Month: April 2020

More than 1,000 sailors aboard a French naval aircraft carrier have tested positive for the Wuhan coronavirus, of whom some 50 percent have no symptoms at all, French media report.

The French minister of the Armed Forces, Florence Parly, announced on April 17 that 1,081 sailors had tested positive for COVID-19 out of a crew of 2,300 sailors on the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle and the aeronautical group accompanying it.

During a hearing by the Defense Committee of the National Assembly, Ms. Parly said that 545 sailors had revealed some symptoms and 24 are hospitalized, with just one in intensive care. Nearly 300 sailors are still awaiting their test results.

The Charles de Gaulle, France’s only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, reached the port of Toulon on Easter Sunday, two weeks ahead of schedule.

The origin of the contamination remains an enigma, since the crew has had no outside contact since making a stopover in Brest from March 13 to 16.

According to Ms. Parly, at this point it is unknown whether the virus was already present on board before the stopover on March 13.

With a predominantly male and healthy population, aged twenty to fifty, the case of the Charles-de-Gaulle shows that there are many mild forms of the virus, French media reported, with more than half the sailors who tested positive showing no symptoms at all.

“There are probably a significant number of asymptomatic forms which occur in particular in the younger populations,” declared Jean-François Delfraissy, president of France’s scientific council for the fight against the coronavirus.

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A Kansas federal court judge issued a temporary restraining order Saturday against a Democrat Kansas governor’s executive order limiting church gatherings to ten people at a time, according to a report.

The ruling came a week after the Supreme Court of Kansas sided with Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly, who saw her executive order get overruled by a Republican-led state legislature.

“We are in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic,” the governor said, according to the Associated Press. “This is not about religion. This is about a public health crisis.” She added that the ruling was “preliminary” and said she would be “proactive” about protecting the public during a public health crisis.

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, on the other hand, supported the court’s decision.

“Today’s judicial ruling is a much-needed reminder that the Constitution is not under a stay-home order and the Bill of Rights cannot be quarantined,” he said. “The Constitution protects our liberties especially during times of crisis, when history reveals governments too quick to sacrifice rights of the few to calm fears of the many.”

The Kansas City Star reported that the state court had not made a ruling on the constitutionality of Kelly’s order, which led to two federal lawsuits on behalf of two churches and their respective pastors.

The judge noted that the order specifically banned church gatherings, but not similar activities such as congregating at an airport, violating the First Amendment and the state’s religious freedom law.

Churches are still required by law to practice social distancing measures, including taking parishioners’ temperatures and sanitizing the building before and after gatherings.

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) represented both churches in the case —First Baptist Church in Dodge City and Calvary Baptist Church in Junction City.

ADF senior counsel Ryan Tucker said his clients are pleased with the outcome.

“In light of the court’s order, we hope the governor will act quickly to remedy the unconstitutional provision of her mass gathering ban and avoid the need for continued litigation,” Tucker said in a news release.

A ten-year-old girl from Missouri is doing her small part in changing the world by helping out the local police officers who have lost out on pay, due to issues stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.

Hannah Imig, a fifth-grader at Babler Elementary in Wildwood, Missouri, heard that some police officers in her town were going to lose out on pay due to the coronavirus pandemic and wanted to see if there was a way she could help, according to a Facebook post from the Chesterfield Police Department.

She first told her mother that she wanted to donate her savings to the officers, but that quickly transformed into a fundraiser where people could buy gift cards for the officers.

The ten-year-old posted a handwritten letter asking for donations on her mother’s Facebook page, KSDK reported.

“Police officers are very important people, right? They protect us even when it’s dangerous. They sacrifice themselves for strangers! Now that’s empathetic,” the letter said.

The Chesterfield Police Department said she raised $2,400 in a day and a half.

“She then went a step further in her kindness and used that money to purchase gift cards from several local restaurants and businesses in the area, helping all of them during these tough financial times as well,” The Chesterfield Police Department wrote on Facebook.

KSDK reported that Imig and her family gave the officers 232 gift cards to distribute among themselves.

The department said it was enough to give each officer and civilian police employee two gift cards.

“A little kindness can change the world”- 10 yr old Hannah Imig. Thank you Hannah! https://t.co/vP67QQ9EFI

— Chesterfield Police (@ChesterfieldPD) April 17, 2020

“A little kindness can change the world”- 10 yr old Hannah Imig. Thank you Hannah!” the police department tweeted.

If you’re a doctor Down Under, you could now face a $13,000 fine for prescribing hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 patients — and you can probably guess the genesis of this.

According to the Brisbane Times, doctors in the Australian state of Queensland are now banned from prescribing the anti-malarial drug for coronavirus patients as of Tuesday.

The drugs can only be dispensed to patients who take it for one of its other approved uses or who are part of a clinical trial.

Failure to comply? A fine of $13,000 Australian dollars, which translates to about $8,300 American.

It’s not just doctors, either.

