“It discovered that using the antiviral drugs interferon beta-1b, lopinavir-ritonavir and ribavirin together was “safe and more effective” in reducing the duration of viral shedding – when the coronavirus is detectable and potentially transmissible – for patients with mild to moderate symptoms, while accelerating their recovery.”

We have commented on this before but feel this deserves its own post. Hong Kong has a population of about 7.5 million people and has, at this point 1048 cases and only 4 deaths. There is a link to the Lancet article in the first comment.

"As the number of confirmed coronavirus cases explodes across Africa, the creeping involvement of the WHO has made some leaders suspicious of the NGO. Tanzanian President John Magufuli was growing suspicious of the organization, so he reportedly decided to investigate whether the organization was as trustworthy and reliable as it claimed to be.

He played what the local press described as "a trick" on the organization: He sent the WHO samples of a goat, a papaya, and a quail for testing."

"Background: COVID-19 has rapidly emerged as a pandemic infection that has caused significant mortality and economic losses. Potential therapies and means of prophylaxis against COVID-19 are urgently needed to combat this novel infection. As a result of in vitro evidence suggesting zinc sulfate may be efficacious against COVID-19, our hospitals began using zinc sulfate as add-on therapy to hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin."

Download the PDF If your viewer does not show the whole paper.

We do wonder if this might be effective for other RNA viruses like the flu?

Yes, it is time to point fingers and show the names.

“Since late in January the world has undergone staggering changes which in many cases may be irreparable. We have given decisions over every aspect of our lives to the judgment of tests and to the projections of computer models for the coronavirus first claimed to have erupted in Wuhan China, now dubbed SARS-CoV-2. With astonishing lack of transparency or checking, one government after the other has imposed China-model lockdowns on their entire populations. It begins to look as if we are being led like sheep to slaughter for corrupted science.”

" Amazingly to me, although this concept of variation in individual susceptibility to infectious disease has been explored in the literature for other agents, I have not seen it discussed in regard to the current coronavirus epidemic, and as I said, it has not been incorporated into the models."

Thank You, Kevin Roche.

"Armstrong's approach was to begin administering Hydroxychloroquine a Zpac and Zinc just as soon as a resident first started showing symptoms. The patients were being monitored daily. "We did EKGs on each of these patients to make sure they didn't have the cardiac side effects that everyone talks about," Armstrong said. "None of our patients did.""

Thank You, to the Guardian for this story. "Scientists working for the US military have designed a new Covid-19 test that could potentially identify carriers before they become infectious and spread the disease, the Guardian has learned.

In what could be a significant breakthrough, project coordinators hope the blood-based test will be able to detect the virus’s presence as early as 24 hours after infection – before people show symptoms and several days before a carrier is considered capable of spreading it to other people. That is also around four days before current tests can detect the virus."

This article is all about mortality rates. New York is the world leader in COVID-19 deaths per 100,000 or population. What, indeed, is the cause of all this mortality?  There is a very nice chart that shows the death rate / 100,000 for each State. See how your governor has done. Recommended.

"Update (13:15ET): The NIAD has released a statement on the Gilead remdesivir study. The statement repeated some of the numbers Dr. Fauci shared at the press conference - that patients who took remdesivir saw 31% faster time to recovery than the placebo group, while mortality rates "improved" to 8% from 11.6% an improvement of 3.6 percentage points, which Dr. Fauci acknowledged wasn't "statistically significant.""

See the first comment for an unencouraging update.

"Three weeks ago on these pages, my colleague V.V. Chari and I asserted that a limited mass quarantine period would make sense only if we used the time it bought us to radically change the facts on the ground regarding our ability to test and trace. Thankfully, it appears our state has indeed used this time to increase its ability to test, trace, and isolate."