On 2020-07-20 20:58:06, user Dan Elton wrote:

This is classic p-hacking! Look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... and apply a correction (the simplest would be the Bonferroni correction, or dividing the p values by the number of comparisons done). I'm going to be really sad if a journal publishes this without a massive overhaul. Negative results are useful, but statistics have to be done correctly or you're doing everyone a big disservice!

On 2020-07-25 13:43:28, user Matthias von Davier wrote:

http://www.expo2015.org/mag...

Same strange association at the country level, has nothing to do with the individual level likelihood of winning a Nobel prize as predicted by chololate consumption

On 2020-07-20 23:49:35, user Joshua Santarpia wrote:

Hi all,<br /> Several folks pointed out the high airborne concentrations noted in the original version of this manuscript. We appreciate the catch. The units should be in TCID50/m3, not cm3. A major difference. A corrected version should be available soon.

On 2020-07-21 05:50:56, user Josh Lerman wrote:

Super interesting. I also noticed this cycle just by eye browsing the CA data. If it is an artifact of data collection, that should maybe be fixed. Thanks for the analysis.

On 2020-07-21 22:11:37, user BiotechObserver wrote:

"Screened patients either had confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections by PCR, or suspected disease, defined as being told by a physician that symptoms may be related to SARS-CoV-2 or exposure to someone with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection... In addition to screening potential donors, Mount Sinai also offered the Mount Sinai ELISA antibody test to all employees within our health system on a voluntary basis."

It would be helpful to know what percentage of each of these 4 subsets of screened patients (out of the 51,829 total screened) were positive vs. negative on the ELISA test. <br /> Your sensible subsequent explanation on sensitivity findings notwithstanding, (it seems plausible you are detecting positive in the ELISA test >95% of those with a confirmed past infection), this breakdown would still be valuable from an epidemiology perspective.

"The vast majority of symptomatic cases that were screened experienced mild-to-moderate disease, with less than 5% requiring emergency department evaluation or hospitalization."

It would be helpful to visualize in a few additional figures the breakdown of various measures (titer ranges, decline/increase, neutralizing activity) stratified by severity of symptoms (asymptomatic vs. mild vs. moderate vs. hospitalized, or asymptomatic vs. mild/moderate vs. hospitalized).

Thank you.

On 2020-07-22 18:17:50, user Marm Kilpatrick wrote:

Dear Authors,<br /> I'm confused about the methods used to recruit participants. The text seems to indicate that you posted a website to which people could volunteer and then selected randomly from those that volunteered. Is that correct? If so, this seems like a very biased set of people from which to select a random sample and would likely alter the resulting seroprevalence estimates. If I am misunderstanding how you recruited participants could you please clarify that part of the text? Thanks!<br /> marm

On 2020-07-23 09:56:15, user Jonathan wrote:

One has to hope for a vaccine and/or effective treatment before the colder northern hemisphere seasons. If not, a second wave is almost inevitable. Thank you for your vital and ongoing work.

On 2020-07-23 13:47:00, user Gill Prager wrote:

At what Baseline outside air temperature does the 15% change in mortality occur? For how long does that temperature need to remain constant pluS/minus each degree for each subsequent rise/fall in mortality?

On 2020-07-23 20:34:45, user E. Taylor Stone wrote:

Just a note for the authors that in the introduction line 55, OC43 and HKU1 are listed as alphacoronaviruses, but I believe should be listed as betacoronaviruses: https://www.cdc.gov/coronav...

On 2020-07-24 07:38:54, user Sally Anderson wrote:

What volume of buffer/medium do you add to your swabs? Do you test the whole of the sample by RTPCR or do you only process a proportion of it? When you plot no. of copies / ml is this per ml of buffer/medium you initially place the swab in? Do you think you are just targetting virus particles or is there a contribution from infected cells?

On 2020-07-24 10:17:10, user Paul McKeigue wrote:

This revision includes changes made in response to the first stage of peer review: new material includes the passages highlighted in yellow and Supplementary Table S1.

On 2021-06-01 11:37:02, user Paul McKeigue wrote:

This paper has now been accepted for publication by BMC Medicine.

On 2020-07-24 16:23:32, user David Gagnon wrote:

Was any data collected on the numbers for the ages of the people in the same household?This section was badly written, is missing something, or I just don't understand something in the language. 15.5% is the lowest of those numbers and that seems odd, since the I would guess the majority of 2 person households to be couples without kids, both young and old, and in the latter case the secondary infection should have been notably high, right?<br /> There are also three number in the section that correspond to three groups:<br /> "The secondary infection risk for study participants living in the same household increased from 15.5% to 43.6%, to 35.5% and to 18.3% for households with two, three or four people respectively (p<0.001). "<br /> Is the 18.3% for households with more than 4 people? Is it then 18% per person?

On 2020-07-26 01:02:03, user JayTe wrote:

Relatively simple to calculate the herd immunity threshold. Take the CDC figure for the infection fatality rate multiply by Covid-19 deaths to determine the infected population. Divide the infection population by the total population and you get the implied herd immunity threshold. Overall for the US it is 15%. There are some states that have not reached that level. Mainly Florida, Texas and Arizona. Does that give you a clue as to what is happening in those states?

On 2020-07-26 06:33:24, user Aurora Fontanilla wrote:

X-linked recessive gene carriers (mothers of G6PD deficient) should also be considered in the study as they may already be considered as immunocompromised. If so, they may easily spread the virus to their children G6PD deficiency.

On 2020-07-26 13:51:08, user Rosemary TATE wrote:

I have now carried out a review of this preprint at https://publons.com/review/...

On 2020-07-27 06:43:06, user OxImmuno Literature Initiative wrote:

https://www.immunology.ox.a...

On 2020-06-28 12:36:47, user OxImmuno Literature Initiative wrote:

https://www.immunology.ox.a...

On 2020-07-29 06:02:10, user Marm Kilpatrick wrote:

Thank you for this important work. It appears that the data in Table 1, include both the cases detected due to symptoms as well as those detected through contact tracing. If this is the case, then could you possibly also present the data (perhaps in a supplementary table) that only includes characteristics of cases from contact tracing? This way one can get a true sense of the fraction of cases for each age that are truly asymptomatic? The current presentation, if it includes cases detected due to their symptoms, would overestimate the fraction symptomatic. Thank you.<br /> marm

On 2020-07-29 22:25:43, user P. J. wrote:

When you download the PDF, you will see all relevant info. ALL patients also got hydroxychloroquine and 3/7 also got azithromycin. Interestingly no heart issues, no deaths, better outcomes. Is it the combo...maybe? Honestly, I don't care as long as it works, but let's be up front about it.

Seven patients out of 7 received at least one dose of the study drug?? Only 3/7 even got the full treatment? (It looks like with an average length of stay of 14-24.5 days, there was plenty of time to complete a 14 day course, assuming treatment began on the first day.)

They do not give any breakdown of the drug group vs control as far as co-morbidities so they will need to do that going forward.

In the end, there were 5 patients. Not sure if all those were on HCQ, as they leave that out. Were any of the five on azithromycin? Who knows? It says "overall" 3 patients received the full course of the study drug. Ok, is that overall of the 7 that started, or the five little patients that remained? Let's ASSUME 3 of the final 5 got the full 14 days, plus maybe HCQ and maybe AZ? There was no statistical significance in the length of time weaning from HFNC to NC 02. Time to room air was about 1.5 days sooner...so 36 hours.

" Six patients in the control<br /> group (33%) required mechanical ventilation (p value compared with opaganib groups=0.13), 2(11%) required ECMO, and one required tracheostomy"

The drug group also had better D-dimer results and higher baseline lymphocytes going into the study which are both markers seen in patients who tend to have better outcomes, drugs or not. There was no difference in the rate of CRP improvement between the control and drug group. They couldn't measure true normalization of lymphocyte count because the control group received steroids.

