patrick.net

Cross posted from another thread:

Patrick says

OK, now what exactly is the name of the obsolete HIV drug that cures coronavirus, and who owns the patent?

The Australians didn't say, but other sites say that one drug is a combination: lopinavir/ritonavir (marketed as Kaletra or Aluvia, and patent expired in 2016!), and another is called remdesivir.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lopinavir/ritonavir

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remdesivir

In late January 2020, remdesivir was administered to the first US patient to be confirmed to be infected by SARS-CoV-2, in Snohomish County, Washington, for "compassionate use" after he progressed to pneumonia. While no broad conclusions were made based on the single treatment, the patient's condition improved dramatically the next day,[7] and he was eventually discharged.[19]

Also in late January 2020, Chinese medical researchers stated to the media that in exploratory research considering a selection of 30 drug candidates, remdesivir and two other drugs, chloroquine and lopinavir/ritonavir, seemed to have "fairly good inhibitory effects" on SARS-CoV-2 at the cellular level. Requests to start clinical testing were submitted.[20][21] On February 6, 2020, a clinical trial of remdesivir began in China.[22]

On 17 March 2020, remdesivir was provisionally approved for use for COVID19 patients in a serious condition in the Czech Republic.[23]

On 18 March 2020, the first italian COVID-19 patient was successfully cured with remdesivir. [24]

Damn, that was just today.

OK, the owner of remdesivir is Gilead, which is up today:

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3553068-gilead-up-3-on-prospects-of-remdesivir-nod

Gilead Sciences (NASDAQ:GILD) perks up 6% premarket on light volume on the heels of reports that its experimental antiviral remdesivir has helped critically ill COVID-19 patients recover.

14 Americans with an average age of 75 who contracted SARS-CoV-2 infection on the Diamond Princess cruise ship were treated with the drug at hospitals in Japan.

After two weeks, all survived and more than half recovered. Five Americans remain critically ill. A total of 17 patients received daily intravenous treatment for 10 days.

The ship was placed under two-week quarantine on February 5 after docking in Yokohama. More than 700 passengers and crew tested positive. Eight died.

Remdesivir (GS-5734), a nucleotide prodrug that blocks a key enzyme needed for viral replication, is also being developed for Ebola virus infection.

So this is why protease inhibitors work:

Some viruses express their entire genome as one massive polyprotein and use a protease to cleave this into functional units (e.g. polio, norovirus, and TEV proteases).[14] These proteases (e.g. TEV protease) have high specificity and only cleave very restricted set of substrate sequences. They are therefore a common target for protease inhibitors.[15][16]

Translated from http://www.ansa.it/liguria/notizie/2020/03/17/coronavirus-a-genova-ce-primo-guarito-con-remdesivir_4e67099a-d9db-4db9-b799-08516c69b227.html "

"We have the first true healed treated with the experimental drug Remdesivir." This was announced by the head of the infectious diseases clinic of the Policlinico San Martino in Genoa Matteo Bassetti at the press point on the coronavirus emergency. Treatment started on March 7 and the 79-year-old patient has already had two negative swabs. "He will be returning to his home in Lombardy soon and this has made us exult enough: the drug seems to work. We have other patients being treated, "said Bassetti.

If this is true it's just a function of dispatching enough meds.

One way to tell if this is true is if the Dow shoots up tomorrow.

mell says

If this is true it's just a function of dispatching enough meds.

.......from factories in FUCKING CHINA, as everything has been outsourced. THANK YOU CEO's of everything!

CEO's who outsourced to China should be charged with treason.

The Chinese used to execute anyone who exported silkworms from China for the same kind of reason - it would destroy their local silk industry.

Patrick says

CEO's who outsourced to China should be charged with treason.

They will be bailed out by gov't instead. WIN!-WIN! Screw workers first, and then every taxpayer in US of A, all while paying themselves bonuses and buying back stocks!

BTW, this is not just a one-off.

The initial source of infection in WA state was cured with the same drug.

And many of the passengers on the Diamond Princess, in Japan. Some are still in critical condition, but none of those treated with this drug have died.

And now this guy in Italy.

I found the cure: Critical Thinking.

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If it wasn't discovered here in the US, (with a patent owned by a big US pharma company) then it isn't effective.

Everyone knows that.

rd6B says

mell says

If this is true it's just a function of dispatching enough meds.

.......from factories in FUCKING CHINA, as everything has been outsourced. THANK YOU CEO's of everything!

