Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Why Experts Are Calling This New Coronavirus Test a 'Game-changer'

This is GAME CHANGER. Abbott to market, starting next week, a fast point-of-care #coronavirus test, delivering positive results in 5min and negative results in 13min.

Scott Gottlieb, MD March 28, 2020 Thank you for all the hard work from Abbott Labs to create a portable and fast Coronavirus testing equipment.

Continuing to expand testing is the #1 way we can stay informed and fight the spread of the virus.

The typical coronavirus test itself is not very pleasant.

President Trump, who was compelled by the press to take the test a few weeks ago after coming in contact with a few foreign officials who had tested positive, admitted it's "Not something he'd like to do every day."

The test starts with taking a swab from the nose or the back of the throat, then mixing it with a chemical solution that breaks open the virus and releases its RNA. The mixture is inserted into an ID Now system, a small box weighing just under 7 pounds that has the technology to identify and amplify select sequences of the coronavirus genome and ignore contamination from other viruses.

Abbott Labs say they plan to start supplying 50,000 tests a day starting Wednesday.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2020/03/31/this-new-coronavirus-test-could-be-a-gamechanger-n2566044

Media, Gov Officials Told Us Not To Wear Masks. They Were Wrong

As Americans slowly woke up to the seriousness of the pandemic, and their own lack of preparedness, our media and government elites discouraged the general public from stocking up on masks in an effort to preserve supplies for health-care workers on the front lines.

On Fox News in early March, Adams told viewers that "You can actually increase your risk of getting a respiratory disease like coronavirus" if you wear a mask improperly.

New York City's official coronavirus guidelines instruct New Yorkers, who are at the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, that they "Do not need to wear a face mask if you are not feeling sick."

This advice, which is seemingly obvious, makes much more sense than the confusing message that ordinary people couldn't possibly figure out how to wear a mask properly, or that masks somehow only work when worn by health care providers.

"Studies have documented definitively that in controlled environments like airplanes, people with masks rarely infect others and rarely become infected themselves, while those without masks more easily infect others or become infected themselves," Howard writes.

Yes, U.S. health-care workers are short on masks and they desperately need them, and of course healthy people should not be stockpiling them, especially N95 masks.

On Monday, President Donald Trump said he could see a recommendation, proposed by former Food and Drug Administration head Scott Gottlieb, that all Americans wear masks.


https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/31/media-and-government-officials-told-americans-not-to-wear-masks-they-were-wrong/

The $20 Solution to Coronavirus: 'Anecdotal Evidence' Is a Life-Saver

Following clinical trials in China, South Korea, and France that demonstrated the efficacy of treating and likely preventing COVID-19 infections with HCQ alone or in combination with azithromycin, President Trump expressed to the media optimism about HCQ being a potential "Game changer" in the fight to defeat the pandemic.

In answer to a reporter's question, Fauci stated that although there was "Anecdotal evidence" that HCQ was effective in treating and preventing COVID-19 infections, controlled clinical trials of the drug were still necessary before any definite conclusions could be reached.

In a follow-up of its previously reported study recommending the use of HCQ and azithromycin to treat COVID-19 cases, researchers in France and Vietnam under the leadership of world-renowned infectious disease expert Professor Didier Raoult, the head of the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée Infection in Marseille, have reported another clinical trial in which that drug combination cured 79 out of 80 patients.

According to the Bahrain News Agency, the head of Bahrain's National Taskforce for Combatting COVID-19 reports that HCQ has had a "Profound impact" when used to treat COVID-19 patients.

Belgium has established a "Strategic reserve" of HCQ to treat as many as 22,000 COVID-19 patients on an "Off-label" basis.

The anecdotal evidence demonstrates that the majority of high risk COVID-19 patients can be saved by early dosing with HCQ and without tying up hospital and ICU beds or the use of ventilators.

In the meantime, ask yourselves if there is any good reason why we should delay for one second a nationwide crash program to ramp up production of HCQ and deploy Dr. Zelenko's $20 solution and similar effective protocols to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://spectator.org/the-20-solution-to-coronavirus-anecdotal-evidence-is-a-life-saver/

Nurses Are the Coronavirus Heroes

It's 1 a.m. A nurse I have known for a long time said to me as she left the shift, "In 18 years, I never felt the need to take a shower in the staff locker room so I could feel safe to go home." Earlier she was at the bedside in a negative pressure room, wearing a powered air-purifying respirator as she helped intubate a possible coronavirus patient who'd crashed.

Nurses are the underappreciated heroes of this crisis.

If you wonder who actually sticks the swabs into the noses of worried patients, it's the nurses.

Moving in and out of negative-pressure rooms, putting protective equipment on and taking it off, nurses are caring for elderly patients who are severely ill and sometimes crashing.

The nurses marinate in risk as they spend the greatest amount of time with the patient.

How critical are nurses to the capacity of the health system? The number of nurses staffing the hospital determines its capacity.

