CV and mad panic behaviour

[flyboy77]

I use ivermectin to worm my chooks.  It works very well.  It's also useful for treating a couple of parasitological conditions in humans.

Sadly, and not too different from the suggestion that injecting bleach could cure COVID-19, some unscrupulous folk have been advocating the use of ivermectin as a COVID treatment, with unfortunate results.

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-u...t-covid-19

It is possible that ivermectin could prove useful in treating COVID-19 symptoms but, to date, no rigorous trials have shown that to be the case.

https://theconversation.com/ivermectin-w...use-157904

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU02mdnoNws

You're being lazy David. And ill informed.

https://c19ivermectin.com/

[flyboy77]

And the myth of asymptomatic transmission is at the core of our governments' irrational responses to covid.

https://www.hartgroup.org/asymptomatic-spread/

An even bigger part of the con than the not fit for purpose PCT test.

https://swprs.org/the-trouble-with-pcr-tests/

[Thryleon]

You’re a footy fan who is outraged that the AFL takes the necessary steps to ensure games can be played. Interesting. Maybe your outrage is as sincere as Captain Renault’s in Casablanca when he closed down Rick’s Café upon being shocked to discover gambling was taking place.

AFL players may be celebs but they’re also workers. The AFL mandates testing and adherence to protocols worked out with the various governments. Remember a few players have been 86’d for breaching them. The players don’t wake up in the morning and decide they’d like their brains massaged through their nostrils just for fun.

Does the AFL have privileged access to testing? I don’t know. I remember seeing film of them attending a drive-through testing station. Maybe that was one open to the public, maybe not. Until this latest outbreak, authorities were begging Victorians to get tested and there really weren’t any queues. But access to tests has hardly been restricted. If the AFL has, like other employers such as hospitals, organised its own testing of its workers, that’s hardly a basis for crying privilege. Are players’ samples processed more quickly? Unknown. But if there are private firms that process tests more quickly at the employers expense and the government requires the AFL to pay for that service, is that celeb-style privilege?

As with the comment about MRIs, I’d be more than happy to kill off the private option in healthcare and education. Get rid of private hospitals and private schools. But until that occurs, it’s a bit rich to slam people who pay privately for those services.

Professional athletes should be high priority to get the appropriate tests done.  In this case its not just a threat to the player and players.  Its competition threatening as well as them not being able to continue without these tests and procedures.  Imagine lock down with no footy to watch....

Before anyone is outraged, hear me out regarding ordinary testing too.

These tests and procedures are all categorised into priority and they bump people up and down based on threat to life and ability to function as a human being.

The majority of people waiting on lists for procedures and waiting to see specialists have generally been assessed as non life threatening and relative to others on list, non debilitating.  Capacity and luck drives this as much as anything else.

Non debilitating might mean a lot of things but this isn't utopia and they must take a pragmatic and repeatable approach to these matters. 

If you're lucky, and not many are waiting for the same procedure for that clinic, you'll get in fast.  If there's lots waiting and its both non life threatening and non debilitating which usually is interpreted as not requiring constant care giving, or constantly in pain you'll get in.

The more time wasters I.e. people who are impacted but impatient rather than actually requiring hugh categorised reaction, the harder it is for the system to prioritize essential first.

In the case of footballers, physical tests go to professional risk and the majority of their procedures and tests will be acute which brings them to the top of the list just like any emergency emergency patient.

This is where it gets tricky. 

Conditions can become life threatening of not treated timely.  They can become debilitating if not treated quickly.

Capacity is Capacity though and footballers don't get preferential treatment just because they're footballers.  They get that treatment because the system has built in mechanisms for accommodating emergency cases requiring quick transition through the system and that capacity can be stretched when emergencies are required.

This is true for anyone.  Heart attack, diagnosis of cancer, other injuries requiring fast diagnosis of surgery.  This is not third world society or communist nations where you only get in by paying or knowing people.  This is the system.  Its imperfect but it does its best.  The majority of athletes are treated privately and pay to get the quick turnaround that Joe average could too.  Thats the difference here. 

[LP]

It is possible that ivermectin could prove useful in treating COVID-19 symptoms but, to date, no rigorous trials have shown that to be the case.
https://theconversation.com/ivermectin-w...use-157904

The general consensus is that Ivermectin is useful as a complimentary medication as part of a suit of compounds that can treat secondary infections caused by a COVID-19 weakened immune system.

It offers almost no detectable prophylactic function against COVID-19.

If it has any effect on COVID-19 infections it is only very mild, barely detectable in most studies that have found any positive effect at all and most have found none at all.

