Trump: "I've been right a lot."

Apparently, it was originally China's idea. See Relativist's post above. — Baden

Who cares? I was asking if Trump pushes this through based upon his limited information would you rethink your disgust of Trump. I mean if this works, he wins in my book and people will live who otherwise wouldn't have.

Corticosteroids are very helpful drugs. Coronavirus symptoms are a match for what we usually give them for. But doctors who give corticosteroids for coronavirus will make their patients more likely to need mechanical ventilation, pressor drugs, and kidney function support.

Keep your day job, man. — frank

,

I'll keep my day job, but first point me to the website that indicates that hydroxychloroquine is a corticosteroid so I'll know why I need to worry about the side effects of them.

The questioning from the reporter related to using the malaria drug as a treatment, and he asked "Is it possible that your impulse to put a positive spin on things may be giving Americans a false sense of hope." This is a worldview distinction you don't appreciate. There is no such thing as false hope. There's this pervasive idea that pessimism is of some value, as if it's related to truth, and even worse that it doesn't create reality. I'm not suggesting that you should jump off a ledge if you're optimistic enough to think you'll fly, but I am saying that as long as Trump continues to ask Americans to take all reasonable precautions (which he has been), then one ought be optimistic. — Hanover

Trump has a credibility problem. On Feb 28, he labeled the coronavirus the "Democrat's new hoax", while this week he said, "“I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic … I’ve always viewed it as very serious.”

There is a chance chloroquine will help, but the evidence for its efficacy is largely anecdotal. It's stupid to place our hopes in this one thing - consider the impact if it doesn't pan out. Earlier this week he made some stupid comments about a vaccine being available in a matter of months, only to be immediately contradicted by Antony Fauci. If Trump's going to continue with his idiocy, we'd all be better off if he'd stay in the background.

Real hope can be delivered by outlining how the government is staying ahead of the problem. This includes tracking critical supplies (ventilators, masks, gloves, hospital beds, medical staff...) and what's being done to address production and distribution problems. Projections on infection rates, hospitalization rates, and even death rates should be tracked and shared - as these reflect the demand side of the problem. Set benchmarks and track progress. Adjust response as necessary. These all show that things are under control, which is so much better than just lying and claiming things are under control as Trump had been doing.

I'll keep my day job, but first point me to the website that indicates that hydroxychloroquine is a corticosteroid so I'll know why I need to worry about the side effects of them. — Hanover

A drug that's helpful in one situation can be deadly in another, so you don't know if this drug is helpful or harmful in the case of coronavirus. None of us do.

I get what you're saying, but it's not just about the result, it's about the risk. Storytime: I live on a hill and I don't know if the brakes work in my car, but it's raining and my wife at the bus stop at the bottom the hill calls me to pick her up. I jump in the car and rush down the hill to get her. Luckily the brakes do work and I don't have an accident. Is what I did OK because there were no ill consequences? No, because I didn't have sufficient information to take that risk. I should have checked the brakes first or let her walk and get wet. What I did was dumb regardless of the result. I don't know in this case what information Trump is basing this on. If it's expert advice and it works, sure, he deserves credit for expediting it. If it's just a hunch and potentially dangerous then I should not be messing with your wife in the rain. Ah, or whatever.

In what sounds pretty much like a hunch based upon some anecdotal information, Trump is touting hydroxychloroquine as a likely cure for the coronavirus. He is trying to fast track its approval and start curing an ailing world. He was heavily criticized at his news conference as being a bit reckless with advocating unproven treatments and in creating false hope.

Suppose it works? Will he not be a great savior? — Hanover

I'm sure he would be proclaimed as a great savior by his constituency. That's the script they read from.

But, of course, Trump's hunches have no more epistemic value than tea-leaf reading. That's a lesson being learnt by those who bought stocks on the hunch that coronavirus was "totally under control".

This is a philosophy forum. Is accidental true belief praiseworthy? Should Trump proclaim certainty about things that he knows nothing about?

Nice crosspost. :up:

"While the president said he would continue to work with governors, “I don't think we'll ever find that necessary,” he said of a nationwide lockdown."

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/20/trump-coronavirus-nationwide-lockdown-139330

Prepare for a nationwide lockdown.

True to form, Trump is dealing with the problem of public fear by attacking the media:

"What do you say to Americans who are scared though? I guess, nearly 200 dead, 14,000 who are sick, millions, as you witnessed, who are scared right now," Alexander asked. "What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?"

“I say that you’re a terrible reporter,” Trump said. “That’s what I say. I think that’s a very nasty question. The American people are looking for answers and they’re looking for hope, and you’re doing sensationalism," Trump said. (Source)

Prepare for a nationwide lockdown. — Baden

I think the point is well made that it makes sense to lock down those areas where it's warranted. Just because it makes sense in New York, doesn't mean it makes sense in Montana. It's like asking whether Europe should go into lockdown. It sort of depends where.

I know. I was just having fun.

If it's just a hunch and potentially dangerous then I should not be messing with your wife in the rain. — Baden

Story time: The headlight on my car doesn't work and there are no replacements, so I rig up an old lightbulb to the front of my car to see if it works. It doesn't. I'm back to where I was and your wife doesn't have tire marks across her face and there's no other calamity.

That is to say, you've sort of made up the danger to the drug just like you accuse Trump of making up the effectiveness of it.

? But the drug is potentially dangerous.

