Are mass lockdowns wise?Doctor author thinks not

Arguing that the current draconian measures against Covid-19 infection are likely to backfire, a well-known doctor author advocated a different approach to the pandemic.

Dr. Marc Siegel, a professor at New York University School of Medicine and media personality, warned that roping off whole communities with freeze-in-place orders can do more harm than good. History shows, he said, that mass quarantines tend to ramp up the fear factor, thus promoting behaviors that inadvertently worsen the contagion. In addition, many are concerned that the national economy cannot easily survive mass layoffs, which are now under way.

Responding to a question from Fox commentator Steve Hilton, Siegel urged mass testing, such as with an antigen test now becoming available. Those who test positive would be warned to stay away from the immunosuppressed and elderly, he said.

Siegel has written two popular books on epidemics, False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear (Wiley 2005) and Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic (Wiley 2006) and another on general health, The Inner Pulse: Unlocking the Secret Code of Sickness and Health (Wiley 2011).

He also writes regularly for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post, Slate, Fox, National Review Online and Forbes Online,

Enraged man rams house, kills retireesafter his fiance fled to the nearest porch

Engineer, schoolteacher shot dead
as 'hell breaks loose out of nowhere'

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2020/03/23/knox-county-victims-homicide-boyd-doris-beets/2897315001/

Oz launches trials of French treatment--without waiting for the feds to budge

Rather than wait for the FDA and White House Task Force to take action on a new French treatment of Covid-19, Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Öz said his hospital, along with academic institutions, planned to get to work immediately to see whether they can replicate the French results with clinical trials.

Oz said today he had spoken with a lead researcher and was very impressed with him as a scientist. Oz is clearly very hopeful that the treatment will work in many patients, making Covid-19 equivalent to a typical influenza in its health effects.

But, he pleaded on Fox News, "We need the pills." Oz urged the federal government to make sure the pills, hydroxochloroquine and Z-pack (Azithromycin) are available to researchers.

He said his hospital, Columbia-Presbyterian in New York City, barely had enough to conduct a trial.

A statement from the French researchers said, "We think that it is not moral" that the drug combo "is not systematically included in the therapeutic trials concerning the treatment of Covid-19 infection in France." They also said that anyone infected who comes to their institution would receive the treatment, except if they are barred by drug reactions. The researchers found that the combo knocks out Covid-19 within six days, as opposed to a typical 20 days in other treatments.

The statement was signed by Doctors Philippe Brouqui, Jean-Christophe Lagier, Matthieu Million, Philippe Parola, Didier Raoult and Marie Hocquart.

The institute, known in English as the Mediterranean Infection Foundation, aims to condense the means of  fighting infectious diseases, the leading cause of death in the world (17 million deaths per year)  and in particular the three world killers  HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.

The research team reported recently that it had achieved astonishing results with the chloroquine-Azithromycin treatment, knocking out Covid-19 within six days in its group of patients.

Researchers report knockout punch of Covid-19
https://invisiblepaul.blogspot.com/2020/03/french-researchers-preliminary-results.html

The French team's decision is reminiscent of the decision of AIDS researchers, some 20 years ago, to suspend controlled studies of the "AIDS cocktail" because it was proving so effective that it was unethical to deprive the control group of the medicines.

A similar issue erupted in the 1950s when the March of Dimes advocated the use of Bayesian statistical methods in order to get the Salk vaccine into usage without being pedantic and risking more childhood cases. By contrast, some officials insisted on using unvaccinated children in control groups in order to obtain standard statistical results, and, in fact, that course of action was taken. Hence, the vaccine's statistical success meant that a number of children were left to contract polio.

Öz is a television personality who directs the Cardiovascular Institute and Complementary Medicine Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

It appears to be imperative that the federal government begin to regulate and ration supplies of chloroquine and Azithromycin to prevent institutional hoarding. It is also important that the government incentivize production of these drugs and others that hospitals are calling for.

With Italy's "crude" death toll at 9.5 percent, the pressure is on to get more tests deployed in the United States, accompanied by effective antiviral treatments.

