I don't understand how one person treated with something, just because they recovered, makes this a game changer. I also don't get why it would take "curing" the president to know of a specific cocktail that works.
I kinda am losing all faith in all things medicine if we've had experience, as a whole, to try to treat 36 MILLION people with this issue and one specific treatment for one specific person, who happens to survive like 35 MILLION others so far. And THATS the winning combo, And it happens to be our president. It's like the other 35 MILLION was just junk data or something.
There are thousands and thousands of people in the biomedical field all around the world working furiously behind the scenes at the moment on this problem.
Unfortunately, there is no single mouthpiece for this effort so people aren't aware of how many people are pulling out the stops, but despite how bleak things may look there are a lot of MDs and PhDs and MD/PhDs trucking away trying to find a way out of this thing.
Ok, fair enough. I dunno if I'm 100% on this, but I'll argue it:
It's important to keep in mind the difference between clinical and basic lab research.
Basic lab research is done in a sort of a closed system. There's a small group of people (grad students, post-docs) working on a limited set of projects. They all have their individual lab notebooks that are property of the lab. Nobody has to disclose anything to anybody, except the IRB and whoever is handing out grant money. The head of the lab, well their entire career depends on what that...lab...does... There is no plan B, other than teaching at a liberal-arts school or community college.
Most clinical researchers aren't as against-the-ropes in terms of their career as PhDs, because they're doctors and they can just go do medicine. Wups, my clinical study didn't work out, guess I'll go be absolutely.........fine..........
Plus, it's harder to keep things secret in a hospital. There's a lot more variables, and it's not as closed a system as a lab.
So for the COVID stuff, you have both MDs/DOs and PhDs working alongside each other in multidisciplinary teams. Thus, information is not as readily concealable and so there's less paranoia because....well, what's the point?
The relevance is that the President got wall to wall media coverage for being sick. And his is in a demographic (old, overweight, male) that puts him at an extremely elevated risk for serious illness.
Doctors will do their job and scientists will do their job, and in the end decisions will be made based on the results of studies.
That doesn't negate the enormous amount of positive press that this event will give to the treatment.
Either way, it should be a signal that we are getting much better at treating the illness. Back in April, Boris Johnson, who is basically a Trump equivalent, but 20 years younger, spent a week in the hospital in very rough shape.
The news on Cornavirus is in trending significantly in the positive direction, which is really all that matters.
> Positive in terms of increasing case numbers, yes.
As the number of people I know who have caught it grows, I have to say I don't really see that as a negative thing.
Most of the new cases are in the young-adult demographic.
Almost universally they suffer no long term complications and the most unpleasant part of the sickness is being confined to their home for a week and a half.
Number of confirmed cases is the wrong metric.
We know very well by now who is at elevated risk.
If you are not in the elevated risk category, and you are able to avoid those who are at elevated risk, then there is very little for you to worry about.
>Almost universally they suffer no long term complications and the most unpleasant part of the sickness is being confined to their home for a week and a half.
Citation please.
As a relatively young person suffering from the long-term consequences of this disease, I am infuriated whenever anyone says something so false.
> ... I am infuriated whenever anyone says something so false.
Citation please.
Is it actually false? Your one case does not a fact make. What percentage of confirmed cases in people under the age of, say, 40, result in long term complications?
Edit: Corrected punctuation and replaced "statistical fact" with just "fact".
Percentage of confirmed cases is the wrong statistic to be looking at here. Because a lot of these cases aren't even being tracked due to not having life threatening symptoms, but never the less seem to result in long-term symtoms that have a significant impact on people's lives.
Why would there be positive press for this treatment, the President was treated by a different therapeutic from another company. From the article "The results also appear roughly similar to those Regeneron presented last week of its own cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies. Last Friday, President Trump was treated with the Regeneron monoclonal antibodies."
In Trump's video statement he said, "I was treated with Regeneron. Eli Lilly has something very similar they are working on as well. They call them therapeutics, but I view them as honestly a miracle."
However, he did end up in a hospital, on oxygen, and they gave him dexamethasone (which isn't something they do just for fun). So it's not a wonderful advertisement for reducing hospitalization, really (many people who end up in hospital wouldn't need dexamethasone).
I kinda am losing all faith in all things medicine if we've had experience, as a whole, to try to treat 36 MILLION people with this issue and one specific treatment for one specific person, who happens to survive like 35 MILLION others so far. And THATS the winning combo, And it happens to be our president. It's like the other 35 MILLION was just junk data or something.