Am I the only person routinely disappointed by the quietly buried info on HCQ? I think it was the RECOVERY remdesivir arm where patients weren't randomized until day 10-12 (well past the point where an antiviral would be of significant benefit) and 85% received HCQ up until starting remdesivir...and some even while taking it. A good number in the severely ill group were already maintaining O2 sats of 94% on room air when started on Remdesivir...in nursing, as far as oxygenation, we call that "stable." I don't know..maybe it's just me.

The results of this amazing new drug just aren't impressive when this sentence is included by the authors:

"In total, seven patients received at least one dose of opaganib since April 2, 2020. All<br /> patients received hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), however one stopped HCQ prior to opaganib<br /> treatment due to borderline Q-T interval in ECG. Three patients received azithromycin as well. One patient, who received both HCQ and azithromycin, developed diarrhea after two doses of opaganib, and the treating physicians decided to stop all his medications. A second patient who deemed to be in severe condition, was weaned to low flow oxygen within hours, and was discharged on RA (how long had he been on HCQ? Was he also on Azithromycin?) after receiving two doses of opaganib. Therefore, five patients were included<br /> in this analysis. Overall, 3 received the full 14-day course of opaganib, and 2 patients received 11 and 7 days respectively, before being discharged."

2/5 received 11 and 7 days of study drugs before being discharged. Were they discharged on the last day of treatment? I don't think so since discharges were from 14-24.5 days in the treatment group. Why was therapy discontinued before discharge? 15.2-29.5 days until discharge in control group. Not sure who fell where so hard to know if that was statistically significant or not. But, the rate of decline as far as needing ECMO or mechanical ventilation were good...maybe, I mean with better D-dimer (not sure how much better...no info there) And higher lymphocyte count at the onset of the study, (Again, not sure how much higher) It's hard to know if the drug helped, if the other drugs helped, or if those patients were more stable going in and would have recovered either way. It just feels like another non-study study. I also have no idea how big the control group was. OH wait, there's a table. I missed it. The control group is over 3x the size of the trial group...come on guys. The control group had 3-4x the comorbidities..so a stacked control group in number and chronic disease manifestation. Mean lymphocyte count in the control group was 850 vs. 1100 in the drug group. Other labs as listed in Table one when you click on the PDF, but overall, the control group was sicker.

I would be interested to know how the drug group (that got HCQ, study drug, and AZ) did vs the control group patients who got HCQ and AZ) That would actually be a more fair comparison...well maybe. I can't be sure since the control group was sicker and had more comorbidities to begin with.

I started this analysis wondering if there was an exciting new drug that could really help and I finish still wondering the same thing. I am beginning to question if any of these studies have people familiar with research standards running them. No randomization, no blinding, no real placebo control group, (I understand the ethics of having a "no treatment" group that truly gets "no treatment" and respect that all patients deserve treatment so placebo will always be a treatment group.)

Doctors on the drug company payroll or affiliated financially with the drug company, data analysis of trials and studies done by the sponsoring drug companies, writiing of studies by drug companies and or their employees rather than doctors without bias....I just find it all questionable.

I keep reading studies that leave out randomization, control group, blinding, etc. The inclusion of gold standard research methods could give us real scientific data. Why does the scientific community routinely fail to integrate the known gold standards in their studies? Do they feel their drugs wouldn't stand up to such rigor?

On 2020-07-30 04:05:03, user Martijn Hoogeveen wrote:

In the v5 update: results of medical findings explaining the effects of allergens/allergies on influenza/COVID-19 are included. Methodological sensitivity analyses are added by including bootstrapped correlations and controlling for autumn. Outcomes are similar and conclusions are the same.

On 2020-06-30 12:20:05, user Dude Dujmovic wrote:

Nothing about filtration other than saying use multiple layers to improve filtration? How many layers? That is the most important aspect of mask. Hydrophobic property is important but you cannot recommend something that you did not do basic filtration research about.

On 2020-06-30 14:50:33, user Munir Hazbun wrote:

Congratulations with your results . We have published in Critical Care Exploration very encouraging results with a higher dose of MP. We learned early that at high dose MP work very well for rescue we have not have any prone position need and outcome are about 10% mortality in about 60 patients so far. Certainly optimal nursing and respiratory strategies are necessary for example we are not using propofol and use recruitment lung strategies

On 2020-08-01 16:36:24, user Dude Dujmovic wrote:

Term "loss expansion" deserves definition, it sounds like oxymoron. The table 2 is unreadable, you need to separate weeks into separate graphs to make sense of that.

On 2020-08-04 10:20:51, user Conrado Fernández Rodriguez wrote:

These results are in keeping with a very recent paper in Journal of hepatology showing a protective effect of immunosuppresants in liver transplanted patients against SARS-CoV-2 with The exception of tacrolimus. <br /> https://www.journal-of-hepa...

On 2020-08-05 20:03:26, user Shi ZHAO wrote:

The peer-reviewed version is published in BMJ Open (DOI: 10.1136/bmjopen-2019-035308), access via: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/con...

On 2020-08-09 17:32:59, user ????? ????? wrote:

Where is the raw data?

On 2020-08-09 20:47:59, user med sci wrote:

Perhaps this topic "Seroprevalence of COVID-19 in Niger State" may be modified to reflect that the study was conducted only on small population of Niger state.

On 2020-07-06 15:59:32, user OxImmuno Literature Initiative wrote:

https://www.immunology.ox.a...

On 2020-07-07 00:26:09, user AR wrote:

Is Supplementary Data 1 missing from this article?

On 2020-08-11 17:07:00, user John Kutil wrote:

Do you know when the study will be peer reviewed?

On 2020-08-12 06:05:43, user Christian Heebøll-Nielsen wrote:

It seems most of the differences between groups could be explained by the difference in time since symptoms onset. Have you made any effort to control for that?

On 2020-08-12 17:28:58, user Lee Rague wrote:

This study has been recently published as follow:

Labrague, L. J., & de los Santos, J. (2020). COVID-19 anxiety among frontline nurses: predictive role of organisational support, personal resilience and social support. Journal of Nursing Management.

On 2020-07-08 16:50:14, user tyler wrote:

It is not possible to evaluate the merits of this "research" based upon an abstract which reports — using unspecified estimates and models, and unspecified methods to eliminate confounders — that this spring's unprecedented surge of first-time interest in exercising Second Amendment rights in the US has a significant causal link to the 0.00037 additional "fatal and nonfatal" injuries correlated with each additional firearms purchase.

But, really...? Doesn't it also seem likely that the 0.000 additional injury associated with each additional gun purchase might be "caused" by pandemic panics and leadership failures? Or institutional racism? Or a divisive President inflaming a constituency of intolerance and fear? Or a surge in off-premises alcohol consumption? Or George Floyd, police misconduct, and cosmic rays?

I hope that disclosure and review of data and methods might clarify any strengths or weaknesses of this work.

On 2020-07-09 10:05:48, user Nan Liu wrote:

Published version of the preprint:<br /> Liu, N., Chee, M.L., Niu, C. et al. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): an evidence map of medical literature. BMC Med Res Methodol 20, 177 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12...

On 2020-07-09 21:41:42, user kpfleger wrote:

Thank you for this study! Suggestions to improve the manuscript:<br /> (1) In the PDF version linked here from medRxiv (as of 2020/7/9), p.1 states the multivariate infection OR as 1.45 but p.5 & table 3 list it is 1.50. Minor discrepancy but good to get the p.1 results summary correct.<br /> (2) You imply in the conclusion that most of the 25OHD test results were recent, such as upon presentation to health services for illness, but it would be helpful for you to characterize the dates of the 25OHD tests in your cohort. (Eg, so we know they aren't as old as the 10+ year old UK Biobank results.)<br /> (3) It would be helpful to have the descriptive statistics for demographic and clinical characteristics for the hospitalized vs. non-hospitalized COVID-19-P patients---analogs of tables 1 & 2 stratified by hospitalized or not. I'm not even sure you say how many were hospitalized.<br /> (4) You gave the multivariate adjusted OR for infection and the OR for hospitalization given infection. It would be nice to state the adjusted OR for absolute risk of hospitalization (not specifically given infection) as this is perhaps more meaningful for public policy.