Everyone is playing a part-but none are more important than the nurses.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/nurses-are-the-coronavirus-heroes-11585608987?mod=hp_opin_pos_2

China's Count Excluded Infected People With No Symptoms

China said more than 1,500 people who were infected with the new coronavirus but haven't shown symptoms were excluded from its national tally of confirmed cases, as questions arise about its accounting of the infectious disease that burst into a world-wide pandemic.

The Latest on the Coronavirus More than 800,000 cases across 178 countries and regions.

China says it will begin reporting infection cases for people with no symptoms.

Zhong Nanshan, a prominent Chinese respiratory expert, told state television recently that he didn't believe China has a large number of those carriers, because otherwise the number of confirmed cases would be much higher.

Before releasing the number of asymptomatic cases on Tuesday, China had reported 81,518 confirmed infections.

In March alone, the number of reported coronavirus infections world-wide jumped nearly nine times from 86,000 confirmed cases on the last day of February, while fatalities surged more than 10-fold, Johns Hopkins data showed.

Both, like the U.S., have surpassed China in total confirmed cases.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-coronavirus-count-excluded-infected-people-with-no-symptoms-11585650226?mod=hp_lead_pos1

Chinese researchers isolated deadly bat coronaviruses near Wuhan animal market

  1. Chinese officials have said the virus likely spread from wild animals to people at Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, not far from the Wuhan Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the national center for China's bat virus research.
  2. Until the recent outbreak, all but two coronaviruses in China were studied at biosafety level-2 (BSL-2) facilities not the high-security BSL-4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology which provides only minimal protections against infection of lab workers, he said.
  3. Virus collection, culture, isolation or animal infection at BSL-2 with a virus having the transmission characteristics of the outbreak virus would pose high risk of accidental infection of a lab worker, and from the lab worker, the public, he said.
  4. Several Chinese state media outlets in recent months touted the virus research and lionized in particular a key researcher in Wuhan, Tian Junhua, as a leader in bat virus work.
  5. The seven-minute film boasts that China has taken the lead in global virus research and uncovered over 2,000 viruses in the past 12 years, the time since the outbreak of the bat-origin virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
  6. Bat coronaviruses are collected and studied by laboratories in multiple parts of China — including Wuhan Municipal CDC and Wuhan Institute of Virology, he told The Washington Times.
  7. Biosecurity researcher Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University professor at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, said the coronavirus behind the pandemic is 96.2% similar to a bat virus discovered by the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2013 and studied at the Wuhan CDC.
  8. They write about collecting SARS-like coronaviruses from horseshoe bats and proving that, like the SARS virus itself, some of these other naturally occurring coronaviruses could infect human beings directly, Mr.
  9. Chinese government researchers isolated more than 2,000 animal viruses, including deadly bat coronaviruses, and carried out scientific work on them just three miles from a wild animal market identified as the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  10. Such practices would pose substantial risk of infection with a virus having transmission properties similar to those of the outbreak virus, he said.
  11. The Chinese video Youth in the Wild Invisible Defender; records researchers engaged in casual handling of bats containing deadly viruses.
  12. Tian shuttled through caves and jungles looking for viruses in bats and ticks, called ;vector organisms, in the quest to develop vaccines.


https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/30/china-researchers-isolated-bat-coronaviruses-near-/

Coronavirus Pandemic: China Must Be Held Accountable

Beijing is trying to take advantage of the pandemic to increase its global standing and influence.

There are three main reasons why the world must hold the CCP accountable for the first global pandemic in a century.

The first reason the CCP must be held accountable for the pandemic is that morality demands it.

The second reason that Beijing must be held accountable is a political one: The CCP's actions have gravely undermined global political governance.

The third reason Beijing must be held responsible is to prevent another pandemic from ravaging the world in the future.

If Beijing escapes blame for its failure to curb the coronavirus pandemic, its lies, and its attempts to cover up the pathogen's seriousness - or, worse yet, if it actually earns global plaudits for its actions - then no country will feel the need to be honest with the world when another epidemic breaks out, and the same deadly fiasco will repeat itself.

Beijing freely chose to deny the truth of COVID-19, and its governing malpractice and incompetence helped unleashed a pandemic on the world.


https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/coronavirus-pandemic-china-must-be-held-accountable/?itm_campaign=headline-testing-coronavirus-pandemic-china-must-be-held-accountable&itm_medium=headline&itm_source=nationalreview&itm_content=Three%20Reasons%20to%20Hold%20China%20Accountable%20for%20the%20Coronavirus%20Pandemic&itm_term=Three%20Reasons%20to%20Hold%20China%20Accountable%20for%20the%20Coronavirus%20Pandemic

China's Long Tentacles Extend Deep Into American Media

One unfortunate casualty of media consolidation could be the objectivity of news at a time of rising tensions with China.

The third reason is that many media companies either do business with China or are paid by the government in some way.

On the print side, top U.S. newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times have been criticized for running paid China Daily inserts.

What might the Chinese government do if it were displeased with something that ran on MSNBC? Perhaps they'd have a tense conversation with their partners at 30 Rockefeller Plaza about the forthcoming slate of movie releases in China.

