Coronavirus Awareness Thread

[Grey]

Apr 15, 2020 4:23:46 GMT 5 Life said:

One of my relatives in USA succumbed to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus strain recently; he was a middle-aged man.

To all members of WoA; take care of yourself and your loved ones. Follow advice of health experts and take necessary precautions.

Sorry to hear that my friend.

I'm not too active on the board these times but take care guys.

[Ceratodromeus]

www.livescience.com/coronavirus-updates-united-states.html

Pretty much confirming what most people believe.

[theropod]

Did Donald Trump just propose to inject corona patients with disinfectant or did I imagine that? I mean, I knew he was clinically insane and probably a psychopath, but how can that guy not be in a closed institution by now?

PS: And no, this is not a generic disparaging use of mental illness as an insult, I genuinely believe he is mentally ill. Of course being mentally ill and being an asshole and an idiot are not mutually exclusive either.

EDIT: PPS: My first sentence was a rhetorical question (wiki→), but apparently that fact was lost on certain people.

Donald Trump has clearly proposed injecting disinfectant as a means of treatment, that is not up for debate, it is what he literally says in his statement (direct Trump quotes in orange for obvious reasons):
"And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or, or almost a cleaning?"
He is clearly only referencing one substance here, disinfectant, and one result, "knocking out the virus in a minute". The only logical conclusion is that "injection inside" is referring to this substance, as there is no other candidate he could be talking about here. Otherwise he would have mentioned it, as that would then have been the only part in his statement with any relevance. Otherwise that would have left him saying nothing but "inject something that will kill the virus". Which is a proposal so entirely lacking any novelty that I’m sure even Donald Trump knows there is no point in even making it.

But even if one were to argue that this was really merely a poor choice of wording on his part and that he did not actually mean to suggest the disinfectant should be injected, he himself buried that possibility when, confronted with his own proposal, he did not use the chance to clarify it but rather tried to make it look like sarcasm: "I was asking a sarcastic and a very sarcastic question to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside,"

Note "disinfectant on the inside"-part. He reaffirms his proposal was meant to be about the disinfectant he was talking of, not just some unspecified other substance that he hoped would have the same effects.

As for his sarcasm excuse, well that also doesn’t check out that well…mostly because when you claim a statement you made was sarcasm, you should not then go back and defend it:

"But it does kill it and it would kill it on the hands and it would make things much better. […] I do think the disinfectant on the hands could have a very good effect. Now Bill is going back to check that in the laboratory, it’s an amazing laboratory by the way, the work they do, so he’s going to check, because hard surface […] the disinfectant has an unbelievable…wipes it out. […] So that I said "How do we do it inside the body or even outside the body with the hands". And disinfectant I think would work, he thinks would work, you use it when you’re doing your hands, I guess that’s one of the reasons you say wash your hands, but whether it’s washing your hands or disinfected hands, that’s very good. So they’re gonna start looking at that."

Now the incoherence of this statement is obvious and his precise meaning is unclear, but we can be confident Bill is not going back to the lab to check that disinfectant has a "very good effect on the hands", after all we already know with a fair bit of certainty exactly what effect disinfectant will have there (e.g. doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2020.01.022), namely killing the virus, nobody needs further testing for that, nor is that promising to be any more of an asset in the fight against the virus than it already is, because everybody already knows disinfectant kills the virus on your hands and everybody already knows when to use it. So what is he doing there? Again the only sensible explanation is that he is actually defending his earlier statement, about "using disinfectant on the inside", finding some way to use it as a curative agent, mind-numbingly stupid, but at least novel enough for him to mention it, which also means he doesn’t know the meaning of "sarcasm".

[elosha11]

Apr 15, 2020 4:23:46 GMT 5 Life said:

One of my relatives in USA succumbed to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus strain recently; he was a middle-aged man.

To all members of WoA; take care of yourself and your loved ones. Follow advice of health experts and take necessary precautions.

My sincere condolences to you and your family.

[theropod]

Apr 15, 2020 4:23:46 GMT 5 Life said:

One of my relatives in USA succumbed to the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus strain recently; he was a middle-aged man.

To all members of WoA; take care of yourself and your loved ones. Follow advice of health experts and take necessary precautions.

My condolences as well Life

[DonaldCengXiongAzuma]

My condolences to your relative, Life. Sorry to hear that 😔.

[Ceratodromeus]

Did Donald Trump just propose to inject corona patients with disinfectant or did I imagine that?

Yeah you imagined it.

"and then i see disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute; is there a way we can do something like that? By injection, inside or -- or -- almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. it would be interesting to check that So that you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds interesting to me, so we'll see."

A verbatim quote which brings to mind just blurting out your thoughts like most people do. Anyway, =/= people should Go inject industrial disinfectants into their cephalic veins. And if you believed that was a good idea in the first place you probably eat dirt.


He also talks about the strain of the virus being susceptible to UVC -- which factually isn't really that far off, but needs more testing (www.bbc.com/future/article/20200327-can-you-kill-coronavirus-with-uv-light ). We live in a weird time.

[Ceratodromeus]

Apr 9, 2020 15:42:41 GMT 5 elosha11 said:

Apr 8, 2020 14:36:04 GMT 5 talira said:

Unfortunately, Australia now has more than 6,000 confirmed cases and the national death toll has reached 50.

Sorry to hear that. The Trump administration's gross incompetence in handling the coronavirus has led to the U.S. being the hardest hit country in the world. Hopefully your leaders have learned from our mistakes, have been preparing, and will institute all proper medical and social distancing measures.

The main problem is the world -- not the united states solely -- was poorly prepared for a highly infectious virus to take it by storm. As those who study it are learning more about it every day, we see that this is the case; for instance it was probably in the united states before we thought it was, if these antibody studies and autopsies published in recent days are anything to go by. Nasty shit.

[theropod]

Apr 25, 2020 8:14:17 GMT 5 Ceratodromeus said:

Did Donald Trump just propose to inject corona patients with disinfectant or did I imagine that?

Yeah you imagined it.

"and then i see disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute; is there a way we can do something like that? By injection, inside or -- or -- almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. it would be interesting to check that So that you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But it sounds interesting to me, so we'll see."

