Washington Examiner: Study finds 84% fewer hospitalizations for patients treated with controversial drug hydroxychloroquine [HCQ]
By Andrew Mark Miller
November 25, 2020

"A peer-reviewed study measuring the effectiveness of a controversial drug cocktail that includes hydroxychloroquine concluded that the treatment lowered hospitalizations and mortality rates of coronavirus patients.

"The study, set to be published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents in December, determined that “Low-dose hydroxychloroquine combined with zinc and azithromycin was an effective therapeutic approach against COVID-19.” "

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/study-finds-84-fewer-hospitalizations-for-patients-treated-with-controversial-drug-hydroxychloroquine?_amp=true&__twitter_impression=true

agalum one thing that most politicians, especially in California, are NOT shifting on is the idea that the demonstrations that occurred during the week just before that upturn had ZERO impact on the surge. If so, I see ZERO reason you couldn’t have several thousand sports fans well spread out at A’s, Giants or Aggie games. Masked, but spread out 6 feet or so.

That’s my one and only COVID opinion post

Agee completely. Very weird seeing completely empty football stadiums on west cost that seat 70,000 plus. Diversity in CA is a religion until it comes to politics and thought. Looking forward to more “normal times” and all of the atmosphere that makes college football great.

thats my wife’s rant about COVID. There is the other consequence that after the protests, things opened probably faster than they should in response. Paper showed a picture of a ‘die in’ In San Jose in their year in review with 1000’s head to head for hours! Next to that was a picture of post election street celebrations with chanting and lots of hugs, granted with masks. And a BIG jump in numbers after both. Yet they harp on Thanksgiving gatherings and I can’t detect a change in the trend.

Still boggles my mind that bars in LA county opened soon after the protests.

Sorry my rant!

I was talking to Mrs. Fugawe last night about my personal threshold to return to unmodified normal times activity. I think my conditions are receiving the vaccine and substantially reduced community spread in my area. If things go right over the next few months, I think it could be as early as this summer leading to a fairly normal football season.

I was listening to an epidemiologist on the radio saying that the effectiveness of the vaccines may be reliant on a quick strike deployment to tamp it out, and that a slow deployment will put pressure on the virus to mutate and give it time and hosts to do so. Right now we are distributing a million doses a week but need to be distributing 2 million per day. He was also saying that we think the vaccine has a ramp up time to effectiveness in a person possibly of a couple months and we don’t know if vaccinated people can still spread it, which means social distance and masks may need to be a thing for vaccinated people until most people are vaccinated or recovered. Estimates for achieving herd immunity range from 65-95%, so perhaps for the public will make it their New Years resolution to listen to doctors and scientists and the politicians make it theirs to stop bickering and do their job.

It might be hard to pin the spike on any one thing. It may well be the confluence of Halloween, election and fallout, thanksgiving, college campuses, compressed wedding season, cooler weather, start of Christmas event/shopping season, restaurants/bars reopening to pent up demand, and increased defiance from local governments and sheriffs regarding enforcement of state orders. All in about a 45 day period.

I just get tired of the media latching onto one idea and running it into the ground, data be damned.

We have a cabin in the mother lode so I follow the news up there. Their numbers went crazy around thanksgiving into December. Indoor gatherings, of course. Well.......800 of those cases were in correctional facility in Jamestown. Officially, an indoor gathering!

The misinformation and hype, I think, has really fed into the fatigue and lowering of many people’s efforts.

In California, the latino population is leading all other races in positivity rate, morbidity, and mortality. Spin it how you wish. My take is there is an educational component and an indifference to breaking traditions, such as large family gatherings. A good friend recently hosted a “fiesta de quince años” for his daughter. He is a successful educated individual, but apparently does not want to interrupt tradition bc of a virus. We are all tired of this. But i truly believe there is light at the end of the tunnel. Happy New Year and Go Ags!

a lot of the Hispanic issues, I think, are economic based. Most of the laborers I see or deal with are Hispanic- hard to build a fence remotely from the safety of your living room!

Our numbers in Livermore are much worse than neighboring Pleasanton and Dublin, and folks want to blame it on our bustling downtown and wineries. I point out our Hispanic population is 3 times our neighbors and that our average income is some $40k less. I think that means we have many more working in the public and risking exposure. I also think traditions and behaviors contribute

I was reading on the Texaa Longhorns website that they've been allowing fans at the bball games, but only season ticketholders from the previous year who opted in. Of course they also have assigned seats and gates and only mobile tickets, among other precautions. That might be similar towhat UCD will do with the spring football.

