Actual good news

[AtW]

"The preliminary results of a clinical trial suggest a new treatment for Covid-19 dramatically reduces the number of patients needing intensive care, according to the UK company that developed it.

The treatment from Southampton-based biotech Synairgen uses a protein called interferon beta which the body produces when it gets a viral infection.

The protein is inhaled directly into the lungs of patients with coronavirus, using a nebuliser, in the hope that it will stimulate an immune response.

The initial findings suggest the treatment cut the odds of a Covid-19 patient in hospital developing severe disease - such as requiring ventilation - by 79%."

Coronavirus: Protein treatment trial 'a breakthrough' - BBC News

That's really good if true, especially given that it sounds like it can be administered via nebuliser - now we need aggressive testing/tracing and early infected hopefully will get this to reduce chances of getting seriously ill, would be great if it holds up!

[DimPrawn]

It's not cheap though.

[darmstadt]

However:

An academic has expressed concern that the Synairgen trial of the interferon beta drug SNG001, that seems to have had remarkably successful results, was not registered in advance (ie, notified formally to other researchers). Steve Goodacre, professor of emergency medicine at the University of Sheffield, said that he needed to know more from the company about how the trial was carried out before he could evaluate its significance. In a statement he said:

These results are not interpretable. We need the full details and, perhaps more importantly, the trial protocol. The trial should have been registered and a protocol made available before any analysis was undertaken. They could easily have included a link to the trial protocol in their press release. I am concerned they have not done this.

The trial protocol will provide crucial details, such as what the primary outcome measure was and whether the trial was designed to detect the differences in outcome reported in their press release. As it stands, we have no way of knowing whether the trial was designed to detect the positive outcomes reported in the press release (which would be more convincing) or whether these are just serendipitous findings from a trial that was designed for another purpose (which would be bad reporting practice).

I would therefore ask them to provide the trial registration details and trial protocol before commenting further.

[DimPrawn]

How to become rich quickly.

1. Buy stock in your own company
2. Announce that your wonder drug cures covid without any peer review or clinical trial
3. Sell stock
4. Retire a billionaire.

[jamesbrown]

How to become rich quickly.

1. Buy stock in your own company
2. Announce that your wonder drug cures covid without any peer review or clinical trial
3. Sell stock
4. Retire a billionaire.

Well, yeah, except for the being illegal part.

[AtW]

It's not cheap though.

Cheaper than lockdown!

And cutting time from 9 days in hospital to 6 is very big saving.

Might be problem to mass manufacture it tho but if it cuts down very tough cases then it's great result

[AtW]

Well, yeah, except for the being illegal part.

5. Settle with FTC for tens of millions (and give hundre millions to current party in power)