2 kin test positive after virus killed 4 in family

New York Post

At least two more members of the tragic New Jersey family ravaged by coronavirus have tested positive for the disease that’s already killed four of their kin and sickened eight others.

Elizabeth Fusco, the youngest of 11 children in a large, close-knit family, lost her mother and three siblings over the next few days, has herself tested positive.

Even worse, her daughter, who has a preexisting health condition, has tested positive, too.

Just one day after she learned of their test results, Elizabeth Fusco told The Post Saturday that she was still cooking dinner for her family that night.

“I have family to feed,” she said while preparing the meal. “My mother in her worst years, whenever she was scared or having a bad time, she cooked. So guess what I’m doing? I’m cooking.

“I feel very sad,” she went on. “I lost family but I still have to feed my family. I remember my sister and my mom when I’m cooking. In this world there is no promise of tomorrow. No one can assume anything.”

Fusco said both she and her daughter are asymptomatic and that they both have already been self-isolating.

Her daughter is choosing to stay under quarantine because she has some underlying, although not serious, medical conditions.

“She’s been cleared,” Elizabeth Fusco said. “We just choosing to keep her quarantined for her own safety.”

Fusco said she will also be remaining in quarantine following doctor’s guidelines.

The awful news came after Elizabeth and a family friend reached out to New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith Tuesday night, imploring him for help getting tested, Fusco family spokeswoman Roseann Paradiso Fodera said.

“Congressman Smith was a huge help to us,” she said.

Smith said he was on the phone with the family “about 50 times” trying to track down the test results.

“We finally got some of the results at 3 in the morning,” Smith said. “Getting the test results as fast as possible is crucial because the longer you wait, the longer you hinder the ability to get patients what can be effective drugs.”

On Thursday, Elizabeth described to CNN her late mother and siblings as “the roots of our life. They were the core of our family since our dad’s been gone. The second we start to grieve about one, the phone rings and there’s anther person gone, taken from us forever.”

The virus has so far claimed Rita Fusco-Jackson, 55, a religion teacher at the Co-Cathedral of St. Robert Bellarmine in Freehold; eldest son Carmine Fuscio, 55, of Bath., Pa.; Vincent Fusco Jr.; and the family’s matriarch, Grace Fusco, 73. She passed Wednesday without knowing the virus had already claimed two of her kids’ lives.

Fears U.S. unprepared to handle virus surge

Second-string status of CDC
alarms former health official

A former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expressed alarm yesterday that that agency is not "central to the response" of the coronavirus epidemic in the United States. He said he would feel "a lot safer" if the CDC was at the forefront of the virus battle, which he predicts will get much worse within the next 10 to 14 days.

"The CDC is the nation's leading protection agency," said Tom Frieden, CDC director in the Obama administration.  "Fighting this without CDC central to the response has never been done with an infectious disease threat in the U.S. before and it's like fighting with one hand tied behind your back."

Frieden said he would feel "a lot safer" if he knew that the CDC  "was at the table" and "at the podium" among the White House task force as it has an important role in combating the outbreak.

When asked how he thought the Trump administration was handling the epidemic, Frieden yesterday told Fox News, "This is not the time for grading, this is the time for all of us to work together."

Frieden said it takes about "five or six days" after initial infection before a person feels symptoms and about another week before possibly becoming "very sick."

"So the severe cases that we're seeing today are people who were infected 10-14 days ago. That means that for the next 10-14 days we're locked in to continue to see a big increase in cases in places like New York City," Frieden said. "That's why we're so worried about health care becoming overwhelmed and keeping health care workers as safe as possible."

The public health specialist said that the public health measure of chasing down an infected person's contacts in places like New York City "isn't going to work" because the virus has become so widespread, but urged the continuation of social distancing, staying home and washing hands, hoping that will eventually result in a "drive down of cases" in the weeks ahead.

Asked  whether chloroquine, the anti-malaria drug that President Trump has spotlighted as a potential treatment for coronavirus, should be "deployed," Frieden responded by saying it should be studied before it's given to patients, but that "absolutely" chloroquine among other drugs should be looked into.

Frieden said there would be a surge in health care workers infected with Covid-19 and that the intensive care units will be "overwhelmed," telling Roberts that's what he is "most concerned about" in the coming week.