Someone on here-I forget who it was-made a good point on what flattening the curve really means. In the short term you prevent deaths, but in the long term you compensate for the lives you saved through other ways. For example, suicides are up because many can't deal with the isolation or losing their jobs. Meanwhile people are losing their homes because they lost their jobs and are being forced onto the streets, where they don't have a good chance of survival and are more likely to get COVID-19.. And don't get me started on how California creates a never-ending cycle of homelessness all the while it is preaching that more needs to be done to help the homeless.

These safety precautions (business shutdowns, cancellations of events) are transparently aimed at preventing hospitals from being overwhelmed, and that's it. The virus is going to do its thing and keep killing thousands of people until enough people are vaccinated, and then it will be mostly people dying of the complications. You can make small gains through staying at home but that is a very minimal outcome. I hate to invoke Darwinian principles here but viruses are a reminder that there are too many people and that nature is thinning out the herd through survival of the fittest.

Well,my employer has started offering weekly testing on-site and I'll do it. It's a win-win. If I am negative I get peace of mind. If positive it could force their hand and send me home to work, which is what I've been asking for.

I’d be shocked if there are fans in the stands for spring football. At the current rate, I’ll be surprised if either basketball or football will be permitted to start any time soon

Yeah, me too. I’m not sure how far in advance the “season” needs to be planned and the consequences of pulling the plug at the last minute. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole season is dropped. Sad, I’ve been anxious to see how the new talent competes.

I was talking to someone in the department and told him I had a hotel booked for the home opener. He said something along the lines of ‘yeah, uh, hope that works out’ . I’ll talk a 3 hour walk that day, laps around the perimeter of the stadium!

Mike, dont expect to get a Plainfield burger. Another COVID closure

closed for good? I don’t know how Davis restaurants are surviving with the limited student population in town

As an undergrad several professors emphasized considering many viewpoints. From the reports I've read overall yearly deaths are constant, and appear to confirm that deaths from the standard flu, heart disease, pneumonia, etc are being attributed to Covid. I'm shocked how rarely obesity, Vitamin D (as prevention measure), and HCQ are mentioned. A medical professional I know stated most of their intubated Covid patients are morbidly obese, 400 pounds was her example, and had multiple comorbidities.

Humm. Maybe we should start a Physical Education program?

Florida has no mask mandate, no mandatory lockdown, and far less deaths. Several studies suggest / claim mask mandates and lockdowns increase the spread. Reminds me of the very popular Bakersfield doctors who were quickly banned by YouTube when they offered different medical opinions. One doctor suggested people with masks touch their face & eyes more often, use their phone (rarely sanitized), etc.

Maybe Darwin is reminding us morbid obesity is a horrible lifestyle choice. And to question the Medical Industrial Complex burying cheap, effective remedies... I didn't think this way before. (Look at the never ending wars in the Middle East both the Ds & Rs and over $700 Billion in pork, much of it abroad?)

See how Amazon, Walmart, etc. make Billions more, while Mom & Pop businesses are closed. Just wait for the next phase, Wall Street to now use President Trump's Enterprise Zones to make Billions more.

Homelessness more complex. Apparently prescribed opiods (?) and other dangerous, highly addictive drugs were knowingly prescribed, netting Billions for Big Pharma, but creating Millions of addicts? Along with super charged marijuana and ADHD / other drugs, as part of our drug culture. Add in over 5 Million illegal immigrants who soaked up our low-cost housing in places like Concord. Chickens coming home to roost?

Home / apartments lost. We've seen nothing yet. The Feds, State & Counties have various Moratoriums right now, and forebearances. How do an average Joe & Jane pay $3,000 a month mortgage plus, say, $30,000 in back payments?

Well, frankly not sure. There was a posting on a local neighborhood site saying they were closed for good. Ive tried calling to get an order to go, they dont answer their phone but the message says they are open. I think they are history just bc they dont answer. They had a very niche market that didnt fit the “to go” crowd since they relied on suds and folks shooting pool, bikers, etc.

sounds temporary from this article in the enterprise last month :

https://www.davisenterprise.com/feature/features/its-hard-when-you-cant-gather-at-your-gathering-place/


Bob Biggs is quoted often. He must be on the mend!

Ok, thanks for that. Hopefully it is temporary.

Seconded.

Now that’s what you call social distancing!

Yeah, a big part of it is how much advance warning do they need to cancel the season. Would be nice if they could push it back even a couple weeks. But that might not be feasible. I'm pretty optimistic that by April or May things will be getting close to being back to normal. Football is much more likely to have fans since it's outdoors. Obviously wouldn't be full seating but they could get a couple thousand fans in there.

