did not have his lights on.
I think she also gave them to the police.
But now how do emergency service personnel manage to remain uninfected in these type of situations ?
20
They have an awareness but it is almost inevitable that they will get the virus if they are dealing with infected people. Their role has almost unavoidable contact and they are usually not well protected, These are the front line people being taken out of service in other countries because they have the virus.
https://nypost.com/2020/03/31/were-bringing-covid-19-patients-to-hospitals-to-die-nyc-paramedic/
I think the police woman’s comment to you was dumb. A mask on your face would certainly be beneficial to her if you had the virus. They have not had the benefit of JoNova’s insights for the past two months.
40
RW
you comment
“I think the police woman’s comment to you was dumb”
I agree.
The problem we have in the ESP in Australia is that we are always playing catch up to the Govt’s changing guidelines. Management are then a week or so behind in implementation. Currently there is no guideline to wear a mask so long as you sanitise your hands. That will change.
It has to.
40
Bill you ask
“how do emergency service personnel manage to remain uninfected in these type of situations ?”
In answer.
We have 4000+ confirmed cases in a population of 26 million.
At the moment coming into contact with a covid-19 positive individual is low.
This will be totally different in a week or two.
Sadly we ESP won’t remain uninfected.
30
… at least you weren’t badly hurt and you’re still here.
30
UPDATE:
Hot verses cold country table over last 4 days:
https://i.ibb.co/DLgf098/Warm-v-Cool-Countries-Percent-Died-Covid-19-29th-March-to-1st-April.png
Cool country cases increased 33.9% in 4 days, the warm countries increased 80.2% in 4 days.
So the hotter more humid weather again shows a 2.36 times rate of case increase over 4 days of data, compared to cold countries, within the most infected countries today.
Brazil, Ecuador, Peru, Dominican Republic and Algeria are all on a fast growth path.
Examine Sweden during the past 4 days, the died % is shooting higher while the daily growth rate in cases is still accelerating each day. With compounding growth they’ll be approaching France in a week. This progressive experimental approach to state health policy (i.e. denial) is going to follow a predicable path to a brutal crescendo then a desperate fight to stymie the mass die-back.
UK and Netherlands have joined Spain and Italy. France and Belgium are done as well. Germany is only 1.2% died still but their serious/critical cases have gone up sharply, to 3,408, doubling in 3 days. Germany’s doctors and nurses are not giving up the fight so easily. The infection in the rest of Europe is going to grow in a similar way as in the hotter countries, unless more of them can quash the curve.
Mexico dropped off the list with 2.39% died, 122 more cases for 1,215 total known.
India and Africa are bringing up the rear but they’re going to be on another scale. India had a 43% daily case increase. The disease is getting going all over Africa now.
50
An interesting outcome in Sweden is that there are many in the country sticking their finger up at the government inaction and self-isolating anyhow. Many in the medical profession consider the government response inadequate.
Expect to see the government panic into action as their hospitals are overwhelmed:
https://www.thelocal.se/20200330/pressure-increases-on-stockholm-hospitals-as-coronavirus-storm-increases-in-strength
I do not think it possible to adequately prepare for the worst. The worst has to be limited by effective isolation across the population.
50
I think so, self-preservation will kick in. Now would be ideal.
50
Fear will shut down their economy anyway. What a horrible way to do it.
70
It’s hard to know what is going on anywhere, until we have good large scale random population testing that can find those who were
asymptomatic, yet had the virus, or had too mild a case to identify other than as a cold or flu, and recovered.
It is also hard to believe numbers from many countries, some of whom are unable to report accurately and some of whom are unwilling
to do so.
Its hard for someone in the US to think of Australia as having a economy that might be in difficult straights — bearing in mind how little
we are taught at all about the rest of the world. We think of Australia as having similar magnitude as Canada, in scope and population, but
with the greater true independence of occupying an entire continent. And I suppose there are some residual pre-war memories of the Commonwealth;
Where an aggregate of Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and colonial suppliers exceeded the US in commercial scope. This seems quaint and
stupid in some ways, I know, but may have some relevance as well, for the current situation of the economy, and its future, as ours, may
require the shaking off the last of the immediate post WWII alliances, assumptions, institutions and attitudes as well as rejecting some of the more
recent and less successful experiments in reshaping them. I can’t speak to which Australian institutions might still be coasting on WWII
momentum — is your ABC similar to the BBC in Britain in living on past glory? In the aftermath we had a mountain of effort go into trans-national
institutions; The WHO is the latest in a series of monumental FUBARS in that realm. And the international effort for Climate Change still aspires to be the biggest of the
bunch.