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“The new law, introduced under public health powers granted to the state’s top doctor, Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young, is also aimed at stopping pharmacies and GP clinics from stockpiling the medication,” the Brisbane Times reported.

“Under the public health order, only some specialists are allowed to prescribe the drug and it must be for the ongoing treatment of a chronic disease or as part of a clinical trial.”

The health minister in Australia, Greg Hunt, has said that the drug has shown “some promising research so far.” That said, trials are mixed — but the drug does a very good job stopping the virus in test tubes.

Professor David Paterson, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Queensland — where a large-scale clinical trial is about to begin — said that the drug showed promise on a very small scale when the disease first hit Australia.

“Prior to the clinical trials going ahead, the medications were given to some of the first patients in Australia infected with COVID-19, and all have completely recovered without any trace of the virus left in their system,” he said.

“However, we know that most people with COVID-19 recover completely, thanks to their immune system, so random anecdotal experiences of some people need to be replaced by rigorous clinical trials.”

In addition to antiviral drug Remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine (and its older relative, chloroquine) has been one of the more promising routes of treatment for coronavirus patients. That doesn’t mean there aren’t risks, but coronavirus is a serious risk. So why stop doctors from prescribing it in certain cases?

Officially, it’s because hydroxychloroquine is used to treat patients suffering from autoimmune conditions, including lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Demand for the drug as a treatment for COVID-19 could make it difficult for patients who need it for those conditions to get it — at least that’s how the argument is most often presented.

But the implicit blaming of Trump, and the implication that he’s hyping the drug without any foundation, gives the game away.

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The Brisbane Times’ article included a bit that should have told you what you needed to know in terms of that: “Worldwide shortages were caused after US President Donald Trump tweeted about the drug’s potential last month,” they noted.

“Mr Trump [promoted] the drug again at the weekend and urged Americans to take it despite a lack of strong evidence the medication is safe to use in COVID-19 patients.”

Ah yes — him. It’s not just the Brisbane Times, either. Here’s the first sentence in a March 23 article from the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners about hydroxychloroquine: “After US President Donald Trump touted hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as a possible ‘cure’ for coronavirus, there has been a rush for the drugs – even though the top US infectious diseases expert Dr Anthony Fauci has cautioned evidence is minimal.”

First sentence. They literally couldn’t even describe why hydroxychloroquine was being tested as a possible treatment for COVID-19 before mentioning Trump. They just jumped right in.

It’s almost as if he just came up with this drug on his own. And knowing how people in the media tend to feel about the president, of course he didn’t come up with this through research.

Here’s what they feel would be a more plausible explanation for it: One day, while Dr. Fauci was off doing some TV spot, Trump broke into his office and ganked Fauci’s Physicians’ Desk Reference. He then dropped it on the Oval Office floor, letting it open to a random page. From behind the Resolute Desk, he blindfolded himself and threw darts at it until he heard the thwack of one hitting its target. He then picked it up and looked at which drug it hit.

“Hydra … hybri …. hydro … Jared! Get in here and tell your father-in-law what this means,” the president yelled.

“Hydroxychloroquine?” Jared Kushner said. “That’s an anti-malarial drug. Why are you–“

“Don’t you worry your little head off about it,” Trump said, leaving the room.

You may not be surprised that didn’t happen. Researchers looked at a plethora of drugs, and the science and test-tube results behind chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine appeared to be the most promising.

The science goes like this: Viruses replicate by entering host cells, which they take over to work as virus factories. In terms of the novel coronavirus, the theory is that they enter it through an acidic compartment. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine change the acidity of that compartment, making it more difficult to enter, according to TheScientist.com.

That’s the theory. Hydroxychloroquine may not work as well as everyone, including President Trump, hopes. Recent studies have tempered hopes somewhat, but we’re still dealing with one of the more promising treatments.

Remdesivir is another one; it’s an investigational antiviral drug which has also worked in small-scale studies like hydroxychloroquine has, something which has many calling for authorities to allow compassionate use of treatment.

We don’t know Remdesivir’s safety profile, given that it’s an investigational drug and not one approved for use. It would have to be rushed into production and may come with significant side effects. It can’t be used off-label. And yet, nobody seems particularly concerned about all of that. Watch Trump start touting it, though, and see how quickly there’s an outcry.

There are ways to handle shortages and stockpiling of hydroxychloroquine that don’t involve making it so that people with COVID-19 can’t be prescribed the drug if their doctor thinks the benefit outweighs the risks. We’re all dealing with terra nova here. This isn’t helping.

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Via Daily Caller:

President Donald Trump said Friday he will end federal funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology that some are claiming spawned the coronavirus.

At the daily coronavirus task force news conference, the president was asked why the National Institutes of Health would include the Chinese laboratory in a $3.7 million dollar stipend to conduct research.

“The Obama administration gave them a grant of $3.7 million. I’ve been hearing about that. We’ve instructed that if any grants are going to that area, we are looking at it literally about an hour ago and also early in the morning,” Trump said.

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