Comcast Corporation is not only the participator of the increasingly close cultural exchanges, but also the contributor and beneficiary of deeper economic exchanges between China and the US. The NBC and the Universal Studios Theme Park in Beijing are witnesses of the in-depth development of Sino-US economic and trade relations and increasingly close cultural exchanges.

Consul General Huang Ping made a point of discussing China's response to the coronavirus, as well as news coverage in the U.S.: "China's prevention and control practices have earned valuable time and experience for other countries. We hope that the NBC and other U.S. media will objectively and fairly report China's efforts to control the epidemic."

A few weeks after the meeting, NBC News stories appeared saying the only new coronavirus cases in China had come from foreigners, and another one about China asserting its global leadership.

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/chinas-long-tentacles-extend-deep-into-american-media/

Pelosi, Dems Now Preparing New Investigation of Trump; Will Be Based on Denial, Equipment Delays

Fox News contributor and investigator Dan Bongino calls Pelosi a master of disinformation, who contributes to the downfall of this country everyday by promoting garbage, misinformation, disinformation and not helping us to get through this crisis at all.

In his Monday podcast, Bongino told viewers that Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, are currently laying the groundwork for their next investigation of President Trump.

It will be a two-fold attack based on Trump's early denial that the coronavirus posed a serious threat to the U.S. and his administration's delays of essential medical supplies to those on the frontlines.

"Pelosi tells him that Trump's denial was"deadly" and "his delaying of gettingequipment to where it isit continues [sic] his delay in getting equipment to where it is needed is deadlyWe have to have testing, testing, testing, that's what we said from the start.

Who is now claiming in her two-prong attack, they're getting readyThey are preparing right now for another investigation into Trump and their attack is going to be two-foldnumber one is going to be denial and number two is going to be delay.

"This is the new media narrative. Listen to Nancy Pelosi. Don't listen to meThey are now into - already - the attack on Trump rather than trying to solve this crisis. They're already setting you up. And morons like the now dumbest man in media, Chuck Todd, are getting ready to parrot the denial/delay talking points. Chuck Todd goes even a step further asking Sleepy Joe, in an interview, if Trump has blood on his hands."

Bongino addresses the second prong of the coming attack, which will be that President Trump denied the intelligence.

https://www.redstate.com/elizabeth-vaughn/2020/03/31/dan-bongino-pelosi-dems-now-preparing-next-investigation-of-trump-will-be-based-on-denial-equipment-delays/

Contact Tracing Will Be Essential To Controlling Covid-19

Contact tracing, for example, is a focused strategy for breaking transmission chains and controlling the spread of disease.

It involves identifying infected persons; taking steps to prevent an infected person from further spreading infection, whether through isolation or treatment, if an effective treatment option exists; identifying those with whom the infected person may have been in close contact while infectious; and, finally, locating and testing these close contacts.

If a close contact is found to be infected, the disease-investigation process starts again.

The Centers for Disease Control's Ebola control strategy illustrates how contact tracing can work.

Being within six feet of someone for a prolonged period; or caring for, visiting, or living with a Covid-19 infected person, qualifies as close contact.

To work effectively contact tracing depends on certain preconditions-especially no existing barriers to testing.

Contact tracing is most effective as a means of containing flareups.

https://www.city-journal.org/covid-19-contact-tracing

Wars Visible and Invisible, Part II

Donald Trump didn't create the coronavirus, but he is the one who called it a 'hoax,' who eliminated the pandemic response team, and who let the virus spread unchecked across America.

Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh responded to Biden's vile attack by shifting attention to the political disaster to which Biden and the Democrats were contributing: "It used to be that Americans faced national adversity with unity," Murtaugh observed, "But Joe Biden and his allies have abandoned that principle in favor of rank, despicable politics."

With a few notable exceptions, it is the leadership of the Democrat Party and its media allies who spread the falsehoods that Trump had dismissed the virus as a "Hoax," cut the budget of the Centers for Disease Control, and failed to provide an adequate number of surgical masks and ventilators to hospitals and their staffs.

The "Hoax" charge was particularly absurd since Trump had closed the border with China in the face of Democrat slanders that the measure was unneeded and "Racist," or that Trump had declared a state of emergency making it the top priority of his presidency.

Despite Trump's obvious deference to his medical team, an army of Democrat and media saboteurs relentlessly attacked the president as "Anti-science," while insisting that he didn't listen to his medical experts.

Dr. Deborah Birx, who coordinated the task force on the virus, and who reaffirmed Dr. Fauci's view of Trump as a responsible leader, was viciously attacked for her testimony as a "Hack" and "Stepford Doc" by former Clinton shill Joe Lockhart and a legion of other Trump-haters in the media.

"The treacherous lengths to which leaders of the Democrat Party have gone to demonize and defame Trump are exemplified in Hillary Clinton's crusade to tar him as a"Racist" for referring to the infection as a "Chinese virus.


https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/03/wars-visible-and-invisible-part-ii-david-horowitz/

See Part I: HERE.]