Official Thread: Coronavirus "COVID-19"

[bill dennison]

the trump derangement syndrome is off the charts here in non P&R



dems would rather see people die in mass than trump have a win on this and that is may work

[bill dennison]

maybe we should do a large test the dems want on hydroxychloroquine

all republicans get hydroxychloroquine if they want

and dems all get the placebo

.......

how thew **** do docs do a real test on this and give anyone a placebo and watch them die if it does work

[xCLAVEx]

I think doctors are allowed to try it.

LA doctor seeing success with hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19

Some are, but in New York didn't the governor outlaw it? Why would he do that?

[Lazy8s]

Some are, but in New York didn't the governor outlaw it? Why would he do that?

Because a fairly common side effect of the drug is respiratory distress known as bronchospasms.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320162

Source on the drugs side effects.

https://www.healthline.com/health/hydroxychloroquine-oral-tablet#side-effects

[MyTMouse]

Maybe I'm just an ignoramus (quite likely) but I don't see why there's so much hysteria over this...I know its new and we don't know entirely what to expect but this (from what I've seen) doesn't seem to be deadly or even critical for the VAST majority of the population overall...and those that are dying (mostly) have various other health conditions and/or are fairly old...those same people die in high numbers from all sorts of other things (regular flu, heatstroke, air pollution, etc.).

I understand nobody wants the loved ones to die (obviously) but if it's from a death toll perspective the regular flu kills over half a million people a year and there are various other things that kill millions of people per year that are preventative (tobacco products, alcohol, etc.)

Some people are acting like this is gonna kill half the world and that everyone who gets within 20ft of them is gonna kill them and their whole family from the disease. Every day that there isn't 0 cases some politician put in more restrictive rules to the point where some places are almost in a police state...again, millions die each year from all sorts of privative things that nobody seems to care about.

Other thing that's weird to me is the numbers seem to be all over the place as far as death rate goes. In Canada we're slightly less than 2% and some places may be over 10%...that's a large variance.

Now I'm not telling people to just go about like nothing's happening but I don't understand paranoia. I just do the things that are always recommended to keep from getting viruses.

The trillions of dollars lost over something that is going to kill less than many other regular things that people don't pay any attention to is kinda saddening

[xCLAVEx]

Because a fairly common side effect of the drug is respiratory distress known as bronchospasms.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320162

Source on the drugs side effects.

https://www.healthline.com/health/hy...t#side-effects

Shouldn't we let Dr.s make that determination for their patients and not the Governor though?

[Java Cool Dude]

The extent some people go to lick the dirt off Trump's shoes is nauseating; this is with him botching COVID-19 response, now imagine their reaction if he was on top of it from day one, we would need a NSFW section!!

[Lazy8s]

Shouldn't we let Dr.s make that determination for their patients and not the Governor though?

Doctors onsite doing the treatments aren't necessarily any better prepared to make the call than the governor.

Problem is we have experts like Fauci and Cambell being over ridden by politicians...I would personally like nothing more for the drug to be proven as a readily available treatment, but:

a. We need to ensure over zealous Drs aren't prescribing it to patients who may recover fine without it and:

b. We need to be as certain as possible that patients showing acute respiratory distress won't be placed in greater danger by having the drug administered.

If the only way Cuomo has to ensure that the greatest number of people aren't being given something that can cause greater harm is to ban it until the experts make a final call, then he's probably doing the right thing.

[MyTMouse]

The extent some people go to lick the dirt off Trump's shoes is nauseating; this is with him botching COVID-19 response, now imagine their reaction if he was on top of it from day one, we would need a NSFW section!!

without getting too much into P&R it's also similar to the tons of people from media to high-level politicians who have Trump derangement syndrome

Also, it's easy to criticise but finding the appropriate level of action is next to impossible...everyone will have a different opinion. If a world leader shuts everything down fast and hard and there's very little in the way of infections then people will say they are a police state psycho...if they do a lot less then they are accused of being murderous morons.

They have to play it day by day and use the advice of the people around them...everyone on here who criticises should be glad they are not in the same position

[xCLAVEx]

Doctors onsite doing the treatments aren't necessarily any better prepared to make the call than the governor.

Problem is we have experts like Fauci and Cambell being over ridden by politicians...I would personally like nothing more for the drug to be proven as a readily available treatment, but:

a. We need to ensure over zealous Drs aren't prescribing it to patients who may recover fine without it and:

b. We need to be as certain as possible that patients showing acute respiratory distress won't be placed in greater danger by having the drug administered.