A verbatim quote which brings to mind just blurting out your thoughts like most people do. Anyway, =/= people should Go inject industrial disinfectants into their cephalic veins. And if you believed that was a good idea in the first place you probably eat dirt.


He also talks about the strain of the virus being susceptible to UVC -- which factually isn't really that far off, but needs more testing (www.bbc.com/future/article/20200327-can-you-kill-coronavirus-with-uv-light ). We live in a weird time.

OK, so where exactly did I imagine it? Seems like you just reproduced the exact quote where he literally proposes that.

"And then I see the disinfectant which knocks it out in a minute, one minute and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on the lungs."

No he didn’t explicitely tell people to "Go inject industrial disinfectants into their cephalic veins", where exactly did I claim that he did? But he did actually propose to try injecting disinfectants into people to kill coronavirus, apparently that wasn’t just a bad dream.
This guy is throwing around proposals that you would expect from some poorly educated middle-schooler, not someone with access to all the scientific resources of the country with the highest number of nobel laureates in the world. Let’s throw nuclear bombs on hurricanes! Let’s inject people with disinfectant to cure diseases! etc. the same level of stupidity as "Why don’t we just put our nuclear waste on a rocket and send it into space?". This would be OK if it came from a curious child, but in his position it is just criminally dangerous.

I hope we all still remember his unfounded claims about hydroxychloroquine and what they led to. Some people are stupid, it’s his responsibility to account for that. Obviously people who listen to Donald Trump for medical advice are exceptionally stupid to begin with, but that still doesn’t give him a right to give them advice that will kill them.

The virus being susceptible to UV radiation is not a surprise to anyone who knows how ionising radiation works, but what Trump is trying to suggest about its potential use as a treatment is bullshit all the same, albeit not as much as the whole "injecting disinfectant" stuff on account of people likely not having the means at home to start administering dangerous doses of UV light to their lung epithelia (but they may well have or be able to obtain a syringe and some ethanol, and we all know what that will result in).

[Ceratodromeus]

OK, so where exactly did I imagine it? Seems like you just reproduced the exact quote where he literally proposes that.

Propose - put forward (an idea or plan) for consideration or discussion by others.

is there a way we can do something like that?

If someone asks if there's potential to replicate the results of something in a different manner, in this case  on a surface vs intravenously, is the result the same product? Not really.

 but This guy is throwing around proposals that you would expect from some poorly educated middle-schooler, not someone with access to all the scientific resources of the country with the highest number of nobel laureates in the world. Let’s throw nuclear bombs on hurricanes!

A caveat to the bafflingly constructed reply you just made, but ironically this was never a recorded verbatim quote from  him about "nuking hurricanes". If it isn't  independently verifiable{1}, you probably shouldn't use it in your reply. Seeing how you should very well know dubious or unverified things shouldn't be used in your argument, i am kind of surprised you used it in your retort here. Moving forward now. 
^{1}www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-nuke-hurricanes/

Let’s inject people with disinfectant to cure diseases!

(...)

but what Trump is trying to suggest about its potential use as a treatment is bullshit all the same, albeit not as much as the whole "injecting disinfectant" stuff

No he didn’t explicitely tell people to "Go inject industrial disinfectants into their cephalic veins", where exactly did I claim that he did?

The above contradicts the below. If you aren't claiming he said it, why are you using a gross exaggeration to make it an interpretation that he has? I expected a much better reply than this.

etc. the same level of stupidity as "Why don’t we just put our nuclear waste on a rocket and send it into space?". This would be OK if it came from a curious child, but in his position it is just criminally dangerous.

Funnily enough, this has been proposed by the likes of NASA since the late 1970s as an idea. I suppose the people  that wrote up this 120 page document{2} are just "curious children". I know you are better than writing lines like this. Try harder. 
^{{2}ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19780015628.pdf}

I hope we all still remember his unfounded claims about the hydroxychloroquine and what they led to. Some people are stupid, it’s his responsibility to account for that.

So unfounded in fact, that there's been a multiple scientific articles on this drug, alongside chloroquine and their  potential therapeutic use in combating COVID-19, right?

"Hydroxychloroquine
(Fig. 1), a less toxic aminoquinoline, has an N-hydroxyethyl side
chain in place of the N-diethyl group of chloroquine. This modification makes hydroxychloroquine more soluble than chloroquine.
Similar to chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine increases the pH and
confers antiviral effects. In addition, hydroxychloroquine has a
modulating effect on activated immune cells, downregulates the
expression of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) and TLR-mediated signal transduction, and decreases the production of interleukin-6
[6]. Although the antimalarial activity of hydroxychloroquine is
equivalent to that of chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine is preferred
over chloroquine owing to its lower ocular toxicity [7]. Retinopathy is a dose-limiting adverse effect of hydroxychloroquine, and
a safe daily dose appears to correspond to 6.5 mg/kg of ideal
body weight and 5.0 mg/kg of actual body weight [8]. Although
there are more clinical data on the anti-coronaviral activity of
chloroquine than that of hydroxychloroquine, both of these agents
are theoretically similar in their antiviral activity"^{3}


"Hydroxychloroquine is an analog of chloroquine that has fewer concerns about
drug-drug interactions. In the previous SARS outbreak, hydroxychloroquine was
reported to have anti-SARS-CoV activity in vitro [9]. This suggests that
hydroxychloroquine may be a potential pharmacological agent for the treatment of
COVID-19 infection. However, to date, there is no clinical evidence to support the
use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for SARS-CoV-2 infection."{4}


{3}Aminoquinolines against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): Chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine
{4}In vitro antiviral activity and projection of optimized dosing of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2)

These clinical trials are still on going, for the most part anyway, so you really can't say anything until the majority of them are complete, but based on the above research, it is not "unfounded" like you  claimed.  The one that has come back, has explicitely stated that it cannot categorically conclude that it isn't a drug that they can use in their fight against this pandemic, as these patients were getting a drug cocktail that probably tainted the  overall results and unfortunately caused deaths^{5}.

