Israeli doctor in Italy says innovative treatments offering hopes of recovery | Hacker News Reader

Israeli doctor in Italy says innovative treatments offering hopes of recovery

timesofisrael.com

45 pointssmacktoward15 comments

Israeli media published this report last week that turned out to be largely false: https://www.jpost.com/International/Israeli-doctor-in-Italy-...

This article is extremely light on details.

All that matters at this point is effective anti-virals, and aggressive use of them before the virus or immune response damage the patient's lungs to the point that they need ventilation/ecmo.

We can't afford to wait 18 months for a vaccine.

Is there any empirical evidence for having patients on their stomach instead of their back on ventilators? That seems absurdly easy to test.

For example, Guérin, C., Reignier, J., Richard, J.C., Beuret, P., Gacouin, A., Boulain, T., Mercier, E., Badet, M., Mercat, A., Baudin, O. and Clavel, M., 2013. Prone positioning in severe acute respiratory distress syndrome. New England Journal of Medicine, 368(23), pp.2159-2168.

Link https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1214103 (just in case https://www.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1214103 )

They appear to be doing it in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfkbv_WQtn0

That isn't specifically a new thing, it has been shown to work in the past.

But I don't think we have effective antivirals or evidence of usefulness. I'd say all that matters is saving people however we can. There's not one thing.

What makes you think we’ll be able to develop effective antivirals faster than a vaccine? We probably ought to be researching both.

I think the idea is that the antivirals are already sitting on shelves, we just need to figure out the right cocktail

If it was that easy, we'd there would be no bacterial infections (antibiotics are already sitting on the shelves) and we would have no problems with viruses (antivirals are already sitting on shelves).

It's not that easy.

That's not at all how it works with antivirals, which is why we have effective antiviral treatments for only very few viral diseases.

you better tell these guys to stop wasting their time, and fast!

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32147628

Yes, it's possible that existing drugs are effective against it, alone or on combination.

It's also quite likely (the norm, in fact, for viral diseases) that they aren't. It's not “we have antivirals we just have to find the right combination”, it's “we might get lucky and have a combination of an existing drug or combination of existing drugs that are effective”. As I said upthread we ought to be (and are) pursuing both approaches, vaccine and antiviral, not treating one as both certain and quicker and focussing exclusively on it, as another poster suggested upthread for antivirals.

This Anonymous is extremely light on details.

The assumption that world wide medical professionals are not looking for some magic bullet anti-viral? Asinine.

The assumption that there is some magical anti-viral cocktail that medical professionals aren't using? Asinine.

We can't afford to give credence to mindless twits who are listening to Alex Jones/Fox News/Conspiracy du Jour and implying all we have to do is take up one of these fake news/fake cure woo and the problem is solved.

If there was an easy answer, life would be back to normal.

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