Coronavirus COVID-19 Thread

Jolly_Green_Giant

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As this is an important topic and with the blessing of Montoya,

I am creating this thread for all things relating to the emerging coronavirus out of China. It will be a good repository for information, a good forum for discussion / speculation, and a great place to post memes. Some may say this is a nothingburger, however the information that is coming from world governments and health agencies is undeniable at this point. I do however understand there is a huge optimism bias that some people will need to overcome as we have never dealt with anything like this before in our lifetimes. Some of us have been discussing this in g-loc on discord for over a month now and its quite obvious this is getting serious (please join us there if youd like). The CDC has told us to start preparing, mostly for socioeconomic disruption.

As for where the information comes from, a lot of what I have been seeing has been coming from Twitter news aggregates for the latest news updates, so I ask that everyone understands there will be a lot of unverified posts in here. Take what you see with a grain of salt and use your own judgement to determine what you can trust. I would hope that most tweets link to an official / trusted authority on the matter but that can't always be guaranteed. I know most of you aren't dummies so it shouldn't be an issue.

Politics should obviously stay to a minimum, but I understand wanting to point out competence / incompetence. Please try to keep it civil.

Don't panic. Have fun. Ask questions. Play nice.


- JOLLY
 

Jolly_Green_Giant

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A good read on what is the clinical findings so far published.

Nice. This is a great bit of info I hadnt seen. Watching this come up, people seemed to only focus on infected vs deaths. The amount of those in serious / critical condition was what was really concerning because without care, they would also die. Theyre the ones taking up most of the resources as they need round the clock care. Even if you are young and healthy, if you dont get the treatment you need to at minimum treat the symptoms youre kinda screwed. If these cases overload our healthcare system, they are also going to take resources away from other patients with other medical issues.
 

Jolly_Green_Giant

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This is the time for these companies to shine. Theyre so happy. I hope they do find a way to manufacture them in quantities needed.


Perhaps @SeungRyul could chime in with some additional expertise. He was mentioning that the big risk is some sort of mutation.

I would love to hear from Seung too. If anyone knows how things are going down it would be him.
 

Montoya

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This is the time for these companies to shine. Theyre so happy. I hope they do find a way to manufacture them in quantities needed.
Caution there, this is company Moderna also rushed out press releases that they can cure Zika. Thing is, pouring bleach into a dish and killing the virus does not mean they found a safe way to cure anybody!

I have not followed up too closely in this particular case, but its fairly common to get a few publicly traded biotech companies rushing out press releases saying they have a cure when these things happen.
 

Jolly_Green_Giant

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Glum

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Caution there, this is company Moderna also rushed out press releases that they can cure Zika. Thing is, pouring bleach into a dish and killing the virus does not mean they found a safe way to cure anybody!

I have not followed up too closely in this particular case, but its fairly common to get a few publicly traded biotech companies rushing out press releases saying they have a cure when these things happen.
Moderna shipped the Covid vaccine to NIH for phase I trials, so I don't believe this to be smoke and mirrors. Flu vaccine isn't hard to produce, but hard to design to account for mutations that will inevitably happen as the virus runs through the population. Phase II trials will start to give us feedback on effectiveness.

Moderna did receive fast-track approval from the FDA for testing their Zika vaccine, so that isn't smoke and mirrors either. Remember that vaccines are preventative, not curative--those two terms should not be conflated. Bleach analogy doesn't apply.

While this isn't my area of expertise, I do have a doctorate degree in pharmacy and have a good grasp on the approval process and science.
 
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