Wuhan got Covid all in check
Much like many parts of the US, Wuhan residents are back to 2019 lifestyles. The difference of course being that there have been no domestically-transmitted cases of Covid-19 in Wuhan for three months. This past week thousands of patrons flocked to a water park concert. Possibly the best solution ever to concert bathroom lines - let's just hope they upped the chlorine levels.
#College
UNC sent their students back to classes for a whole week before seeing 100+ cases of Covid. They pulled a U-turn, moved undergraduate instruction fully online and actually asked students to leave campus. NOT a good sign. Michigan State didn't wait for the semester to start - they preemptively changed tack and decided to do all undergrad classes online. Many more Universities will be following suit.
University of Alabama decided to allow 20% capacity at home football games. That translates to a mere 20 thousand people.
With so many Universities trying so many extremely different things, we should get some info on what works best.
Shady Publications
Some of the Covid-related publications coming out are being published in shady journals that are pay-to-publish. One hydroxy-promoting study, which included a French politician on its author list, was published in just such a journal.
"2.2 Study 2 – Use of HCQ + AZT and PSA before 2020
Study 2 was excluded from analysis and from this paper, as it did not provide informative results (i.e. the results we wanted)."
They paid their $55 and sure enough it made it through the alleged peer-review and was published briefly. If you look at the peer-review file,
which was still available early this week, you can see some supposed scholars appear to have seriously reviewed it. Really there was nothing to review - it was ridiculous.
Such an inane article was bound to be taken down, but the point was made - a lot of these journals will publish anything if you pay them. Reasonably feigned scientific work would skirt through permanently.
One added bit for this quack journal is it is a prerequisite to submit, with the manuscript, the names, addresses and e-mail addresses of 4 potential reviewers. So you even get to pick your reviewers.
Covid Immunity
A pre-print article came out indicating immunity to Covid-19 lasts at least three months and maybe much longer. As always this would depend greatly on viral mutations, but for now it's good news. Most of what we have heard in the past few months was indicating 3-4 months or more of immunity, so this hews to what we know. Good to have some slight confirmation. Derek Lowe covers some additional news bits about immunity
ThirDMD Time's a Charm
The FDA recently approved a third treatment for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) and like the other two, it did so without efficacy being proven. DMD is a rare genetic disease causing muscles in children to degenerate. The parents of sufferers have built a strong group who have persistently demanded that FDA and drug companies make unproven treatments available to their children. The FDA decided to approve Exondys 51 in 2016 and has continued down that path.
Despite follow-up studies, it is still not clear whether Exondys works. All three approvals to date are based on biomarker data alone, not whether the drug actually ameliorates disease symptoms/progression. Specifically, the drugs showed single-digit percentage increases in dystrophin levels. Not exactly enormous.
As long as there are no side effects, it would seem to be worth a shot for these parents. However, prices ranging from $100k to $800k/yr are a pretty high bar to get over when it comes to cost-effectiveness.
Covid Treatment & Status
STAT has a simple yet useful list of treatments/vaccines in the pipeline. They add only a sentence for major updates. Conveys the major info only. Very nice.
The US seems to have passed it's latest crest of infections. Guess masks do work. Some of these case drops are no doubt due to the current administration sidelining the CDC and massaging the numbers before releasing, but even if they're doctoring them a bit, testing is way higher than it was back in April. So apples to apples, things probably aren't as bad as April. Infections are distributed more widely with few hospitals being overloaded. That's the goal - keep hospital capacity available for those that need it. School's in though, so things could get out of control quickly. Damn pandemic.
