[late]

"Medical authorities in China have said a drug used in Japan to treat new strains of influenza appeared to be effective in coronavirus patients, Japanese media said on Wednesday.

Zhang Xinmin, an official at China’s science and technology ministry, said favipiravir, developed by a subsidiary of Fujifilm, had produced encouraging outcomes in clinical trials in Wuhan and Shenzhen involving 340 patients.

“It has a high degree of safety and is clearly effective in treatment,” Zhang told reporters on Tuesday."

It's called Avigan, and needs more testing. Even if it works, it will take a while to ramp up production. Still, that would be rum luck if it does.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/japanese-flu-drug-clearly-effective-in-treating-coronavirus-says-china

[Skynet]

Avigan should be mass produced, about patent laws and fees can after the pandemic be discussed.

The chemical formula is not complicated each ecstasy cook could produce this

[Pants-of-dog]

The Cubans already have an effective antiviral treatment. They also have made enough to treat every single person on the island, as well as enough to export.

[Ter]

Hydroxyclhloroquin in combination with Azythromycin has reduced the viral load dramatically in a small pilot study. This is all very fresh news. I suspect and hope that quite soon treatment protocols will be established to alleviate the bad outcomes from COVID-19

[Stormsmith]

The Cubans have been very effective in China, too.

The problem is, President Trump has ramped up that damn able trade barrier, making it difficult for Cubans to import all drugs, or the ingredients. I think the Chinese are now helping them.

[Rancid]

I wonder if Gin and Tonic works.

[ThirdTerm]

The new coronavirus is officially named as SARS-CoV-2, while the original SARS virus is SARS-CoV-1. Favipiravir is recognized as a substrate by SARS-CoV-2, thus inhibiting its RNA polymerase activity. Therefore, favipiravir may have potential antiviral action on SARS-CoV-2, which is a RNA virus. It is unfortunate that an effective SARS vaccine has not been developed yet, which could have been effective against SARS-CoV-2 that is slightly altered from SARS-CoV-1. We need a generic coronavirus vaccine that will be effective against potential SARS-CoV-3 since coronaviruses are endemic in China, where bats and other exotic wild animals are traded and consumed. SARS-CoV-2 was originally a bat virus.

Abstract
The SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged in December 2019 and then spread rapidly worldwide, particularly to China, Japan, and South Korea. Scientists are endeavoring to find antivirals specific to the virus. Several drugs such as chloroquine, arbidol, remdesivir, and favipiravir are currently undergoing clinical studies to test their efficacy and safety in the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China; some promising results have been achieved thus far. This article summarizes agents with potential efficacy against SARS-CoV-2.
https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/dd ... f/-char/en

[QatzelOk]

I wonder if Gin and Tonic works.

How can you make jokes about a virus that has killed 3,000 people in China? (out of a billion) (I actually understand why you can joke about it)

I'm much more concerned about the media treatment of this story, as well as the resulting hysteria. Why is this being over-sold to the public as a plague? This hysteria is causing real harm, both social and economic. Small businesses are going under because they aren't allowed to serve customers, kids are losing school days, and many people are suffering symptoms because of media-induced stress.

In Italy, 3,500 people have did. But in Italy, about 40,000 - 60,000 people die of flu every year. And 7-15% of these flus are coronaviruses of some kind. (I googled Italy annual influenza deaths, and had to go through an entire page of Corona SEO-work to get to some kind of statistics)

Is anyone besides me researching influenza pathology, or is everyone just watching commercial media and emoting to whatever narrative they spin? (this is a general question about a lot of media narratives, by the way)

[Code Rood]

I'm much more concerned about the media treatment of this story, as well as the resulting hysteria. Why is this being over-sold to the public as a plague? This hysteria is causing real harm, both social and economic. Small businesses are going under because they aren't allowed to serve customers, kids are losing school days, and many people are suffering symptoms because of media-induced stress.

Whether this corona thing is a test to make us react in a certain way or not, they're almost ready to collapse society and roll out their new system.

The world as we know it is drastically going to change. A cull of the herd is coming. AI and robotics are going to dominate our lives and eliminate a lot of jobs. A social credit system is coming. A cashless society is coming. 5G. Smart city programs. And so on. That's basically what it all comes down to.

[Patrickov]

How can you make jokes about a virus that has killed 3,000 people in China? (out of a billion) (I actually understand why you can joke about it)

Some believe the numbers are much higher than that, because the Chinese government's tendency of suppressing information.

In February, China Mobile had a net loss of 7.25 million customers (they had 942 millions customers in total). I do not think it is a large loss, but some speculated the change to be one of the following reasons:
1. China Mobile uses Huawei so people abandoned it
2. People switched over to rival telecom service providers (there are at least three of them in China)
3. The loss are actually subscribers who succumbed to coronavirus in February.