Official numbers are at 21M official cases. Best estimates are actually at least double that if not triple. Officially we're at 6.3% of people having contracted it, but tripling it makes it nearly 20%. People are getting the vaccine now. They're starting with hospitals and nursing homes. The latter alone is going to make deaths drop quickly in a few weeks. I believe I read even the first dose is 50% effective in preventing the virus so we're going to see significant gains pretty quickly, even before people start getting the second does.

The next month is going to be rough. But the seven day rolling average, even accounting for the Christmas reporting lag, shows cases as having plateaued. Hopefully we don't see a Christmas bump just like we didn't see a Thanksgiving bump. Now we just need to see a downturn.

Can confirm FL is a hot mess right now. DeSantis has made everything from social distancing to vaccine distribution up to counties to solve, so 67 uncoordinated approaches made really complicated in multi-county metro areas where the counties aren’t on speaking terms. FL has substantially more hospital beds per capita than CA and they are 91% full, but the empty beds are concentrated in the counties taking COVID more seriously. And just because the tourist economy is open doesn’t mean it’s working. The money tourists are from conventions, the Northeast, Canada, UK, and Brazil. They can’t or won’t come now, so it’s just locals using discount tickets. In the race to reopen and chase the small dollar, he’s only prolonged the big dollars staying away. There’s a lot of nuance that doesn’t make the national media, but FL is definitely not a success story in health or economic terms.

Moderna 80% protection after 1 dose, Pfizer 70%. That’s better than the flu vaccine.

in an article I was reading today about the Kaiser Christmas outbreak, the paper said it takes 10 days and isn’t more than 50%. Wonder where they get their info? I’ve heard the numbers you quote.

BTW, I don’t believe the Kaiser outbreak is due to someone passing through an area where e dry one was fully masked in an inflatable costume. Too many head scratchers there. Sounds like a diversion from some serious protocol breaches.

I read it was the fan inside the costume. If that person was covid positive, the fan would serve as a mechanism to spread the virus.

I read that also, but she was supposedly walking through the area where they are masked by ER standards. And people started testing positive within 2 days ( I think one report said some were later that same day)? I would think ER personnel is exposed in close quarters for much longer periods and the masks seem to handle that. Must be one hell of a fan! Much stronger than the HVAC in ER.

Just seems a little fishy to me. Maybe I’m getting too cynical in my old age

California & New York dropping the ball.

StephanieABC7@StephanieABC7

'Doses delayed': Nearly 900,000 COVID-19 vaccines stuck in transit across #California

"Only 35% of the 1.7 million doses sent to CA have been used"

Governor Newsom also had six months to prepare for the winter Covid surge, and should have known Latino-heavy SoCal would be hit hard.

Mark D. Levine@MarkLevineNYC

"Vaccination in New York City is basically only occurring during regular business hours. Very little on weekends. Almost none on holidays.

"We are in a war-like situation. We need to be vaccinating TWENTY FOUR-SEVEN. We are losing precious time."

Tony Crivello@NorCalBaseball

"So it has taken California 10 days to get less then 1% of our population the covid vaccine. At this rate the 70% we need to stop the spread will take 700 days. Not sure what Sacramento was doing last few months preparing for this but great job Clapping hands sign Thumbs up Ok hand 2023 looking good"

They were probably too busy bashing the the vaccine effort rather than preparing for its eventual rollout. I hate politics...it corrodes everything.

+1.

Regardless of party:

1. Ramp up vaccinations, at least 2 shifts, 7 days a week.
2. Especially given many (dozens?) of ERs going out of business because of unpaid bills from illegal immigrants, they should have expanded current facilities, and added new ones.

(It was previously reported by the LA Times that former Governor (businessman) Arnold Schwarzenegger created 3 massive, portable hospitals for such emergencies. With tight budgets, Governor Brown decided storage fees were too much, so he depleted the beds, tools & supplies.)

Here's what I am hearing from my friends in health care (not specific to CA, but more national in nature) - the trouble isn't necessarily that the people doing the injections are overwhelmed, it is a crisis of getting the right people at the right time to the administration location. As it turns out, there is no master list of who falls into the different priority groups, where they are, and how to contact them. And there is a moderate rate of no-shows or people who decline, leading to a chaotic footrace to get alternate recipients to a particular site before doses spoil. While I agree Newsom has spent too much time at the French Laundry, I do not think states and counties turned out to have the expertise or resources needed and the varied approaches have caused confusion, especially in border areas where people are hearing info from multiple jurisdictions. Since the chief executive was so intent on involving the military, it would have made sense to spend the last few months registering people with a federal selective service type system so they could be filtered into priority groups and then called by draft numbers to report as vaccine doses were available.