“globalization” is likely to be a dirty word in all the nations that find that gaining low costs in their supply chain might have had some unforseen pitfalls. It might
be very economically beneficial to recapitalize and rebuild for a number of countries; which ones if any will have the will —
Trade used to mean you got good at something, then sold some of the stuff you made to other countries and bought some of the stuff they made.
There will be an intense propaganda effort to tell us all how awful and xenophobic and hurtful to the poor this is. Not to mention that rebuilding industry will damage the environment.
It hurts a lot to count up the unnecessary lost souls, in every county, due to this scourge.
Many of us are at the beginning of a period of isolation, followed by a period of economic recovery.
For hundreds of millions of people in the world, many of the joys and sorrows of everyday life are being foregone, never to be recovered;
the little things like baby’s first word with the grandparents there, or the wedding you can’t really celebrate with your friends,
or the graduation you’ll never walk. We’ll mostly get over it, and I guess, for most of us it’s not a shooting war.
But one nation is already completely suppressing any public sorrow in favor of taking maximum advantage of circumstances.
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See comment I just made here Richard:
http://joannenova.com.au/2020/04/coronavirus-treatment-antibodies-that-work-in-20-minutes-could-give-protection-for-8-weeks/#comment-2302511
One remark, the US still has a major strategic and economic-scale interest and benefit in being a global power, and a Pacific power in particular, and countries without strong close trustworthy Allies are weak ineffective countries.
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Empires of all sorts go through very similar cycles; up, down then collapse, with a variety of mini-cycles during the whole process. Not that usual given humans tend to learn very little for the mistakes of the past. Perhaps it will be different this time around? Past empires asked the same question. The answer is always the same. That’s another lesson that’s always ignored.
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Richard:
To answer one question our ABC is the BBC-lite.
Mostly repeats of BBC programs that none of the commercial stations want (latest Attenborough shows appear on (commercial) Ch9 and repeats (ad nauseam) on (commercial) Ch.10.
Their often paraded Top Program (which they keep saying is under threat) is Peppa Pig. I have never seen it but understand that it is imported.
Their share of the audience is quite small, and this despite the Godawful shows on the commercial channels.
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if this cov is a blast, what will the next 5-10 virus parties look like?
https://balance10.blogspot.com/2020/04/sars-cov-2-recombinant-in-nature-or-by.html
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Exterminate the bats in China, for thousands of years they have been a menace to human civilisation.
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Bats are continuing to be a menace in Geelong as they fly across the city every sunset from the Botanic Gardens to the river region, dropping filth and vermin every yard along the way.
Disgusting. Get rid of the bats!
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This is good news.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/04/this-is-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-pandemic-dr-stephen-smith-announces-hydroxy-choloroquine-study-that-is-game-changer-in-battle-against-coronavirus-video/
There is also a Jewish doctor ( Dr Zelenko) who has treated about 700 patients successfully in New York.
https://www.thepostmillennial.com/ny-doctor-reports-100-success-treating-coronavirus-with-drug-combination
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Today, 2nd April, New York needs 75K beds for COVID19 patients. They have 13k. If people cannot get to see a doctor they are not going to be prescribed any magic drug.
The fact that the Pentagon has ordered 100k body bags to add to its stock of 50k gives clearer indication of where the US is headed. Best estimate, if current isolation measures are effective, is a toll across USA of 84k; would be better than Italy per head of population.
Any wishful thinking dingbat who hopes to be saved by a magic drug while continuing to mix freely will likely be surprised that they could not even make it to hospital for treatment.
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I thought Aussies were positive , optimistic people. Clearly not all of them.
Why would you not want to try different things ? No one is suggesting these medicines will solve the problem on their own but they look like they will help a lot of people if given early enough. ( If I tested positive and had symptoms I would not think twice of trying them)
Why has the FDA given a speedy approval for the use of them ?
Why are many countries around the world, at least trialling them? (France, UK , NZ, Japan etc etc.)
Why are the NY authorities giving them to huge numbers of their health workers?
I presume you are happy Morrison is talking of this “lock down” going on for six months while you wait for it to “die out” —the Australian economy will go over a cliff and meet Venezuela at the bottom if you are not prepared to try all options.