{5}Caution needed on the use of chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus disease 2019

Obviously people who listen to Donald Trump for medical advice are exceptionally stupid to begin with, but that still doesn’t give him a right to give them advice that will kill them.

I don't see how calling people stupid really helps bolster your argument at all, lol. Perhaps it even wasn't meant to be; but for someone who has been on internet forums for the better part of a decade now, i would have expected a much more thought out, less insult driven reply. Now, i am aware that the insults are directed at me, but that doesn't make them any less eye roll inducing.

The virus being susceptible to UV radiation is not a surprise to anyone who knows how ionising radiation works,

And what percentage of the general public do you think knows about how ionising radiation works? 

[elosha11]

Apr 25, 2020 8:45:30 GMT 5 Ceratodromeus said:

Apr 9, 2020 15:42:41 GMT 5 elosha11 said:

Sorry to hear that. The Trump administration's gross incompetence in handling the coronavirus has led to the U.S. being the hardest hit country in the world. Hopefully your leaders have learned from our mistakes, have been preparing, and will institute all proper medical and social distancing measures.

The main problem is the world -- not the united states solely -- was poorly prepared for a highly infectious virus to take it by storm. As those who study it are learning more about it every day, we see that this is the case; for instance it was probably in the united states before we thought it was, if these antibody studies and autopsies published in recent days are anything to go by. Nasty shit.

I agree that the world was not prepared; hell we haven't seen anything like this since early 20th century influenza, and those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And no matter who was the U.S President, our country would have been hit hard by COVID-19, like much of the rest of the world. But neither HRC, Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Sr., Reagan, nor Carter would have subjected our country to as much damage as the Trump admin. He discards expertise and science as a staple part of his administration. His administration dismantled and scattered the Pandemic response team from the National Security Council. He ignored the literal pandemic "playbook" with specific and prescient advice gleaned from the Obama admin's response to Ebola and swine flu. He refuses to vigorously apply the Defense Production Act. His dilly-dallying causes states go on the open market to try to outbid each other for PPE, ventilators and other needs. We are still WOEFULLY behind on testing per capita, in fact our testing numbers per day are going down. This might be the MOST important aspect of isolating and containing the virus and the federal government is falling flat on its face.

He belittled, and ignored the threat in January, February, and part of March (even though internally his administration sounded the alarm and consistently warned him about devastation if it was left unchecked) and gaslighted the whole country and Democrats who were cajoling him to take action. His press briefings - once the scientists and specialists have provided useful information and updates - are often nothing more than temper tantrums and fights with reporters, self induced ego-stroking and rampant misrepresentations of fact.

Yes, the world WAS unprepared for the coronavirus. But President Trump was singularly the most unprepared U.S. President to handle a pandemic crisis as I've seen in my lifetime. There could not a worse President for the USA in such a disaster. His actions and inactions have no doubt needlessly caused/will cause the death of tens of thousands of Americans and severely exacerbated the economic harm done to the country. No one's perfect, many of the states should have closed down earlier. If Gov. Cuomo (who has done a lot right) had shut down his state and imposed social distancing even a week earlier (like California did), NYC would have greatly mitigated its loss of life. Again hindsight is 20/20, and no state or federal government is perfect or blameless. But if Trump would have just been a typical President and used the power and bully pulpit of Presidency to inject urgency and ramp up preparedness in January, even February at latest, much of this crisis would have been avoided. However, he was too caught up in narcissism, petty squabbles, his impeachment hit list, and let's face it, frequent golfing and campaign rallies, to see and act upon the big picture. And our country is paying a bitter price for his neglect and dereliction of duty.

[theropod]

Apr 26, 2020 5:46:56 GMT 5 Ceratodromeus said:

A caveat to the bafflingly constructed reply you just made, but ironically this was never a recorded verbatim quote from  him about "nuking hurricanes". If it isn't  independently verifiable{1}, you probably shouldn't use it in your reply. Seeing how you should very well know dubious or unverified things shouldn't be used in your argument, i am kind of surprised you used it in your retort here. Moving forward now. 
^{1}www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-nuke-hurricanes/

Well it is bafflingly easy to surprise you then.
You haven’t read your own source, it actually does include the verbatim quote. As to why the source is anonymous, this should be obvious considering Trump’s propensity for firing dissenters. As to Trump denying the allegation…well he has a bit of a history denying things he has said, even when there was video evidence, so I don’t exactly consider his word trustworthy (in fact pretty much any anonymous source is more trustworthy, except, of course, if it is Trump himself that is the anonymous source, which I think we can rule out in this case). As to why I would doubt the source of the quote, or the word of the news site that reported them…I haven’t seen any argument why I should do that. I am not in the habit of using dubious information, but if you want to tell me my information is dubious, please make an argument as to why your information contradicting it isn’t even more dubious.

The above contradicts the below.

It does not, not to mention you just quoted something I wrote after you claimed I wrote it as supposed evidence that I wrote it before.

If you aren't claiming he said it

You are not getting the difference between suggesting the medical use of something (which is bad enough, and very much what he did there) and suggesting everybody to go do it at home to themselves. Still, as Chloroquine showed, people are prone to do stupid things, especially when authority figures encourage them to do so. There’s a reason the New York Times is now putting out warnings to not "ingest bleach".

Funnily enough, this has been proposed by the likes of NASA since the late 1970s as an idea. I suppose the people  that wrote up this 120 page document{2} are just "curious children". I know you are better than writing lines like this. Try harder. 
^{{2}ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19780015628.pdf}

Indeed, in many ways, people in the late 70s really were curious children when we compare their technological and scientific abilities to today’s, yes.

That being said I must amend my previous statement, some of those Trump proposals are actually even a fair bit worse than the idea of sticking nuclear waste on rockets. The latter is bad enough, but not on the same level as injecting disinfectant or nuking hurricanes, I must admit. I was trying to illustrate a stupid proposal that uneducated people keep coming up with, but putting it on the same level was inappropriate. At least with the nuclear waste I understand why someone would entertain the notion before becoming aware of the problems, while I think everybody who hasn't already done it and fried their last brain cell in the process should understand why injecting disinfectants is suicide.
I just hope that Trump supporters won't keep stooping to new lows and actually start doing it in spite of that.