I look forward to a couple more analyses like this from other large HMOs or government insurers around the world. I also look forward to data on post-hospitalization measures of severity (eg, ICU/ITU admission, fatality) in population cohorts this large.

On 2020-08-17 06:39:53, user Jesper Markmann wrote:

A big difference between Sweden and Danmark, and the UK, US, and southern Europe is labor market rules and culture. In Denmark and Sweden people would stay at home, if they have the slightest symptoms. In the latter group of countries, more people would be inclined to go to work, in spite of symptoms in fear of loosing their source of income.

On 2020-08-18 03:13:47, user Bashar Emon wrote:

The paper has been peer-reviewed and published in a reputed journal- Extreme Mechanics Letters.

Onur Aydin, Bashar Emon, Shyuan Cheng, Liu Hong, Leonardo P. Chamorro, M. Taher A. Saif,<br /> Performance of fabrics for home-made masks against the spread of COVID-19 through droplets: A quantitative mechanistic study,<br /> Extreme Mechanics Letters,<br /> Volume 40,<br /> 2020,<br /> 100924,<br /> ISSN 2352-4316,<br /> https://doi.org/10.1016/j.e....<br /> (http://www.sciencedirect.co... "http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352431620301802)")

On 2020-08-19 17:04:00, user Pat Tokarz wrote:

Thank you for this important information in such a timely fashion. It will be interesting to compare your experience with other institutions<br /> over time.

On 2020-08-19 21:20:12, user Sissy Lona Moxley Skaggs wrote:

Since this is dated in May as there been any additional information in your news base on antibodies or the length of the contagion in carriers that could be reviewed?

On 2020-07-15 16:36:55, user Peter Ellis wrote:

Death data for the UK (and its constituent nations) show a very pronounced weekend effect when analysed according to the day of reporting - see for example the graph at the bottom of this page:<br /> https://coronavirus.data.go...

However, in England the "weekend effect" almost entirely disappears when data are analysed according to the actual date of death rather than the date of reporting - see for example the daily data files reported here:<br /> https://www.england.nhs.uk/...

This therefore appears to be an entirely artefactual phenomenon driven by reduced reporting at weekends. The authors dismiss this possibility and assert that "one would expect for the pooled world data to be averaged rather than this almost weekly periodicity". Unfortunately for their hypothesis, Saturdays and Sundays fall on the same date everywhere in the world.

On 2020-08-28 07:43:07, user Hilda Bastian wrote:

At several points, the authors rely on what's described as the "historical efficacy of passive antibody therapy for infectious diseases". This is based on a small amount of data, much of it from the pre-intensive care era, and none from a publication later than 2010. As a result, no randomized trial is included, as they were published after 2010: 2 NIH randomized trials of convalescent plasma in influenza and 2 randomized trials of IVIG for influenza. Meta-analysis shows no benefit. [1] This also fails to consider the post-2010 ebola outbreak, and the failure of convalescent plasma to improve mortality from that disease. [1] Thus, there is no historically proof of efficacy of convalescent plasma, and what randomized data exists, does not suggest there has been important benefit in the past.

In addition to relying on this biased assessment of historical evidence to support a conclusion of effectiveness in this study, the authors cite this claim as a reason for not conducting a randomized trial: "Many COVID-19 patients would likely have been distrustful of being randomized to a placebo based on historical precedent". However, if they were accurately informed, prospective participants would be told there was no evidence of benefit. In a randomized trial in the Netherlands stopped because it was determined no benefit was likely in the study as designed, the authors reported that only 1 in 4 eligible patients declined, and that was typically because of fear of adverse events. [2] The requirement for adequate trial recruitment has more to do with doctors and patients in outbreaks not being misled about the state of uncertainty of this treatment.

The authors argue that the patients in the Expanded Access Program are diverse. However, it is important to point out that their diversity is not representative of the people severely ill with Covid-19 and at risk of dying. For example, 19% of the group are Black, whereas the CDC reports that they are over 30% of those hospitalized with Covid-19 and twice as likely to die. [3,4]

In respect of the representativeness of the small non-random sample described as "pseudo-randomized" in this preprint, no data is provided on the hospitals providing those samples.

In addition, as others have already pointed out in a discussion linked here, [5] critical information on timing of deaths is not provided. Those transfused earlier in the "epochs" have far longer follow-up for deaths than the larger number more recently. Given that since early in the outbreak, it's been observed that deaths occur across 2 to 8 weeks from the onset of symptoms, [6] the impact of this could be substantial, as participation in the EAP was higher later. In the group on the Diamond Princess cruise, for example, per Wikipedia's tallying, half the deaths may have occurred in that second month [7], and assessment of mortality appropriately included censoring for this. [8] Case series in the US typically report substantial proportions of people still in intensive care at study's end.

The authors' interpretation of their subgroup analysis based on a non-random set of blood samples preserved for blood bank quality assurance proceeds as though the safety of convalescent plasma for Covid-19 has been established, based on the data of their own uncontrolled study. However, controlled study is required to be certain, for example, whether plasma with lower levels of antibodies trigger antibody dependent disease enhancement. [5] As the FDA's memorandum reports that the results are also dependent on which assay results are used, this should be reported in any discussion of this subgroup analysis. [9]

In the absence of adequate controlled study of convalescent plasma establishing that it does more good than harm in infectious respiratory disease generally in contemporary medical settings, and Covid-19 in particular, the authors' claim that their uncontrolled study provides "strong evidence" is unjustified.

Disclosure: I have written about this study for the general public at WIRED, and am in the process of doing so at PLOS Blogs.

[1] Devasenapathy (2020). https://www.cmaj.ca/content...

[2] Gharbharan (2020). https://www.medrxiv.org/con...

[3] CDC COVID-Net (2020). https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/C...

[4] CDC surveillance data (2020). https://www.cdc.gov/coronav...

[5] Harrell (2020). https://discourse.datametho...

[6] WHO (2020). https://www.who.int/docs/de...

[7] Wikipedia (2020). https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

[8] Russell (2020). https://www.medrxiv.org/con...

[9] FDA Clinical Memorandum (2020). https://www.fda.gov/media/1...

On 2020-10-02 00:01:26, user Immunogenetics wrote:

DQA1_509 is not an accurate representation of an HLA allele.

On 2020-11-23 09:17:17, user Brenda Penton wrote:

I don't see how the data can be used if it only included 4 months of pandemic data? If Sweden had had a decreased mortality rate pre-pandemic and after the first wave, wouldn't that mean they would have had a decreased annual mortality rate otherwise or the assumed trajectory? I'm not sure if after wave data can be used since people still distanced, I'd assume. I can see if they used data next year comparing the two from March 2020 to March 2021. I still don't see the relevance of the study...even though Sweden had thousands of deaths from a pandemic..they would have died anyways, so no biggie? Is that it? It seems that people are using this data for proof that Sweden didn't do so bad or some kind of excuse? It's a little messed up to me.

On 2020-12-01 11:33:46, user S Cook wrote:

While all their theories and calculations may seem exact, it is a proven fact that people in room, house, building, etc. will spread Covid 19 much faster than the model indicates.

On 2020-12-02 17:57:59, user Sam Wheeler wrote:

Here are some reviews of this study. You may find more reviews at other websites, perhaps?<br /> https://rapidreviewscovid19...

On 2020-12-03 17:33:21, user Nikita Mehta wrote:

Hello, I was wondering if RNA sequencing data for intronic variants (both canonical and non-canonical) was discussed in regards to PS3. Or at least adjusting PVS1's strength for canonical sites if possible?