As for the dingbats going out and mixing —two posts down you say you have been out to the local Dulux shop ???
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The US military is getting ahead of the COVID19 pandemic:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/pentagon-seeking-100-000-body-bags-for-civilians-in-virus-crisis
Good to see there is at least some proactive agencies.
This link has the data that POTUS Trump was referring to yesterday:
https://covid19.healthdata.org/projections
Really good details on the availability of beds, ICUs and ventilators. New York is presently able to meet 10% of their need. No wonder the military is preparing to collect bodies.
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Visited my local Deluxe paint shop today. About 10 staff very busy but all keeping their distance from each other and customers. Told me they have never been busier. I expect many of the houses around our area are going to look good inside and outside on the other side of the lock down.
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Highest percentages of new cases as a proportion of their active cases.
Countries over 250 cases and above 12.5% New Cases as a proportion of Active Cases.
% New v Active | Country | Total Cases
33.5 … India … 1,998
29.0 … Peru … 1,323
20.5 … Cyprus … 320
20.1 … UAE … 814
19.6 … Ukraine … 794
18.6 … Azerbaijan … 359
18.0 … Algeria … 847
17.7 … Moldova … 423
17.5 … Ecuador … 2,758
17.3 … Brazil … 6,836
17.2 … Russia … 2,777
16.2 … Serbia … 1,060
16.0 … UK … 29,474
15.8 … Colombia … 1,065
14.4 … Dominican Republic … 1,284
14.3 … Turkey … 15,679
14.1 … Reunion … 281
13.6 … Canada … 9,677
12.6 … Israel … 6,092
12.6 … Egypt … 779
South America is going bad fast.
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Thanks for that WX. They are key statistics. I wish worldometer had a column for that. It’s a pain to calculate…
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Argentina WXCycles ?
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Sometimes the new cases for the day have not been posted and where that happens that country does not come up in the sorted column.
Argentina is 13.6% right now.
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Dramatic daily increase in fatalities in the UK.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
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Bad weather forecast for UK. Influence of the low from the Norwegian Sea.
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How is that relevant? It’s 12,000 miles away in the other hemisphere. It’s literally on the other side of the world from here.
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Out of interest, I checked on earth.nullschool.org and looked at the North Atlantic. I only looked at sealevel. It looked C-C-COLD.
There were a couple of weak fronts in between Iceland and Ireland and that was about it: dull and boring, with Southern England being washed over by a westerly wind which originated well north of Greenland and diverted around Iceland to pick up some warmth from the volcanoes and animal farts.
John O’ Groats was being touched by a North to Northwesterly somewhat stronger than the south, so it would be very Cold. The Orkneys were buried in it.
Nothing there at all interesting.
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Another golden oldie,
Friars Balsam is a good de-congestant anti inflammatory ages old medication. If you feel you may be coming down with the virus or ordinary Flu’ it is a good part of early relief and possibly avoidance of the worst effects.
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If you’re a good boy and remember to take your Vitamin D, you won’t need Friars Balsam.
(Dr. John Campbell of UK on vit-d efficacy as immune system reinforcement. Pay attention to the scientific papers he references … )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5yVGmfivAk
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We had some Friar’s Balsam; don’t know what became of it. It does work well but makes a disgusting mess of the container used for it. We had a dedicated bowl and spoon.
A few drops of eucalyptus oil in boiling water also works for an inhalation.
It’s Vit C and Vit D for us atm.
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I remember my mother making me an inhalation for a bad cold when I was about knee-high to a duck.
It assaulted my upper sinuses with malice aforethought. They felt as though they had been reamed out.
After that, any time it looked as though an inhalation was being prepared, I left it to my brothers and hid as far away as I could get.
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Several miles was about right.
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WA to properly close borders – only a month too late!
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-02/coronavirus-sees-wa-close-state-borders-from-midnight-sunday/12114648
If you are in Perth and want to freak yourself out, take a a look at how close your neighbour with coronavirus lives:
https://ww2.health.wa.gov.au/~/media/Images/Corporate/article%20images/Coronavirus/Maps/region-map.jpg
There is one really close to me
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It almost follows the traditional ‘more prosperous’ areas AP. Areas where many people
travel. And the University of WA where the students, both local and from abroad, are concentrated.
