[gaweidert]

Come on guys let’s get some perspective here.Most of us are far,far more likely to die of the big C,heart disease,a road accident,etc,etc......and do we make as much fuss about these?

According to a John Hopkins study, approximately 700 people die every day in the US as a result of mistakes made by medial professionals. It is the third and possibly second leading cause of death in the US. Of course these deaths are never listed is causes of death in the US.

[vonBaloney]

According to a John Hopkins study, approximately 700 people die every day in the US as a result of mistakes made by medial professionals. It is the third and possibly second leading cause of death in the US. Of course these deaths are never listed is causes of death in the US.

Yes, medical error deaths get funneled into the things they "actually" die of, i.e. doctor causes heart attack: they died of "heart disease" on the death cert. And so heart disease stats are inflated, which affects flows of research money. It's a huge problem.

[Serkevan]

Yes, medical error deaths get funneled into the things they "actually" die of, i.e. doctor causes heart attack: they died of "heart disease" on the death cert. And so heart disease stats are inflated, which affects flows of research money. It's a huge problem.

You have sources for that? I'd be interested in reading them.
Heart disease stats in the US, even while not inflated, are more worrying than more or less anything else in that country's mortality rate (second only to cancer).

[vonBaloney]

Medical errors third-leading cause of death in America

Study Suggests Medical Errors Now Third Leading Cause of Death in the U.S. - 05/03/2016

According to the CDC, in 2013, 611,105 people died of heart disease, 584,881 died of cancer and 149,205 died of chronic respiratory disease — the top three causes of death in the U.S. The newly calculated figure for medical errors puts this cause of death behind cancer but ahead of respiratory disease.

“Top-ranked causes of death as reported by the CDC inform our country’s research funding and public health priorities,” says Makary. “Right now, cancer and heart disease get a ton of attention, but since medical errors don’t appear on the list, the problem doesn’t get the funding and attention it deserves.”

[Serkevan]

Scary stuff, in particular because a lot of those deaths are because of systemic problems more than a doctor/nurse making a clearly wrong call. Understaffed hospitals and confusing insurance networks are a great way to get patients dead.

[Wheatfield]

Man, some of you guys have it baaad! I look forward to the next comparison video on the Tube about which brand spread most coronavirus and is mirrorless more contageous than DSLR etc etc. Now wash your hands.

Wait for the claims by the mirrorless brigades about how "flippy mirrors" spread the virus.

---------- Post added Mar 8th, 2020 at 12:27 PM ----------

This is one of these much liked comments in the forums, that you might regret liking in a few weeks from now.

You've never heard of dark humour?
The coronavirus, like all viruses will vector towards the most at risk populations. Being an influenza, it will vector towards high population density areas that have less than ideal health care protections. The people who will get hit hardest will be less affluent inner city populations, they will see higher infection rates and most likely, higher than the average mortality rates.
Countries or regions that do not have sick leave benefits built into their societies, regions where people tend towards gig style employment, populations who cannot afford to take the necessary time off from work to not only get over this flu, but prevent themselves from passing it on to coworkers, customers, etc, are going to have higher infection rates and probably higher death rates.
This isn't panicking, this is just the way it is.

[gaweidert]

Scary stuff, in particular because a lot of those deaths are because of systemic problems more than a doctor/nurse making a clearly wrong call. Understaffed hospitals and confusing insurance networks are a great way to get patients dead.

Not a new problem. My late aunt became a nurse in the 1950's when doctor's word was law. She once told me a story where a doctor ordered that a certain patient be given a certain medication. She questioned him three times and he started screaming at her to do as ordered. The patient died. When the doctor asked what happened she told him that he had carried out his orders. He denied having ordered her to do it. The only thing that saved her butt and her career was the head nurse overheard the original conversation and backed up her story. At that the doctor shrugged his shoulders and walked away. No repercussions at all.


This study tallied mistakes admitted. The actual number may be 100,000 deaths higher.

[Digitalis]

Nature and biotechnology have an interesting article on existing small molecule therapies that may help to combat Covid-19.

STAT has a demographic breakdown on among whom the Covid-19 virus is spreading, and how it is affecting each group, and despite the alarming spread of Covid-19 this is why you should not panic.


Seeing the need for accurate information and the magnitude of the crisis, Biocentury are making all their articles that pertain to Covid-19 available for free. They have also published a listing of Therapies and Vaccines that are currently under R&D

[Serkevan]

Nature and biotechnology have an interesting article on existing small molecule therapies that may help to combat Covid-19.

I saw they were also trying several anti-HIV cocktails in Spain... I would put more stock into interferon therapies but my biochemistry is rusty. Clinical trials in this situation are very challenging.

Speaking of Spain, Pharmamar got CE marking for two testing kits - they are supposed to be reliable before symptoms appear so hopefully manufacturing and rollout can be done quickly

Here is the pdf of the press release

[Digitalis]

I saw they were also trying several anti-HIV cocktails in Spain... I would put more stock into interferon therapies but my biochemistry is rusty. Clinical trials in this situation are very challenging.

