Blood cell damage? From what I recall they lose their nucleus and don't act like normal cells, and they get replenished by the bone marrow every 3 days after the ... liver removes the old ones from circulation. If theres damage to those erythrocytes.... you'd have a lot of free haeme floating in the blood stream.

I thought the malaria drug chloroquinone thingy moderated the immune system, less holes in your lungs?....

Extremly important news. It seems that lookdown measurements are not really working, and I don't mean that as a bad thing. Even standing 1.5 meter away and working in a place with descent ventilation decreases the r(n) below 1.

Here is the source on how r(n) progressed in Germany (look at page 14). As you can see in the graph closing all major events and work together gradually puts the virus below the tendency of potentially r(1). Take into account that the illness takes a week or two to incubate and view the general tendecy in the decrease. With this in mind, you can see that rendering the last "shutdown everything" measure most likely useless, because the decrease already happened before this measure was taken.

The longer these measurements take to happen, the higher the r(n) becomes for a while as virus attack rates are constantly increasing. The reason why SARS-CoV-2 is so severe in the US is because government reaction was too late. In Austria however, the attack rate is extremly minimal as their government reacted early. In Germany, we took a week time to look into things and having fun before reacting properly, which is why the infection rates are high. Not to mention that many germans are living in crowded places and they like to hug each other, things are different then in countries like Sweden, a crountry that doesn't really care it seems (yet research also shows that the country will get through this without it ending in a catastrophe just by not-standing-too-close-together).

This means that simply not-being-too-close all the time and with proper ventilation is enough. After the rate of active infected people is at least verified, the government can then trace and warn the population so they can quarantaine. Threatment is also on the way, I heard that Remdisivir is actually exceptional. This indicates that Ebola vaccines could maybe work, even if doubtful?

Anyway, theres also the reason Germany is so successful in combating the general attack rate is that our health care system is able to mitigate a lot of potential damage, while also performing some critical tasks for the world, such as research. Every country who is witnessing a full catastrophy due to SARS-CoV-2 has to change their healthcare plans after this. Germany is also considering a full optimization of their system. SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 is bad and has to be prioritised, but I consider something like cancer treatment just as important. If your healthcare system focused on one thing many people will die gruesomely due to other illments, perhaps in an even worse fashion.

Let me repeat myself in different terms to be as clear as I can, restricting human contact to 1.5 meters or about 5 feet and working in spaces with proper ventilation completely makes the virus infection rate alone drop to r(0.9). You potentially can even have a human to human conversation with an infected person who is as close as 1 meter (or about 3 feet) in open space and not get infected for 15 minutes while risking a 15% (or very high) infection rate. With a gap of at least 1.5 meters while being outside its impossible to get infected regardless, at least according to the general R(n) projections.

What also matters a huge amount is the way to communicate this to the population. If the population doesn't care, even the best containment measurement in the world does not matter.

There is another thing I want to say. Those simulations you probably saw on how the virus spreads while you're running outside while breathing or shopping don't take dispersion, circulation and atmosphere into account. We also don't know how many virus is with aerosol of medium level consistency and if its infectious. There are some huge indication that the virus is not infectious if a small amount of it enters your body. So your body may even handle tiny amounts of this new virus with ease.

Regardless, any of these proper measures require physical distance at all times in order to succeed. Its also known that in open spaces, infection rates are extremly low even if you stand as close as 1 meter from each other. This changes in closed spaces obviously.

If any of the GOG-staff reads this, working inside any office can only continue if work can happen without physical contact and inside an office with good ventilation. Any cases where workplaces became severely infected are in places where the atmosphere basically "stands still". Right now, even infected people inside discounters and other food shops never became infected here. There is no case I know off in Germany where this is the case, and there is some very close contact between costumers and the cashiers but only for a very short while.

What I'm saying next is just from myself and not what the experts and research centers say, but all of this indicates that this virus is actually really weak. The high infection rate, lethality and lasting damage it can perform on your metabolism is only because its a new unknown virus. I also do believe that risk of relapse is very high, as with about all corona viruses, such as the "endemic" 229E, which also causes millions of mild to severe cases every month, through to a much lesser extend.

True, pretty sure that increase in case mortality is linked to ACE2 reception as most/all coronaviruses do (AFAIK). Also you have to keep in mind that people in hospitals are not always well threated as well, which may also be a cause of some lasting damage (stress also may be a huge factor and so does some medication). This virus is still new, it takes time to figure out how long the lasting damage may be.

