Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19) and Tinnitus

[Bill Bauer]

regularly conveys that virology is not his area of expertise

Would you prefer that he lie about it, and pretend that it is?

 

[Bill Bauer]

My friend just sent me this but here is another example of Trump being pretty confused about medicine/virology as well (watch the whole thing):

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/t...to-the-body-to-treat-coronavirus-824709817524

At one point he suggests looking into injecting the body with disinfectants.

I saw that as I was finalizing my long post.

I guess he seems to know less about biology than would seem reasonable. But the important thing is that, unless I am missing something, it didn't seem to have had a significant negative impact on the actual policy.

 

[another sean]

 

[Hazel]

Hey there, hope you all caught our latest podcast episode about the Coronavirus and tinnitus! You can listen to it here. We interviewed a bunch of Tinnitus Talk members, including @Ed209, so it's also a chance to hear from them 'live'!

 

[david c]

I must say that given that I often (though not always) agree with @Bill Bauer on matters tinnitus, particularly regarding the dangers of loud noise exposure, I am somewhat surprised by his views on coronavirus.

For me it seems my views on tinnitus, which are: (avoid large, noisy crowd situations where possible; be always aware of the dangers of loud noise exposure; have hearing protections always on hand but don't rely on it completely to protect your ears), these views align closely with my coronavirus views, avoid large crowd situations, practise social distancing as much as possible, useful to have a face mask to hand but don't rely on them completely to protect from coronavirus.

Maybe, I don't know, Bill's allowed his medical views to be influenced by political views. But when you have a US President seriously suggesting ingesting disinfectant might be a solution to coronavirus words begin to fail ...

 

[FGG]

I saw that as I was finalizing my long post.

I guess he seems to know less about biology than would seem reasonable. But the important thing is that, unless I am missing something, it didn't seem to have had a significant negative impact on the actual policy.

It has to. He was literally lying when he said the doctors are looking into using UV light and systemic disinfectants to treat people. He knows that's not true.

He does not have the curiosity to actually learn the biology and just riffs with whatever his "big brain" (he has repeatedly mentioned his big brain "really understands this Corona virus stuff!" -- I can find you that video too I think) thinks about the situation.

Even if that didn't have ramifications on actual policy (which I doubt), he has repeatedly mischaracterized the virus and preventative measures to the American people.

 

[FGG]

Has the guest confirmed that it will take them months to find volunteers?

I don't remember him specifically commenting on that aspect.

 

[Autumnly]

I searched news.google.com and YouTube, but couldn't find anything. May I ask for a link? I would like to see whether this has had any influence on his policies.

• February 26, 2020: "And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done." source
• March 29, 2020: "So you're talking about 2.2 million deaths, 2.2 million people, from this. And so, if we could hold that down, as we're saying, to 100,000 — it's a horrible number — maybe even less, but to 100,000 — so we have between 100,000 to 200,000, we, all together, have done a very good job."

Here's a list with other statements by him.

 

[Lane]

he has repeatedly mentioned his big brain "really understands this Corona virus stuff!"

Ya reckon there's a "big brain" in there somewhere?

 

[Jack V]

Would you prefer that he lie about it, and pretend that it is?

Trump, yesterday:

"Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light … and then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're gonna test that too, sounds interesting. And then I see disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute — one minute — and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it'd be interesting to check that. So, that you're going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me."

 

[Lane]

"Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light …

@Jack V -- In all fairness to Trump, it should be noted that he appeared to be making extemporaneous comments after a Homeland Security official commented fairly extensively on these topics. Below is a link to a 2 1/2 minute video, which gives some insight into what actually transpired at the news briefing. -- I actually don't care for the way the press is (somewhat inaccurately) characterizing this.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/do...e-it-s-dangerous-experts-rip-trump-s-n1191246

I mostly agree with the comments coming out of the White House this morning (below). For clarification, this is one of the first times I've been in agreement with their commuications. And to "fess up", it almost "pains" me to agree do so. But I will when I feel they're being treated unfairly treated and mischaracterized. -- It's almost always the other way around, with them mischaracterizing most everything.
......................................

The White House claimed Friday morning that the media was mischaracterizing Trump's comments regarding coronavirus treatment.

"President Trump has repeatedly said that Americans should consult with medical doctors regarding coronavirus treatment, a point that he emphasized again during yesterday's briefing," White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement. "Leave it to the media to irresponsibly take President Trump out of context and run with negative headlines."​

 

[Jack V]

@Jack V -- In all fairness to Trump, it should be noted that he appeared to be making extemporaneous comments after a Homeland Security official commented fairly extensively on these topics. Below is a link to a 2 1/2 minute video, which gives some insight into what actually transpired at the news briefing. -- I actually don't care for the way the press is (somewhat inaccurately) characterizing this.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/do...e-it-s-dangerous-experts-rip-trump-s-n1191246

I mostly agree with the comments coming out of the White House this morning (below). For clarification, this is one of the first times I've been in agreement with their commuications. And to "fess up", it almost "pains" me to agree do so. But I will when I feel they're being treated unfairly treated and mischaracterized. -- It's almost always the other way around, with them mischaracterizing most everything.
......................................

The White House claimed Friday morning that the media was mischaracterizing Trump's comments regarding coronavirus treatment.

"President Trump has repeatedly said that Americans should consult with medical doctors regarding coronavirus treatment, a point that he emphasized again during yesterday's briefing," White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement. "Leave it to the media to irresponsibly take President Trump out of context and run with negative headlines."​

It's a mischaracterization to quote his entire statement word for word?

 

[Lilah]

Finding it hard to believe the recent surveys/studies which indicate HCQ is dangerous, or worsens coronavirus, especially since there were quite a doctors who say it works. The treatment for coronavirus is only for 10 days or so. I think doctors are using 400 to 600mg per day, max. Meanwhile, a lot of lupus/RA patients have been taking HCQ 200 to 400mg/day for DECADES and still no/minor side effects. Obviously I am not pushing for HCQ (if it is not working), but I am seeing political bias/elements here. If it does work, but not used for treatment, that's unfortunate.

 

[Lane]

It's a mischaracterization to quote his entire statement word for word?

I was referring to his (exact) words and comments not being contextualized properly. In the 2 1/2 video I linked to, the Homeland Security official talked for about 2/3 of that time, while Trump's extemporaneous comments were less than a minute. I just thought the video provided a much better context. -- News organizations are notorious for taking things out of context (usually to try to improve viewership), and this appears to be just one example of that.

BTW, UV light and other modalities (such as ozone) are well known for being able to kill viruses and other pathogens. So what the Homeland Security official was saying does have some merit. Some have argued that a combination of UV light and ozone could vastly improve the safety of the nations blood supply, because it would be relatively easy to treat all blood that's donated.

 

[FGG]

I was referring to his (exact) words and comments not being contextualized properly. In the 2 1/2 video I linked to, the Homeland Security official talked for about 2/3 of that time, while Trump's extemporaneous comments were less than a minute. I just thought the video provided a much better context. -- News organizations are notorious for taking things out of context (usually to try to improve viewership), and this appears to be just one example of that.

BTW, UV light and other modalities (such as ozone) are well known for being able to kill viruses and other pathogens. So what the Homeland Security official was saying does have some merit. Some have argued that a combination of UV light and ozone could vastly improve the safety of the nations blood supply, because it would be relatively easy to treat all blood that's donated.

While news organizations can take things out of context at times with clever editing, this was absolutely not the case here.

 

[Bill Bauer]

Trump, yesterday:

""Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light … and then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're gonna test that too, sounds interesting. And then I see disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute — one minute — and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it'd be interesting to check that. So, that you're going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. "

It sounded like nonsense to me too when I first heard it. But I guess he was talking about

and Dr. Birx wasn't familiar with the research at Cedars-Sinai.
They are injecting intubation tubes, and using UV light as a disinfectant.

He should have just showed the clip during his next press conference instead of attempting to describe the technology. Or it was a (successful) attempt to make his critics look like idiots by getting them to laugh at him and then demonstrating the clip.

 

[Lane]

OK, I've given Trump & Co. a brief reprieve (first one since the 2016 election), but it's now over. Just ran across this cute 3 minute video. For those who are ready for a little humor:

The Liar Tweets Tonight

P.S. -- Well, I've watched it a couple more times, and it's gone from "cute" to fairly uproarious. I seem to catch a new facial expression from the "stars" of the video every time I watch it. Almost 4 million views in 3 days.

 

[FGG]

It sounded like nonsense to me too when I first heard it. But I guess he was talking about

and Dr. Birx wasn't familiar with the research at Cedars-Sinai.
They are injecting intubation tubes, and using UV light as a disinfectant.

He should have just showed the clip during his next press conference instead of attempting to describe the technology. Or it was a (successful) attempt to make his critics look like idiots by getting them to laugh at him and then demonstrating the clip.

Where did you find this video? It was only posted 17 hours ago on YouTube and there is zero reference to it on Aytu's website. I also can't find the Ceders-Sinai research. Link?

Edit: Nevermind I found a blurb about it, it's pre-clinical.

If it's related, and I'm not sure it is since he also mentioned isopropyl alcohol IV injections, perhaps the company was looking to Trump to plug it for them since the Cedar-Sinai research hasn't even been done yet.

 

[FGG]

Now he's claiming it was all sarcasm:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...virus-inject-disinfectant-quote-a9483151.html

 

[aot]

Now he's claiming it was all sarcasm:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...virus-inject-disinfectant-quote-a9483151.html

Has his whole presidency thus far been sarcastic as well?

 

[Bill Bauer]

Where did you find this video? It was only posted 17 hours ago on YouTube

Scott Adams has tweeted a link to it, and it ended up being in my Twitter feed.

perhaps the company was looking to Trump to plug it

He must be getting briefings about the research that goes on, and he talks about it during his press conferences.

he also mentioned isopropyl alcohol IV injections

Are you talking about

And then I see disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute — one minute — and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning.

In this context, "disinfectant" stands for UV light, and not for isopropyl alcohol.

Now he's claiming it was all sarcasm:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...virus-inject-disinfectant-quote-a9483151.html

contending he was asking his medical advisers to examine the impact sunlight has on the virus, not disinfectants

That part of it is plausible. Right?

 

[Bill Bauer]

He was literally lying when he said the doctors are looking into using UV light and systemic disinfectants to treat people. He knows that's not true.

Would you like to take that back?

On Feb. 10, he repeatedly predicted ― at a meeting with governors, at a campaign rally and in a Fox Business interview ― that the coronavirus would no longer be a problem by April.

In light of the findings regarding the effect of sunlight on the virus reported at that "disinfectant" press conference, would you like to acknowledge that there was something to the prediction above (after April UV is more intense in the Northern Hemisphere so the time when virus can stay on surfaces and infect others will be hundreds of times shorter, resulting in a significantly lower rate of transmission), which was based on what we know about the seasonality of coronaviruses, that is the result of their vulnerability to sunlight?

 

[Bill Bauer]

For me it seems my views on tinnitus, which are: (avoid large, noisy crowd situations where possible; be always aware of the dangers of loud noise exposure; have hearing protections always on hand but don't rely on it completely to protect your ears), these views align closely with my coronavirus views, avoid large crowd situations, practise social distancing as much as possible, useful to have a face mask to hand but don't rely on them completely to protect from coronavirus.

Damn - I am spending Way too much time contributing to this thread. I should be working!

I am finding it irresistible not to respond when it appears to me that someone on the internet is wrong.

In any case - here it goes. As I had indicated in an earlier post, my Initial reaction was anger at the concept of waiting for "herd immunity" to set in, instead of enforcing quarantines and banning flights. But it hasn't occurred to me that locking down planet Earth was a possibility.

This virus is deadly for the elderly and those with serious preexisting conditions (something like 95% of those who die have a serious preexisting condition). We could achieve 95% of the benefit that we are achieving with locking down Earth by isolating those vulnerable individuals. If we encourage people to not have any social events that involve large gatherings and have the employers provide their employees with masks and hand sanitizer, the cost would be a small fraction of the cost of the lockdown and it seems to me that we would be able to get another 3 or 4% of the current benefit. So we are paying an enormous cost (that involves the broken lives of graduate students who graduate this year to learn that they will never be able to be get a teaching job as a result of hiring freezes, business owners losing their business, etc., etc.) for 1% of the benefit.

To me an appropriate analogy is if metal shopping carts, vacuum cleaners, and power tools were to be banned everywhere on Earth (along with social gatherings that might get loud), to protect people with T. It would make more sense to just provide earplugs to the people suffering from T and ask the rest of the people to voluntarily go out of their way to not surprise strangers by loud noises.

A second component is that back when I was advocating strong government action, I was assuming that we were given the right mortality figures. But the projection fell from over 2 million to 60,000 dead in the US. It is very fishy that they could be orders of magnitude wrong like that. How could they have locked down Earth before finding out how deadly this thing is (their mortality figures were "number of die"/"number who tested positive", but "number that tested positive" is a poor proxy for "number that got infected"; they should have selected people at random to be tested and then found out what fraction of the sample were infected and what fraction ended up dying).

 

[Bill Bauer]

February 26, 2020: "And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done." source

On February 26 there were 0 US deaths and 53 US cases. Why wasn't it reasonable to hope that contact tracing would succeed in putting an end to that epidemic?

March 29, 2020: "So you're talking about 2.2 million deaths, 2.2 million people, from this. And so, if we could hold that down, as we're saying, to 100,000 — it's a horrible number — maybe even less, but to 100,000 — so we have between 100,000 to 200,000, we, all together, have done a very good job."

In your opinion, what is wrong with this statement?

But when you have a US President seriously suggesting ingesting disinfectant might be a solution to coronavirus words begin to fail ...

Would you like to take that back?

OK, I've given Trump & Co. a brief reprieve (first one since the 2016 election), but it's now over. Just ran across this cute 3 minute video. For those who are ready for a little humor:

The Liar Tweets Tonight

P.S. -- Well, I've watched it a couple more times, and it's gone from "cute" to fairly uproarious. I seem to catch a new facial expression from the "stars" of the video every time I watch it. Almost 4 million views in 3 days.

Is the above your response to my reply to your post? Please confirm that you can't think of an actual problem with the points I made, but instead of admitting this in a post, you decided to just post a funny meme.

 

[FGG]

Scott Adams has tweeted a link to it, and it ended up being in my Twitter feed.

He must be getting briefings about the research that goes on, and he talks about it during his press conferences.

Are you talking about

In this context, "disinfectant" stands for UV light, and not for isopropyl alcohol.

That part of it is plausible. Right?

If you watch the original video I posted, he talks about the UV light and if there are studies and and then goes onto talk separately about the disinfectant that kills in a minute (isopropyl alcohol) and then suggests maybe that disinfectant should be used IV (or at least in the body in some way).

He also claims (today) he was only talking about sunlight and disinfectants on the skin/hands and the rest (including talk on UV therapeutically) was sarcasm which was absolutely not how it comes off in the press conference bc he wasn't directing a sarcastic question to the reporter as claimed but rather directly turning to his scientific advisor to ask that. It comes off like an attempt to reframe it to save face.

 

[linearb]

I think the problem is that Trump has a tendency to both repeat whatever the last thing he was told was, but also to not really have understood it and so paraphrase it in ways that make this obvious.

I think any presidential admin woulda gotten their pants pulled down by this event; Crimson Contagion and Event 201 drills made this obvious. However, the Trump admin conducted Crimson Contagion and they had a full six months to put something in place in response. They did nothing, which is worse than doing something, even if most of the somethings they would have been likely to do, might not have been super super effective.

For what it's worth, my fatalistic relative who has spent their life chasing infectious diseases doing research, said this to me yesterday, about COVI-19:

we are lucky to get a trial run with a bug of low virulence albeit a very transmissible one.

So, we have a bug that has exposed massive flaws in the global response to bugs and brought many economic engines to standstill or worse -- and my one relative who has spent their life studying this stuff thinks this is a "trial run".

I'm inclined to agree, but, if we did have something this transmissible that had a 5-10% mortality across all age groups, I think you would be looking at total societal breakdown. A worse disease emerging seems inevitable, maybe we can learn from this?

That part of it is plausible. Right?

Yes and no; there's been pretty extensive attempts at study in terms of the real effects of weather; there may be some benefit, but the fact that Ecuador is having a massive explosion right now tempers the "summer will slow this down" argument, and there is no mechanism to get "sunlight" inside the human body (only very specific frequencies of IR penetrate deep).

I might accuse a different president of cherry picking data and studies to support a narrative, but in Trump's case I really think it is just him repeating something he was just told but only half-understood.

The press is poised at this point to take any gaffe he commits and highlight it, but it's shooting fish in a barrel. I don't believe that, at a core level, the press is "unamerican", or trying to do anything other than make a revenue stream based on what sells, but also still in some cases on a genuine desire to inform. (I know a number of journalists, and they span a spectrum).

 

[Bill Bauer]

If you watch the original video I posted,

I attempted to do that, but the link isn't working for me (I tried multiple browsers). Is it still working for you? I also attempted to find another clip or a full transcript of that press conference and I couldn't. There are countless stories that Quote the conference, but none of them provide a full transcript. Would anyone have a link to the conference?

the fact that Ecuador is having a massive explosion right now

They've had only 576 deaths. Many people live communally in crowded conditions in the slums. So there's that.

 

[FGG]

Would you like to take that back?

In light of the findings regarding the effect of sunlight on the virus reported at that "disinfectant" press conference, would you like to acknowledge that there was something to the prediction above (after April UV is more intense in the Northern Hemisphere so the time when virus can stay on surfaces and infect others will be hundreds of times shorter, resulting in a significantly lower rate of transmission), which was based on what we know about the seasonality of coronaviruses, that is the result of their vulnerability to sunlight?

If he somehow knew about Healight in pre-clinical than he was speaking honestly but absolutely no one is researching using systemic isopropyl alcohol (which is very neurotoxic systemically).

Regardless, he clearly knows how ridiculous it sounded and is trying to say it was just a dig at reporters now which is not at all how the footage reads.

 

[FGG]

I attempted to do that, but the link isn't working for me (I tried multiple browsers). Is it still working for you? I also attempted to find another clip or a full transcript of that press conference and I couldn't. There are countless stories that Quote the conference, but none of them provide a full transcript. Would anyone have a link to the conference?

They've had only 576 deaths. Many people live communally in crowded conditions in the slums. So there's that.

WTH, it worked perfectly fine last night. It's no longer working for me, either. Not sure what the issue is.

 

[FGG]

@Bill Bauer , I found it in this Twitter feed (2nd video down atm) but it's missing the first part immediately preceding where the Dr says rubbing alcohol kills Covid in a minute.