So if we wait around for a vaccine we're looking at 18 months mostly cooped up

[conuly]

Which is awful. Of course, other people are suggesting we say "Fuck it, let the geezers die" and just go back to "normal".

This is a terrible idea in many, many ways, but if I know one thing it is that there is no shortage of powerful people who like to promote terrible ideas. If the unthinkable happens and the awful plan ever gets put into place, about how long would it be until everybody was either immune or dead, do you think?

Comments

[melannen]

From what I've seen in my "bad science" blogs and podcasts, that original study that claimed a large effect was a very bad study by any metric (and in ways that can't be excused by "we are in a hurry because of pandemic.") Like "we took anyone who got worse out of the study, so look, everyone still in the study got better!" bad.

I think there's some evidence from other studies that it might have a small but statistically factual effect, but it's not going to be anything that noticeably reduces the load on ICUs - just on the level of "slightly less chance of dying if you're already really sick" level, and even that's hard to say. It makes sense because quinine works at least a little against a lot of viral sickness. But it has some pretty drastic side effects at clinical doses - iirc a couple of the follow-up trials stopped early because people were vomiting while intubated, and, nope, augh.

But there are people testing literally *every* already-proven-safe drug against the virus, and some other people who were already nearly there on an anti-coronavirus drug after SARS before they lost funding, so I think there's a reasonable chance, as long as people like Trump and the idiots who published the chloroquine study don't make it impossible to that kind of research well.