
Clinical trials launch to test coronavirus treatments - sohkamyung
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00444-3
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3fe9a03ccd14ca5
> _Another study — a 300-person controlled trial — will test serum from
> COVID-19 survivors. The bare-bones strategy, based on the idea that the
> antibodies one person steadily builds up to fight a virus can rapidly help
> someone freshly infected to fight it off, has had modest success when used
> to treat other viruses in decades past_

I’m surprised we don’t see this type of treatment more often. It might be
worth it to set up infrastructure to do this type of treatment at scale
everywhere, since it presumably works in _most_ recoverable viral infections.

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londons_explore
It has many of the same risks as cannibalism - there are lots of unknown
viruses and proteins that normally don't get transferred from person to
person, but could cause harm, and if you start distributing them widely,
you're gonna have problems.

~~~
blueprint
can the relevant antibodies be isolated?

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londons_explore
Viruses and prions are so small it's pretty much impossible to be sure you
have removed them all from some sample.

Sure you can remove most, but you'll never get all of them.

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hurrdurr2
They literally have a trial on Forsythia.

If I recall this was the snakeoil peddled as a miracle cure in the plotline to
the movie Contagion.

~~~
Alex3917
I mean it makes sense. We already know Forsythia is safe-ish to eat, has
antiviral properties, and it's probably growing within a couple blocks of
wherever you live. If it works for COVID-19 then that's kind of the ideal
scenario. ~80% of people recover on their own, so a treatment doesn't even
need to work that well if it's something that's safe enough for people to just
start taking as soon as they get symptoms but before they're sick enough to
warrant seeing a doctor, if at that point it can actually make a difference in
clinical outcomes.

Something that slows down viral growth by 10% isn't going to do anything if
you start taking it a week after you get sick, but if you start taking it at
t=0 it could make an enormous difference.

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koheripbal
> ~80% of people recover on their own, so a treatment doesn't even need to
> work that well...

20% of people needing hospitalization and 5-10% needing mechanical ventilation
in an ICU does NOT mean treatments don't need to be very effective. ...unless
you assume your in the 80% and you don't care about anyone else.

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wyxuan
This is crazy fast. Usually hit to target takes almost a year, and they are
doing this all in less than a month.

~~~
DarthGhandi
Quite sure they had a Zika virus vaccine completed within a few months after
the outbreak. Obviously getting regulatory approval takes much, much longer
but people would probably be surprised how quickly such things can be
developed.

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koheripbal
Zika vaccine is still in clinical trials.

~~~
DarthGhandi
> Obviously getting regulatory approval takes much, much longer

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AtomicOrbital
Interesting ethics of using people as the null hypothesis population knowing
they are then condemned to death

~~~
loeg
You give the control arm the current best standard of care until and unless it
becomes statistically obvious that your test arm is better and then ethically
you're supposed to switch everyone to the drug at that point. It's not like
the control group is denied the best care we know how to provide, just to
accommodate experimentation.

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corona-chan
The official infection and death numbers in China appear to be completely
fabricated as they followed an almost perfect quadratic progression:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/ez13dv/oc_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/ez13dv/oc_quadratic_coronavirus_epidemic_growth_model/)

None of the various measures taken to contain the outbreak have affected those
numbers.

This apparently has happened before with organ donation data:
[https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s129...](https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12910-019-0406-6#citeas)

~~~
knzhou
This is a breathtakingly stupid abuse of data analysis. Which of course means
it's at the top of Reddit's r/bestof, with thousands of upvotes.

Let's take a look at that paper you linked. The supposedly damning point is
that you can fit the data extremely well with a quadratic, in the sense that
R^2 is high. However, the data points are rapidly increasing, and because of
the way R^2 works, that means only the last ~4 data points have any impact on
R^2 at all. The statement of the paper boils down to the claim that you can
fit 4 data points on a smooth curve accurately using a 3-parameter fit whose
form you got to choose. This is obviously true, for _any_ 4 data points.

It's too bad that reason goes out the window whenever China is involved.

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corona-chan
I'm sorry, but I don't quite understand your point. There are far more than 4
data points fitting the curve smoothly. Shouldn't the data have a lot more
variation for something like this?

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knzhou
I'm responding to the paper you linked, where you assert "this has happened
before".

The story with the Reddit link is similar: at the time of the posting, only ~6
data points actually mattered for R^2, so you would expect R^2 to be very
high. (The fit is extremely poor for the first ~6 data points, but that
doesn't affect R^2 at all.) After the last date on the chart shown, the R^2
begins to plummet. This is also exactly what you would generically expect.

Amusingly, _both_ of these totally ordinary results are taken as evidence for
a conspiracy: the 6 points that fit are taken to be fabricated, and the
subsequent points are taken to be fabricated _with the sole purpose of
throwing off people on Reddit_. But if you can claim evidence for a conspiracy
no matter what the numbers are, has something gone wrong in your reasoning
process? You be the judge!

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corona-chan
I would say the numbers deviating from the model after it has been publicized
and discussed online are still evidence against the data being fabricated, but
weaker than it could have been because there were definitely Chinese people
watching those discussion on social media, and so the idea that they might
have corrected the mistake and started adding more variation isn't that
unlikely.

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russli1993
wow you make it sound like someone is sitting in front of a computer, watching
reaction of foreigners on reddit, and tweaking the numbers on an excel sheet.
Really? You know, Chinese ppl online really hoped it wasnt a quadratic curve.
If the government was just making up the numbers and trying to hide the
problem, why not make it linear, or square root? why pick quadratic, such
terrifying curve...why say its cornavirus at all? just say its flu, its
pneumonia, its a terrible flu season. If all the government cares about is
money and economy, why shut down the cities at all and destroy the economy in
the processes. When economy is down, business will go bankrupt, people will be
pissed, and maybe they will revolt. Why go through all this trouble and not
deflect the issue or take no responsibility at all. Isn't all about protecting
people and keep people from getting sick? oh btw, now that model doesnt fit
anymore, the reported number is higher than the predicted model

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corona-chan
I have no doubt there are Chinese propagandists sitting in front of computers
watching and interacting with foreigners. I don't know why you think that idea
is so ridiculous. The west does it, why wouldn't China?

You're asking a bunch of unrelated questions. It's pretty obvious the epidemic
in China is very serious. That's why they are taking all those measures.