If only we had a president who would start a trade war with China. Then, even if manufacturing doesn't come back here, it'll be distributed to a variety of countries that the USA can man-handle into complying with our needs and whims. Such a president could be called a "stability genius" ... or just "stable genius" for short.

HeadSet says

One way to tell if this is true is if the Dow shoots up tomorrow.

Mainstream media will not cover this.

SunnyvaleCA says

If only we had a president who would start a trade war with China. Then, even if manufacturing doesn't come back here, it'll be distributed to a variety of countries that the USA can man-handle into complying with our needs and whims. Such a president could be called a "stability genius" ... or just "stable genius" for short.

Can't tell if you're joking, but it actually does sound like a pretty good idea not to be dependent on China at all, for anything. Ever.

And to start executing US executives (ironic word) who outsource anything to China.

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I find it curious, all the people that say we have to stop outsourcing. Do they think it through ?

1) Many items we buy from China aren't outsourced, they are just made there, or Mayalsia, or Bangladesh, or Vietnam etc. We buy from them and they buy things from us.

2) If say Apple has things made in china, is it illegal for them to buy from a company that is Chinese owned and subcontracts ? Again, this is simply trade.

3) If we did somehow force things to be made more expensively here (deciding that free trade and capitalism on a global scale doesn't work as we have always claimed it would) why doesn't that raise our cost of living ? I don't see any reason to think that salaries go up correspondingly. If they do, that means inflation and the value of our money has gone down which negates the cost difference that was achieved thereby causing the cost of goods that other wise would be bought elsewhere to go up more, until the dollar value changes doesn't offset it. So the American consumer (and businesses) are fucked !

How do you give up on free trade, that is just the part that you don't like ? American corporations, the ones in peoples retirement accounts want to sell things outside of the US.

I just get the idea that anti-globalists are 100% blind on these issues and can't comprehend the big picture, not that I fully can.

But then, there's this:

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2020/mar/18/the-latest-disappointing-results-in-1st-chinese-vi/

A combination of two antiviral drugs that are used now to treat HIV — lopinavir and ritonavir — did not resolve symptoms quicker than usual care did. The study involving 199 hospitalized, severely ill patients was published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

However, "intriguing" signs were seen in some other results. There were slightly fewer deaths among those given the drugs but the comparison group that received just usual care also was sicker, making this information hard to interpret, two editors wrote in an editorial in the journal.

Many other medicines are still being tested in various experiments including remdesivir, an experimental antiviral drug that has shown some promise against viruses similar to the one causing COVID-19.

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I'm glad other countries are moving ahead (competing) and we don't just have to wait for American big pharma to figure out how to cash in. Or do we ?

marcus says

:
I'm glad other countries are moving ahead (competing) and we don't just have to wait for American big pharma to figure out how to cash in. Or do we ?

We can always count on marcus to squeeze American-hating message into anything. Way to go, marcus-boy!

marcus says

If we did somehow force things to be made more expensively here (deciding that free trade and capitalism on a global scale doesn't work as we have always claimed it would) why doesn't that raise our cost of living ?

The question is this: who is "we"?

Yes, paying fair wages to Americans instead of outsourcing to China would cause many thing to cost more to consumers.

BUT: American workers would get that money, raising their wages, and allowing them to spend more. And poorer people immediately spend that extra income, benefiting the economy, unlike giving money to rich people, who throw it on the pile in the basement.

And we as a country would not be dependent on China and their extremely poor sanitation practices.

There is some balance to be struck, but the current massive dependency on China is stupid and shameful, definitely treason on the part of US executives.

Patrick says

given to some of the first people to test positive for COVID-19 in Australia, had already resulted in “disappearance of the virus” and complete recovery from the infection.

Now you probably need large scale double blind experiments to prove it works and is safe, before these drugs are approved to treat this.

But if you are dying you may find a doctor willing to prescribe it to you anyway if they are not scared of losing their licenses.

I have heard Chinese used HIV drugs and also tried chloroquine.
I also read some French doctor also found chloroquine is efficient, but the guy looks like he escaped from Woodstock:

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I totally disagree. You haven't scratched the surface of convincing me that there is as shred of evidence to back up your assertions.

It's just pure dogma

This is the age of automation and AI coming. We need to be investing in education and preparing for new technologies, developing areas where we can compete. Where we must compete.

Worrying about china's low skills workers taking away our low skills workers jobs/wages is focusing on entirely the wrong thing. IT would make more sense for the govt to subsidize, in new and different ways, the pay of our low skills workers than to bark up that nonsensical tree.

