7 ms·

Drugs are not a solution in the next 2-3 months. There's no way a drug can be tested and ensure safe and scaled up to the tens/hundreds of millions of doses you

Drugs are not a solution in the next 2-3 months. There's no way a drug can be tested and ensure safe and scaled up to the tens/hundreds of millions of doses you would need. It's impossible so don't even bother considering it. Quarantining is the only thing that will help in this situation. There's no other solution we have as a society to slow down the pace of infections. People who normally wouldn't die will die because of the lack of medical care. The problem we face in the US is lack of testing, which makes it impossible to do anything except a quarantine.

lbeltrame 7y ago
> Quarantining is the only thing that will help in this situation. The question is, for how long? Until the infection curve goes down? Until there is not a single infected cases in the whole country? While you can't know when this will happen (especially the former, most models are inaccurate because too little is still known about this virus), I don't believe it is sustainable to keep an extended lockdown on a whole country (as opposed to "just" Hubei, which however has almost the entire population of Italy) more than a few months.
- kadoban 7y ago
  The purpose now of social distancing and quarantine is to spread out the infections so that the hospitals are not overrun by everyone being sick at once. A significant proportion of infected need hospitalization to survive. If we all get sick at once, there simply aren't enough hospital beds to go around, not to mention other supplies. If the hospitals go far beyond capacity, the fatality rate will be _far_ higher than otherwise. As to how long, I haven't seen good models. In the US we don't have very good data either, because we're testing basically noone.
  - lbeltrame 7y ago
    The press reports several models which say between next week and the end of April for the so called "peak" (I don't think the press understands what it means, however), but at least to me they're useless because the confidence intervals are not given (I can't expect a newspaper to do so, but providing a source to consult in such cases would be beneficial). Some of these models are also different in nature, which adds to the uncertainty: some are epidemiological models, some are economical (used to evaluate the impact of the measures on the long term). Lastly, a lot of qualified people speak and try to give estimates. I'd love if they don't, because currently the best answer is "we do not know yet". That said, I think that going over two months of lockdown will be probably ruinous for the country as whole.
  - shrthnd 7y ago
    The purpose now of social distancing and quarantine is to spread out the infections so that the hospitals are not overrun by everyone being sick at once.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Until we have a vaccine or enough people have been infected to build up natural herd immunity. At least a year is my guess.
  - lbeltrame 7y ago
    I don't know if the country can hold economically and socially being completely locked up for one year. Probably not. And I'm not sure if people can hold psychologically being locked up for one year.
stevespang 7y ago
You are wrong. Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine have already been proven effective. Do a google search.
tim333 7y ago
There are some existing drugs that help with the treatment but they don't really stop the infection spreading. Chloroquine / hydroxychloroquine are maybe the most useful. Probably if they handed some out and told people to take a few as soon as they got a cough + some temperature it would help things. (http://news.southcn.com/nfplus/gdjktt/content/2020-03/09/content_190536632.htm http://news.southcn.com/nfplus/gdjktt/content/2020-03/09/con...)
cameldrv 7y ago
Drugs are a solution for mitigation. They already have a preliminary trial result in China that says Chloroquine works. South Korea agrees and I believe is combining it with Zinc. South Korea has the lowest fatality rate of any country.
- graeme 7y ago
  This has a lot to do with their age distribution. Their fatality rate by age is similar to elsewhere. A large fraction of the infected cult members were young. Korea also hasn’t had any hospital breakdown related increase in the death rate. Chloroquine may indeed work, but the Korean stats are misleading if you don’t adjust for ages.
  - cameldrv 7y ago
    China’s fatality rate is also way down. Partly of course from less stress on the medical system, but they’ve also just learned a lot about how to treat it, particularly what drugs to use. I believe Chloroquine + Liponavir/Ritanovir + Interferon or Ribavirin is state of the art.
    - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
      I thought that remdesivir was the drug showing the most promise? What happened with that one? And my big questions are how soon can they spool up world supplying levels of batches?
      - lbeltrame 7y ago
        It's being tested in a few trials, the earliest one should have data in April, IIRC.
    - copperx 7y ago
      Chloroquine + Liponavir/Ritanovir may cause fatal arrithmias, in the case anyone out there is self medicating. It's one or the other.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
They can fast track drugs if that drug has been tested for other things. It happens all the time. I mean like all the time doctors do it for other cases, there's not reason it couldn't happen for cov19