"China, where the deadly pathogen first emerged in December, recommended the decades-old malaria drug chloroquine to treat infected patients in guidelines issued in February after seeing encouraging results in clinical trials. But within days, it cautioned doctors and health officials about the drug’s lethal side effects and rolled back its usage."

I didn't make that up. Whether or not it could also be effective is yet to be established. Let's pursue the line, but carefully. As Frank pointed out:

A drug that's helpful in one situation can be deadly in another, so you don't know if this drug is helpful or harmful in the case of coronavirus. None of us do. — frank

Fauci specifically said the same in the latest Trump presser btw. You can't presume someone with a different disease is going to react the same way to the same drug. You have to test first.

Is accidental true belief praiseworthy? — Andrew M

In the same sense it's praiseworthy when you play the $1 lottery and win $1,000,000 It's the same $1m whether you worked your ass off your whole life or whether you got lucky. Worst case you lost a $1.

True to form, Trump is dealing with the problem of public fear by attacking the media:

"What do you say to Americans who are scared though? I guess, nearly 200 dead, 14,000 who are sick, millions, as you witnessed, who are scared right now," Alexander asked. "What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?"

“I say that you’re a terrible reporter,” Trump said. “That’s what I say. I think that’s a very nasty question. The American people are looking for answers and they’re looking for hope, and you’re doing sensationalism," Trump said. (Source) — Relativist

Shows that he must be cracking under the pressure and what a terrible leader he is. Pence answered the same softball question by the same reporter in a normal reassuring way.

Being killed by the lethal side-effects of a drug untested in a particular infection context is not like losing a dollar.

"China, where the deadly pathogen first emerged in December, recommended the decades-old malaria drug chloroquine to treat infected patients in guidelines issued in February after seeing encouraging results in clinical trials. But within days, it cautioned doctors and health officials about the drug’s lethal side effects and rolled back its usage." — Baden

In my extensive studies of this drug, dating well back to 3, maybe 4 hours ago, I note there are actually two types of this drug. You have the older chloroquine which can have some nasty side effects, and then you have its less angry cousin hydroxychloroquine. As you will note from this article, that drug is not dangerous, but is as safe as a cup of hot cocoa on a blustery winter day: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-020-0156-0

Being killed by the lethal side-effects of a drug untested in a particular infection context is not like losing a dollar. — Baden

You've obviously never lost a dollar.

I did. I just bet @Michael you'd say something smart on this thread. Must have been the Guinness. :groan:

I did. I just bet Michael you'd say something smart on this thread. Must have been the Guinness. :groan: — Baden

Very suspicious. Why are you guys dealing in American currency?

Hey, if NOS is an American, we are too. :halo: :party:

Why are you guys dealing in American currency? — Hanover

Because it's worthless so we don't mind losing it.

Apparently, it was originally China's idea. — Baden

Any bets on whether Trump will start calling chloroquine The Chinese Cure?

It's like asking whether Europe should go into lockdown. It sort of depends where. — Hanover

Like just where in Europe there isn't a lockdown in one form or another? Sweden and the UK?

Lockdown is starting to be curfew. Bavaria has already implemented this. Whole of Germany might be following...

In Bavaria the only exceptions are to the curfew will be going to work, necessary shopping, visits to doctors and pharmacies, assisting others, visits from partners - and also exercise outside, but only alone or with other household members.

Visits to hospitals are also now forbidden in most circumstances and Söder urged employers to allow people to work from home. "The police will monitor and check all of this...anyone who breaks the rules can expect huge fines."

In fact similar rules are already here...without police yet giving huge fines. So I don't know what the really differences are.

The German government warned on Friday that it may have to impose a country-wide curfew on its 83 million citizens if they do not abide by social distancing over the weekend.

(Schools out! A pupil celebrating that gymnasium is over in Finland. Perhaps interested in studying medicine in the university?)

(This is part of a post I posted on a different thread. I believe it is worth repeating here.)

I think the quaranteening movement actually can stop the virus from spreading. If all people who have got it are quaranteened for three weeks, the virus will die in them. Some will die with the virus, but the virus in the survivors also will die.

If some of the carriers pass it on, and quaranteening continues, in the next generation of virus infections there will be fewer people infected.

And in the next, even fewer.

Depending on how stringently we do the quaranteening, and the contact avoidance, thus the spread avoidance, the stoppage of the spread and the killling of all viruses will be inversely proportional in time and in number of generations with the stringency and success of quaranteening

Better quaranteening = fewer generations of infections, shorter diesease time before the virus dies out (becomes extinct.)

Continuation of my previous post: The alternative of course is to allow COVID-19 to spread freely. In this case, depending on the nature and efficiency of contacts, the virus will go though everyone, and die out with the last person's hosting the virus.

This has difficulties, too. This presumes no reinfection is possible. But the COVID-19 virus is mutating quickly. If the mutants are impervious to the antibodies in the previously infected surviving people, the thing can go on forever.

Sure, many governments and banks will need to introduce similar strategies. But how long could it be sustained?

Also, will it only be those who simply cannot pay their mortgage or rent who are exempt from payments?

You realize that pumping money into the system will cause inflation, especially if there is a shortage of goods in the system?

I'm not saying governments won't be able to handle this; but I'm not confident that they will either. Of course, I realize it's always better to maintain an optimistic outlook... :wink:

So, my point is; remain open to the possibility that this won't end well, and that the economy will not be able to recover, and resume business as usual. Of course if business as usual is not reinstated, then that will surely be best for the planet, if not for our comfortable lifetsyles.