Drug cocktails especially HIV cocktails are far from straight forward - most of them have pretty horrendous side effects, nephrotoxicity, hepatoxicity, migraines, metabolic acidosis, peripheral neuropathy, nausea, psychological volatility....the list of effects is lengthy and can vary with test subject.

[Serkevan]

Not a new problem. My late aunt became a nurse in the 1950's when doctor's word was law. She once told me a story where a doctor ordered that a certain patient be given a certain medication. She questioned him three times and he started screaming at her to do as ordered. The patient died. When the doctor asked what happened she told him that he had carried out his orders. He denied having ordered her to do it. The only thing that saved her butt and her career was the head nurse overheard the original conversation and backed up her story. At that the doctor shrugged his shoulders and walked away. No repercussions at all.


This study tallied mistakes admitted. The actual number may be 100,000 deaths higher.

My girlfriend's a trained pharmacist, and many of her friends have terrible pharmacy stories - it's not the first time that they get into a fight with a medic because they overlooked an interaction between the medicine cocktail and a previous condition that would have killed the patient.

Still, if you go down to the root cause, many times you find out that the doctor was on a six minute per patient schedule at the end of a 12 or 24-hour shift. When my girlfriend was working at a hospital pharmacy, she was on her feet for 12 hours, six days a week. Nobody can function properly in those conditions. Health care workers are no exception.

[Digitalis]

With the HIV therapies they are hoping to unhinge the viral reverse transcriptase - which transcribes RNA (from the virus) into DNA so the foreign DNA can hijack the host cellular machinery. This happens to be a pretty effective target against preventing the virus from replicating, and has proven to be a sound strategy to lower Viral loads* in HIV positive people.I'm not sure if inhibiting a Retroviral RT will have much effect on a Caronavirus RT, I guess in time we will see. Preferably formulating a drug that can irreversibly bind or denature the binding proteins on the virion surface and preventing infection to start with would be a better solution - but accomplishing this in a timely fashion is a tall order.


*and thus reduce the possibility of transmission.

[Serkevan]

With the HIV therapies they are hoping to unhinge the viral reverse transcriptase - which transcribes RNA (from the virus) into DNA so the foreign DNA can hijack the host cellular machinery. This happens to be a pretty effective target against preventing the virus from replicating, and has proven to be a sound strategy to lower Viral loads* in HIV positive people.I'm not sure if inhibiting a Retroviral RT will have much effect on a Caronavirus RT, I guess in time we will see. Preferably formulating a drug that can irreversibly bind or denature the binding proteins on the virion surface and preventing infection to start with would be a better solution - but accomplishing this in a timely fashion is a tall order.


*and thus reduce the possibility of transmission.

From the Nature article, one of the epidemiologists quoted (from Leuven in Belgium) says the coronavirus lacks the reverse-transcriptase that gets typically targeted by anti-retrovirals:

Instead, he would favor targeting a virus-specific protein such as the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, noting that coronaviruses do not contain or use a reverse transcriptase

That's why I am skeptical about it, but it wouldn't be the first time that a medicine has a sort of unintended cross-effect on other targets.


Interferon therapy is probably working better because heightened nonspecific responses are normally quite effective against viruses, right? IIRC macrophages are the ones doing the heavy lifting.

[Digitalis]

one of the epidemiologists quoted (from Leuven in Belgium) says the coronavirus lacks the reverse-transcriptase that gets typically targeted by anti-retrovirals:

I think that comes from the type of animal model they are using as a reference, Coronaviruses are known to have varying effects on different species. There are a few other mechanisms where RNA can be translated into DNA without using transcriptase enzymes but they are even more error prone: which means the virus would have a higher mutation rate..which is a really cheery thought. Using HIV medications to unhinge known human cellular viral replication pathways such as reverse transcriptase enzymes, protease inhibition, Integrase inhibiton is better than doing nothing at all.

it wouldn't be the first time that a medicine has a sort of unintended cross-effect on other targets.

Do you know how long it took us to figure out how Asprin worked? we only learned that a few years ago. If anything, half of drug discovery is unintended consequences and "this screening didn't show and affinity for THAT target". At this point I wouldn't be surprised of monoclonal antibodies came to the rescue - at least the theory of how they work is simpler than beating the crap out a few molecules in the hopes they will somehow throw a spanner the workings of viral infection proceses.

[Serkevan]

we only learned that a few years ago. If anything, half of drug discovery is unintended consequences

*Laughs in how anesthetics worked for more than a century without a clue about why.

I was mostly being sarcastic, I know that unintended effects are bread and butter (and made the makers of a certain blue pill a load of money* ). Of course throwing stuff at the virus to hope something works because of some similarity is better than letting the infections run their course; it's not like we can magically conjure a perfectly targeted antiviral out of thin air, so in the meantime we just keep trying.


The miss' doctorate degree is actually geared towards drug discovery (the PhD itself is basic science, but the end goal of the project is drug discovery), so I've been exposed to a lot of pharmacology. It's a fascinating topic.

*Or, on a darker note, the effort to make a less-addictive morphine gave us heroin instead, which is totes safe