I do not actually believe the speculation, and frankly for a 1.4 billion country even 72.5m death in a month might not be that noticeable. But we probably should not take official numbers for granted either.

Meanwhile, is it really appropriate to think everything as a conspiracy theory? dismiss people's fear (of their own lives) as mere hysteria?

"Only 1 person die" can be very different if it actually means "I am the person who die".

EDIT: Added the bolded part above.

[QatzelOk]

..."Only 1 person die" can be very different if it actually means "I am the person who die".

As I'm riding my bike, I often think cars need to be almost entirely eliminated (except emergency and commercial vehicles) because I might be "the one" (out of 1 million car-caused deaths per year).

To understand the appropriate response to an "event," you have to research because commercial media exists only to sell products, like government repression, vaccines, and useless gadgets and miracle cures.

Here are some interesting stats and factoids from various sources:

...In 2018 I wrote about DISEASE X that the World Health Organization claimed was a priority. An infectious disease expert said the world must prepared for the next deadly flu pandemic that is predicted to kill 200 million and the infectious disease industry needed $7.5 billion to prevent it. Well, they never got paid off, so in mafia fashion, DISEASE X just arrived.
...
America is said to be facing a coronavirus that is not as virulent or deadly than the seasonal influenza virus this flu season, yet the nation is being placed in quarantine and the national guard is said to be readying for “urban lockdown.” All this onerous social and economic control over a worst-case scenario that predicts millions of coronavirus deaths in the U.S., which is not likely to ever happen, that is, unless the sun doesn’t shine come spring.
...
The fact that modern medicine has induced the public to be sun-phobic to avoid skin cancers comes at the price of weakened immunity.
...
In Italy where hundreds of deaths are being reported daily, of 105 patients who were said to have died of the virus, the average age was 81 and there were only 2 deaths under age 50. Two-thirds had pre-existing conditions. According to a long-term study of Italians (2006-2014), 29.9% were heavy drinkers and 26% of these heavy drinkers also smoke tobacco. About 1 in 4 Italians over age 65 already have some form of lung disease. All the quarantines in an effort to prolong the life of winos and tobacco smokers over age 80 for a short time.

In China, deaths attributed to the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic were largely among 80+ year-olds. In China, 68% of men are smokers and 46% drink alcohol.
...

If you click on the link, it takes you to the Information Clearing House article, which also includes an interesting video presentation by Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg.

Please stop emoting in front of commercial media and read this article. And then do some enlightened googling while you're idle.

[ness31]

It is perfectly possible that we are having a serious respiratory pandemic, and not wanting to waste a crisis, implementation of a new authoritarian regime. I don’t see why the two would be mutually exclusive.

[Patrickov]

As I'm riding my bike, I often think cars need to be almost entirely eliminated (except emergency and commercial vehicles) because I might be "the one" (out of 1 million car-caused deaths per year).

To understand the appropriate response to an "event," you have to research because commercial media exists only to sell products, like government repression, vaccines, and useless gadgets and miracle cures.

... In China, deaths attributed to the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic were largely among 80+ year-olds. In China, 68% of men are smokers and 46% drink alcohol ...

Please stop emoting in front of commercial media and read this article. And then do some enlightened googling while you're idle.

In Hong Kong the first death is a 39-year-old so the disease killing older people is not true. Besides it is highly inconvenient to fall ill of a disease without proper treatment.

Be assured that I am aware of possible media manipulation. This is why I only expose myself to limited reporting. Also, I have practically never procured health goods myself. My family might have done some but they stopped once they get enough (with no thanks to the government and practically no thanks to big moguls), and more often than not they got the said resources through community distribution, which costed them no money at all.

It is perfectly possible that we are having a serious respiratory pandemic, and not wanting to waste a crisis, implementation of a new authoritarian regime. I don’t see why the two would be mutually exclusive.

I am already under one so the question is to break it instead of stopping it from being formed.

[ness31]

*fist bumps Patrickov* So are we mate, it’s just that no one bothered to tell us.

[Patrickov]

*fist bumps Patrickov* So are we mate, it’s just that no one bothered to tell us.

However, I am quite sure our definitions differ a little bit, and my standard / bar is actually lower.

[ness31]

As in, you are more tolerant to authoritarian interference?

[Patrickov]

As in, you are more tolerant to authoritarian interference?

Probably mere surveillance instead of that.

[ness31]

I don’t think I will ever get used to it

[Code Rood]

I don’t think I will ever get used to it

Good. Because when you start to think ''oh, it's just a part of our lives now'' or ''oh, it's for safety reasons'', you're at the point of no return. You'll accept anything once it gets normalized enough by the state and its propaganda arm.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Code Rood
@ness31

Which authoritarian regime do you live under?