If the only way Cuomo has to ensure that the greatest number of people aren't being given something that can cause greater harm is to ban it until the experts make a final call, then he's probably doing the right thing.

This is treading dangerously into the government controlling decisions over peoples lives rather than letting their medical professionals make the determination.

I rather like my governor, but I wouldn't want him to make my medical decisions for me.

[Lazy8s]

This is treading dangerously into the government controlling decisions over peoples lives rather than letting their medical professionals make the determination.

I rather like my governor, but I wouldn't want him to make my medical decisions for me.

I don't necessarily disagree with you. But as a guy (anecdotal here) who lived with debilitating pain for years because of a simple, but misdiagnosed issue, I'm also wary of Drs who may jump the gun without being fully informed themselves.

[Lazy8s]

The extent some people go to lick the dirt off Trump's shoes is nauseating; this is with him botching COVID-19 response, now imagine their reaction if he was on top of it from day one, we would need a NSFW section!!

We have one! It's called P&R

[xCLAVEx]

I don't necessarily disagree with you. But as a guy (anecdotal here) who lived with debilitating pain for years because of a simple, but misdiagnosed issue, I'm also wary of Drs who may jump the gun without being fully informed themselves.

It is true there are bad drs., and now I understand where you are coming from.

[Mahjik]

I'm not sure if this was already posted or not:

A new COVID-19 vaccine candidate is entering Phase 1 clinical human testing today, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) accepted an application from Inovio Pharmaceuticals under the regulator’s Investigational New Drug program. Inovio plans to inject its first volunteer test subject with the INO-4800 DNA vaccine candidate it has developed, following promising results from preclinical studies performed on animals that did indicate increased immune response.

The Inovio DNA vaccine candidate works by injecting a specifically engineered plasmid (a small, independent genetic structure) into a patient so that their cells can produce a desired, targeted antibody to fight off a specific infection. DNA vaccines, while available and approved for a variety of animal infections in veterinary medicine, have not yet been approved for human use.

That said, Inovio’s work isn’t starting from scratch: The company previously completed a Phase 1 study for a DNA vaccine candidate for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), where it showed promising results and a high level of antibodies produced in subjects that persisted for an extended period of time.

Inovio has been able to scale up quickly, developing and producing “thousands of doses” of INO-4800 in just a few short weeks in order to support its Phase 1 and Phase 2 trials. The company has done so in part thanks to backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as funding from other nonprofits and organizations. If clinical trials are successful, Inovio says it will be able to have up to one million doses of the vaccine ready by the end of the year, for use both in additional trials and for potential emergency use pending authorization.

This is the second vaccine to undertake Phase 1 clinical testing on human subjects: Moderna began its trial in mid-March. Inovio’s trial will be made up of 40 volunteers, all healthy adults selected via screening conducted at either Philadelphia’s Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, or the Center for Pharmaceutical Research in Kansas City. It’ll span the next several weeks, and the company expects data around the immune responses from test subjects, as well as info pertaining to the safety of the treatment for humans, to be available by late this summer.

Any broad clearance or approval for use is still likely at least a year to 18 months away, but the pace with which human trials are beginning is still exceptional, so hopefully we won’t have to wait too much longer than that.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/06/a-second-potential-covid-19-vaccine-backed-by-bill-and-melinda-gates-is-entering-human-testing/

[Jay20016]

Why not let the people who are badly sick try this and see if it works? There is technically only anecdotal evidence so far, but there is a MOUNTAIN of it piling up. Studies take years and many of the sick don't have that long, what have they got to lose at this point if it's available?

Causation and correlation are two totally different things. If it works awesome, none are wanting people to die needlessly from it, however we simply don’t know enough about the virus and how to treat it to begin putting eggs in one basket. If the latest bit about 1 in 5 showing cardiovascular damage even without respirator troubles you have to see why the medical community is being overly cautious to pin hopes on something that has been proven through the “normal” paces to have heart failure be a side effect.

[bill dennison]

NN's John Berman pressed Navarro about his (or the president's) qualifications to weigh in on the use of any medication.

"The issue wasn't about me offering my medical opinion," Navarro said. "The question was whether we should take the 29 million doses in the FEMA storehouses and surge them into the zones, and it was unanimous in that task force meeting to do so. So, that's the only question I posed."