On 2020-12-05 01:38:02, user ACE NYPD wrote:

I have been using Betadine Gargle (.05% Povidine Iodine) as a gargle & nasal spray for months at 3 or 4 times a day. My wife, who has comorbidities also uses it. I have been exposed to Covid at least 4 times by others at work, and have always come back negative. Since I am in Tech Support, I have used keyboards and mice of infected persons. I am currently working from home until my latest exposure is 14 days since exposure. I took a rapid test that came back negative 6 days after the exposure, but I am still waiting on the PCR test I took the same day.

I also take a vitamin D supplement.

Do I think that the Betadine Gargle is preventing me from getting Covid, yes I do, but of course talk to your physician first. I have found these articles about Povidine Iodine and Covid:

https://www.pulmonologyadvi...

https://doi.org/10.1177/014...

https://www.thailandmedical...

Stay safe and informed.

On 2020-12-09 16:25:30, user Andrew T Levin wrote:

Our paper has been peer-reviewed and accepted at the European Journal of Epidemiology and is now published online with open access: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1

On 2020-12-10 22:13:25, user Lincoln Sheets wrote:

This is a fascinating and somewhat counter-intuitive, but plausible, finding that could have important implications for practice and policy worldwide. This study deserves wider publication.

On 2020-12-11 00:01:06, user lbaustin wrote:

Has this article been submitted to a journal yet? If not, please add to the conclusion the point that for people living in modern settings, dietary sources and sunlight rarely provide adequate amounts of vitamin D, which is why the authors of the papers reviewed here generally support universal supplementation with vitamin D3.

Also, excluding RCTs is so unusual in a review of the evidence that this decision needs to be justified.

And, Hastie, et al., did not have a true sample size of 348,598. Only 1474 of the individuals in the UK Biobank database had Covid-19 test results. Of these, 449 had at least one positive test, and the remaining 1025 had only negative results. Similar sample size adjustments should be made for the other studies (Merzon and Kaufman) using "big data."

On 2020-12-11 00:47:38, user lbaustin wrote:

This Basic Review could provide you with the information you need to add to this article about biological plausibility (page 7 and following). https://www.frontiersin.org...

It also includes two causal inference studies (page 12).

The recent RCTs and quasi-experimental studies (Castillo, Rastogi, Afshar, and two by Annweiler) should further bolster the argument that vitamin D supplementation is a causal factor in improved Covid-19 outcomes.

On 2020-12-13 20:05:53, user Peter Hodgkinson wrote:

The paper advocates an age-based priority system but then gives top priority to care homes - not the same thing! In several places it claims that this approach yields the best benefits based on the QALY method....and yet it provides no supporting math. I'll try to help out. Care home residents survive an average of 30 months from arrival so, those being immunized now will, on average survive 15 months. So the year factor equals 1.25. This figure then needs to be multiplied by a quality factor ranging from zero (no life quality restored) to one (full quality of life restored). I would like to know what figure was used?<br /> R is hovering around '1' and the ensuing lockdowns have had an awful effect on the quality of life on the rest of the 68,000,000 population. So let's work out a QALY figure for the loss of quality life over the last 9 months. The math is obvious. The vaccines should be targeted at keeping R below '1' by targeting the main 'mixers'. These are generally the people going about their daily work and this would benefit everyone. They've done this for healthcare staff - no problem with that. But why not all the many trades that are necessarily visiting peoples houses on a continuous basis?

On 2020-12-15 00:40:01, user David McCarthy wrote:

Great work Pengbo, Christine and the rest of the team!. Love the work. We recently also uploaded our pre-print on this very topic from the Australian context. If anyone is interested, please check it out: http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/...

On 2020-12-16 04:51:51, user Teresa Aarts wrote:

Does anyone know if someone with a history of viral sepsis should take the vaccine?

On 2020-12-17 13:40:29, user Dr Anand Lakshman wrote:

Can the proportion of active infections found be compared to proportion found through routine testing for same period? <br /> Since we have samples collected over 14 days, can we look at RT PCR positivity for each day and calculate incidence over the study period?<br /> How did we account for various socio economic groups? The sampling appears biased towards lower socio economic groups as the settings are largely public hospitals. How was the sampling for the elderly and co- morbidities done, as that is only one which is truly community based random sampling?<br /> The active infection rate in Ballari district is an outlier. Needs to be verified.

On 2020-12-21 01:45:45, user Mahalul Azam wrote:

This work now published in Scientific Reports 10, 20692 (2020) with the DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/s41...

On 2020-12-23 13:11:08, user Sheena Ricarte wrote:

I want to emphasize on the basic human need for employment. Indeed, work gives people dignity, pride, and a sense that they are important since they are a component of an organization meant to serve a key purpose in society. As French Enlightenment writer and philosopher, Voltaire wisely remarked, "Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need."

These past few months, I found news articles about people committing suicide due to joblessness caused by the coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic very common. The reports involved people in desperate scenarios from around the world: Canada, the United States, Thailand, India, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan, and so forth. This dismal reality shows that chronic unemployment caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is an international problem severely affecting mainly the most vulnerable and the indigents.

Workers whose jobs are on the brink of becoming irrelevant and obsolete due to technology revolutionizing the way we work and live worldwide are also susceptible to joblessness and severe mental health issues. I believe the articles and news reports I read highlight the strong correlation between the significance of JOBS, the apparent viciousness of the COVID-19 PANDEMIC, and the severity of SUICIDE committed by people unemployed for long periods and in abject poverty.

COVID-19 adversely impacted human survival. It immensely deprived the people around the world of their important need to earn a living, provide for their families' needs, basically survive, and live decently. I believe COVID-19 is a great and notorious human rights "violator." Moreover, I believe worklessness is lethal. Having a job basically translates to having food on the dining table and being able to pay one's essential household bills. People who are unemployed for a long period can surely get inconvenienced by its devastating effects on their overall wellness, quality of life, and family's survival.

I think one of the ways to resolve the COVID-19 and unemployment-related suicides is education with a different focus. The world's governments should stress to the people that we live in changing times and educate them on the things that matter the most today and possibly in the future. We live in a changing world and coexist with people from different generations and with different beliefs. As a millennial, I believe WORK and MONEY are LIFE.

Governments and schools worldwide should educate the people about the relevant life and workplace skills and jobs they believe would be important today and in the future. In this way, young people can equip themselves well skills-wise and become smart and adaptable. They can also find employment that can be future-proof. Schools should also emphasize offering helpful financial education and the significance of being financially stable, if not financially secure in the long run, to prevent people from suffering from poverty when they lose their jobs.

On 2020-12-23 21:55:19, user Marc wrote:

Were you able to compare these antibody types/quantities results against those resulting from other strongly immune-provocative respiratory viral infections such as type A flu?

And were these autoimmune antibodies rapidly declining post-infection or did they demonstrate high persistence?

On 2020-12-25 09:54:49, user DrAnurag Patidar wrote:

The review is providing insight about the impact of mhealth intervention on ante and postnatal care in low and middle income countries. It's a unique meta analysis which is very well undertaken and articulated. It will help the policy makers to make appropriate decision with regards to antenatal and postnatal care. The analysis is focused on middle and low income countries where the MMR and IMR is in bad situation. The result may impact to improve upon the same.

On 2020-12-26 04:26:03, user Peter Tomasi wrote:

The authors of this study (Corona-Ciao) https://www.medrxiv.org/con... draw conclusions from the results of serologic testing for a still ongoing extremely high-exposure environment in the study area.

They suggest these conclusions also to be valid in a general way for schools that apply preventive measures in high exposure environments.

Serologic tests only get positiv after a certain period of latency post onset of symptoms (POS).

The collection of samples started October 26, when case numbers in the general population of the study area just had very rapidly risen to an extremely high level and continued until November 19.

The rise started suddenly September 30 and was most massive from October 14 till October 30. After the described sharp and fast rise case numbers remained more or less at the very high level ever since. <br /> https://www.zh.ch/de/gesund...

