from Hacker News

Covid-19 had us all fooled, but now we might have finally found its secret

by g3e0 on 4/7/20, 2:04 PM with 37 comments

  • by galhara on 4/7/20, 3:30 PM

    I tried googling the author's username and found this:

    https://thedonald.win/p/4FWoXTT/so-why-are-we-being-whipped-...

    "It escaped the Wuhan BL4 facility and was likely a bug/bio weapon Chinese were working on in that facility using our tax & trade deficit dollars"

    Seems a reliable source!

    EDIT: Also from the user's post history:

    "I'm not an academic so fuck all that citation waste of time"

  • by mtmail on 4/7/20, 3:09 PM

    I'm with "Be aware that the author has low trust factor and may have put the piece together from other sources without having a clue what he was writing about." until I see credentials.

    http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/index.php/2020/04/05/wuhan-f...

    "All that hilariously misguided and counterproductive criticism the media piled on chloroquine (purely for political reasons) as a viable treatment will now go down as the biggest Fake News blunder to rule them all. The media actively engaged their activism to fight ‘bad orange man’ at the cost of thousands of lives. Shame on them."

    The media critique part reads more like a political rant than scientific discourse.

  • by tomohawk on 4/7/20, 3:25 PM

    A family member is a nurse treating these patients at the hospital. She was relating how the blood of covid patients has a very different color. It is very dark. Is that related to this?

    EDIT: She also noted that many of the patients were breathing fine, but their pulse ox would just drop and drop.

    EDIT2: really? downvotes for asking a questions and seeking info?

  • by newsbinator on 4/7/20, 2:09 PM

    I read this the other day (before it got blocked on Medium) and to my layman eyes it sounded plausible.

    But I'm not a medical researcher and this is not medical research- it's more of a guess.

    I'm looking forward to some expert comments here on whether this theory has any basis in reality.

  • by lizrn on 4/8/20, 11:57 PM

    I took care of a gentleman the other day in the icu and this seems plausible but am also cautious as he was the first young man I took care of who had(?) to be intubated due to a drop in SAO2 from little activity ....his recovery was very slow but he also didn’t appear to be in distress the way I thought he would. The doctors are proactively incubating to prevent an emergent or urgent intubation. I questioned as I would normally being an icu nurse. This information presented is interesting although there is no author or scientific data. 🧐

  • by freeulysses on 4/8/20, 4:30 PM

    this aligns with the story as well. I cannot fathom why, when lives are on the line and the medical community does not have a sure-fire solution, that anyone would be so crass to shut down civil questions and speech. If you disagree, disagree, but don't downvote reasonable responses.

    https://nypost.com/2020/04/06/nyc-doctor-says-coronavirus-ve...

    https://www.the-hospitalist.org/hospitalist/article/220301/c...

  • by saminaustin on 4/8/20, 1:06 AM

    Based on this paper. There seems to be merit to the argument.

    Essentially these researchers claim that they modeled the corona virus surface proteins and found that they will bind to hemoglobin and cause it to release the iron atom - making it non-functional. This leads to the other symptoms of COVID-19. Given the severity of the outbreak it is certainly a hypothesis that others should test to validate or discredit. But based on scientific analysis, not just twitter snarking.

    https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surf...

  • by TonRoly on 4/8/20, 9:06 AM

    I am not a doctor... I am just a regular person who doesn’t understand why articles and posts similar to this including videos on YouTube, Facebook and other places are being removed.

    I found this to be an interesting article and true or false Doesn’t it fall under the Freedom of Speech... I sent this link to several people I know that are in the medical industry one of which is a brilliant doctor on the front lines saving lives at NCH hospital in Naples Florida... but before she sees it it is no longer available...

    I track this to this thread and see everyone debating everything from politics to science... yet why was this removed I. The first place? I’m sorry but when my mother raised me she was adamant about the point that we could say anything we wanted to anyone that we wanted and as long as it didn’t hurt anybody we were free to do so… Now I’m finding it very disturbing situation where information that I felt was important and needed to be looked at by people that I needed to trust to tell me if it was correct or not etc. etc. now it’s gone and I come to this group debating… And thank goodness I found out about this.

  • by shahrukh8 on 4/7/20, 3:11 PM

  • by cincijones on 4/8/20, 4:20 AM

    This is totally incorrect. First, the MOA of hydroxychloroquinoline (HCQ) in malaria is completely incorrect. It works through lysosomal function regarding the presentation of antigens to the immune system. Secondly, Covid-19 is not a DNA virus but an RNA virus, DNA is not involved nor is an interaction with hemoglobin involved in the anti-malaria activity of HCQ. There is nothing in the scientific/medical lit as of today about any interaction with hemoglobin and covid-19, nor any reason to think HCQ would interfere in such process. (WKJ, Professor of Pharmacology)

  • by mensetmanusman on 4/7/20, 6:08 PM

    Let’s hope this is accurate! If we have a straightforward way to cope with dropping O2 values in blood, this is great.

  • by nunez on 4/7/20, 6:09 PM

    Not sure of the OP’s credentials but this has been discussed often in /r/COVID19 and has some truth to it

  • by freeulysses on 4/8/20, 4:26 PM