So unfounded in fact, that there's been a multiple scientific articles on this drug, alongside chloroquine and their  potential therapeutic use in combating COVID-19, right?

You are either entirely missing the point, or intentionally acting as if you did. This is not simply a question of whether Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine might have some utility in treating COVID. There have been plenty of studies on that and several clinical trials are ongoing in China, as they should be, because you need clinical trials to make a confident assessment of a drug's utility. There have been inconclusive results, but what is clear from all research, including research that has actually suggested it is effective, is that firstly it doesn’t have the massive, game changing effect Donald Trump kept insinuating, and secondly that it is a drug with serious adverse effects that requires caution, or even the controlled setting of a clinical trial at this point, when used. It is NOT, I repeat, NOT a drug people should go get and swallow like candy, but the latter was how Trump made it look, and evidently what some people have been doing. He, who just so happens to have commercial ties to a company selling these drugs, was praising them as if they were a proven cure, or even prophylaxis and said, to quote him "Take it! I really thing they should take it! What do they have to lose?". That is certainly very far from what you should do with an experimental→ treatment that has not been appropriately tested.

And all that is actually being optimistic in assuming it has a positive effect at all, which is doubtful. At least two very recent studies find no efficacy for hydroxychloroquine at all.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v2

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.10.20060699v1.full.pdf

These clinical trials are still on going, for the most part anyway, so you really can't say anything until the majority of them are complete, but based on the above research, it is not "unfounded" like you  claimed.  The one that has come back, has explicitely stated that it cannot categorically conclude that it isn't a drug that they can use in their fight against this pandemic, as these patients were getting a drug cocktail that probably tainted the  overall results and unfortunately caused deaths

I’m really not sure what your problem is here, do you have some issue with my English or is it that you simply want to talk past me?
That someone has not categorically ruled out the use of a certain drug doesn’t mean when you make confident claims about its efficacy those won’t be unfounded. They will be unfounded up. I think nobody has categorically ruled out that ginger tea could help against coronavirus, that doesn’t mean if I were a head of state and went on TV telling people ginger tea is pretty much a miracle cure that wouldn’t be unfounded.

He goes on telling people to go and take this drug because it will cure them or prevent them from getting sick in the first place. That is unfounded, research on this drug suggests it it a potential treatment for severe cases, that is all. He is also ignoring side effects completely. That is dangerous, people have died because of it. Finally, there have also been reports of people who actually depend on Chloroquine for treatment of chronic diseases like lupus who have been unable to get their medications because other people have been panic-buying them, which is intensely worrying. The papers dealing with the use or mechanisms of Chloroquine or derivatives to treat COVID are not warranting any of that that. Trump is just taking one of the messages from this research (Chloroquine is a candidate for a drug that could be used to treat COVID), at a stage where it is not clear at all whether that statement is actually correct, and spinning it into a general recommendation for people to take this drug. That is NOT how you correctly interpret the results of a medical paper, irrespective of whether it is actually finding a drug to be effective or not, and it is not how a president needs to communicate during a crisis.

I don't see how calling people stupid really helps bolster your argument at all, lol.

And I don’t see how asking that question bolsters yours, your point?

Perhaps it even wasn't meant to be

You are perfectly right, I was just stating a fact, it adds or detracts nothing significant to or from my argument: getting your medical advice from a notoriously unstable politician with no medical expertise and a nag for blurting out lies and undermining the credibility of science is stupid, you should be getting your medical advice from someone with medical training. You know, perhaps better listen to the guy who’s usually standing next to Trump and having to diplomatically correct his overconfident BS.

; but for someone who has been on internet forums for the better part of a decade now, i would have expected a much more thought out, less insult driven reply.

Hmm yeah so would I, but the world is not a wish-granting factory.

Now, i am aware that the insults are directed at me, but that doesn't make them any less eye roll inducing.

They actually weren’t intended to be, but if you feel personally insulted by them, then maybe I was wrong and they actually were. Does that mean you take your medical advice from Donald Trump then? If so, good luck!

And what percentage of the general public do you think knows about how ionising radiation works? 

Depends on what place we are talking about? A place where normal high-school physics classes are compulsory or one where they are not? Virologists in my country have mentioned this in public interviews weeks ago, specifically remarking that sunlight can be expected to reduce the time the virus stays infectious on surfaces when discussing the then-preprint-now-published→ study dealing with that subject. My point was simply that Donald Trump is spinning a result that is not terribly surprising, certainly not to someone with basic scientific knowledge, into some big reveal and immediately coming up with fantastic ideas of how to turn it into a treatment, as if the people actually treating patients wouldn’t have thought of something so obvious if it were an option. Trump himself btw doesn’t seem to understand how ionizing radiation works, otherwise he’d probably consider that the dose of radiation that could reliably kill of an entire Coronavirus infestation will likely also reliably kill off people’s respiratory epithelia, which are usually the first thing that gets damaged by radiation.

[Ceratodromeus]

Apr 27, 2020 18:27:59 GMT 5 theropod said:

Apr 26, 2020 5:46:56 GMT 5 Ceratodromeus said:

A caveat to the bafflingly constructed reply you just made, but ironically this was never a recorded verbatim quote from  him about "nuking hurricanes". If it isn't  independently verifiable{1}, you probably shouldn't use it in your reply. Seeing how you should very well know dubious or unverified things shouldn't be used in your argument, i am kind of surprised you used it in your retort here. Moving forward now. 
^{1}www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-nuke-hurricanes/

Well it is bafflingly easy to surprise you then.
You haven’t read your own source, it actually does include the verbatim quote. As to why the source is anonymous, this should be obvious considering Trump’s propensity for firing dissenters. As to Trump denying the allegation…well he has a bit of a history denying things he has said, even when there was video evidence, so I don’t exactly consider his word trustworthy (in fact pretty much any anonymous source is more trustworthy, except, of course, if it is Trump himself that is the anonymous source, which I think we can rule out in this case). As to why I would doubt the source of the quote, or the word of the news site that reported them…I haven’t seen any argument why I should do that. I am not in the habit of using dubious information, but if you want to tell me my information is dubious, please make an argument as to why your information contradicting it isn’t even more dubious.