In the discussion of the conclusions it is important to know in which exact extent serum sample collection respected the necessary POS-latency for them to be truly representative of the very high exposure environment the authors draw their conclusions for.

The Study used the ABCORA 2.0 binding assay of the Institute of Medical Virology (IMV) of the University of Zurich (Ref. 22). The publicly available document describing the test gives no information about the latency.<br /> https://www.virology.uzh.ch...

It nevertheless refers to the following study: Seow, J., et al. Longitudinal evaluation and decline of antibody responses in SARS-CoV-2 infection. medRxiv, 2020.2007.2009.20148429 (2020). https://www.medrxiv.org/con...

This document states the mean time to seroconversion from POS against at least 1 antigen to be 12.6 days (Line 117).

The authors of Corona-Ciao specify samples in their assay (ABCORA 2.0) were defined as seropositive for SARS-CoV-2 if at least two of the 12 parameters were above the cut-off (Line 172).

As a rough estimate I therefore suppose the usual latency of the test to get positive to be somewhat longer than 12.6 days, maybe 14 to 21 days? If we ad 7 more days for safety, we have 28 days.

I suppose the Institute of Medical Virology of the University of Zürich has validation data for its ABCORA 2.0 Test that specify latency from POS. It would be interesting to have validation data for children, if they exist.

If we assume a latency of 28 days, a substantial amount of samples could have been collected while the level of the exposure environment was not yet as high as the one the authors draw their conclusions for.

To clarify this worry, it is important, that the authors release complete information about when exactly collection of the samples occurred for all study participants and which exact latency from POS they assume on which validation data of the used ABCORA 2.0 Test.

On 2020-12-28 18:04:37, user Rogerio Atem wrote:

The 3 preprints of this series on COVID-19 epidemic cycles were condensed into a single article that summarizes our findings using the analytical framework we developed. The framework provides cycle pattern analysis, associated to the prediction of the number of cases, and calculation of the Rt (Effective Reproduction Number). In addition, it provides an analysis of the sub-notification impact estimates, a method for calculating the most likely Incubation Period, and a method for estimating the actual onset of the epidemic cycles. <br /> We also offer an innovative model for estimating the "inventory" of infective people.<br /> (Revised, not yet copy-edited)<br /> https://doi.org/10.2196/22617

On 2020-12-29 00:33:03, user Olga Matveeva wrote:

Several recent preprints support some of this manuscript findings.<br /> 1. Authors from Sweden and China in a study entitled “Pulmonary stromal expansion and intra-alveolar coagulation are primary causes of Covid-19 death” demonstrated that “The virus was replicating in the pneumocytes and macrophages but not in bronchial epithelium, endothelial, pericytes or stromal cells. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/202...<br /> 2. Researchers in China concluded that “Collectively, these results demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 directly neutralizes human spleens and LNs through infecting tissue-resident CD169+ macrophages.” They published a preprint entitled “The Novel Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Directly Decimates Human Spleens and Lymph Node” doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/202...<br /> 3. Researchers in France demonstrated “that SARS-CoV-2 efficiently infects monocytes and macrophages without any cytopathic effect.” Their findings are reported in the preprint entitled “Monocytes and macrophages, targets of SARS-CoV-2: the clue for Covid-19 immunoparalysis” doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/202...<br /> 4. Researchers in Brasil investigated SARS-CoV-2 infection of PBMCs and found that in vitro infection of whole PBMCs from healthy donors was productive of virus progeny. They also found that “SARS-CoV-2 was frequently detected in monocytes and B lymphocytes from COVID-19 patients, and less frequently in CD4+T lymphocytes” The preprint is entitled “Infection of human lymphomononuclear cells by SARS-CoV-2”. <br /> doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/202...

On 2020-12-29 21:21:46, user Meerwind7 wrote:

Is this modelling for an isolated "island state"? If there is exchange with other regions, where infection rates are assumed constant or independant of the regional approach, the advantage of "vaccines for the young" may set in at a little later, as the inward movement of infections could affect the older people stronger (if not yet vaccinated) and the effect of dampening infections by vaccines over time is disturbed. But not necessarily so or just a little, if imports affect the young first and spread (and either multiply or are dampened) among them for a while before affecting older people.

On 2020-12-31 16:42:18, user R Pressinger wrote:

One drawback with this study is it investigates only two parameters of lymphocyte counts - comparing individuals below 900 per cu/mm with those above this range. Normal lymphocyte count is approximately 1,100 to 3,100 for the middle 95% population. 2.5% of us score below this range and 2.5% above. Therefore, the majority of Covid-19 deaths could very well be in the bottom 5-10% range but we would not know if this was occurring from the current study design. Other published studies have shown asymptomatic Covid-19 patients average upwards of approximately 1,700 lymphocytes, which is interesting as this is still in the bottom 1/4th to 1/3rd of the general population. It would be intriguing and far more enlightening to add additional parameters for comparison. For example, comparing Covid-19 fatality rates for those with absolute lymphocytes below 900 to those in the "healthy normal range" (roughly between 1,800 and 2,400). Extrapolating from current findings, this information could possibly result in a dramatic difference in fatality rates. If this was the case, it would identify individuals at near zero risk of severe health outcome for this and future outbreaks and imply these individuals could be at the front line without risk of injury. This would be invaluable information for workers in many professions including medical, nursing home staff and teachers involved in the education of our children.

On 2021-01-04 08:24:09, user Li-Juan Jie wrote:

This article has been accepted for publication in Physical Therapy, Published by Oxford University Press

On 2021-01-05 13:45:57, user Rogerblack wrote:

The authors claimed case is at best flawed as they are implicitly assuming by use of the GHQ12 that people with covid are otherwise healthy.

"The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) is a screening device for identifying minor psychiatric disorders in the general population".

It is not designed for those with severe fatiguing illnesses.

https://oxfordbrc.nihr.ac.u... for example found many physical symptoms persisting.

Endorsing 'Felt constantly under strain', 'felt you couldn't overcome your difficulties' when facing a disabling illness that may make you unable to complete normal activities, and has an unclear prognosis is not a clear measure of depression/anxiety.

At best, each question needs to be investigated carefuly for contamination with physical health issues of the patient before a more detailed claim can be made than 'patient scores on the GHQ12'.

On 2021-01-06 10:52:36, user Erik Hogh-Sorensen wrote:

Regardless of the outcome, I am extremely happy that some scientists like Kasper Kepp & co. still dare make independent research and review potential government failures in the official response to covid19. Only through knowledge does mankind improve. Thanks Kasper Kepp!

On 2021-01-06 18:17:16, user RT1C wrote:

"grade 4 (tops for breath after walking about 100 yards" SHOULD BE "stops for breath"

On 2021-01-07 22:48:33, user Adesuyi Ajayi wrote:

What role will ivermectin play before or after vaccination for Covid 19? -No role or adjunctive ?<br /> Will viral mutations such as the B1,17 affect efficacy of ivermectin or vaccines ? <br /> These are questions to be answered for ivermectin and its possible use before any widespread chemoprophylactic use can be advocated.<br /> Will ivermectin be useful for future RNA respiratory viruses.

On 2021-01-08 15:40:35, user lbaustin wrote:

Nicely done! I especially appreciate the fact that the JBI's standards were used to determine that the studies were at low risk for bias.

I am looking forward to seeing this published in a MEDLINE indexed journal so that it can easily be picked up by other researchers.

On 2021-01-11 12:34:52, user Paul McKeigue wrote:

This paper has now been formally accepted by BMC Medicine, after several rounds of peer review.

On 2021-01-12 09:56:32, user Hein De Waele wrote:

How far are you with the peer reviews. When do you expect publication?

On 2021-01-12 17:11:09, user sultan mehmood kamran wrote:

https://doi.org/10.1371/jou...<br /> article is published in PLOS ONE

On 2021-01-12 21:06:13, user Ca Doctorj wrote:

@Wayne, 14 days after dose one, vaccine efficacy is >90% compared to placebo. How high do the antibody titres need to be to prevent infection? No one knows, but one dose appear to be enough.

