Jacob Lawrence Struggle: From the History of the American People, Panel 8 1954
From the Automatic Earth’s most vocal resident physician, Dr. John Day, in Texas. Who thinks Trump’s meeting with COVID should start a change in America (back) towards preventive healthcare. Why is Trump doing so well so fast? Because his treatment started much earlier.
John Day: The Trumpster was never taken out of action by the virus that has been ravaging Big-Mac consumers his age all year. Uh, how come?
After Returning To White House, Trump Implores Americans Not To Let COVID-19 “Dominate Your Life”
Update (1515ET): Dr. Conley has confirmed that although President Trump isn’t out of the woods yet, he has recovered enough to warrant his safe return back to the West Wing, as the president announced via tweet.
Doctors said that Trump has maintained a full work schedule at Walter Reed. He will receive his fourth dose of remdesivir Monday evening, before taking the fifth and final dose on Tuesday. When pressed by a reporter about the safety risks to the Secret Service agents during Trump’s ride outside Walter Reed Sunday evening, Dr. Conley said that the agents wore PPE, as they have in recent days, and that the trip took place over a “very short period of time”.
Circling back to Trump’s mental acuity, reporters asked whether there had been any fogginess as a result of the medication, or the virus, Dr. Conley assured reporters that “he’s back” and that Trump has been a “great” patient.
Looking ahead, Dr. Conley said advanced diagnostic techniques will be used to detect when the last traces of ‘live’ virus have left the president. Dr. Conley said that people are most at risk of shedding the live virus during the first 5 days of infection, but usually by ten days the last traces have left.
Trump got treated with antiviral medicines shortly after he was diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, based upon a screening test. A super-spreader cluster was identified at the White House, with 29 people now positive, from that event. The unmasking in the Rose Garden for Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination is blamed, but the people who got sick were all inside without masks for the reception afterward.
I think that’s where the viral cloud got ’em.
Friends, was it the rose garden or the inside party? pic.twitter.com/7j2L28prmw
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) October 4, 2020
We have all been told that the only advantage to early and frequent testing is early isolation to reduce spread. All the drugs the Chinese used, and the rest of the world uses, have not been shown to save lives in America, where nobody is allowed to have them until they are almost dying. These antiviral drugs only worked in cell cultures, China which is to blame, and fakes results, and poor countries like India.
Just stay at home until you need a ventilator. Do NOT use drugs from India and Bangladesh! Are you CRAZY?! Trump announced in May that he was taking hydroxychloroquine/zinc prophylaxis, but no mention is made of it now. None. Was it stopped sometime in the summer? Anyway, nobody says he was taking it last week and he’s not taking it now. Hydroxychloroquine/Zn does seem to work as prophylaxis in studies.
There is a progression in the attack of SARS-CoV-2 upon the human body. It’s moderately well understood now, but understandings are broadly misrepresented to the public by the national medical bureaucracy. Many treating physicians have been mocked and belittled in the press for saying that there are treatments to reduce morbidity and mortality from COVID.
Rheumatic fever, from untreated Strep Throat used to be a major cause of death and morbidity in the US. That stopped when strep throat started to be treated promptly with penicillin. Now it’s unheard of. In HIV, we discovered that all the “AIDS-defining-illnesses” like pneumocystis pneumonia, and Kaposis’s Sarcoma would just never happen if viral infection was detected early and antivirals were started before the virus had caused widespread injury. Even Tony Fauci knows that.
Now, with the way Donald Trump is being treated, with antivirals reserved for the hopelessly ill, and getting a rapid recovery from early symptoms, when we know he’s exactly the target this virus likes to find, maybe we can get a national reprieve and Make-America-Average-Intelligent-Again.
What if everybody took a little saliva test every Monday and Thursday? What if people at higher risk or even higher anxiety level, got treated as soon as the test was confirmed, like President Trump did, and some of the other party-goers probably are? Hey, what if all the people who tested positive before elective surgery got treated that way for starters? I bet we could set up a study proposal to do that in about 3 months, and have it reviewed for possible approval by next spring!
To have convincing scientific evidence you have to go through the process. It takes a lot of time. Just treating people, like in the old days, can’t give you convincing evidence that it is better to take ordinary drugs for a life threatening infection, before your life is already threatened. Some people might want to do that if they test positive, of course, but it’s not to be condoned, is it?
What if it was somebody in your family? You know how stressful that can be, right? What if great-aunt, or grandma isolated at home and took some safe, purportedly antiviral combination like ivermectin, zinc and doxycycline, or hydroxychloroquine and zinc if her EKG was ok? Would you go for that? Would it seem OK to you? If auntie-grandma just got a positive screening test after 3 visits to the ER , and couldn’t get the surgery she needed, would you think she should take some treatment, even before she got sick with fever, diarrhea, hurting all over, and gasping for air?
How would you know the medicine really worked if she never got sick enough to be sure? Can’t have that, can you?
Our family is treating Auntie-Grandma. Judge us if you must, but we are weak and subject to temptation. We fear the guilt which would come from inaction if she did get badly sick and suffered, and maybe died. She has started ivermectin, doxycycline, and will get the zinc in a couple of hours when the family-courier gets it to her. We’ll letcha know how it works out. Maybe she can get her surgery without too long of a wait.
We may be on the cusp of paradigm shift. I sure hope we are. Take 5000 units per day of vitamin-D. “Auntie Grandma” is taking 5000 units 3 times a day with her zinc, vitamin-C and NAC 600 mg for the next 10 days.
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