The above contradicts the below.

It does not, not to mention you just quoted something I wrote after you claimed I wrote it as supposed evidence that I wrote it before.

If you aren't claiming he said it

You are not getting the difference between suggesting the medical use of something (which is bad enough, and very much what he did there) and suggesting everybody to go do it at home to themselves. Still, as Chloroquine showed, people are prone to do stupid things, especially when authority figures encourage them to do so. There’s a reason the New York Times is now putting out warnings to not "ingest bleach".

Funnily enough, this has been proposed by the likes of NASA since the late 1970s as an idea. I suppose the people  that wrote up this 120 page document{2} are just "curious children". I know you are better than writing lines like this. Try harder. 
^{{2}ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19780015628.pdf}

Indeed, in many ways, people in the late 70s really were curious children when we compare their technological and scientific abilities to today’s, yes.

That being said I must amend my previous statement, some of those Trump proposals are actually even a fair bit worse than the idea of sticking nuclear waste on rockets. The latter is bad enough, but not on the same level as injecting disinfectant or nuking hurricanes, I must admit. I was trying to illustrate a stupid proposal that uneducated people keep coming up with, but putting it on the same level was inappropriate. At least with the nuclear waste I understand why someone would entertain the notion before becoming aware of the problems, while I think everybody who hasn't already done it and fried their last brain cell in the process should understand why injecting disinfectants is suicide.
I just hope that Trump supporters won't keep stooping to new lows and actually start doing it in spite of that.

So unfounded in fact, that there's been a multiple scientific articles on this drug, alongside chloroquine and their  potential therapeutic use in combating COVID-19, right?

You are either entirely missing the point, or intentionally acting as if you did. This is not simply a question of whether Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine might have some utility in treating COVID. There have been plenty of studies on that and several clinical trials are ongoing in China, as they should be, because you need clinical trials to make a confident assessment of a drug's utility. There have been inconclusive results, but what is clear from all research, including research that has actually suggested it is effective, is that firstly it doesn’t have the massive, game changing effect Donald Trump kept insinuating, and secondly that it is a drug with serious adverse effects that requires caution, or even the controlled setting of a clinical trial at this point, when used. It is NOT, I repeat, NOT a drug people should go get and swallow like candy, but the latter was how Trump made it look, and evidently what some people have been doing. He, who just so happens to have commercial ties to a company selling these drugs, was praising them as if they were a proven cure, or even prophylaxis and said, to quote him "Take it! I really thing they should take it! What do they have to lose?". That is certainly very far from what you should do with an experimental→ treatment that has not been appropriately tested.

And all that is actually being optimistic in assuming it has a positive effect at all, which is doubtful. At least two very recent studies find no efficacy for hydroxychloroquine at all.

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v2

www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.10.20060699v1.full.pdf

These clinical trials are still on going, for the most part anyway, so you really can't say anything until the majority of them are complete, but based on the above research, it is not "unfounded" like you  claimed.  The one that has come back, has explicitely stated that it cannot categorically conclude that it isn't a drug that they can use in their fight against this pandemic, as these patients were getting a drug cocktail that probably tainted the  overall results and unfortunately caused deaths

I’m really not sure what your problem is here, do you have some issue with my English or is it that you simply want to talk past me?
That someone has not categorically ruled out the use of a certain drug doesn’t mean when you make confident claims about its efficacy those won’t be unfounded. They will be unfounded up. I think nobody has categorically ruled out that ginger tea could help against coronavirus, that doesn’t mean if I were a head of state and went on TV telling people ginger tea is pretty much a miracle cure that wouldn’t be unfounded.

He goes on telling people to go and take this drug because it will cure them or prevent them from getting sick in the first place. That is unfounded, research on this drug suggests it it a potential treatment for severe cases, that is all. He is also ignoring side effects completely. That is dangerous, people have died because of it. Finally, there have also been reports of people who actually depend on Chloroquine for treatment of chronic diseases like lupus who have been unable to get their medications because other people have been panic-buying them, which is intensely worrying. The papers dealing with the use or mechanisms of Chloroquine or derivatives to treat COVID are not warranting any of that that. Trump is just taking one of the messages from this research (Chloroquine is a candidate for a drug that could be used to treat COVID), at a stage where it is not clear at all whether that statement is actually correct, and spinning it into a general recommendation for people to take this drug. That is NOT how you correctly interpret the results of a medical paper, irrespective of whether it is actually finding a drug to be effective or not, and it is not how a president needs to communicate during a crisis.

I don't see how calling people stupid really helps bolster your argument at all, lol.

And I don’t see how asking that question bolsters yours, your point?

Perhaps it even wasn't meant to be

You are perfectly right, I was just stating a fact, it adds or detracts nothing significant to or from my argument: getting your medical advice from a notoriously unstable politician with no medical expertise and a nag for blurting out lies and undermining the credibility of science is stupid, you should be getting your medical advice from someone with medical training. You know, perhaps better listen to the guy who’s usually standing next to Trump and having to diplomatically correct his overconfident BS.

; but for someone who has been on internet forums for the better part of a decade now, i would have expected a much more thought out, less insult driven reply.

Hmm yeah so would I, but the world is not a wish-granting factory.

Now, i am aware that the insults are directed at me, but that doesn't make them any less eye roll inducing.

They actually weren’t intended to be, but if you feel personally insulted by them, then maybe I was wrong and they actually were. Does that mean you take your medical advice from Donald Trump then? If so, good luck!

And what percentage of the general public do you think knows about how ionising radiation works? 

Depends on what place we are talking about? A place where normal high-school physics classes are compulsory or one where they are not? Virologists in my country have mentioned this in public interviews weeks ago, specifically remarking that sunlight can be expected to reduce the time the virus stays infectious on surfaces when discussing the then-preprint-now-published→ study dealing with that subject. My point was simply that Donald Trump is spinning a result that is not terribly surprising, certainly not to someone with basic scientific knowledge, into some big reveal and immediately coming up with fantastic ideas of how to turn it into a treatment, as if the people actually treating patients wouldn’t have thought of something so obvious if it were an option. Trump himself btw doesn’t seem to understand how ionizing radiation works, otherwise he’d probably consider that the dose of radiation that could reliably kill of an entire Coronavirus infestation will likely also reliably kill off people’s respiratory epithelia, which are usually the first thing that gets damaged by radiation.