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The foregoing information comes from Joseph A. Wulfsohn, a reporter for Fox News. 

Researchers blast as 'immoral'
failure to test anti-virus combo

French researchers are urging a major expansion of testing of Covid-19 patients with chloroquine and Azithromycin, saying that not to do so is "immoral."

Citing the Hippocratic Oath, researchers at the Institut Hospitalier Universitaire Méditerranée Infection, based in Marseilles, said their group would go ahead and treat anyone with Covid-19 with the combination as long as the patient was not barred because of potential drug reactions. The group said it had decided:

# For all febrile [symptomatic] patients who come to consult us, to practice the tests for the diagnosis of infection with Covid 19.
# For all infected patients -- many of whom are not very symptomatic and have pulmonary lesions on CT as soon as the diagnosis is made -- begin treatment with hydroxychloroquine (200 milligrams three times per day for 10 days) plus Azithromycin (500 mg on the 1st day followed by 250 mg per day for 5 more days), within the framework of the precautions for use of this combination (with in particular an electrocardiogram on D0 and D2), and outside of marketing authorization.
In cases of severe pneumonia, a broad-spectrum antibiotic is also used.

"We think that it is not moral that this association is not systematically included in the therapeutic trials concerning the treatment of Covid-19 infection in France," the researchers said in a public statement.

The statement was signed by Doctors Philippe Brouqui, Jean-Christophe Lagier, Matthieu Million, Philippe Parola, Didier Raoult, and Marie Hocquart.

The institute, known as the Mediterranean Infection Foundation in English, aims to condense the means of  fighting infectious diseases, the leading cause of death in the world (17 million deaths per year)  and in particular the three world killers  HIV, tuberculosis and malaria.

The research team reported recently that it had achieved astonishing results with the chloroquine-Azithromycin treatment, knocking out Covid-19 within six days in 75 percent of patients.

Researchers report knockout punch of Covid-19
https://invisiblepaul.blogspot.com/2020/03/french-researchers-preliminary-results.html

The French team's decision is reminiscent of the decision of AIDS researchers, some 20 years ago, to suspend controlled studies of the "AIDS cocktail" because it was proving so effective that it was unethical to deprive the control group of the medicines.

A similar issue erupted in the 1950s when the March of Dimes advocated the use of Bayesian statistical methods in order to get the Salk vaccine into usage without being pedantic and risking more childhood cases. By contrast, some officials insisted on using unvaccinated children in control groups in order to obtain standard statistical results, and, in fact, that course of action was taken. Hence, the vaccine's statistical success meant that a number of children were left to contract polio.

Fauci dawdles on antivirals

http://www.koreabiomed.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=7428

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House's point man in the Covid-19 fight, is hesitant about "anecdotal" reports about the efficacy of chloroquine and other anti-virals. Fauci has said he planned  to consult with other medical experts on whether clinical studies should go forward.

Fauci, a career government immunologist who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and is a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, is noncommittal about President Trump's intense interest in these treatments. Fauci's comments were elicited by Fox commentator Laura Ingraham.

Dr. Mehmet Cengiz Öz, a television personality who directs the Cardiovascular Institute and Complementary Medicine Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, told an interviewer that he was surprised that the press paid little heed to a French study that showed very effective results in fighting Covid-19 with a chloroquine regimen. See

Study: Chloroquine deals Covid-19 knockout blow
https://invisiblepaul.blogspot.com/2020/03/french-researchers-preliminary-results

Oz said that, while he respects Fauci as a scientist, during an emergency it is sometimes necessary to "cut corners" and deploy drugs that haven't gone through rigorous testing protocols. He observed that, in particular, chloroquine was a very well-known drug so that there was little to worry about with regard to unknown adverse health effects.

The difference between the attitudes of Oz and Fauci is that Oz reflects the urgency of a "this is war" mindset whereas Fauci does not give any such impression. Obviously prudence is highly important. But it sounds as though Fauci is not picking up on the urgency of the situation.

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Makes you wonder whether what critics take to have been Trump's overcautious behavior was a result of the advice from a career government bureaucrat.