TWiV 669: All the wrong COVID-19 moves

October 4, 2020

Daniel Griffin provides a clinical report on COVID-19, including a discussion of the role of vitamin D in COVID-19, Michael and Christopher explain why we have made all the wrong moves during the pandemic, evidence that the D614G amino acid change improves transmission in hamsters, and listener questions.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, Rich Condit, and Brianne Barker

Guests: Daniel Griffin, Michael B. Yaffe, and Christopher D. Barrett

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Links for this episode

Weekly Science Picks 2:46:13

DicksonWhy we should all wear masks
BrianneMilestones in Vaccines
RichWallpaper/fabric designs by David Goodsell
VincentDas Coronavirus bullet points and a new t-shirt

Listener Pick

JustinCOVID Alert NY App | Department of Health

Intro music is by Ronald Jenkees

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8 comments on “TWiV 669: All the wrong COVID-19 moves

  1. Richard Cornell Oct 4, 2020

    ESDA
    Emergency Services and Disaster Agency is a division usually of the local fire department. Most cities have similar divisions where they set up road blocks in floods or when trees are blown over. It is a volunteer’s maned division. They are trained in being as an extra arm of the fire department to manned those road blocks. Whereas the street departments can cut up trees. They (ESDA) are paid by funds that have been filter down from FEMA. In the old days they were your Civil Defense.
    Stepping back to that era of Civil Defense the local Civil Defense were in charge of stocking fall out shelters in commercial buildings, churches, schools or any place so deem to house civilian populations. Stocking consist of food (crackers), water barrels (filled monthly) standard (non-drug) medical supplies, reading material. In theory everything was in place in every location when the Cuban missile crises occur. By the mid 1960’s most shelters in commercial builds toss out what was in their basements for needed room. That also applied to churches and schools.
    Prime examples have shown that FEMA when they went looking for all the emergency supplies that they have stocked up in warehouse could not find them and in many cases warehouse were in fact empty lots. Hurricane Katrina was a major storm that shown what was not there in emergency supplies.
    The same with Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria hit, FEMA knew that it had stock pile enough supplies to get that country back on its feet quickly. Except that those stock piles existed only on paper.
    That shown what has been lost, even that the paper work shown supplies were brought and stored in warehouses that were kept up just for when they were needed.
    It is no surprise that when COVID-19 happen that emergency supplies in reality were not there even if paper work showed that they were.

    I worked back in the 1970’s in a warehouse that was 300,000 square feet. That was listed as having a well stocked 300,000 square foot basement filled with Civil Defense emergency supplies. A dream of supplies that were up kept yearly. The entrance was in the back, which was reality a sump pump well. The warehouse sat on a concrete slab.
    At any one time FEMA does not know what exist in reality what they have. Even the US military always up date their files and then those files are in question.

    If you think I’m a nut. I ask a simple question about your hospital or university. How many rolls of toilet paper do you buy each month for the number of rolls that seem to be used by a increasing number of people? If Trump is a goof then what is your excuse?

    Trump did not have enough of anything even if it shown that there was enough of everything.

    • Ole Bjørsvik Oct 6, 2020

      Great comment Richard Cornell! — In my own small European country I’m impressed (and slightly proud) of the way our prime minister and government stood up fast and hard when they decided to act. (Perhaps they could have acted a day before, but things may need some deliberations?.) But, I may next vote will not go to the prime minister, her government did as you descriebe happend to your FEMA, a more centrist, less business oriented party will get my vote.
      (PS: a verb with or without negation seems to be missing in your sentence about the US Army, and the last sentence seems to miss a small word too….)

  2. Michael Irvine Oct 5, 2020

    Of course we listen to The End !

    This is the end
    Beautiful friend
    This is the end
    My only friend, the end

    😉

  3. Ole Bjørsvik Oct 6, 2020

    You know, there has ben done randomized trails with jumping from planes with parachutes, albeit it was non-blind: https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

  4. Hugh Hill Oct 6, 2020

    Cowboys or Clerks: In discussions with other age peer Emergency Physicians, ie old, who were around when we were making it up, I’ve felt we are more comfortable caring for COVID-19 than our younger colleagues. One cannot deny that checklists and pathways reduce errors and oversights, but most physicians realize that they are guides, not laws. “Cookbook medicine” is a relatively modern phenomenon, facilitated by EMR’s and systematic risk management. From the beginning of the pandemic, Emergency Physicians were all over the web, internationally, sharing and conversing. We acknowledge that the pleural of anecdote is not evidence, but the lack of evidence is not evidence of lack. OBTW: There is an extant organization seemingly well situated to do what your guests suggested — PCORI, The Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute. And they are already into it. https://www.pcori.org/COVID-19-Updates
    And regarding UVC, there is a company in Chicago with promising technology retrofitting large air handlers, including schools. https://replaceair.com Their room device might be useful at home in one situation: Where an infected patient is recuperating. Maybe a rental that could live in a sick room for 5 days?
    Hugh F. Hill III, MD, JD
    Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine
    Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

  5. Gary Cole Oct 7, 2020

    At or around 2:09 of the podcast Dr. Racaneillo in discussing the retracted Lancet article said that President Trump “based on this report said that we should use it (hydroxychloroquine} and people started using it”. This is an obviously false statement by you because the retracted article suggests that hydroxychloroquine should not be used to treat this disease because it seems to induce cardiac arrhythmias.

    FYI this is the conclusion of the rejected article: We were unable to confirm a benefit of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine, when used alone or with a macrolide, on in-hospital outcomes for COVID-19. Each of these drug regimens was associated with decreased in-hospital survival and an increased frequency of ventricular arrhythmias when used for treatment of COVID-19

    In addition I would humbly suggest that you and your fellow podcasters control your snikering and sneering. It is unbecoming and suggests to an “objective observer” like myself that you have an agenda other than the dissemination of scientific information.

  6. COVID19 patients testing negative is common for nasal samples. This only works in the period around the start of symptoms. Later the virus moves into the lungs and is often no longer detectable in nasal samples. You would have to to a sample from the lungs, asks the patient to cough up some mucus or use a stool sample. Later in the progression of COVID also antibody tests are an alternative and well as lung x-rays. (Stool is not infectious, but contains a lot of dead virus material.)

    Source: Christian Drosten, Corona Virus Update podcast. https://variable-variability.blogspot.com/2020/03/corona-virus-update-tests-tests-tests.html

  7. I always listen to the end! I wouldn’t want to miss a single speck of info from my newly found friends! Love you guys!