Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Health, Medicine & the healing Sciences Coronavirus: The Plague of The 21st Century?

I also read that 150 degrees in the oven for 15 minutes will do the trick. Not sure what it will do to the elastic after repeated heatings.

If need be, you can replace the elastic with four 18" lengths of 1/8" cord or long sewn fabric strips. But clothes driers typically run at 140 F, so 150 F probably will not hurt the elastic.

My wife was burning little swaths of all her fabric pieces last night, to see what was natural and what was synthetic. Natural fabrics work better for catching droplets. They burn like paper. Synthetics burn more vigorously and leave little beads of melted plastic. She got some very simple mask patterns off the internet. I managed to print it out for her before I screwed up my printer. It pulled in the pulse oximeter cord, and I pulled it out. Now it says it has a paper jam, but it feeds paper perfectly.

all that trouble with masks ...

me musing <--- why not drink some clorox or shine a UV lamp in my eyes .... won't that cure something?

If all the people were gone then the Covid would die out.

Got my blood drawn today for a very high quality antibody test. Used HealthLabs.com, because they supply their own doctor to order it. They claim to use the FDA-approved Abbott test with 100% specificity. I have no reason to think they aren't since they are BBB A+ and have very high BBB customer ratings. They sent me to a local Quest Diagnostics for the sample, and the tech drawing the blood said Quest has their own patient-ordered antibody tests now, for a bit less money. Problem with that is they use the Abbott test and another pretty crappy one.

If you do go through HealthLabs.com, beware: Their site faxed my test order in and sent me to a closed Quest location. I had to go back to their website to see some other lab locations, verify that a different one was open, and have my test order faxed to them. Quest was great: Everybody there masked. They won't even let you in without a mask. No waiting at all, since no customers there. Blood draw was quick and painless. Very professional.

Bathed in hand sanitizer back at my car, wore my mask home, then dumped my clothes in the washer and took a hot shower. Now I wait to see if I'm one of the privileged few or one of the high-risk protectees for when California starts to reopen over the next few months.

I mentioned a while back that Trump may have been right about hydroxychloroquine, but actually he wasn't. He was promoting it as if it could cure the seriously ill. It can't. Like EVERY OTHER ANTIVIRAL ON EARTH it has to be given as early as possible. Instead of ERs sending Covod-19 patients home until they develop pneumonia, they should be sending those patents home with hydroxychloroquine and zinc. I bet a lot fewer would come back to the hospital with pneumonia.

They have some good antivirals for influenza, and they act the same way. Given as early as possible, fewer serious cases. Given late after the virus has already replicated like crazy, they do nothing. None of them are anti-virus. They interfere with viral replication. Once a new virus is assembled, the drug has no effect on it.

This is very different from antibiotics. Bacteria are alive and have all sorts of critical processes that have to happen or they die. Every one of those is a potential weak spot some antibiotic could attack. Viruses are not really alive: They just replicate, like a computer worm that does nothing but send out more worms. The only weak spots are stages in that replication.

Even the Lupus dose and malaria dose are a fraction of what CV19 patients have received, which sounds suspiciously like what is sometimes known as a "shock dose".
Shock dose regimens have their use, like in the early times treatment of some STD's. A guy gets the ordinary case of The Clap, the doc puts fourteen Penicillin in his hand and tells him to take them all at once, then follow up with one a day for the next five days.

But CV19 is not The Clap, nor is it even a bacterial infection.
I shudder to think who may have even come up with the notion of a shock dose of an antiviral medication.
Since I am not a doctor, I have no earthly idea if the mechanism of action is the same.

Someone who wants to get the maximum profits out of this bullshit before everyones' kidneys fall out of their arses.

Got my results back today: NEGATIVE Which means either I had something awfully flu-like, but not influenza A or B. Or I did have a mild case of Covid-19 but didn't make any IgG antibodies. This is the phenomenon called "failed to seroconvert" by some researchers. Either way, I get to hide out until we have a vaccine. Once I get vaccinated and wait a month, I can try again and see if I make any IgG.

Dr. Fauci was on CBS today, to tell us they did see some difference in a big remdesivir trial. It shortened recovery time by a few days, but with p < 0.001. That's gold-standard. So it does do some good, for some people. Now the big questions are how much does it cost and how much can they make quickly?

We should have some decent trials on hydroxychloroquine + zinc, ivermectin, and pepcid soon. They do have the advantage of being very cheap and highly available. If the 10 cent generic works as well as the $$$$ remdesivir, then it would be very nice. Especially for people in the Third World.

One thing to keep in mind: Antivirals only work if you give it early as possible. So they would have to give it to EVERYONE who has any symptoms, even if most would not need it.