It’s not a great feeling to be in amongst the densest black spots. Up the barricades! But take
heart and look at Sunni’s referred site; ‘wash your hands every minute you touch anyone or anything. Tie them to your belt so they can’t touch your face, nose or eyes (my bit about tying ’em down), isolate, wear a mask out to stop your hands touching your face,….’.
Actually, it’s a very well presented ‘do’s and don’ts’. The presenter is a doctor working exclusively with COVID-19 patients on admission to hospital in NYC. He says the disease is virtually exclusively past along by hand – face touch. He says a lot more, beautifully, clearly put. Recommended; take the time!
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Yes good link, thanks!
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Personally, I suck organic zinc tablets, take large doses of vitamin C and a few cloves of garlic a day. Garlic is important in protecting the circulatory system and heart. It also lowers pressure.
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You need to have the ionophore or the zinc can’t get to where it is needed.
Quertecin.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jf5014633#
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As antioxidants, I recommend bioflavonoids, coenzyme Q10 and melatonin.
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And what were Australian health departments doing?
“Public Health Agency did not stock masks but spent $5.6M on #ClimateChange, incl studies of mosquitoes, rats, and programs on “storytelling regarding climate change”. https://t.co/VSOWKoKlyg @CPHO_Canada #covid19Canada #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/7WwPQKwq4m
— Holly Doan (@hollyanndoan) April 1, 2020″
And the second part doesn’t look too promising when translated from “government speak” either
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/04/01/y2kyoto-contagion/
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Couldbe worse – like Canada
“Happy April 1, enjoy the higher taxes”
“Because this is what Trudeau does in a time of crisis, he hikes taxes.”
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/04/01/happy-april-1-enjoy-the-higher-taxes/
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Loving the steady drop in new infections, the key.
The linear shape on the decline is consistent. About 30 cases per day, now at 272 cases. That means, fingers crossed, that
we have ten days to go before the number of new cases per day is in single digits!
If the cruise liners are resolved and there is enough testing to cover incoming passengers, we are out of immediate daily danger
in under two weeks. Then two weeks after no cases, the country is clean. At the first sign of a case, there has to be rapid intervention unit to secure the area.
Likely back to work in April, cautiously and get people back earning, selling, making, servicing.
And the borders have to stay closed for longer, except for imports and exports.
I can see a lot of the world will want to holiday in Australia, including Australians. Can you imagine people staying off aircraft for a year?
Maybe we can get some relief from our electricity bills by killing the RET dead? And stop buying useless German windmills/moneymills for private owners and free Chinese solar panels.
And get the price of what is 90% coal electricity back to what it was, the cheapest in the world. So we can afford to make our own ventilators and masks and hand sanitizers and
everything else made in China.
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I didn’t see this pop up, so I rewrote it 3 hours later. Must be a huge lag these days for posting.
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A virus shreds the economy, then it appears the climate mob want to make sure the economy is “shaped” by eco foolishness as it starts to recover…..bad idea….
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/ambitious-climate-action-a-double-win-for-economy-in-coronavirus-recovery-20200402-p54gj3.html
“Industry groups and climate change experts are calling on the government to use the economic recovery effort after the disruption from the global coronavirus pandemic to generate jobs and economic growth by rolling out low-emissions technologies.
“On Wednesday the UK government announced it had postponed the United Nations climate change conference which it was set to host in Glasgow in November. It is expected to be reconvened some time next year.
“Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor said the federal government remains “committed to the Paris Agreement” and the Morrison government has previously promised to release a long-term emission reduction strategy ahead of the UN talks, backed with an “investment roadmap” to guide government expenditure on emissions reduction technologies.
“Anna Skarbek, chief executive of the ClimateWorks policy advisory body with Monash University, said the actions needed to achieve our climate commitments are compatible with economic stimulus to recover from the pandemic.
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If the LNP do not take this opportunity to revive our economy with a new energy policy then as I’ve been saying for some time now the voters better wake up and stop voting for either major party. If PM Morrison doesn’t change direction then I hope his own party do to him what they did to Turnbull and get someone who will make the change. We can’t afford to keep going down the anti-coal pro-renewables path any longer.
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Fully agree. Kill the RET. Give us back our pre RET prices for what is 90% from coal from 50 year old power stations. The billions have achieved nothing except the world’s highest electricity prices.
Then maybe we can get manufacturing started again, smelting, machinery, the stuff we have been sending offshore to China which runs on coal anyway.