On 2021-01-13 16:49:11, user Ezequiel Petrillo wrote:

Suppl. Table 2 has an error. Where it says that the Custom-made qPCR mix has 8 ul of MgCl2, it should say 4 ul (4mM final concentration), adding the extra volume with ultrapure water. We will fix this error in an updated version soon.

On 2021-01-15 14:45:01, user mary wrote:

It is proven that links of interest have a massive influence on the results of such studies.<br /> Please take the prevailing legislation into account and list any link of interests of the persons involved in this study. Thank you.

On 2021-01-16 15:28:40, user Julie Courraud wrote:

Our article has been accepted for publication in Journal of Molecular Neuroscience! Soon you will be able to see the latest improved version. We thank our reviewers for their constructive feedback.

On 2021-01-16 15:36:22, user Robert Flisiak wrote:

Article is already published in PAIM and is available at the <br /> https://www.mp.pl/paim/issu...

On 2021-01-16 22:39:12, user Fernando Marcucci wrote:

Have this article accepted and published in any peer-reviewed journal yet?

On 2021-01-19 14:10:34, user Curbina wrote:

It is very sobering to finally be presented with a study that gives statistical dimensions to what has been already suspected: that surviving COVID-19 is not the end of it, and that the sequelae can be life altering, and even lethal. May this open the eyes to those that insist that there’s no justification to strict measures, but above all, that those who oppose the measures finally realize that this is not a game and that the personal responsibility to stay healthy is also for the sake of keeping your personal sphere of relations healthy.

On 2021-01-21 12:22:19, user Michael A wrote:

Thank you for this important trial. Please include specific data on what ‘usual care’ was given to patients. Comparing dexamethasone use between treatment and placebo groups would be important. If those rates were similar your conclusion would be even stronger.

On 2021-01-21 13:03:26, user Mikko Heikkilä wrote:

Would you be kind enough to clarify if the registered protocol (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/... "https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=205523)") is in fact the protocol for this review and meta-analysis or for another paper yet to be published?

On 2021-01-22 12:24:37, user Jeany wrote:

See the final version published by Analytical Chemistry (ACS) (https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.0c04497) "Covid-19 Automated Diagnosis and Risk Assessment through Metabolomics and Machine Learning"

On 2021-01-22 19:01:20, user Alberto wrote:

I hardly see any recommendation about measures to remove pathogens from indoor air. Good to see someone recommending it. I hope people take note and use methods, especially in public places, work places, schools, etc... The other big missing part is that to prevent upper respiratory tract infections (both to get them and to spread them), washing your hands often is good, but washing your upper respiratory tract often is fundamental. And yet, few advises about it. Pity.

An article for anyone interested in measures for both of the above: https://clo2info.wordpress....

On 2021-01-23 12:39:18, user Graeme Ackland wrote:

Independent study with different methodology and using public data: draws same conclusion as Uk govt, NERVTAG committee

On 2021-01-23 16:10:09, user Prasad Kasibhatla wrote:

Do the top and bottom panels of Figure 1 represent different ambient conditions?

On 2021-01-25 18:59:34, user janomila wrote:

None of the citizens of Slovakia was informed about this research.<br /> - nobody signed the informed consent.<br /> - no voluntariness - blackmail under the threat of lost labor.<br /> Are anyone interested in the Nuremberg Codex???<br /> No, money are money. <br /> Who cares about human rights?

On 2021-01-28 11:39:12, user Ronaldo Wieselberg wrote:

There is a serious question in the paper. While there is a similarity in the two groups accordingly to comorbidities, there is no information about similarity of time of symptoms between the two groups. This may lead to uneven groups, in which, for example, the intervention group had a longer time of symptoms, thus, receiving a late diagnosis with PCR, after the period in which they could evolve in a worse condition, then providing a selecting bias in the paper.

If the groups had similarity in this condition, this should be put clearly. Otherwise, it may be interesting to review the data.

On 2021-01-30 21:26:15, user Sharif Ismail wrote:

This article has now been published in updated form in the Lancet Infectious Diseases.

It can be found here: https://www.thelancet.com/j...

On 2021-01-31 20:05:06, user Gareth Hill wrote:

What happens if you assume that the vaccines gave a very high efficacy 99%+, against death and hospitalization , as found in the trials

On 2021-02-03 11:01:36, user Stig Mangschau wrote:

"Risk" and "current findings" is not the same. If the rain is approaching you are indeed at high risk of becoming wet, even though you are currently dry.<br /> Yet in Norway this study is now being used as an argument for keeping schools open without keeping 1 meter distance. Schools are now reopening, and as a teacher, I feel very unsafe!

On 2021-02-03 22:22:54, user Francisco Sánchez Jiménez wrote:

But let's see, here the crucial test is missing, let's leave the apriorisms, that the antibody titers are in higher quantities does not ensure greater efficiency, or effectiveness, that remains to be demonstrated

On 2021-02-13 15:15:13, user Rick Phelps wrote:

It was noted that high degrees of in and ex leakage rates were typically observed. Were added filtration control measures taken to reduce and or control this variable. ? Others have published means by which the public can increase overall FFE using many techniques and materials.

On 2021-02-16 16:07:20, user Roberto Valente wrote:

Dear researcher colleagues. The manuscript has been reviewed and published on the British Journal of Surgery. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjs...

On 2021-02-23 20:17:28, user AJ wrote:

Regarding public health measures selecting for mutations-<br /> the effect is nil; those mutations must exist in order to perpetuate, and if a mutation confers a transmissibility advantage it will outcompete according to this relativity regardless of the mitigations in place. This is a virus transmitted through lungs and by air- we are not going to start growing gills and swimming and neither will it. It is bound by the laws of physics.

The daily survivorship/ incubation period is also long. In order for a mutation to reduce transmissibility by affecting/incapacitating the host the effect would need to be massive.

The S strain, the relatively slow one that was not as virulent is gone. It had a lower R and was not as virulent. The tendency of these mutations is clear, and is shown by the Weizmann institute.

On 2021-02-26 03:39:12, user Larisa Tereshchenko wrote:

Now published in JACC: Heart Failure: JACC Heart Fail. 2021 Feb;9(2):100-111. doi: 10.1016/j.jchf.2020.09.006. Epub 2020 Nov 11. PubMed PMID: 33189627

On 2021-02-26 16:48:14, user Jason Beugnet wrote:

what journal is this published within? Just trying to make a citation of this

On 2021-03-01 19:08:36, user Rainald Koch wrote:

The model ignores delays. If tracing and testing is not much faster than the transmission itself, the effectiveness of backward contact tracing is largely overestimated. Compliance with quarantine is another weakness. What works in SE Asia won't work in most other cultures.

On 2021-03-02 21:59:38, user cybericius wrote:

For a year already I have dry nose and every morning dry flat parts with dry blood come out when blowing. Never had this before, and very hard to breath through nose before blowing it out. The mucus during the day feels more stickier than ever before.<br /> Inside the tip of the nose I feel a sensitive area. Sometimes I smell iron (blood?). Humidifier doesn't help, I keep the air on 55%. Would be great to know how to find a way back to have normal nose state again.

On 2021-03-10 06:06:36, user Robin Whittle wrote:

These researcher's ability to actually discern the 25OHD levels of real people seems to be very limited, since they are relying on analysis of genetic variations which supposedly account for only 4.3% of the observed variation in 25OHD levels.

Their fealty to actual observations is questionable since they represent the Cordoba calcifediol trial [Castillo et al. 15] as involving "high dose vitamin D" and "less intensive care unit admissions". In this trial, oral 0.532mg calcifediol (25OHD) was given at the earliest opportunity, and can be expected to have raised circulating 25OHD levels within four hours or so to 60ng/ml or more, according to the patent for the same capsules, https://patents.google.com/... - although these levels were with young, healthy and presumably non-obese subjects. The outcomes were ICU admissions 50% to 2% and deaths 8% to zero. This is an extraordinarily successful outcome, well explained by the promptness with which 25OHD levels were repleted. Criticisms of randomisation etc. were countered by Jungreis and Kellis doi.org/10.1101/2020.11.08.....

