Pharmaceutical firms don't want effective drugs, they want money-spinners.

Politicians want to score political points. Patient welfare doesn't matter.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/11/distributed-denial-of-hcq-to-covid-19-victims/

Only 2 UK hospitals are using HCQ. Most are not trying anything, as AK has said.

Siemens, GE, Philips etc. are currently raking it in with CT scanners.

Covid-19 treatments in the US:

https://covid.idea.medicine.uw.edu/page/treatment/drugs

Charly, very interesting. I wonder if you've had had any experience in reducing some of the fear factor associated with these big, shiny, space-age looking machines, machines that encase you like a womb and which commonly emit scary noises during their operations. Commonly made even scarier by needing to be injected with something beforehand and/or associated with the operators seemingly fleeing the scene.
Having had experience of most scanners now, they hold no fear for me, although I was glad to be forewarned about the noise the magnets make in a NMI Scanner. My second wife, who died of brest cancer, and was a geology lecturer like me, was petrified when confronted by one of those shiny monsters living in its own hospital cave. She freaked out, totally out of character.
I am interested because after my NMI scan I had time to talk with the operator who was worried about how to reduce patient anxiety. I told her, for patients like me the more technical information the better - atomic spinning tops and all that, but for those that the sleek, space-age appearance transported into utter fear I had no remedy. Any thoughts?

AK, sorry to hear about your wife.

Magnetic resonance imagers are less claustrophic than before. If possible, you can have ear protection. Or just enjoy the unusual techo performance. For my first scan, I had the nurse hold my foot so I didn't feel I was entombed.

I can no longer go in the high-power machines - all the titanium I've been fixed with. The field induces heat. In the 90s, the NHS was still using primitive ionic contrast agents for X-ray/CT. Burning sensation, very painful.

With MRI, think carefully before accepting a gadolinium-based contrast agent. Ask which product and how much they will inject. There is evidence that some is absorbed by bone and other tissue, the chelation breaks down and you have a poisonous metal in you. Ongoing cases in US courts.

When researching the market for an ultrasound agent, the radiologists were begging for it. Product was never released.

Tomo. I was talking about fears that are totally unreasonable, totally beyond expectations. My wife was a highly educated woman, rational in every way except in her reaction to a scanner. I thought she was going to require sedation, but eventually I was able to calm her down. It happened more than 20 years ago but it is still scarred deeply in my memory. My friendly NMI operator told me this type of reaction is not uncommon.

tomo, I feel sorry for daddylonglegs that come in - I try to coax them into the garden if possible - but I hate big house spiders. They get wacked.

RNA don’t lie.

The nickname 'Wuhan Virus' may not be correct, Chris Forster's team at Cambridge found of strain A of the virus, described as the root of the outbreak, was more common in early samples in Southern China, Guangdong province, than Wuhan - though he admits the numbers are small.

https://www.pnas.org/content/117/17/9241

Large scale observational study finds no benefit from taking hydrochloroquine or chloroquine, but treatment does increase mortality.

https://eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-05/tl-tln052220.php

May 23, 2020 at 10:13 AM Phil Clarke
Coronavirus causes death.
How is Chloroquine as a prophylactic or treatment for initial symptoms of Coronavirus if caught early?

Will the comings and goings of Cummings precipitate the going of Cummings?

Cos they bloody well should.

Cummings must be doing a good job as the haters hate him.

Good work Dominic. Remember "Love is Hate"

I suspect that the old style Medical Officers of Health, with the draconian powers that they held 50 years ago would be doing a better job than the Politically Correct lot we have now, on both sides of the political fences.

4th July for the restricted opening of pubs! Bring it on !

Iantanyrallt - Cummings travelled 260 miles from London to Durham, with his partner who was exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms. At the time, the North East was one of the least affected areas and Government advice was that anyone in a household where someone has symptoms should not leave their house for 14 days. Seeing family members outside your household was specifically banned, as Matt Hancock said

“I end with the advice we all know. This advice is not a request, it is an instruction. Stay at home, protect lives and then you will be doing your part.”

The Deputy Chief Medical Officer was equally clear:-

If you are symptomatic you stay put. Take yourself out of society as quickly as you can with your family.

The Chief Medical Officer for Scotland resigned when it emerged she had travelled to her second home. SAGE member Professor Neil Ferguson went after it emerged he had breached the guidelines.

Millions have complied with the guidance at massive personal cost; people have lost loved ones with no opportunity to say goodbye or attend a funeral. These sacrifices were made willingly to save lives, and to avoid the NHS being overwhelmed.

Cummings' partner Mary Wakefield is a commissioning editor at the Spectator. That publication carried articles from both of them describing their experience with contracting the virus, but at no point did they reveal that they were sick in Durham, not London. Wakefield's piece ends:

we emerged from quarantine into the almost comical uncertainty of London lockdown

Trumpian levels of honesty, there.

In my view, the worst case outcome now is that all the good work done to get the R0 number down below 1 will be ruined as people, understandably, want to reestablish contact with loved ones and we get a seond spike. The Government advice has with some exceptions been sound, it now seems the Prime Minister's most senior advisor flaunted that advice. Lest you think this is just for lefty Guardian readers, the Telegraph just posted this…

The Telegraph understands that some friends of Mr Johnson outside No 10 had sent texts saying he had to sack Mr Cummings “for the benefit of Boris and the country”.

The friend – who claimed he was appalled that Mr Cummings was not more contrite yesterday – said: “This is a car crash. I feel sad for the two of them but the truth is it was the wrong thing to do.“It is not about Dominic, it is about perception. And when lives matter you may never recover from this.“

If this turns out to be that he stays, there is a public backlash and people say ‘I am going to sit in the park’, and the R rate goes to 1.5 and people start to die again, it could be finished.”An MP ally of Mr Johnson said Mr Cummings should quit, but probably would not.

.The MP said the problem was that the people around the Prime Minister felt that they were above the law.The Conservative MP said: “It is very damaging for the Government because it builds on this belief that there is a genuine feeling in Number 10 that they are above the law.”

Cummings goes or more people die. Clear?

my brother is correct - hanging would be too good for Cummings - he should be crushed to death under a pile of unsold newspapers.

May 24, 2020 at 1:32 AM Phil Clarke
May 24, 2020 at 3:44 AM Karen Clarke

Are either of you connected to Gary Evans of Greenpeace and The Guardian aka Bluecloud? He wanted to kill people too.

CGTN: Since the outbreak began, there has been speculation that the novel coronavirus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. How do you respond to that?

Wang: This is pure fabrication. Our institute first received the clinical sample of the unknown pneumonia on December 30 last year. After we checked the pathogen within the sample, we found it contained a new coronavirus, which is now called SARS-CoV-2. We didn't have any knowledge before that, nor had we ever encountered, researched or kept the virus. In fact, like everyone else, we didn't even know the virus existed. How could it have leaked from our lab when we never had it?

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-05-23/Exclusive-with-head-of-Wuhan-Institute-of-Virology-Let-science-speak-QJeOjOZt4Y/index.html

Sorry, conspiracy fans.