lbeltrame 7y ago

> Quarantining is the only thing that will help in this situation. The question is, for how long? Until the infection curve goes down? Until there is not a single infected cases in the whole country? While you can't know when this will happen (especially the former, most models are inaccurate because too little is still known about this virus), I don't believe it is sustainable to keep an extended lockdown on a whole country (as opposed to "just" Hubei, which however has almost the entire population of Italy) more than a few months.

kadoban 7y ago
The purpose now of social distancing and quarantine is to spread out the infections so that the hospitals are not overrun by everyone being sick at once. A significant proportion of infected need hospitalization to survive. If we all get sick at once, there simply aren't enough hospital beds to go around, not to mention other supplies. If the hospitals go far beyond capacity, the fatality rate will be _far_ higher than otherwise. As to how long, I haven't seen good models. In the US we don't have very good data either, because we're testing basically noone.
- lbeltrame 7y ago
  The press reports several models which say between next week and the end of April for the so called "peak" (I don't think the press understands what it means, however), but at least to me they're useless because the confidence intervals are not given (I can't expect a newspaper to do so, but providing a source to consult in such cases would be beneficial). Some of these models are also different in nature, which adds to the uncertainty: some are epidemiological models, some are economical (used to evaluate the impact of the measures on the long term). Lastly, a lot of qualified people speak and try to give estimates. I'd love if they don't, because currently the best answer is "we do not know yet". That said, I think that going over two months of lockdown will be probably ruinous for the country as whole.
- shrthnd 7y ago
  The purpose now of social distancing and quarantine is to spread out the infections so that the hospitals are not overrun by everyone being sick at once.
adrianN 7y ago
Until we have a vaccine or enough people have been infected to build up natural herd immunity. At least a year is my guess.
- lbeltrame 7y ago
  I don't know if the country can hold economically and socially being completely locked up for one year. Probably not. And I'm not sure if people can hold psychologically being locked up for one year.

stevespang 7y ago

You are wrong. Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine have already been proven effective. Do a google search.

tim333 7y ago

There are some existing drugs that help with the treatment but they don't really stop the infection spreading. Chloroquine / hydroxychloroquine are maybe the most useful. Probably if they handed some out and told people to take a few as soon as they got a cough + some temperature it would help things. (http://news.southcn.com/nfplus/gdjktt/content/2020-03/09/content_190536632.htm http://news.southcn.com/nfplus/gdjktt/content/2020-03/09/con...)

cameldrv 7y ago

Drugs are a solution for mitigation. They already have a preliminary trial result in China that says Chloroquine works. South Korea agrees and I believe is combining it with Zinc. South Korea has the lowest fatality rate of any country.

graeme 7y ago
This has a lot to do with their age distribution. Their fatality rate by age is similar to elsewhere. A large fraction of the infected cult members were young. Korea also hasn’t had any hospital breakdown related increase in the death rate. Chloroquine may indeed work, but the Korean stats are misleading if you don’t adjust for ages.
- cameldrv 7y ago
  China’s fatality rate is also way down. Partly of course from less stress on the medical system, but they’ve also just learned a lot about how to treat it, particularly what drugs to use. I believe Chloroquine + Liponavir/Ritanovir + Interferon or Ribavirin is state of the art.
  - ImprovedSilence 7y ago
    I thought that remdesivir was the drug showing the most promise? What happened with that one? And my big questions are how soon can they spool up world supplying levels of batches?
    - lbeltrame 7y ago
      It's being tested in a few trials, the earliest one should have data in April, IIRC.
  - copperx 7y ago
    Chloroquine + Liponavir/Ritanovir may cause fatal arrithmias, in the case anyone out there is self medicating. It's one or the other.

stjohnswarts 7y ago

They can fast track drugs if that drug has been tested for other things. It happens all the time. I mean like all the time doctors do it for other cases, there's not reason it couldn't happen for cov19