Well it is bafflingly easy to surprise you then.

Folks we have another winning comment from theropod right here. Truly the epitomy of coherent and thoughtful rebuttal. 

You haven’t read your own source, it actually does include the verbatim quote.As to why the source is anonymous, this should be obvious considering Trump’s propensity for firing dissenters. As to Trump denying the allegation…well he has a bit of a history denying things he has said, even when there was video evidence, so I don’t exactly consider his word trustworthy (in fact pretty much any anonymous source is more trustworthy, except, of course, if it is Trump himself that is the anonymous source, which I think we can rule out in this case). As to why I would doubt the source of the quote, or the word of the news site that reported them…I haven’t seen any argument why I should do that. I am not in the habit of using dubious information, but if you want to tell me my information is dubious, please make an argument as to why your information contradicting it isn’t even more dubious.

So, it is a "verbatim quote" without substantiation -- no recording, no corroborating real evidence that this was a "verbatim quote", it is a claim, without proper substantiation, and therefore dubious. Whether your personal thoughts on this clouded your perception of how a claim is proven, i do not know. But if there's not an audio recording of this "verbatim" quote, then you cannot prove it to be factual, and therefore dubious. For someone who said i "didn't read my source", one has to question if you did 

"snopes cannot independantly verify the claims of anonymous sources cited in the Axios story, or claims contained within documents we have not seen. As such, we rank the claim “Unproven.” "

 My reply: " If it isn't independently verifiable{1}, you probably shouldn't use it in your reply. "

So, are you sure about that, really?

It does not

Another winner

not to mention you just quoted something I wrote after you claimed I wrote it as supposed evidence that I wrote it before.

Yeah man, you can use what someone says in a conversation regardless of duration of time. Just because you said it in your next reply, doesn't mean it can't be used to show contradiction in response. Is that new for you?

You are not getting the difference between suggesting the medical use of something (which is bad enough, and very much what he did there) and suggesting everybody to go do it at home to themselves. Still, as Chloroquine showed, people are prone to do stupid things, especially when authority figures encourage them to do so. There’s a reason the New York Times is now putting out warnings to not "ingest bleach".

Since you just pretty blatantly ignored the question, i will ask it again, if someone asks you if you can get an appealing result with a similar product to Product A, does that make product B the same thing? No, so the grotesque interpretation of "He wants disinfectants to be used as a treatment" is pretty wild. There is not anything i am "not understanding", but nice try to insinuate feigned ignorance.

Indeed, in many ways, people in the late 70s really were curious children when we compare their technological and scientific abilities to today’s, yes.

That being said I must amend my previous statement, some of those Trump proposals are actually even a fair bit worse than the idea of sticking nuclear waste on rockets. The latter is bad enough, but not on the same level as injecting disinfectant or nuking hurricanes, I must admit. I was trying to illustrate a stupid proposal that uneducated people keep coming up with, but putting it on the same level was inappropriate. At least with the nuclear waste I understand why someone would entertain the notion before becoming aware of the problems, while I think everybody who hasn't already done it and fried their last brain cell in the process should understand why injecting disinfectants is suicide.

I just hope that Trump supporters won't keep stooping to new lows and actually start doing it in spite of that.

Very nice wordy reply basically repeating yourself. Slick stuff.

You are either entirely missing the point, or intentionally acting as if you did

Another not so good attempt at insinuating feigned ignorance.

This is not simply a question of whether Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine might have some utility in treating COVID. There have been plenty of studies on that and several clinical trials are ongoing in China, as they should be, because you need clinical trials to make a confident assessment of a drug's utility. There have been inconclusive results, but what is clear from all research, including research that has actually suggested it is effective requires caution, or even the controlled setting of a clinical trial at this point, when used.

It ultimately is a question as to if it is effective, that is why there are clinical tries being conducted. Also, i said the rest of this uselessly wordy segment in my reply to you, so i am not really sure why you went through the trouble of repeating it again. I even included the trial that said caution to be used, lol. Did you bother to actually read through what i posted, or no? What an odd reply.

 He, who just so happens to have commercial ties to a company selling these drugs, was praising them as if they were a proven cure, or even prophylaxis and said, to quote him "Take it! I really thing they should take it! What do they have to lose?". That is certainly very far from what you should do with an experimental→ treatment that has not been appropriately tested.

Another improperly and unscrupulously vetted reply, i am afraid. Trump owns a small and insignificant stake in Sanofi and basically has 0 to gain from such, so bringing it up as if it is the soul reason as to why he has peddled Hydroxychloroquine, is inherently misleading and -- wait for it-- dubious.
www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/09/facebook-posts/trump-has-tiny-financial-stake-company-manufacture/

I’m really not sure what your problem is here, do you have some issue with my English or is it that you simply want to talk past me?

hahahaha, what? are you serious?

That someone has not categorically ruled out the use of a certain drug doesn’t mean when you make confident claims about its efficacy those won’t be unfounded.

Never once have i made a claim about efficiency of the drug, i am posting the research suggesting it's possibility in fighting the virus, like i stated.  To make a claim that something is "unfounded", which means (verbatim definition) "having no foundation or basis in fact.
" When there have been published scientific articles on the matter suggesting the possibility of therapeutic use, is simply not being intellectually truthful. And lastly in response to this, like i already said in reply, which you seem to have glossed over, we will have to wait until these trials are done to see the true outcome; one with a bigger and more potent result.

They will be unfounded up. I think nobody has categorically ruled out that ginger tea could help against coronavirus, that doesn’t mean if I were a head of state and went on TV telling people ginger tea is pretty much a miracle cure that wouldn’t be unfounded.

This is classic appeal to extreme fallacy; in this case tea (lol) is not even remotely applicable to the case of an antiviral drug that has shown responses to other related viruses (In this case SARS-COV). You might want to step up your game on your attempted examples, that one was......atrocious.

He is also ignoring side effects completely.

