Tag Archives: COVID

Just out, Better the drug you know: commentary on Daughton 2020, Natural Experiment Concept to Accelerate the Re-purposing of Existing Therapeutics for Covid-19 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590113320300110

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Broadbent A. 2020. Better the drug you know: commentary on Daughton 2020, Natural Experiment Concept to Accelerate the Re-purposing of Existing Therapeutics for Covid-19. Global Epidemiology 2(10027):1-2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloepi.2020.100027

This is a (positive) commentary on what I thought was a really useful idea for accelerating research into anti-COVID drugs, which I shared previously and which you can (and should) read here:

Daughton CG. 2020. Natural experiment concept to accelerate the re-purposing of existingtherapeutics for Covid-19. Global Epidemiology 2(100026):1–6.66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloepi.2020.100026

And the author Christian Daughton posted a reply to my commentary here:

Daughton CG. 2020. Response to: Broadbent 2020, Better the drug you know: Commentary on “Daughton 2020, Natural experiment concept to accelerate the re-purposing of existing therapeutics for Covid-19”. Global Epidemiology 2(100028):1-2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloepi.2020.100028

 

“the truth is that lockdown is a luxury, and it’s a luxury that the middle classes are enjoying and higher income countries are enjoying at the expense of the poor, the vulnerable and less developed countries” Sunetra Gupta @FreddieSayers @unherd

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https://unherd.com/2020/05/oxford-doubles-down-sunetra-gupta-interview/

Loads of great points

  • COVID on the way out in UK
  • Antibody tests unreliable, don’t show prevalence
  • Infections rates shouldn’t even be reported; dependent on testing
  • R number depends on immunity and thus a red herring
  • Everywhere same curve: up, then gently down (resonant of Michael Levitt’s interview in the same place). Immunity explains better than a load of different explanations for all the countries with different measures.
  • And lockdown is retrogressive, not progressive; it’s dumb to bundle up the anti-lockdown people as on the right (or left I guess). It’s a luxury that the rich can afford and the poor can’t.

This Thursday at 11:30am (via Zoom) the @CHESS_DurhamUni reading group will be discussing our recent report from the IFK, ‘A Framework for Decisions in a Post-COVID World’ by @AlexBroadbent

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This Thursday at 11:30am (via Zoom) the @CHESS_DurhamUni reading group will be discussing ‘A Framework for Decisions in a Post-COVID World‘ by @AlexBroadbent . . . please contact admin.chess@durham.ac.uk for the paper and joining instructions #COVID19 #socialpolicy #policymakers

Video now up – the first in our series of webinars, Reimagining the world after COVID-19, with Joyce Banda, Johan Giesecke and Sehaam Khan

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This event took place on Wednesday 13 May 2020.

 

A simple and FAST method for identifying existing drugs that may work against COVID-19 has just been published: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590113320300109 This deserves to be widely read and tried. #epitwitter

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Daughton CG. Natural experiment concept to accelerate the Re-purposing of existing therapeutics for Covid-19. Global Epidemiology 2:1-6.

I’ve got a commentary coming out soon too.

 

“Two months later, it has not been the worst-case scenario many envisioned,” says the New York Times (strongly pro-lockdown, as a rule). In other words: what critics of Sweden said two months ago was entirely wrong.

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nyti.ms/2ZcFmmm

Let’s see whether the Swedes continue to be right, about the advantages of their strategy over a longer time frame.

Chief of Health at UNICEF Stefan Peterson @stefanswartpet tells @Telegraph what he told us weeks ago: that the lockdown will kill children and most likely more people than it saves

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https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/unicef-warns-lockdown-could-kill-covid-19-model-predicts-12/

It’s important to bear in mind that the appropriate comparison is not lockdown-or-bust, but lockdown vs. some more moderate and contextually feasible social distancing measures in conjunction with protection of vulnerable groups.

The documentary where he told us this to us is below.

7 minute low-res version:

 

30 minute high res version:

SA government being taken to court over lockdown

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https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2020-05-14-da-and-ff-to-challenge-lockdown-constitutionality/

Steenhuisen (leader of the Opposition): “The state of disaster we are currently under, governed by the Disaster Management Act, has zero provision for parliamentary oversight. Which means this secretive NCC answers to no-one. Not even a state of emergency, which is a further step up from a state of disaster, has such sweeping powers with no parliamentary oversight.”

Tracing apps are untested medical interventions , says The Economist

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https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/05/16/dont-rely-on-contact-tracing-apps

The Economist argues that hopes should not be pinned in tracing apps which might not work. Medicine is littered with medical interventions that failed, sometimes harmfully. What is different?

One difference is that this is not a biomedical intervention. However, public health is also littered with ineffective or harmful interventions with dangerous consequences (perhaps the effects of lockdown on mass migration being a case in point). It is interesting that governments should consider giving this potential solution a free pass, so to speak, without testing or an evidence base – perhaps because it hs a technological flavor?