Some of the holes in the lungs caused by SARS-CoV-2 are used due to IL-6 re-/misinterpretation (people call it "Cytokyne-Storms" every now and then but its a pretty weird descriptor, the immune system does not fully understand how to handle the illness and sometimes overshoots, there is lots happening inside your body during the course of this because of many factors). An immune system cannot simply eat dead cells with pinpoint precision of 100% accuracy, it takes quite a lot of energy and care for antibodies to detect dead cells due to several protein compound factors any of the cells are composed off.

In this case, the antibodies overshoot a little too much. This does happen with a lot of illnesses though and is not new. It also depends on how the virus RNA is structured. Right now it seems that this virus shares a lot of traits of HIV and especially Ebola, which is good because Ebola is very well understood and even treatable (there is a widely produced vaccine that completly can halt the spread of Ebola called rVSV-ZEBOV-GP, basically halting and curing Ebola whenever it is used with a 100% rate AFAIK). This vaccine probably will not work on SARS-CoV-2 however, but perhaps it might? Dunno, I'm not a professor working on it.

At any case, regarding the worry about potentiality of organ damage. The largest study on the lasting effects of COVID-19 is conducted in germany right now regarding how the body is affected during and after the illness has run its course, theres around 2000 or so parameters the conducters do consider. Since there is lots of stuff to check so it will take time. Its so massive that two of the biggest research centers here are working together on this, with several ten thousand professors and doctors, with some of them even specializing with only SARS and MERS for over a decade now, so they know whats up.

The reason people want to do this is to publicise ways on how to threat the long lasting damage of the illness. Besides understanding the virus, people want to mitigate the lasting effects after the illness has to run its course. The most common threatment of fibrosis is stem cell insertions but this stuff is not researched in a wide fashion. I'm fairly certain that experiments are being accelerated so expect some damages to become mitigated and therapy options getting used like its a science fiction movie. I do expect huge and good things out from this situation.

EDIT: I wanted to write several other important things, such as this but then the post would be three times as long. Huge indication that herd immunity may work regardless of what the WHO said (because they don't conduct studies, they've only listened to 3 countries.) If what they say was the case, then people who survived COVID-19 would die due to sudden reinfection at all times because families relapse worldwide and reinfect each other again and again ad infinitum and such info would spread a whole lot. This has not happened. Its also known that SARS-CoV-2, while mutating, does so slowly for both good and bad reasons.

What we know is that NAb threatment works, because some patients do produce NAbs and you can use that. The WHO is stating that they simply can't confirm anything because they don't know.

I also let an AI translate the RKI results and converted them again, if someone wants the translation of the document in english as a source hit me up in chat.

Redacted.

While Rendesivir may prove a useful tool against COVID-19, it has "in the field" shown itself to be a drug of last resort. Approximately 25% of recipients have ended treatment with some level of detected kidney and / or liver damage. If those numbers stand up via recently begun trials, I can't imagine Rendesivir being anyone's drug of choice. But...

... there are some big names involved with Gilead.

I only hope that the science is exhaustive and transparent... and that there's not a premature rush to adopt a faulty treatment.

It is not known whether or not the kidney and liver damage is the result of a severe case of the infection, rather than the threatment itself or vice versa. And as with all clinical studies, the amount of medication also matters. I'm sure that these studies will always use inballanced usage of the drug to see what dosages work and what dosages may become dangerous. This is not a choice about transparency but rather to gather more data. And data about the virus and possible treatments are what we need right now, people depend on it and we owe it to those who suffer. We actually owe it all the time because suffering did not start with the virus and there are pleagues right now in the world that are worse than this. Right now, first world countries are having what third world countries always had to suffer from. We owe it to those people that we fix this not because we fear the virus, but rather to help everyone all while finding a way to treat more illments through advanced medicine and further scientific research. Its because of science that this virus was able to spread this well in the first place due to modern ways of travel and with science people can turn this back around. If anything this virus can make humans become more human through working together, instead of focusing on the petty stuff all the time.

I get your point though, since with corruption there can't be any progress. We have to solve these issues along the way.