He really hasn't been pushing it like he had prior to these results coming back, so to say he is ignoring it is a pretty big stretch.

And I don’t see how asking that question bolsters yours, your point?

Well, if you are just going to call people stupid, regardless if it is aimed at me or someone else, this shows a real lack of depth in your reply. I am rather happy to point these subtle things out. So yeah, it does bolster one of the points i have been building towards. Thanks for that, btw.

You are perfectly right, I was just stating a fact, it adds or detracts nothing significant to or from my argument:

Yeahhhh, calling people stupid really does detract from your argument. this is called ad hominem, direct or indirect as it may be.

getting your medical advice from a notoriously unstable politician with no medical expertise

I suppose if people thought that was actual medical advice.

and a nag for blurting out lies and undermining the credibility of science is stupid, you should be getting your medical advice from someone with medical training.You know, perhaps better listen to the guy who’s usually standing next to Trump and having to diplomatically correct his overconfident BS.

Like the doctors he was referring to, right?

Hmm yeah so would I, but the world is not a wish-granting factory.

It is however a debate that you're losing traction in, so maybe it would have been better off as a wish granting factory. You really lost me in the insinuation that i was attacking your english, which is honestly pretty good. But yikes chief. Try a different route, because that is not it at all.

Depends on what place we are talking about? A place where normal high-school physics classes are compulsory or one where they are not? 

Neither of those groups are the general public. Have you got an idea of what the general public actually is? I would put a substantial amount of confidence that the vast majority do not know how ionizing radiation works; and no, this is not referencing physics classes in high schools.

[theropod]

Apr 28, 2020 7:58:25 GMT 5 Ceratodromeus said:

So, it is a "verbatim quote" without substantiation -- no recording, no corroborating real evidence that this was a "verbatim quote", it is a claim, without proper substantiation, and therefore dubious. Whether your personal thoughts on this clouded your perception of how a claim is proven, i do not know. But if there's not an audio recording of this "verbatim" quote, then you cannot prove it to be factual, and therefore dubious. For someone who said i "didn't read my source", one has to question if you did 

"snopes cannot independantly verify the claims of anonymous sources cited in the Axios story, or claims contained within documents we have not seen. As such, we rank the claim “Unproven.” "

 My reply: " If it isn't independently verifiable{1}, you probably shouldn't use it in your reply. "

So, are you sure about that, really?

Yeah, so people who willingly became members of Trump’s staff would just make something like that up, but we have no reason at all to doubt Trump’s denial, right? You want it to go on record that there’s no 100% certainty that Trump actually said that? Fine. But then let the record also reflect that we both know it is overwhelmingly likely that he really did say it.

You don’t get to tell me what I can and cannot use in my reply. I can give you other if less relevant, examples of Trump talking BS, there is certainly no shortage of them. Remember how he talked about how his inauguration ceremony having many more visitors than Obama’s, just for the heck of it, despite the fact that there are photos clearly proving him wrong? Trump makes it a habit of talking BS, sometimes evidently just to prove that he can, sometimes apparently out of impulsive stupidity.

I merely thought the hurricane-nuking was a particularly nice example of the latter. If you have some issue with it, ignore it and move on.

Yeah man, you can use what someone says in a conversation regardless of duration of time. Just because you said it in your next reply, doesn't mean it can't be used to show contradiction in response. Is that new for you?

If there actually is a contradiction, yes. Since there is none, no. But even if there were, that wouldn’t save you from the apparent inability to substantiate what you actually claimed. If I make a post, you raise an accusation of something I did in that post, I respond, and then you use that response rather than the original post as evidence, then that suggests you cannot actually find evidence for your original claim, which meant you made an unfounded accusation even if that accusation were to later turn out to be true. If you go up to someone on the street and shout "this guy just admitted he’s a murderer!", when they didn’t, then that is an unfounded accusation, even if that guy later actually turns out to be a murderer.

But I am not contradicting myself, so this whole point is moot. I am saying Trump is proposing to inject disinfectant into COVID-patients. Which is literally what he is doing (he can claim it was sarcasm all he wants, I guess everybody can go and claim every embarrassing statement they have ever made was just sarcasm…), you can deny it all you want.
That is not the same as telling people to go "inject industrial disinfectant into their cephalic veins" (funny you should accuse me of hyperbole while being the first to use it), though it is still bad enough.

If you don’t get the difference, then perhaps you need to sit down and contemplate until you do.

Since you just pretty blatantly ignored the question

You mean this question?

If someone asks if there's potential to replicate the results of something in a different manner, in this case on a surface vs intravenously, is the result the same product? Not really.

Well it makes no sense the way it is worded, so I ignored it.

How can the RESULT of a treatment be a PRODUCT?
If you write coherent, sensible sentences I will reply to them, if you don’t, don’t get upset if I ignore them.

, i will ask it again, if someone asks you if you can get an appealing result with a similar product to Product A, does that make product B the same thing?

And well, it still makes no sense. Nobody is talking about using different products, the only "product" Trump was proposing to use in that press conference was an unspecified disinfectant, and the only way he proposed using it was "injection or something".
If you are talking about replicating the results a disinfectant has on surfaces by different means inside the body, well that would be great, but it is fantasy, and you certainly won’t get that effect by injecting the disinfectant, which will likely result in death (though on the plus side, you won’t die of Coronavirus if you actually get disinfectant injected into your body…).

No, so the grotesque interpretation of "He wants disinfectants to be used as a treatment" is pretty wild.

That is not a "grotesque interpretation", it is literally what he is saying. Please don’t "go Trump" on facts and reality on me here. And it is literally what he admitted to have been saying when he later tried to make it look as if it was just sarcasm (though him then continuing to argue for the idea suggests he doesn’t actually understand what sarcasm is, not to mention how even actual sarcasm would be exceptionately bad form for a president in his situation).

It ultimately is a question as to if it is effective, that is why there are clinical tries being conducted. Also, i said the rest of this uselessly wordy segment in my reply to you, so i am not really sure why you went through the trouble of repeating it again. I even included the trial that said caution to be used, lol. Did you bother to actually read through what i posted, or no? What an odd reply.