"You may find this interesting," he told the CNN host. "In the city that you live in, in New York, in the New York health and hospitals system, virtually every patient now that comes in presenting COVID-19 symptoms is given a cycle of hydroxychloroquine, and when I discussed this last night with Mitch Katz, who is the head of that system, I asked him, are you doing that because the federal government is telling you or because you think it may work? And he said quite clearly that it may work."

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/04/06/navarro_virtually_every_covid-19_patient_in_new_york_is_given_hydroxychloroquine.html

[shrike126]

The evidence for using hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19 is flimsy

Basically, anyone saying this is a treatment that's better than doing nothing at all are at best overly optimistic without data to support their optimism and at worst, lying.

How we could find out if hydroxychloroquine is a good treatment for Covid-19

Clinical trials are the main way researchers figure out whether a drug works — and whether taking it is worth potentially harmful side effects. Doctors in individual cases can repurpose a drug like hydroxychloroquine that’s been cleared to treat other illnesses, prescribing it for off-label use.

But even drugs previously approved to treat one illness need clinical trials before they can be used as a widespread standard treatment for another condition. Repurposing drugs cleared for one purpose to use for another also has a tragic history of severe harm to patients.

Researchers also don’t know whether hydroxychloroquine is actually good at fighting against Covid-19. Most patients infected with the disease recover with no treatment. So scientists need to distinguish whether the drug is actually helping patients recover faster or if they are getting better on their own, making sure that what they’re seeing isn’t due to chance.

The small sample studies and anecdotes around hydroxychloroquine that have emerged so far don’t cut it.

The gold standard for figuring out cause and effect is a double-blind randomized controlled trial. Here, patients are sorted randomly between those receiving the treatment and those in the control group, or those receiving a placebo. To make a study “double-blind,” not only do the patients not know if they are receiving the active treatment, the people administering it also don’t know (thus controlling for unintentional bias). These trials, when large enough, can yield robust results and overcome biases that emerge in smaller samples, like having a certain age demographic overrepresented in the study group.

There are now larger studies underway to resolve questions about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, some recruiting thousands of patients.

Such trials are especially important because of the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic. Millions of people are likely to contract the virus, and without widespread treatment, many of them will suffer and die. On the other hand, a treatment like hydroxychloroquine could do more damage than good if prescribed to patients without proper testing to see which circumstances make the most sense to use the drug.

But randomized controlled trials are expensive and frustratingly time-consuming in the context of a mounting pandemic. It’s not surprising that people are scrounging for whatever information is already available.

What we currently know about using hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19
The anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, sold under the brand name Plaquenil, is also prescribed as an anti-inflammatory drug for conditions like arthritis and lupus. It’s a derivative of another anti-malaria drug, chloroquine.

Hydroxychloroquine is an appealing prospect because it’s already been tested in humans and is available in a low-cost generic form. Doctors in several countries, including the United States, France, China, and South Korea, have reported success in treating Covid-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine, sometimes paired with the antibiotic azithromycin.

But these are anecdotes that don’t offer much insight into how effective the drug could be in a wider population.

A laboratory study of hydroxychloroquine showed that it could prevent SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind Covid-19, from entering cells in a petri dish. While it shows a plausible mechanism for the drug, the effects on cells in a dish can be different from those in living people.

Human trials of hydroxychloroquine, by contrast, have so far yielded mixed results. A tiny study by researchers in France found that the drug could clear the infection in a few days. But the study sample included only 36 patients, and the trial wasn’t randomized, meaning the administrators were deliberately picking which patients received the treatment, potentially skewing the results.

Other studies have been even less promising. A study in China found that hydroxychloroquine was no better than standard medical treatments without the drug. This study was also small, 30 patients, but the treatment was randomized. Another study in France among 11 patients found that hydroxychloroquine was ineffective at best, with one patient dying, two transferred to an intensive care unit, and one patient who experienced a dangerous heart problem and had the hydroxychloroquine treatment stopped early.

In Sweden, some hospitals have stopped offering the drug after some patients reported seizures and blurred vision.

Source: https://www.vox.com/2020/4/7/2120953...clinical-trial

There's a list of clinical trials underway here: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/resul...e=&city=&dist=

[Lazy8s]

It is true there are bad drs., and now I understand where you are coming from.

We're good - there's no easy answers here unfortunately. And I would hate to have the weight of making those decisions on my shoulders lol.

[bill dennison]

Basically, anyone saying this is a treatment that's better than doing nothing at all are at best overly optimistic without data to support their optimism and at worst, lying.