The Murai et al. [16] trial in Brazil did use high dose vitamin D3 - which takes days to a week or so to be converted to circulating 25OHD - and which was given much later in the patient's disease progression. So it is not surprising that it produced no clinical improvement.

The shallow and unreasonably dim analysis this article gives of RCTs, and the limited ability of the researchers ability to actually discern 25OHD levels in actual people, does not seem to give the authors a reasonable basis for their pronouncement "These findings, together with recent randomized controlled trial data, suggest that other therapies should be prioritized for COVID-19 trials.".

A more informed analysis of current research would point to articles such as McGregor et al. "An autocrine Vitamin D-driven Th1 shutdown program can be exploited for COVID-19" https://www.biorxiv.org/con... in which Th1 lymphocytes from the lungs of severe COVID-19 patients are found to be stuck in their pro-inflammatory program, unable to enter their anti-inflammatory shutdown program, as they should after complement levels rise, because their vitamin D autocrine (internal) and paracrine (nearby cells) signaling systems are not working. The sole cause of this failure - which arguably causes severe COVID-19 via endothelial damage driving hypercoagulative blood - is lack of 25OHD.

Such an analysis would concern the question of what levels of 25OHD are sufficient to ensure rapid, complete, vitamin D based autocrine/paracrine signaling in all immune cells generally, for instance by reference to the graphs of hospital-acquired and surgical wound infection rates vs. 25OHD levels in Quraishi et al. 2014 https://jamanetwork.com/jou... . These indicate continuing benefits to immune function up to 50 or 55ng/ml.

A proper account of 25OHD levels and their relation to the hyper-inflammatory immune system dysregulation which drives severe COVID-19 would also cite Stagi et al. 2015 https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/... in which children suffering from Kawasaki disease had 25OHD levels averaging just 9.2ng/ml and in which those with coronary artery abnormalities averaged a disastrously low 4.9ng/ml. This research - with such obvious clinical implications for KD, Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome, sepsis and severe COVID-19 - should be well known to all clinicians.

On 2021-04-15 00:06:12, user fra setch wrote:

Anti-spike IgG glycoprotein for Covaxin in Phase 2 trial was 65%. And this trial was done on only 96 Covaxin participants. Something doesn't seem right about this.

On 2020-11-04 22:10:53, user stephan walrand wrote:

it is not an issue of quickly decline, it is a question of crossing down a certain blood level: it is a threshold triggering effect. <br /> When enough people cross down the threshold, when positive they become more contagious as their respiratory track is more invaded, and they contamine other people being under the threshold, who also become more contagious.<br /> It is similar to a nuclear chain reaction: under a critical neutron rate production you can control the reactor, a little bit above it is an explosion.<br /> But I will be happy to consider any other explanation for the correlation with the latitude.

On 2020-11-06 03:35:38, user AliD wrote:

The final version of the article has been published on the journal of Aging Clinical and Experimental Research in Sep 2020. Please use the following information to cite the article.

Daneshkhah, Ali, Vasundhara Agrawal, Adam Eshein, Hariharan Subramanian, Hemant Kumar Roy, and Vadim Backman. "Evidence for possible association of vitamin D status with cytokine storm and unregulated inflammation in COVID-19 patients." Aging Clinical and Experimental Research 32, no. 10 (2020): 2141-2158.

On 2020-11-18 00:52:30, user Peter James wrote:

I am very much concern with ethics of this research. The authors stated that the local authorities approved the study. Although it is good to have a local buy in in such research, I believe that it would have been prudent and ethically appropriate to seek proper ethics approval from a recognised body either from a university or from the national ethics committee. There are ethics committees or IRB. The most popular one is the one in the ministry of health and sanitation (Sierra Leone ethics review and scientific committee). I believe that those local authorities, many of which are less educated and have little or no idea about research ethics and so getting their consent does not equate to addressing the ethics concerns of such study. I think this research should not published given that the authors did not adhere to the tenets of good research ethics. As a Sierra Leonean researcher, I have observed such issues, especially during the Ebola outbreak where western researchers disguising as NGO workers tend to exploit our system or take advantage of the weak quality assurance system when conducting research in Sierra Leone. I believe such cannot be done in Italy.

On 2021-05-30 17:20:05, user Badger Vanamburgh wrote:

It’s astonishing that anyone thinks that this study is in any way scientific, controlled, with conclusions based on anything but bias. It’s alarming that such nonsense writings like these are even taken seriously enough for someone to decide to publish it, spread it around the internet. The times of truth, fact and reality ruling the day, are behind us. They are destroying science and destroying our democracy. That is very sad indeed.

On 2021-06-10 02:33:11, user baby drumf wrote:

How come countries like Taiwan and South Korea have such low rates of transmission? they are all wearing melt blown polypropylene masks (KF94 & N95 Respirators). Respirators work much better than cloth or surgical type procedure masks.

On 2021-06-01 00:21:43, user Pat Frank wrote:

"We show here that the mRNA from anti-COVID BNT162b2 (Pfizer) and <br /> mRNA-1273 (Moderna) vaccines is not detected in human breast milk <br /> samples collected 4-48 hours post-vaccine"

Nice, but irrelevant. The worry has been that the mRNA encoded spike protein gets into breast milk (and other tissues).

There does not appear to be any concern that the mRNA itself appears in breast milk. So the paper of Golan, et al., is irrelevant to the concern.

On 2021-06-10 10:53:46, user Soshay wrote:

Of course BNT162b2 (Pfizer) and mRNA-1273 (Moderna) would not be detected in breastmilk 4-48 hrs post injection. The biodistribution study follows the lipid nano particle envelope still covering the mrna up to 48 hrs post injection. Follow the ALC - 0315 and ALC - 0159.

On 2021-06-11 09:20:26, user WayneGao TMU wrote:

Taiwanese government may soon authorize EUA to a protein subunit vaccine by Medigenvac which just de-blind their phase 2 clinical trial results (about 3800 participants) on June 10, 2021. The results shows credible safety and good immunity response( for instance, GMT 662, compared to AZ's 370). Like many other countries, Taiwan has struggled with securing enough vaccines. My question, if the vaccine receive its EUA, is Taiwan going to be the first country to issue an EUA based post-immunization antibody titers as the basis for establishing a correlate of protection for COVID-19 vaccine? Thanks, Wayne

On 2021-06-11 09:54:15, user Patrik D'haeseleer wrote:

How did you deal with correcting for multiple hypothesis testing in this study? It sounds like you focused on one sub-population of 255 out of >1200 patients. How many different sub-populations did you wind up testing, how many different medications, and how many different tests per medication?

On 2021-06-11 13:44:12, user Jay Alan Erdman wrote:

Where to begin? 1) This is an abstract; not yet peer reviewed; so it's just four guys saying this. 2)They don't say how they got their population. 3) They provide no data. 4) There is no control group either randomized, case control, or cohort. 5) They really do not specify their methods. 6) There is no treatment protocol so we don't know what additional treatment they may have received. Overall this doesn't meet any scientific standard. But even if it had been well done; these patients presented in the Spring of 2020 when treatment protocols were very different and outcomes much worse. This study says nothing about whether HCQ would be of any benefit to patients receiving treatment in Spring 2021.

On 2021-06-12 13:48:28, user Igor M. wrote:

What was the rationale for using different metrics in figure 2? One talks about "% inhibition" and another about "optical density"- comparing apples and oranges? Secondly, I could not for the life of me find the justification for the seemingly arbitrary definition of "positive" and "negative" thresholds.

On 2021-06-15 11:03:19, user camel faizal wrote:

It seems the participants are quite elderly with the mean age at 40.4 (+-12. 2) years and just a small group of 15.

