Good news day focus…

New mechanical solutions to reduce viral load coming out – at some point govt. need to mandate some options for public spaces much as they do with mask wearing – reducing viral load is key. https://uh.edu/news-events/stories/july-2020/07142020ren-covid-filter

“Researchers from the University of Houston, in collaboration with others, have designed a “catch and kill” air filter that can trap the virus responsible for COVID-19, killing it instantly.

Zhifeng Ren, director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH, collaborated with Monzer Hourani, CEO of Medistar, a Houston-based medical real estate development firm, and other researchers to design the filter, which is described in a paper published in Materials Today Physics.

The researchers reported that virus tests at the Galveston National Laboratory found 99.8% of the novel SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, was killed in a single pass through a filter made from commercially available nickel foam heated to 200 degrees Centigrade, or about 392 degrees Fahrenheit. It also killed 99.9% of the anthrax spores in testing at the national lab, which is run by the University of Texas Medical Branch.”

Another mechanical solution to reduce viral load and also deactivates the virus – https://weartv.com/news/local/cantonment-based-manufacturing-company-invents-virus-killing-mask

“McDivitt said studies show their ‘Acteev’ material kills 99% of viruses, including the Coronavirus.

The product has active zinc in it that destroys viruses and bacteria.

It’s being used in three masks they’ve developed, which the company said are more effective than those on the market right now.”

““It’s going to be completely different than a general purpose mask or a N-95 because those masks– the way they work is they’re simply just trying to stop the virus. They actually don’t do anything to deactivate the virus or kill the virus,” said McDivitt.

McDivitt told Channel 3 News the basic version of the mask, which resembles a surgical mask, will cost several dollars.”

Making covid-19 no more impactful than common cold via a cholesterol drug – https://www.jpost.com/health-science/hebrew-u-scientist-drug-could-eradicate-covid-19-from-lungs-in-days-635028

Noted another win for a vegan diet – given vegan diet is essentially a no cholesterol diet.

“Researchers at Israel’s Hebrew University of Jerusalem and New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center believe they could potentially downgrade COVID-19’s severity into nothing worse than a common cold.

New research by Hebrew University Prof. Ya’acov Nahmias and Sinai’s Dr. Benjamin tenOever revealed that the FDA-approved drug Fenofibrate (Tricor) could reduce SARS-CoV-2’s ability to reproduce or even make it disappear.”

“Nahmias and tenOever spent the last three months studying what SARS-CoC-2 is doing to human lung cells. What they found is that the novel coronavirus prevents the routine burning of carbohydrates, which results in large amounts of fat accumulating inside lung cells – a condition the virus needs to reproduce.”

“…Nahmias said, noting that it also may help explain why patients with high blood sugar and cholesterol levels are often at a particularly high risk to develop COVID-19. The team then reviewed a panel of eight already approved drugs that could possibly interfere with the virus’s ability to reproduce. Tricor caused the cells to start burning fat, Nahmias said. The result was that the virus almost completely disappeared within only five days of treatment. The experiment was done in lab studies both in Israel and New York and was replicated several times with different lung samples. Nahmias said there is a strong indication that the experiment is highly repeatable in other labs.

The team is advancing to animal studies in New York and hoping to fast-track clinical studies in both Israel and the US within the next couple of weeks, since the drug is already proven safe. ”

We have learned a lot about Covid-19 over the past few months. There are several negatives but yet positive takeaway. I think the big negative seems to be this is not going away and will likely be an endemic. The positive is we can treat it AND not only that we can prevent it through a healthy lifestyle living and likely cheap alternatives (BCG vaccine, Vitamin C, D, healthy lifestyle (diet and exercise). There are also mechanical solutions that can be implemented in buildings to reduce viral load. Mask wearing is also simple viral load reducer – yet controversial. Expensive drugs are not needed for treatment if prevented in the first place. Even if prevention is not possible we do seem to have promising treatments from simple steroids to cholesterol reducing drugs.

Data dive into the US counties of interest. Below is the pie chart broken out by county for the US for the last 30 days for confirmed test results. You can see the 4 counties we have discussed each day leading the pack. They represent 16% of total confirmation – yet those counties only represent 6% of total US population.

On the death side those same counties are high but not the highest as NY still leads that category

Those counties are not at all tracking what happened in NY. The scale of NY deaths and confirmation are nowhere near what we are seeing in any of these counties. To give NY kudos at this point for their current numbers is quite disingenuous. There is no doubt in my mind something went awry in NYC.

Nonetheless the recent increase in confirmations is somewhat alarming. There have been continuous warning of the health care system. Harris county offers a tale of two stories….Texas Health and Human Service continues to show a bleak outlook in its data for Houston area https://txdshs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/0d8bdf9be927459d9cb11b9eaef6101f

The Texas Medical Center shows a different story

They are so FAR apart only one of them can be close to the truth.

It would seem the Texas Health and Human Service is off given the numbers are not adding up in terms of producing the dire crunch as they indicated. Looking at the change chart for both confirmation and the ICU beds for Covid reported by the THHS there is not much delay in ICU bed jump and confirmation jumps. However the ICU beds are not following the pattern of increase confirmation. Perhaps hospitals are being more prudent with ICU selection and/or better pre-treatment to not get into ICU and/or change in demographic in confirmation.

Obviously at some point IF things were really bad we should start seeing increase deaths. Yet still so very far away from NY fatality rate of 10+% ….Harris County still sits at under 1%. Of course lots of stories on how its not just death and longterm issues etc…yet all those reports not 1 discusses what is the percentage of those experiencing longterm issue. There is no doubt some will have longterm impacts from contracting covid but yet to be known if they represent a significant amount.

Brazil deaths shot up to 1300. US second at 900 – but once again lead in confirmation 67.4K

California leads in deaths and confirmation at 161 and 12.9K respectively.

Same county cohorts as discussed above

Global View