Medicynic

“In the trial, patients who received remdesivir recovered 31% faster than those who received a placebo, a finding of superiority that could not be attributed to chance, researchers reported. Specifically, half of the patients who were randomly selected to be treated with remdesivir were considered completely recovered within 11 days, and half of those patients took longer. By comparison, it took 15 days or less for half of those who received the placebo to recover.”

“The results also suggested that patients who were given remdesivir were more likely to survive COVID-19 than were those who got the placebo. But the difference in fatality rates — 8% for the group that took the drug versus 11.6% for the placebo group — fell slightly below the cutoff point at which researchers could rule out a statistical fluke.”

Medicynical note: some good but not great news. Remdesivir has activity against the civic-19 virus but the activity is marginal. Comparison of fatalities in the study between those receiving the drug and those getting placebo were not quite statistically significant. The decrease in recovery time was significant. 11 days to recovery vs 15 is progress but not what I would hope to be the ultimate solution.

Use of this drug earlier in the course of the disease may provide more profound benefit. As Dr. Fauci implies this is a start towards an effective treatment.

It should be pointed out that when a very active medication is found it will not take large studies to prove its worth. Remdesivir is a good first step.

When you have a leader who disregards everything.…………but himself. “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability,” Mr. Trump said.

It was a striking boast, even amid a grave health crisis in which Mr. Trump has repeatedly contradicted medical experts in favor of his own judgment. But a disregard for scientific advice has been a defining characteristic of Mr. Trump’s administration.

As the nation confronts one of its worst public health disasters in generations, a moment that demands a leader willing to marshal the full might of the American scientific establishment, the White House is occupied by a president whose administration, critics say, has diminished the conclusions of scientists in formulating policy, who personally harbors a suspicion of expert knowledge, and who often puts his political instincts ahead of the facts.

Medicynical note: imagine the alternate reality of Trump receiving a letter from an immigrant scientist, a Nobel prize winner, warning about a new source of energy for a powerful weapon…….or a series or reports warning of a catastrophic change in climate that will threaten humanity……….or a note from a predecessor warning of the likelihood of a pandemic during his administration.

Think he would make the right decision?

Or would he dismiss the scientist’s letter as being unreliable because it came from a swarthy immigrant Jew with an accent?………or would he dismiss the climate warning as a hoax?………or would he ignore the previous President’s note and fire the staff preparing for the epidemic?

Sadly we don’t have to imagine.

“President Trump on Friday threatened to block an emergency loan to shore up the U.S. Postal Service unless it dramatically raised shipping prices on online retailers, an unprecedented move to seize control of the agency that analysts said could plunge its finances into a deeper hole.”

And

“[Trump] is interposing his own flawed judgment for a very complex, technical enterprise that serves at least a $2 trillion industry,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who chairs the House subcommittee in charge of postal oversight. “It’s one of the most important services in America. It serves every business and every household and it has a workforce of 630,000 people who put themselves at risk every day on behalf of the American population. And he’s willing to risk it all because he’s got a bugaboo in his mind that Jeff Bezos and Amazon are getting a good deal.”

Medicynical note: As we watch this President come apart on live TV, each day demonstrating his bad judgement and constant lying, we should not let him destroy the postal service…..something that’s right about our country. Trump, in the midst of a nationwide stay at home quarantine, actually wants to raise delivery costs (a form of tax if you will) for citizens and businesses. Sad sack social misfit that he is, he can’t just leave things alone.

“Trump is the worst political leader I have experienced in all of my professional life, which is forty years of working with governments at a high level. I’ve never seen anything like the narcissism of this man, and here we are, a country so rich in expertise, in resources, in capacities, and yet we’re watching a complete failure of a political response—with a massive loss of life—in real time. It’s quite shocking, because Trump not only does not know how to approach this issue but he blocks those who do.”

And

“So, let me be specific. The United States is completely failing at the federal level to control this epidemic. It’s a tragedy. We’re losing tens of thousands of lives unnecessarily because of the shambolic failure of Trump and his team to mobilize the vast resources of our country, both human and material. At the same time, there are poor countries that are doing much, much better at controlling the epidemic. Take a country like Vietnam, which is a low-income country in East Asia, and close to China, but for a variety of reasons they acted very quickly to stop the transmission of the virus, to a much greater extent than we did. They also don’t have the means for mass testing and so on. At least to date, they have been able to keep the epidemic more under control through public-health means, which is identifying potentially sick people, helping them to isolate, tracing their contacts, helping those people to isolate, and so on.”

Medicynical note: Read the article. It’s no secret. He’s a failure making us failures too.

This time it is to continue the fiction that stopping travel from China in January saved thousands of lives.

In fact 40,000 travelers from China returned to the US after the so-called ban. Virtually no precautions were take to protect those travelers or us. His ban did nothing….nada!

So it is surprising…..wait…nothing is surprising with this president. Trump now claims that because he heroically stopped travel from China that travelers went to Italy and that’s why the outbreak in Italy was so bad.