At any case, regarding the link I've posted, you have to remember that 113 of these cases had multiple sepsis (complete organ failure of multiple spectrums, only capable to be stableized through ICU threatment) and were on the verge of death. These weren't cases that you would see on the lower end of the "bad case" spectrum. These cases were all on the upper end of ICU treatment cases and the most heavily affected victims. Or in other words, without treatment they would've died for sure. Read the link I've posed closely and you will see these were the worst-of-the-worst cases beyond those of the ICU cases that still have significant chances to survive.

We do know that out from these 125 patients, 113 were discharged, which is a good sign. Again not that these werent only "regular" ICU COVID-19 cases, where the rate of death is about 50 percent. So thinking that the cases I've mentioned are ones that are even worse, yet in this case have less damage assumes that Remdesivir is useful, at least for treating patients who're in hospital.

Not only that, severe cases usually should/must get treatment in ICU for at least 3 weeks or longer, AFAIK with Remdesivir they only need 6 days and that is consistent with multiple clusters and datasets. Thats huge indication that it works well and the body does not get damaged by this medication rather its the general treatment of the patients, other illments involved and of course COVID-19.

Here in Germany we're also trying this medication in a placebo trial right now, which can gives greater and more accurate results.

At any case always question everything further in this case, please. Crosschecking several datapoints from multiple countries also help to see whether or not something really is the case of x and not y. At any case science is and will be all about observation and nothing else, while means testing is already whats in its name :D!

This also helps in practice, let me give you an example. For instance the silly claim that SARS-CoV-2 can exist on flat surfaces without other organic tissue for a long time and probably close to a week. So touching the surface and rubbing your eyes will lead to infection. This claim is true, but its a scientifically artificed study that is fantasy.

In reality, the virus can live even longer but they stopped the trial when there was a small amount of virus still on the surface left because of time contraints and in reality the virus always dries up and dies. And we know that any "dead" virus can't infect you. It is close to impossible to infect yourself by rubbing your face after touching a dry surface that a COVID-19 infected person had touched a short period prior to you. Not only that but there is vast indication that active small virus loads entering your body are so insignificant that in this case the antibodies notice the virus even without reaction of the body itself (no symptoms and no way to become really infectious to others). Don't believe the falsehood that this is the only new virus that is around, it is just the most significant and prominent. Virus of this type and other types mutate all the time as well. Again, the virus acts according to the established laws of virology.

Because the virus has such a weak shell that dries up so quickly that it becomes harmless, and even if thats wrong the body can still handle insignificant virus loads. Read the famous Singapore study where people gathered material from flat surfaces from hospital rooms where highly infectious COVID-19 patients resided. While they've found lots and lots of virus material and not even one part of every gathered tissue and all gathered materials were infectious in the slightest.

In other words, you could've drank that soup of SARS-CoV-2 or bake a cake with it and you would've been 100% safe. This is just one study and not representative of course but theres some other that indicate the same things, like the Case-Cluster-Study (previously called "Heinsberg Study") which is seeing a scientific release for the world with objectively quantifyable data to compare with others.

From what I know by people who seeing the prototype of the study, the amount of data will be compiled in hundreds of pages and it also is most likely the best study regarding SARS-CoV-2 and what COVID-19 does from a human standpoint in the most real way possible, which is important. Because what the population needs are studies conducted at homes and places where people can gather (schools, shopping malls, etc) so you can deduct if really only large gatherings of people play the major part in understanding and breaking any upcoming infection chain caused by SARS-CoV-2 through tracing and quarantaine measures and that if anything else is safe, as long as people keep their distance from each other and if air circulation is properly happening.

Thanks for this and other tidbits.

It kinda irritates me that the leaders and health experts also here tended to downplay how the virus spreads (and originally also suggesting that it is not really that risky to others but elderly and other "risk groups"). The earlier consensus, which many experts here still seem to stick to, is that the only ways to contract the virus from someone else are:

1. Someone sneezes right at your face.
2. You touch a surface some sick person has touched just before you, and right after that pick your nose, suck your fingers or rub your eyes.

"So yeah, just remember to wash your hands and stay 1-2 meters away from others, and you will be fine." Somehow that didn't quite correlate with how fast and easily the virus seemed to be spreading all around the world, also here.

So, why do the experts talk against their better knowledge? I presume they think they have a public duty to "not cause panic in public", so little downplaying of risks or even outright lying is deemed ok. If they are unsure about something, then they should just say "We don't know", not "Well, no (because there is no definite proof it can spread also through air).". If they feel something is possible but still unproven, then just say it out loud and stop treating citizens as dummies.