There's a list of clinical trials underway here: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/resul...e=&city=&dist=

Thousands of NY COVID patients are being treated with anti-malarial drug

https://nypost.com/2020/04/05/ny-coronavirus-patients-being-treated-with-anti-malarial-drug/

i think i will trust the doctors giving it over you

[Lazy8s]

https://nypost.com/2020/04/05/ny-cor...malarial-drug/

i think i will trust the doctors giving it over you

Did you read what you posted? Same thing I said above.

“Currently, there is no proven way to prevent COVID-19 after being exposed,” said Anna Bershteyn, an assistant professor with the Department of Population Health at NYU Langone and the study’s co-principal investigator.

“If hydroxychloroquine provides protection, then it could be an essential tool for fighting this pandemic. If it doesn’t, then people should avoid unnecessary risks from taking the drug.”

That drug can cause some pretty harrowing issues. I think I'll trust the researchers over the doctors in this case.

[Munkus]

Maybe I'm just an ignoramus (quite likely) but I don't see why there's so much hysteria over this...I know its new and we don't know entirely what to expect but this (from what I've seen) doesn't seem to be deadly or even critical for the VAST majority of the population overall...and those that are dying (mostly) have various other health conditions and/or are fairly old...those same people die in high numbers from all sorts of other things (regular flu, heatstroke, air pollution, etc.).

I understand nobody wants the loved ones to die (obviously) but if it's from a death toll perspective the regular flu kills over half a million people a year and there are various other things that kill millions of people per year that are preventative (tobacco products, alcohol, etc.)

Some people are acting like this is gonna kill half the world and that everyone who gets within 20ft of them is gonna kill them and their whole family from the disease. Every day that there isn't 0 cases some politician put in more restrictive rules to the point where some places are almost in a police state...again, millions die each year from all sorts of privative things that nobody seems to care about.

Other thing that's weird to me is the numbers seem to be all over the place as far as death rate goes. In Canada we're slightly less than 2% and some places may be over 10%...that's a large variance.

Now I'm not telling people to just go about like nothing's happening but I don't understand paranoia. I just do the things that are always recommended to keep from getting viruses.

The trillions of dollars lost over something that is going to kill less than many other regular things that people don't pay any attention to is kinda saddening

I pretty much feel the same way. We are destroying the global economy and about to send the world into a massive depression, because a relatively small % of people who catch the virus are dying from it. Usually those who already have pre-existing conditions or are elderly (though yes, there are exceptions).

I don't think we should go about our normal routine, but I do think we need to open up the economy soon while encouraging people to continue social distancing and self-quarantining. Make people responsible for their own health and well-being. Rather than have the government tell you what you can and can't do, leave it up to the people to protect themselves and those around them.

That's the ideal. Self-government. Responsibility.

However, the reality is that people suck at self-government. The virus is still spreading like crazy because people refuse to self-quarantine, thinking it won't happen to them, and not realizing (or caring) that they can transmit the disease even if they don't get sick from it. Therefore, external government has to step in and protect people from themselves and each other.

The government should not have to tell businesses to shutter, enforce quarantines, and make people stop being dicks about the whole thing. But they do, because people are dicks. So we have to wait until the government gives us the all-clear, because we're collectively too irresponsible and stupid to handle this the right way ourselves.

/getoffmylawn

[bill dennison]

Did you read what you posted? Same thing I said above.



That drug can cause some pretty harrowing issues. I think I'll trust the researchers over the doctors in this case.

and all very rare
and they are watching the people they are giving it to 24/7


and i have had it

the US Navy has been giving it for years to everyone on a ship that goes into a malaria area

no one on my ship had issues out of 365 guys
small tin can yes but the US navy is not

[Athena]

My doctor that has done actual research on this anti malarial drug vs reading 'the googles', the huff or CNN.
He is very confident that it has merit and has a supply in case I get this nasty thing. I trust him over politically driven interests on one side or the other.

[bill dennison]

gee lets do the drug tests on it that the researchers want and can take a year

so find them say 5000 people out of 10000 that have it that want the placebo

i'm sure they would think it would be great to be dying for science


.......
if it saves 1% it is worth trying under a doctors care

[SD-[Inc]]

Right now we are only doing mitigation to try and flatten the curve to avoid overwhelming our medical systems. But, once cases peak and we start down how does this phase end? We certainly can't wait until the number of new cases goes to 0 because that may never happen. How can we safely go back to work without just restarting the epidemic again? It seems like there should be some plan involving massive amounts of testing. But, so far, I haven't heard of any preparations. Anyone else have any idea how the second half of this battle will go down?