I don’t like this practice of just commenting on what we perceive is the quality of the other’s responses instead of discussing content and as if it were of interest to anybody, but here I must do it myself in remarking that I find this refusal to reflect on actual content very odd as well. There’s not really much else to reply here, except maybe mention that here you are claiming (only partially correctly I might ad) that this is a question of if it is effective, while further down you claim you are not making any claims on this issue.

Another improperly and unscrupulously vetted reply, i am afraid. Trump owns a small and insignificant stake in Sanofi and basically has 0 to gain from such, so bringing it up as if it is the soul reason as to why he has peddled Hydroxychloroquine, is inherently misleading and -- wait for it-- dubious.
www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/apr/09/facebook-posts/trump-has-tiny-financial-stake-company-manufacture/

Oh great, and once again you are ignoring most of what I wrote and picking out one small bit that for some reason you seem to mistakenly believe changes something about my wider argument. His share is small, amazing. Total game changer to know that the guy advertising an unproven and potentially dangerous treatment with a drug only owns a small stake in the company that produces it. That of course makes him totally trustworthy, while of course it makes me totally "unscrupulous" for even mentioning it (which you call "bringing it up as if it is the soul [sic] reason"), right?

Never once have i made a claim about efficiency of the drug

You mean efficacy, not efficiency. And yes you have (see above), for accusing me of not reading your quotes you are very quick to forget about them yourself.

, i am posting the research suggesting it's possibility in fighting the virus,

That is a claim about efficacy of the drug.

To make a claim that something is "unfounded", which means (verbatim definition) "having no foundation or basis in fact."

And what Trump claimed about Hydroxychloroquine has no foundation or basis in fact, it is an overconfident overinterpretation of preliminary results. If it were based in fact, there couldn’t be other preliminary results contradicting it (because that is what facts are, well, facts), and there would be results that are more than preliminary that support it (because otherwise, how could it be called a fact when there isn’t even conclusive evidence?).

When there have been published scientific articles on the matter suggesting the possibility of therapeutic use, is simply not being intellectually truthful.

What is not intellectually truthful is A: making it look like I hadn’t acknowledged that this possibility exists and B: conflating a possibility of therapeutic use with something being a proven cure and a game changer. The "game changer" part I think being Trump’s own wording, despite his own officials consistently urging caution.

And lastly in response to this, like i already said in reply, which you seem to have glossed over, we will have to wait until these trials are done to see the true outcome; one with a bigger and more potent result.

I have not glossed over that, I have even said the same thing (We need to wait for clinical trials) myself, which you yourself have apparently glossed over. But Trump, the truthfulness of whose claims we are discussing here, has said something very different; he told people to take this drug.

This is classic appeal to extreme fallacy; in this case tea (lol) is not even remotely applicable to the case of an antiviral drug that has shown responses to other related viruses (In this case SARS-COV). You might want to step up your game on your attempted examples, that one was......atrocious.

To point out differences between an analogy and what the analogy as proof for it being a fallacy is usually to miss the point of an analogy altogether.

This is not a fallacy, because this is not based on the notion that there is evidence ginger tea will cure your coronavirus infection, it is based on the fact that it was not conclusively ruled out, which was your argument for why Trump’s chloroquine claims supposedly aren’t unfounded. The point of the analogy is that something not being conclusively ruled out isn’t enough to justify claiming it, why you fail to grasp that is beyond me. If really you fail to grasp it, and aren’t just looking for ways to needlessly prolong this argument, which was my impression with the previous points you appeared to curiously miss.

That being said ginger root may indeed have some antiviral properties (https://doi.org/10.4315/0362-028X.JFP-15-593) and is a popular if unverified treatment for the common cold, which is frequently caused by coronaviruses. That obviously doesn’t mean it is a suitable treatment for COVID-19 at all, or any sort of proven treatment for anything really. It means that we need to be more picky with our evidence before we consider stuff a game-changing treatment and advertise it as such to the public.

He really hasn't been pushing it like he had prior to these results coming back, so to say he is ignoring it is a pretty big stretch.

It isn’t, because that these drugs have side effects isn’t a new result. For the reasons Trump himself kept stressing, that these drugs are well-known and have been in use for a long time, which he took to mean they were save. Chloroquine has serious side effects ranging from cardiovascular effects to deafness and retinopathy. Drugs with potentially serious side effects should only be used if the benefits outweigh the risks, and only in a controlled setting, and only under medical supervision, all stuff Trump conveniently forgot to mention, all the while making it look like this was some sort of miracle drug.
I repeat what Trump had to say on it: "Take it! I really think they should take it! What do you have to lose?". Their life, it turned out.

Yeahhhh, calling people stupid really does detract from your argument. this is called ad hominem, direct or indirect as it may be.

You know what? You are right about one thing, it is ad hominem. That would be of concern if my other arguments had hinged on it, but they don’t. Like this, I am just pointing out that some people are stupid, but that the president should account for this by not making statements that look like medical advice to those people. How would you call someone who swallows aquarium chemicals to protect against COVID, or someone who believes the earth is flat or that vaccines cause autism for that matter? Doesn’t matter to me.

I suppose if people thought that was actual medical advice.

Well, some people did. Not particularly smart people as I already mentioned, but that doesn’t mean their lives are not worth protecting.

Like the doctors he was referring to, right?

I actually meant Dr Fauci, but the doctor present when he made those UV and disinfectant remarks, who could only utter a short "not as a treatment" when he brought up UV light and then make an exasperated face when he talked about injecting disinfectant would also be worth a shot. Given Trump doesn’t fire her if she ever confronts him about his stupidity.

Neither of those groups are the general public.

And I am not talking about the general public like you seem to believe for some reason, I am talking about medical researchers. Like the people Trump seems to believe he just pointed to a grandiose new treatment idea when he suggested they use UV light, as if those people didn’t have elementary physics classes and knew something that inactivates viruses will also fry your own DNA.

[elosha11]

^While I get that politics and this crisis leads to very strong feelings and stress, can the two of you have a vigorous debate with less sarcasm and insults? As seen in my posts, I have strong opinions on this as well, but I know and can respect other views, even if I happen to disagree.