Similar thing was that the health experts here kept claiming over and over again that using the masks does not help at all, and might even be a risk in themselves by harboring more virus and bacteria in them. Well then, if the masks are that useless, why do the health care professionals use them?

Somehow I feel the reason they have been telling people here NOT to use masks in public is because they feel they should be preserved for health professionals and people who treat sick people. If common people hoard masks, then there may be less of them available to professionals. Ok, if that is the real reason, SAY IT, and stop claiming something that is untrue.

When you keep hearing these half-truths from the experts over and over again, is it really surprising people start trusting the experts less and less overtime, and even start seeking for rumors from alternative sources? The experts and leaders have the duty of speaking the whole truth and nothing but the truth, instead of "herding" the public.

Auto-censorship

Please also erase quote of my posts.

Sorry I can't seem to post a long explaination, because my initial post is too long it seems.

Be glad you live in Finland, according to my data, the pandemic is almost over there. Just wait until the mid of may and its over.

Facemaks are needed because you're able to infect people before showing signs of illness, kinda like with flu. Facemaks don't give 100% safety, they just hinder infecting others a little bit due to droplet aerosol spread. If you breath, the cotton mask makes it so virus loads don't travel through the air at full speeds all the time. Even if you talk to someone in a mask, if you're closer than a meter from them, they can still get infected. However, the risk of infection becomes lower, because again, the masks halts movement of your breath and therefore movement of the virus. Again, standing 1.5 meters away in a place with good air circulation is something that must be done by anyone, wearing a mask while doing that lowers the risk of infection even more.

Do not use medical masks, using a strong piece of cotton that you can breath through and that lowers air circulation through breathing should suffice (buy one for a few dollars if you want). Put the mask inside the washing mashine and use 60 degree celsius to clean it every time you went outside. You should do that because the atmosphere that exist between the mask and your mouth/nose makes things very moist, and germs of all kinda just love that stuff.

Scientists compile information slowly, the information that is out in the public changes as much as the situation does. The population need to understand this in order to make healthy decisions. The problem is is proper communication to the public, in my opinion.

I'm sorry, but modern way of travels aren't results of science, rather just one of it's potential application. Science didn't have anything with spread of this virus (unless it's manufactured in some laboratory, of course, but let's not get in there). I am quite annoyed when somebody blames a tool (in this case, science) for something instead the one who uses that tool.

I apologize for my outburst just had to say it.

Deleted - overly confrontational

IMHO a better way of putting things is that with modern international travel and global connectivity the potential advent and spread of a pandemic is made vastly more likely than in previous years, decades, and certainly centuries...

... but...

... in this particular case, there was the potential early on to keep this a localized outbreak. COVID-19 wasn't destined to become a pandemic; it wasn't inevitable. But for many reasons, the window of opportunity to keep this particular outbreak from becoming a pandemic was lost.

Now that COVID-19 is widespread, we are in mitigation -- mainly to keep our medical systems from collapse. We are simply trying to slow the spread to manageable numbers of COVID-19 patients in relation to the available medical treatment / resources. We are "treading water" while waiting for mass testing, better treatments, and preventative care.

And with that understanding...

While it is great to hear about mitigation success stories like Taiwan or South Korea, it is important to understand that mitigation seemingly becomes almost impossible -- again -- with re-opening borders. Short of a preventative treatment (or herd immunity if that is indeed found possible with COVID-19), we could be in for a long haul of mitigation.

This morning I was reading about The Black Plague and European society's responses. Granted, it was a very different world, but in many ways it was also very much the same. It was interesting to see how societies dealt with 4+ years of rampant disease. I don't know that it made me feel better, but it certainly gave some perspective. And talking about rats...

... I certainly feel like a rat in a cage. *Squeak*

Just my 2 cents (for what it's worth)...

While I can understand questioning credentials or authority on a subject, IMO there is no way of adequately resolving your questions. I've been in the same situation of validating my skills and profession online... and it has never ended in anything but more arguments and accusations. I may be wrong, but that's where I have seen this questioning lead more than once. IMHO the best you can hope for on an internet message board is information that you can then research and validate on your own (or not)... and Dray2K has provided that.

Agreed - post deleted.

A worthwhile story on Finland's reaction to the coronavirus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOzkpIUQPaE