The company who makes the drug has shown from their own study that it is very effective – https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/gilead-says-remdesivir-coronavirus-treatment-reduces-risk-of-death.html

“Gilead Sciences announced new findings Friday that its antiviral drug remdesivir reduced the risk of death for severely sick coronavirus patients by 62% compared with standard care alone, saying more research is needed. he company said its analysis also found that remdesivir treatment was associated with “significantly improved clinical recovery.” The findings are being presented at the Virtual Covid-19 Conference as part of the 23rd International AIDS Conference, the company said.”

Given the US paid 1.2B at $2340 per treatment it had better shown something. IS it still worth it? What was Standard Care? Could standard care be also compared to HCQ with Zinc which is under $10?

Let us not highlight this other study – since not produced from the company and perhaps would not support the market rally – https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.27.174896v1.full.pdf

“After designing 56 residues in the Remdesivir binding site of nsp12, the designs retained 96-98% sequence identity, which suggests that SARS-CoV-2 attains resistance and develops further infectivity with very few mutations in the nsp12.”

“A comparison of 21 nsp12 Remdesivir-bound designs to the 13 EIDD-2801-bound nsp12 designs suggested that EIDD-2801 would be more effective in preventing the emergence of resistant mutations and against Remdesivir-resistance strains due to the restricted mutational landscape.

Covid-19 based on their findings will likely develop a resistance to Remdesivir ….thats not good news. Interesting they compare it to EIDD-2801 – this is another experimental drug from a Miami based company Ridgeback Biotherapeutics – this is an oral drug unlike Remdesivir which is an IV treatment.

Automation acceleration due to Covid – https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/10/business/tyson-meatpacking-plants-automation/index.html?

“Tyson, which has invested a half of a billion dollars in technology and automation during the past three years, is now expediting its efforts, according to the Journal report”

Andrew Yang is right

Why not do somethings simple and easy and proven to be not fatal and limited side effects – BCG vaccine – risk/reward asymmetric – let people get BCG vaccine at least give it to the kids per the benefits- https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/07/07/2008410117

“A strong correlation between the BCG index, an estimation of the degree of universal BCG vaccination deployment in a country, and COVID-19 mortality in different socially similar European countries was observed (r2 = 0.88; P = 8 × 10−7), indicating that every 10% increase in the BCG index was associated with a 10.4% reduction in COVID-19 mortality. Results fail to confirm the null hypothesis of no association between BCG vaccination and COVID-19 mortality, and suggest that BCG could have a protective effect.”

“In the last 10 y, several studies demonstrated that the priming or “training” of the innate immune system is an ancient response observed in evolutionarily distant organisms, including plants (40), insects (41), and humans (42). Trained immunity, defined as the enhancement in innate immune responses to subsequent infections, is achieved through epigenetic and metabolic programming of immune cells that allows them to mount a stronger response to pathogens and to activate adaptive responses more efficiently (43). Trained immunity can confer broad protection that is not pathogen specific. For example, BCG vaccination is approved as a treatment for cancer of the bladder, and destruction of cancer cells has been shown to be mediated by trained immunity (44). Furthermore, BCG vaccination has been shown to elicit long-lasting innate immune responses, beyond those specific to mycobacteria (45), and to modify hematopoietic stem cells, resulting in epigenetically modified macrophages that provide significantly better protection against virulent M. tuberculosis infection than naïve macrophages (46). Taken together, our current understanding of broad immune protection mediated by trained immunity and the epidemiologic evidence of long-lasting protection from viral infections of the respiratory tract, conferred by BCG vaccination, offer a rational biological basis for the potential protective effect of BCG vaccination from severe COVID-19. This response to BCG vaccination appears to be mediated by a mechanism different from the cellular immune response that confers protection from systemic TB in children (13).”

Brazil tops again 1214. US 802 but with 67K confirmation.

CA tops the death chart at 96. Confirmations are the usual suspects CA, FL, TX, AZ

Once again the usual counties LA, Maricopa, Miami-Dade and Harris.

LA county is showing a slight increase in death/confirmation.

Harris county another spike in confirmation 1081. Death hit new daily max death of 16.

ICU bed availability drop for TSA Houston under 100. We will see soon whether the ICU beds number get revised or we are in a real bind.

The US has out tested all the countries in the world by multiples. Wonder who paid for all this? Russia is second place in testing

US has now confirmed nearly 1% of the population in US has been infected by covid-19