Also the study should include data from both doses administered instead of just the first dose. Otherwise , this study just adds to more hesistancy.

Would it not be better if there are more participants ( at least 10,000 or more ) and are in the younger age group , something like having participants between the ages of 18-40 years ?

Thanks for the hard work and effort.

Greatly appreciated and all the other comments need to be addressed too.

People's lives hang in the balance.

On 2021-06-12 19:20:03, user brycenesbittt wrote:

The missing matching is individuals who "continue to take covid precautions" such as distancing, masking indoors, and limiting exposure in indoor crowds. Matching people just by zip code, age and gender misses this not-so-subtle point.

On 2021-06-13 01:39:10, user cathyx wrote:

You are using relative risk reduction instead of absolute risk reduction in your calculations. <br /> Therefore, your analysis is flawed.

On 2021-06-14 20:50:49, user Sheila Lewis wrote:

glad to peruse and know it's always good enjoy fresh air and sunshine away from dense crowds...thanks! sheila

On 2021-06-19 13:31:53, user globus999 wrote:

I read with interest the article. However, the conclusion does not seem<br /> to be supported by the evidence. If you look closely at all the plots, <br /> there seems to be no impact below 10 units. This would therefore <br /> indicate that yes indeed, there seems to be a safe level.

On 2021-06-19 21:00:25, user Elisabeth Bik wrote:

As pointed out on Twitter by @seqwave, in Figure 1, the 'Left orbitofrontal cortex (thickness)' and the 'Left superior insula (thickness)' plots are identical. Could the authors please check?

On 2021-06-19 23:50:30, user Gabriel Rodrigues Couto wrote:

This study was made with >70 year old patients. The interpretation should contain this information, right? It doesn't. In brazil a lot of midia is announcing this article as " the vaccine does not work".

On 2021-06-25 10:42:32, user helene banoun wrote:

Congratulations for your work!

It would be interesting to study also the mutations related to the immune system not located on the spike like those on orf3 and orf8

https://www.karger.com/Arti... <br /> Evolution of SARS-CoV-2: review of mutations, role of the host immune system ?<br /> Banoun H, Nephron (2021 Apr 28:1-12)

On 2021-06-26 12:51:39, user Grzegorz A Rempala wrote:

A paper from our group on modeling repeated testing on OSU campus. We hope that the methodology can be used in other situations when vaccination is not an option and repeated testing is requited. Thanks to all who contributed to data collection for this project !

On 2021-06-26 15:55:06, user Prospector wrote:

Hindsight is 20/20. It was a naturally panicked reaction to the quickly spreading virus, but I believe history will show us that those nations and states that did not use draconian lockdown mandates will lag in recovery as compared to those jurisdictions where leadership made available the best information at the time to the public and allowed the public to choose for themselves what is best. Within the U.S., this is exactly what is playing out between the red and blue states.

On 2021-06-28 02:07:33, user Matt wrote:

The study seems to have a fatal flaw, which is that it was based on healthcare workers. Hospitals and other healthcare offices would have very strict mask enforcement and many other mitigation measures not found outside of healthcare settings. Therefore, I don't see how one can extrapolate the results to the general population. In other words, maybe it was the mitigation measures and not the vaccine or prior infection that was the primary driver in limiting the spread in this particular scenario.

On 2021-07-13 02:04:31, user Matt Jolley wrote:

Thank you for the data collection. I hope you continue the study for some months. The infected immunity indicated here may be less for other Covid variants.<br /> Delving into recent UK variant Delta sequence confirmed reinfections of 285 as of May 31 out of 22571 sequences by sample date. For Delta prior infection immunity appears similar to two shot vaccination immunity. Just taking the last two or three months of your data if similar infected immunity to vaccinated immunity was tested the smaller prior infected unvaccinated population would be expected to have 1.2 or so cases compared to the 15 from the larger vaccinated population. Thus the very large confidence interval reported.<br /> I prefer seeing person days used as in the Haas et al paper. https://www.thelancet.com/j...<br /> How many cases of reinfection if any occurred within the 90 day post positive sample period? Figure 3. the sums of previous infected and not previously infected both monotonically decrease until increasing in the last column. Better to note the number of persons who have passed the 90 day interval since prior infection as this number would be increasing especially around the beginning of the study. The UK study had a vast majority of possible reinfections sampled just after that 90 day interval.

On 2021-07-15 21:52:38, user Brian Mowrey wrote:

Results for the not-previously-infected group are barely presented/summarized. Without a calendar of absolute case counts, it is very difficult to get an idea of the real infection rate. I gave it a shot, using the relative plot in Figure 3. More at blog link.

Not previously PCR-confirmed-infected infection rate: 2,154 / 49,652 = 4.3%<br /> -Completely Vaccinated infection rate: 15 / 28836 = 0.05%<br /> -Unvaccinated / Incompletely Vaccinated infection rate: 2,139 / 49,652 = 4.3%<br /> -Estimated Day 0 - 80 U/IV infection rate in 150-day units: (1620/49652)(15/8) = 6.1%<br /> -Estimated Day 80 - 150 U/IV infection rate in 150-day units: (529/21,332)(15/7) = 5.3%<br /> -Estimated Day 0 - 150 U/IV real infection rate (1620/49652) + (529/21,332) = 5.7%<br /> https://unglossed.substack....

On 2021-07-17 21:41:27, user David Timmons wrote:

Do we have an estimate of when this article will be peer reviewed and move out of the preprint shadow? Many skeptics ignore anything listed as a preprint, no matter how much work has been done. Including those unvaccinated who test positive for Covid 19 antibodies would put the US population with some form of immunity at about 75%. That means our vulnerable population (unvaccinated with no prior Covid 19 infection) at 25% or less.

On 2021-06-28 23:40:06, user Alex Poliakov wrote:

Really cool!

Why do we get different numbers of results for different genes? If I type in a gene symbol into the browser and then press "export data to csv" - I get different numbers of rows for different genes:

APOE: 1001 phenotypes<br /> PCSK9: 1951 phenotypes<br /> BRCA1: 1950 phenotypes<br /> IL6: 978 phenotypes

At first we thought it might be a pvalue threshold but there are entries with pvalue=1 in all cases...

On 2021-06-29 02:14:48, user JM V wrote:

I presume growth rates are in units of "per week" ?

On 2021-06-30 05:07:04, user Sampo Oksanen wrote:

Note that this has been published http://ijomeh.eu/Sources-of...

On 2021-07-01 03:15:16, user Subhajit Biswas wrote:

Really excited to see that our original observation that pre-exposure to dengue may be cross-protective against COVID-19, has been further supported by the following study from Brazil!

Title of paper: Previous Dengue Infection and Mortality in Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Abstract: We studied 2351 participants with coronavirus disease 2019; 1177 (50%) reported previous dengue infection. Those without previous dengue had a higher risk of death (hazard ratio: .44; 95% confidence interval: .22–.89; P = .023) in 60-day follow-up. These findings raise the possibility that dengue might induce immunological protection against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1093/cid...

This perhaps explains why mortality in dengue endemic regions like the Indian subcontinent, Africa and SE Asia is about 10-times less compared to dengue non-endemic regions.

Why Brazil is an exception?

Read following publications:

1. https://www.medrxiv.org/con... by Prof Miguel A L Nicolelis

2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.c... by our Group

As of today, Worldometer says mortality per million population is 287 for India compared to 1863 for US & 1878 for UK (1st July, 2021). Indian population is almost 4-times the population of US with 0.4 million deaths compared to 0.62 million deaths in US.

On 2021-07-01 18:18:58, user vinu arumugham wrote:

You don't seem to have covered T cell homing. T cells induced by injected vaccines will home to the skin. T cells induced by infection will home to the lungs.

On 2021-07-02 23:04:45, user Ali Salehinejad, PhD wrote:

The peer-reviewed published article (open access) of this preprint can be found below:<br /> https://www.sciencedirect.c...