For those people earning under $20,000 a year who pay no tax, it is the biggest single cost they have, after food and rent. Green madness based on a threat which is ridiculous. If we had spent that money on just about anything else, we would better off. And stop Malcolm Turnbull’s ludicrously expensive and usless Snowy II, which will come in at $12Billion of wasted tax money. Give it back to the people. And $60Billion on French submarines which are useless, slower and worse than what we have. And the world’s slowest and most recognizable diesel submarines in a country which has seven days of diesel.
Then demand that the public servants of Queensland do not get a 3% pay rise in the middle of the greatest financial crisis in Australia’s history. Take it out of their GST.
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The downward straight line on new infections is holding. About 25 fewer new infections every day. At this rate infections will stop in 10 days!
The key is that these infections happened a week ago and we are noticing them today but we may be seeing the tail of the spread which has stopped, so it may be the pattern of the last infections appearing as people take different times to show symptoms and report. This is assuming new infections do not include those on ships.
If so, the virus may have stopped infecting people already. Hopefully in ten days the total number of new infections is in single digits. Then we need sensible assessment of how to restart society in a safe way. Or take until the end of April, just to be sure. Or both.
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So long as we keep those Cruise ships out of Australian ports
They want to off load their sick passengers & crew here
To minimise their own costs & expenses
By making Australians pay.
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Some good news from a much anticipated recent study endorsed by Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, in a recent open letter to the German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/open-letter-professor-sucharit-bhakdi-german-chancellor-dr-angela-merkel/5708004
From https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300972
“SARS-CoV-2: fear versus data”
Author YanisRousselabAudreyGiraud-GatineauacdeMarie-ThérèseJimenoeJean-MarcRolainabChristineZandottiabPhilippeColsonabDidierRaoultab
“Highlights
•Comparison of incidence and mortality rates of four common coronaviruses circulating in France with those of SARS-COV-2 in OECD countries.
•As of 2 March 2020, 90 307 patients had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 worldwide, with 3086 deaths (mortality rate 3.4%).
•As of 2 March 2020, among OECD countries, 7476 patients had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, with 96 deaths (mortality rate 1.3%)
•As of 2 March 2020, in France, 191 people had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, with three deaths (mortality rate 1.6%).
•In OECD countries. the mortality rate for SARS-CoV-2 (1.3%) is not significantly different from that for common coronaviruses identified at the study hospital in France (0.8%; P=0.11). [my bolding]
•The problem of SARS-CoV-2 is probably overestimated, as 2.6 million people die of respiratory infections each year compared with less than 4000 deaths for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of writing. [my bolding]
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So this is ultra-good news.
“•In OECD countries. the mortality rate for SARS-CoV-2 (1.3%) is not significantly different from that for common coronaviruses identified at the study hospital in France (0.8%; P=0.11). [my “bolding]
“•The problem of SARS-CoV-2 is probably overestimated, as 2.6 million people die of respiratory infections each year compared with less than 4000 deaths for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of writing.” [my bolding]
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I will survive, with all due apologies to Gloria Gaynor
No doubt applies to all too many of the masses…
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New measures of asymptomatic Covid19 spread are worrisome. China, apparently early on, reported this category at 10%. Others suggested up to 20%. Now comes word from Iceland’s 5% survey that about half of the 1% detected are asymptomatic.
An April 2 piece at newshub.co.nz carries on:
The invincible young would appear to be the Death Bringers of their elders. What a world we’re witnessing….
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A 29-year-old man is in a Washington, D.C., intensive care unit recovering from coronavirus and he has a warning to young people and anyone who thinks they don’t need to abide by social distancing guidelines: “This can happen to you.”
Francis Wilson of Woodbridge, Virginia, was washing his hands often and taking other precautions as the potentially deadly virus spread. He didn’t think he was at much risk. But he got so sick that he was put unconscious for 10 days.
“I had no idea that the symptoms could get that bad for somebody young and healthy,” he said via video call Tuesday from his hospital bed at George Washington University Hospital.
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/coronavirus/this-can-happen-to-you-29-year-old-coronavirus-patient-shares-warning/2354408/?_osource=taboola-recirc
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British American Tobacco may have found a tobacco based vaccine:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8175471/British-American-Tobacco-working-COVID-19-vaccine-using-tobacco-leaves.html
It sounds so odd in some way, but pharmaceutical companies are arguably worse than tobacco companies, and in any case I hope that the BAT product (ironic name in these circumstances) does actually work.
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