[NWR_Midnight]

and all very rare
and they are watching the people they are giving it to 24/7


and i have had it

the US Navy has been giving it for years to everyone on a ship that goes into a malaria area

no one on my ship had issues out of 365 guys
small tin can yes but the US navy is not

The problem that is being ignored, is we do not know what the long term effect will be combined with COVID-19, and could very well be extensive and beyond the known side effects, as the body is compromised already by a virus that is till very foreign, unknown, and seem to change daily based on many factors. Short term, it may seem to be working. Long term it may have other side effects, as well as death to people who could have survived without it.

That is why we have clinical trials, and why it takes so long to get vaccines and such.

gee lets do the drug tests on it that the researchers want and can take a year

so find them say 5000 people out of 10000 that have it that want the placebo

i'm sure they would think it would be great to be dying for science


.......
if it saves 1% it is worth trying under a doctors care

What if it causes 10%, 20% or more to die in the end when they could have survived? I think that over rules saving 1% trying out a quick fix that hasn't been proven yet to be a viable solution.

[shrike126]

https://nypost.com/2020/04/05/ny-cor...malarial-drug/

i think i will trust the doctors giving it over you

Yeah that article supports what I said.

But Gov. Andrew Cuomo last month said health care providers in the state would be using the drug in combination with the antibiotic Zithromax, or azithromycin, for some last-ditch cases, based on potentially promising research.

“Time is of the essence,’’ Albany University Public Health Dean David Holtgrave, who is on the state’s research team, said in a statement.

A state Health Department official said the DOH has shipped doses of hydroxychloroquine to 56 hospitals across New York, distributing enough “to treat 4,000 patients to date.”

That's doesn't sound like "this will work" as much as it sounds like running out of options and getting desparate.

Desperate use of a drug because you think your patients are going to die anyways is not the same as using it because it's proven to work. Those tests are just starting.

[bill dennison]

The problem that is being ignored, is we do not know what the long term effect will be combined with COVID-19, and could very well be extensive and beyond the known side effects, as the body is compromised already by a virus that is till very foreign, unknown, and seem to change daily based on many factors. Short term, it may seem to be working. Long term it may have other side effects, as well as death to people who could have survived without it.

That is why we have clinical trials, and why it takes so long to get vaccines and such.



What if it causes 10%, 20% or more to die in the end when they could have survived? I think that over rules saving 1% trying out a quick fix that hasn't been proven yet to be a viable solution.

not likely under a doctors care in the hospital
they will take you off at the first sign of a problem

[shrike126]

not likely under a doctors care in the hospital
they will take you off at the first sign of a problem

Then did the drug kill them? The Covid-19? Or a combination of the two? If they pull the patient off and they recover, were they about to recover on their own anyways?

[Cyko]

not likely under a doctors care in the hospital
they will take you off at the first sign of a problem

Not every hospital is Walter Reed and not every doctor has been trained at Harvard Medical School. You are assuming that a) they notice the problem and that b) the problem doesn't kill you before they notice.

I like to operate under better odds than "not likely" when it comes to my health, but that's just me

[bill dennison]

Of the 2,171 physicians surveyed, 37 percent rated hydroxychloroquine the “most effective therapy” for combating the potentially deadly illness, according to the results released Thursday.

The survey, conducted by the global health care polling company Sermo, also found that 23 percent of medical professionals had prescribed the drug in the US — far less than other countries.

“Outside the US, hydroxychloroquine was equally used for diagnosed patients with mild to severe symptoms whereas in the US it was most commonly used for high risk diagnosed patients,” the survey found.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/02/hydroxychloroquine-most-effective-coronavirus-treatment-poll/

[shrike126]

https://nypost.com/2020/04/02/hydrox...reatment-poll/

I mean... that's a survey not a study.

Of the 2,171 doctors asked which drug is most effective, 37 said hydroxychloroquine. By contrast, 32 percent answered “nothing.”

And almost as many said doing nothing at all was just as effective.

[bill dennison]

I mean... that's a survey not a study.



And almost as many said doing nothing at all was just as effective.

During the survey, a total of 6,227 physicians were questioned in 30 countries about at least 15 treatments used for COVID-19.