“It is a perplexing claim because, as we have reported before, Italy stopped all flights to and from China on Jan. 31. Although the White House announced its travel restrictions on China the same day, they did not go into effect until Feb. 2.”

Medicynical note: Nice try Donald, if you had asked someone or bothered to check you’d have known that Italy stopped all travel. ALL travel, from China to Italy was stopped two days BEFORE Trump enacted his partial ban.

Amazing.

Trump opines without thinking or vetting his comments.  That’s undoubtedly what happened when he endorsed the use of chloroquin, hydroxychloroquin and azithromycin as wonder drugs for the covid-19 infection.  His comments were based on a headlines generated by a small poorly documented study from France done by an unreliable researcher–a global warming by human activity denier no less.

Trump repeated his endorsement several times since and as is his style he has never admitted that he might be, or as appears to be the case from recent studies,  wrong.  The drugs don’t appear to work.

Thus is it sad to see a government scientist who expressed reservations about the use of chloroquin and hydroxychloroquin being fired.

As reported by Maggie Haggerman of the New York Times: “Dr. Rick Bright was abruptly dismissed this week as the director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, or BARDA, and as the deputy assistant secretary for preparedness and response.”

In the article Dr. Bright  stated:

We as a culture could barely bring ourselves to give two weeks in social isolation to stop the covid-19 worldwide epidemic. Then under the guise of”freedom,” gun toting idiots paraded around claiming their so-called freedom had preference over controlling an epidemic that killed 40,000 fellow citizens in 5 weeks.

So it’s not at all surprising that, when queried, our citizenry doesn’t give a damn about global warming from human activity, not even ten bucks worth.

“In fact, now more Americans than ever understand that climate change is happening. Seven in 10 believe it is. That’s not to say they all understand the scientific reality that human activity is the cause of climate change—some surveys shows that barely more than half of Americans believe the scientific consensus that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are to blame. And most won’t do much about it, even if they realize it’s happening and realize our emissions are causing it. One poll conducted in 2018 found that 70 percent of Americans would be unwilling to contribute just $10 a month, the cost of a Netflix subscription, to combat climate change.”

Medicynical note: Just like other dumb animals man is unable to defer pleasure even a little bit to assure future survival. I hate to think what that means for the future of the planet which is well on its way to 10 billion inhabitants.

Our slow to react, and even then he can’t get it right, President maintains that the W.H.O. mismanaged the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

But it was Trump who ignored advice from his predecessor that there was a real possibility of a worldwide epidemic.

The first cases and deaths occurred in December 2019, and by that time our leader had destroyed the office in the NSC (in 2018) that was set up to plan for and respond to an epidemic

He had already destroyed the CDC’s capability to respond and help other countries manage such an outbreak (2018).

He had already removed the embedded CDC personnel from the Chinese CDC (June 2019)

When appraised of deaths in China and the possibility of an epidemic, he opined that the outbreak was a media hoax.

He later stated he thought it would go away like a miracle

After deaths in the US he limited flights from China and said that it was well under control. About 40,000 people subsequently returned from China. On arrival they were delayed at airports which were overwhelmed by the large number of people returning home. Very limited precautions were taken to prevent spread among arriving passengers.

There is no evidence that the stopping of flights did anything by itself to slow or stop the smoldering epidemic in the U.S., as “you know who” maintains.

It’s only when we exceeded 40,000 people dead that Trump announced that the problem, in his not so humble opinion, was the WHO–which warned of the possibilities back in mid January–when he thought it was a media hoax

And now when his medical experts are recommending caution as the social isolation strategy appears to be slowing spread of the disease, Trump doesn’t listen to them either and actively undermines their recommendations.

In reality the only advice Trump listens to comes from the likes of Limbaugh and FOX news….i.e. bad advice. In the fog.of his sociopathic narcissism with some dementia mixed in, he is unable to understand and accept good advice–as he has proven over the last 3 1/2 months.

Folks the problem ain’t the W.H.O.

Some very peculiar observations this Sunday

“More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials.”

“A number of CDC staffers are regularly detailed to work at WHO in Geneva as part of a rotation that has operated for years. Senior Trump-appointed health officials also consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said.”

And yet Dr. Birx covers for Trump and pitches the following in a quick move to place blame, anywhere but on Trump.

“Asked early Sunday about the presence of CDC and other officials at the WHO, and whether it was “fair to blame the WHO for covering up the spread of this virus,” Deborah Birx, the State Department expert who is part of the White House pandemic team, gently shifted the onus to China, and the need to “over-communicate.””

Medicynical note: No matter the spin it turns out it wasn’t the W.H.O. or even China. Trump willfully ignored briefings and information from the W.H.O., ignored information from China, ignored alarming intelligence briefings from his own appointees and put forth his ignorant spin–it will go away like a “miracle”, it will disappear like “magic”.

Trump wasted two months and didn’t prepare. It’s as simple as that.