(Perhaps Trumps massive tax cuts in 2017 should have been tied to hiring low skills workers (note by low skill, I simply mean not having skills that the market is paying much for now)).

And as I tried to explain, you either accept the idea of free trade or you don't. I wish I had the words to describe how little sense you make from my perspective.

Also, I have tried to show data in the past that indicates our manufacturing has not dropped nearly as much as manufacturing employment, and that is a function of using technologies productively.

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It's just part of Trumps bullshit con, to get the vote of people that don't understand whats going on. It's all lies.

Without Trump lying and sales skills he would have never been elected. I honestly believe he would be the first to agree with me on that, including the lying part. He does have moments of honesty, such as when he talks about how effective lying is in make the sale.

It's called taking advantage of the fact that so many people are going to believe what they want to believe.

But for some of this, it's basically the definition evil.

marcus says

Worrying about china's low skills workers taking away our low skills workers jobs/wages is focusing on entirely the wrong thing

Is that why Trump just enacted the National Production Defense Act? Seems like he needed to because China took that work and is now keeping the product as well. We have no medical supplies because they’ve all been outsourced to Asia! When you’re dying in a hospital bed without meds that could have saved you, just remember that outsourcing to China is not the problem!

marcus says

Worrying about china's low skills workers taking away our low skills workers jobs/wages is focusing on entirely the wrong thing.

There are plenty that justifies worrying about it:
1 - the low skill workers in the US get screwed.
2 - China manipulated it's currency and kept its workers underpaid,
3 - we build an economy of buy buy buy, funded by debt debt debt, where everything is temporary held in place only by growing leverage. Everyone knows this will have to stop eventually. And when it happens (and we see the panic now as soon as the financial pyramid is hit) America will wake up poor, with few industries, with few skills, and dependent on China for everything.
4 - We built up a communist undemocratic government into the next superpower. It doesn't stop at low skills jobs. They are building computers chips, AI programs, OSs, rockets, communication networks, Social networks, etc, that are more advanced than what the US has. All subsidized by the government, and all backed by a billion customers.

In exchange of that what did we get?: instant gratification with cheap stuff, and an artificially standard of living for many decades.
Screw this.

Heraclitusstudent says

In exchange of that what did we get?: instant gratification with cheap stuff, and an artificially standard of living for many decades.
Screw this.

I'm in agreement with a lot of what you said, but that's not about taking low paying jobs back from China.

Carter's malaise speech was correct, and we started going in the wrong direction in the Reagan's (debt doesn't matter) era. Ironically Dvid Stockman is one of the ones talking about this the most in the past decade or more.

Where I disagree is that it's about bringing back, seamstress or assembly line jobs.

We need to be making the best robots here. We need a few Elon Musks to get behind that. Or behind manufacturing drugs or anything else that can be automated where we can compete. If subsidizing worker pay is what it takes, then fine.

Heraclitusstudent says

instant gratification with cheap stuff, and an artificially standard of living for many decades

Yes, this is what Carter tried to warn us about, and Daddy (Reagan) came in to tell us "don't worry, be happy."

I don't see how that has ANYTHING to do with bringing assembly line level jobs from China to here. They won't pay better than Kinkos or starbucks. And there just aren't that many.

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Again, please see the gap between manufacturing in the US and manufacturing employment. That's about automation not China.

marcus says

Worrying about china's low skills workers taking away our low skills workers jobs/wages is focusing on entirely the wrong thing. IT would make more sense for the govt to subsidize, in new and different ways, the pay of our low skills workers than to bark up that nonsensical tree.

Huh? It's totally the right tree to bark and why would anybody need "new and different ways to subsidize the pay of our low skilles workers" when old ways of tariffs would do it pretty much automatically and transparently?

And no, it's not realistic to make every low-skilled worker into programmer/doctor/engineer: some people simply have no natural aptitude for that kind of thing no matter how much time and money you'll waste trying.

TEOTWAWKI says

why would anybody need "new and different ways to subsidize the pay of our low skilles workers" when old ways of tariffs would do it pretty much automatically and transparently?

Thanks for asking. Actually the current way our country subsidizes low skills workers is food stamps and other aid to workers that can't pay their bills on Walmart wages or other market low level wages.

Ever wonder why Walmart doesn't have to pay workers more ? If American companies started making shirts here because we somehow managed to set the tarrifs that high, the pay to those employees would be just like the pay to walmart employees. Not enough, the govt provides food stamps or subsidized housing etc.