Of the 2,171 doctors asked which drug is most effective, 37 said hydroxychloroquine. By contrast, 32 percent answered “nothing.”

no i think they were saying nothing was effective

you get that from people when they have seen too much death

[NWR_Midnight]

not likely under a doctors care in the hospital
they will take you off at the first sign of a problem

The first sign of problems can be to late, because the damage can already be done, and they lost their chance to survive because they are being used as guinea pigs as test subjects for a drug that has not been proven or tested in hopes of it being a "wonder drug" or "Miracle drug" against a virus that they yet to even understand to any real extent. All because the President threw it out there as a solution, which is why any real testing started to happen
after it was promoted by him, not before. There is also NO proof that those that they administered the drug to, that the results where not due to their own immune systems, and not the drug. That is why legitimate tests are done, so they can administer the drug to the same individual, randomly inserting placebo's and recording their reaction. To find out if it is actually the drug that is helping or the patients own immune system. But what is happening is they are administering the drug, and if the results are positive, they are going straight to "it's effective" without doing the other needed steps to confirm it. Your own article shows that only 37% believe it is effective (those that said nothing, or voted no, both support that either there isn't enough information to make that call, or it is't effective).. I think 63% carries more weight than 37% and shows that it isn't effective at this time with what little testing that has been done so far.

[MasterGoa]

Meanwhile, patent war:

https://globalnews.ca/news/6515020/china-scientists-drug-coronavirus/

[MasterGoa]

I pretty much feel the same way

/getoffmylawn

I find it really interesting to witness such discussions while totally ignoring the ground you stand on.

Fun fact: The stay at home is actually keeping you safe...

Simply postponing the stay at home by 1 week (Italy) would mean 95,700 dead in the USA right now.

Post pone it by 2 weeks? Probably over 340,000...

[Munkus]

I find it really interesting to witness such discussions while totally ignoring the ground you stand on.

Fun fact: The stay at home is actually keeping you safe...

Simply postponing the stay at home by 1 week (Italy) would mean 95,700 dead in the USA right now.

Post pone it by 2 weeks? Probably over 340,000...

It's not a black & white issue. Of course staying home keeps you safe. However, you can't ignore the fact that staying home also keeps you unemployed (for most people). The point is to discuss where the balance lies between the health risk and getting the economy running again. At some point we need to get back to work, and if we wait until a cure is found or we have herd immunity, there may be no work to get back to. I don't have all the answers, just stating the obvious.

[koralis]

I find it really interesting to witness such discussions while totally ignoring the ground you stand on.

Fun fact: The stay at home is actually keeping you safe...

Simply postponing the stay at home by 1 week (Italy) would mean 95,700 dead in the USA right now.

Post pone it by 2 weeks? Probably over 340,000...

Never leaving the house during your lifetime would save people from things other than Covid-19 also. Permanent home quarantine for everyone! Then those doctors could go home and be safe too.

It's all and well to "flatten the curve" but the only way to keep it at these rates is to impose this indefinitely. Asking people to stay locked up for 2 years while medical science works on a solution is not a valid solution. Medical science needs to come up with a plan on a shorter timetable before either politicians impose it or people simply reject it outright and violate the orders.. and if this goes on long enough, it WILL happen. Pandemic + civil unrest is not a pretty combination.

Medical science has to accept that some people are going to die. How do we minimize that while beginning to normalize things? X numbers of businesses allowed to open on a per capita basis per week with limited customers at a time? Everyone wears masks in public during this period? Would let them ease the country into it and they can monitor it.

or we have herd immunity,

If no one goes out, they can't gain herd immunity.

[bill dennison]

The first sign of problems can be to late, because the damage can already be done, and they lost their chance to survive because they are being used as guinea pigs as test subjects for a drug that has not been proven or tested in hopes of it being a "wonder drug" or "Miracle drug" against a virus that they yet to even understand to any real extent. All because the President threw it out there as a solution, which is why any real testing started to happen
after it was promoted by him, not before. There is also NO proof that those that they administered the drug to, that the results where not due to their own immune systems, and not the drug. That is why legitimate tests are done, so they can administer the drug to the same individual, randomly inserting placebo's and recording their reaction. To find out if it is actually the drug that is helping or the patients own immune system. But what is happening is they are administering the drug, and if the results are positive, they are going straight to "it's effective" without doing the other needed steps to confirm it. Your own article shows that only 37% believe it is effective (those that said nothing, or voted no, both support that either there isn't enough information to make that call, or it is't effective).. I think 63% carries more weight than 37% and shows that it isn't effective at this time with what little testing that has been done so far.

so do nothing and let them die for TDS

[Java Cool Dude]

~2k death in the US alone today, what a sad sad day