In the USA Ivermectin is being touted by the right wing as the correct COVID-19 solution for Africa, Mexico and India, who'd have thunk it! They think an expensive, highly profitable but barely effective treatment is better than a cheap highly effective vaccine, I wonder why?

btw., On the cost, the PBS subsidised cost of Ivermectin is about $35 a box of four, the base cost of Ivermectin is capsule form is $85 per capsule. Sure India, Africa and Mexico are going to dispense bulk Ivermectin! :o

[Thryleon]

Anyone else get the suspicion this lockdown is going to last longer than a week?

I guess 2 at least, and in a worst case scenario where cases are still spreading we might even stretch out to 4 weeks.

The high school becoming a hotspot is about as worst case scenario as it gets.  First the kids give it to each other, then they take it home, then they take it out on the weekend to the footy, their local basketball competition, then spread it to the opposition players.

Its a contact tracers nightmare about to unfold.  Before anyone states this is rubbish, we have been living life with relative normality and over the last fortnight, speaking for myself, I saw a very lacsadaisacal approach to QR code checkins, as well as just general public behaviour.

Its like the pandemic ended and people were back to their selfish selves.

[ElwoodBlues1]

Anyone else get the suspicion this lockdown is going to last longer than a week?

I guess 2 at least, and in a worst case scenario where cases are still spreading we might even stretch out to 4 weeks.

The high school becoming a hotspot is about as worst case scenario as it gets.  First the kids give it to each other, then they take it home, then they take it out on the weekend to the footy, their local basketball competition, then spread it to the opposition players.

Its a contact tracers nightmare about to unfold.  Before anyone states this is rubbish, we have been living life with relative normality and over the last fortnight, speaking for myself, I saw a very lacsadaisacal approach to QR code checkins, as well as just general public behaviour.

Its like the pandemic ended and people were back to their selfish selves.

I'd be thinking all of June.....case numbers are only going up and I think the contact tracing cant handle now what is
a decent spread of sites and unknowns.
Agree on the slack approach too, not everyone wearing masks and social distancing also hit and miss, you get tired of pointing to the marks on floor in shops and having to direct people in supermarkets who want to rush through the checkouts and end up breathing down your neck at the cashier.
re: Athletes..  a lot of them end up at the private ERs like Cabrini, where they get quick treatment and get to see a specialist sooner.
If you close down the private hospitals, and private schools you will only be dumping those patients/students into the public system and making the waiting times longer and the class sizes larger.
Like it or not we need the private systems and celebs/athletes do benefit because of their wealth and connections, its often unfair but until funding improves to the public system thats the way it is.
We are lucky the under resourced public hospitals and staff do such a good job in the main to handle the workload because the pollies couldnt care less..

[Mav]

This isn’t the thread to get into the weeds concerning private schools and the like. But can I just quickly point out that the funding model Howard brought in requires the Federal Govt to match increases in funding to needy Govt schools with increases of private school funding. Build some extra classrooms in underesourced schools and you need to build a 2nd or 3rd swimming pool at Scotch College. Anyway, that’s my recollection of this nonsense and I’m happy to be corrected.

[flyboy77]

There are now about 20 randomized clinical trials (RCTs) of ivermectin for covid. They overwhelmingly show reductions in mortality, when used in adequate doses and in patients who are in early enough stages of the disease.

The Kory et al review encompasses both observational and RCT data. It was published in early May in a peer-reviewed journal, the American Journal of Therapeutics, and is already the most-viewed paper in the journal’s history.

https://journals.lww.com/americantherape...the.4.aspx

The Bryant, Lawrie meta analysis is very rigorous (only considers the RCTs etc) and reaches similar conclusions: about a 70% relative reduction in mortality when used in adequate doses and early enough.

https:2.1//osf.io/k37ft/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ju5v4TAaQ&t=1166s

[LP]

Meta analysis is analysing data from trials previously completed, some of the trials forming part of the analysis were completed almost a decade before COVID-19.

All the of the trials used at least one other drug like doxycycline or azithromycin in conjunction with ivermectin, a cocktail of pharmaceuticals, they don't know why they worked or what they worked on because the meta analysis required no analysis of secondary infections.

No specific direct treatment or prophylaxis of SARS-CoV-2 virus was demonstrated, the papers are analysis the survival of illness post COVID-19 illness, but many trials do not differentiate mild illness versus severe illness, they are just lumped into the same category.

Really these studies repeatedly demonstrate just how serious COVID-19 is and why vaccination is so important. If you get a SARS-CoV-2 infection and develop COVID-19 you are at great risk of becoming very ill from secondary infections requiring a suite of pharmaceuticals to assist, there is no silver bullet to make you better.

SARS-CoV-2 is the virus, ............... COVID-19 is the disease that SARS-CoV-2 causes........ COVID-19 is a complex set of symptoms and infections.

[Professer E]

This lock down is a total joke - town is inundated with visitors. Cruising around in their heritage cars etc.  Usual stuff - "sun's out,  flogs out".