What I meant "new ways of subsidizing workers in new ways" is tax breaks, write offs or even credits or other indirect ways the government could support actually paying workers decently while companies can still compete globally. If we are going to deficit spend it should be in ways that really do trickle down, not by funding the investment accounts of the 1%.

Declaring through our actions that America is no longer for free trade is beyond retarded. It would end us.

By the way, this was largely proven long ago. But somehow right wing populism and demagoguery have brought the idea back. Never mind the evidence to the contrary.

marcus says

Carter's malaise speech was correct, and we started going in the wrong direction in the Reagan's (debt doesn't matter) era.

The debt is just the result of massive imports. Reagan was facing high inflation and he found a simple answer: crush the US workers negotiating power using offshoring to workaround them (and immigration for low skills immigration in the US). Initially this was US companies producing abroad. Soon these were all Chinese companies as US skills, IP and capital were offered to the Chinese.

marcus says

That's about automation not China.

No it's not. Automation was happening all the time before Reagan, but it always resulted in better US worker s pay. Not throwing the entire lower half of the US under the bus.
Automation always meant more productivity. Workers move to more productive occupations and get paid more - and consume new things.
This equation stop applying when you add many hundreds of millions poor workers to the labor supply. Automation never disrupted the position of labor in the US this way.

marcus says

If American companies started making shirts here because we somehow managed to set the tarrifs that high, the pay to those employees would be just like the pay to walmart employees.

Why would the pay stay flat? Makes no sense. Right now walmart employees have no alternative and must agree to the low pay. If shirt/socks/TV/phone manufacturers move back to the US the workers will have a choice where to work and the salaries for BOTH walmart and shirt-making employees will have to go up simple because of increased competition for the same labour pool.

Heraclitusstudent says

In exchange of that what did we get?: instant gratification with cheap stuff, and an artificially standard of living for many decades.

The cheap stuff was just a justification for massive CEO bonuses for screwing America.

Really, all those CEOs should be shot. They put us in this position, with the help from paid-off Congressmen. That may explain why so many CEOs are suddenly "retiring". They know that the bill has come due, and people are going to be looking right at them.

OccasionalCortex says

Where do you think the capital for the vast majority of loans being made come from? The 'basement', that's where. :)

No, there is way too much money in the basement. All those loans could be made with only a fraction of what is sloshing around looking for something to do.

Most of the money that the rich have is doing nothing productive at all.

Patrick says

SunnyvaleCA says

If only we had a president who would start a trade war with China. Then, even if manufacturing doesn't come back here, it'll be distributed to a variety of countries that the USA can man-handle into complying with our needs and whims. Such a president could be called a "stability genius" ... or just "stable genius" for short.

Can't tell if you're joking, but it actually does sound like a pretty good idea not to be dependent on China at all, for anything. Ever.

And to start executing US executives (ironic word) who outsource anything to China.

No. Not joking. The trade war has a variety of benefits. This is one of them.

marcus says

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Again, please see the gap between manufacturing in the US and manufacturing employment. That's about automation not China.

No. If that were the case, the items would be manufactured in America using all that technology. Manufacturing is only outsourced because China has lower costs due to slave labor and lax pollution laws. Nothing wrong with free trade, but an exception should be made when the only comparative advantage is allowing severe labor exploitation and zero environmental protection. Apple produces at Foxconn in China so they can make $400/phone vs a mere $200/phone by producing in the US.

https://techstartups.com/2020/03/19/two-anti-malarial-drugs-chloroquine-and-hydroxychloroquine-show-early-promising-results-in-coronavirus-treatment-u-s-doctors-now-say/

As we reported yesterday night (New York Time), a new controlled clinical study conducted by doctors ​in France shows that Hydroxychloroquine is effective in the fight against coronavirus. The study, which was conducted by Didier Raoult​ M.D/Ph.D, et. al in France showed that 100% of patients that received a combination of HCQ and Azithromycin tested negative and were virologically cured within 6 days of treatment. Chloroquine and his sister drug, hydroxychloroquine, have been used to treat malaria since Word War II.

Patrick says

The cheap stuff was just a justification for massive CEO bonuses for screwing America.

The Chinese have been playing the greed card against our elites and it's been like shooting an elephant in a corridor.
I would bet most economic literature justifying the current framework is just motivated reasoning from elites. It would insist on stuff like "Americans get the benefit of cheaper products at the store." while blissfully ignoring the US doesn't even produce the income to buy these without debts. It would look at debt and just say: "It's normal for a richer nation to run an account deficit." without explaining in what sense we are richer: the fact we have better credit score.