Hua Hin Forum

All 4 returning Thai nationals in State quarantine.

ROME (Reuters) - The new coronavirus is losing its potency and has become much less lethal, a senior Italian doctor said on Sunday.

“In reality, the virus clinically no longer exists in Italy,” said Alberto Zangrillo, the head of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan in the northern region of Lombardy, which has borne the brunt of Italy’s coronavirus contagion.

“The swabs that were performed over the last 10 days showed a viral load in quantitative terms that was absolutely infinitesimal compared to the ones carried out a month or two months ago,” he told RAI television.

Italy has the third highest death toll in the world from COVID-19, with 33,415 people dying since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21. It has the sixth highest global tally of cases at 233,019.

However new infections and fatalities have fallen steadily in May and the country is unwinding some of the most rigid lockdown restrictions introduced anywhere on the continent.

Zangrillo said some experts were too alarmist about the prospect of a second wave of infections and politicians needed to take into account the new reality.

“We’ve got to get back to being a normal country,” he said. “Someone has to take responsibility for terrorizing the country.”

The government urged caution, saying it was far too soon to claim victory.

“Pending scientific evidence to support the thesis that the virus has disappeared ... I would invite those who say they are sure of it not to confuse Italians,” Sandra Zampa, an undersecretary at the health ministry, said in a statement.

“We should instead invite Italians to maintain the maximum caution, maintain physical distancing, avoid large groups, to frequently wash their hands and to wear masks.”

A second doctor from northern Italy told the national ANSA news agency that he was also seeing the coronavirus weaken.

“The strength the virus had two months ago is not the same strength it has today,” said Matteo Bassetti, head of the infectious diseases clinic at the San Martino hospital in the city of Genoa.

“It is clear that today the COVID-19 disease is different.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... ld+News%29

These studies have been reported from various sources since March.

This one from May 6

Dr. Ramin Oskoui, a cardiologist and CEO of Foxhall Cardiology, reacted on Tuesday to a study that found a new coronavirus mutation reportedly mirrors a change that occurred as the SARS virus began to weaken, saying, “it’s well-known that as viruses progress, they typically mutate to weaker forms.”

“The phenomenon is known as ‘Muller’s Ratchet,’” Oskoui told “The Ingraham Angle” Tuesday.

He added that this is “virology 101.”

“This is how they go away. They typically mutate, as well as herd immunity, to attenuate weaker strains that no longer make people so ill,” Oskoui continued.

This from March 18

A team of Singapore-based scientists has uncovered the first glimmer of hope that the COVID-19 virus could be mutating into a less virulent strain after discovering key protein suspected to affect the virus’s transmission and severity has disappeared in some patients.

In an academic paper, still under peer review but provided to The Australian, the Duke National University of Singapore team reported the protein “deletion” discovered in eight Singapore ­patients between February 9 and March 2 was consistent with those found at the tail end of the 2003 SARS outbreak, and could signal a weakening of the disease.

Duke NUS team leader Wang Linfa, an Australian virologist who sequenced and named Australia’s bat-borne Hendra horse virus, said the discovery was significant because “it’s important for the world to know that, just like SARS and MERS, (COVID-19) can change”.

Also from May:

Out of the 382 nasal swab samples the researchers examined from coronavirus patients in the state, a single sample was missing a significant chunk of its genome. Eighty-one of the letters were permanently deleted, according to the new study published in the Journal of Virology.

“One of the reasons why this mutation is of interest is because it mirrors a large deletion that arose in the 2003 SARS outbreak,” Lim said in a statement.

During the middle and late phases of the 2003 SARS epidemic, the virus accumulated mutations that lessened its strength, according to the researchers.

There are several more reports from Australia, Singapore, the US as well as Italy.

The more studies that agree with today's result adds weight to it's validity. It's a cousin of SARS and like SARS it could weaken itself into oblivion.

FINGERS CROSSED.

^^Not so sure about this source, however, or the Ingraham Angle...

On Ingraham’s show, he [Oskoui] spoke out against the Affordable Care Act and explained why “Medicare for All” would never work. Last month, he criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which really did foul up testing for COVID-19, for “how they’ve acted on gun control. They’re a highly political organization.” And recently, he was on “The Ingraham Angle” alongside former Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer, touting hydroxychloroquine as a potential coronavirus game-changer.

Even when I started hearing about how Ingraham and a couple of her doctor friends had convinced President Donald Trump that a drug that’s been prescribed for years for lupus and malaria might treat or even prevent the novel coronavirus, I only later realized that the doctor who’d been such a cowboy that he’d been willing to treat a pregnant woman with a heart condition was now such a cowboy that he was willing to talk up an unproven application to a highly suggestible president.

On TV, Ingraham asked Dr. Oskoui if health care workers, the military and pretty much everyone else should be on hydroxychloroquine at this point, prophylactically. “Should they all be on hydroxychloroquine with a physician’s supervision?”

“I think the answer is clear, absolutely yes,” he answered. Lupus patients on the drug, which he called “both safe and highly effective,” simply aren’t getting COVID-19, he said. Trump has repeated Oskoui’s assertion that lupus patients on hydroxychloroquine aren’t getting sick.

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn- ... rylink=cpy

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn- ... rylink=cpy

Thailand has had a 'net zero' for a week or more now!

Wuhan’s mass testing may have eradicated the coronavirus

https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/19276 ... oronavirus

Wuhan authorities said they found no new cases of “silent spreaders” for the first time in nearly two months as the city’s aggressive push to test its entire population appears to have succeeded in breaking hidden chains of transmission.

Of the 60,000 people tested on Sunday, no cases of asymptomatic infections were found, said the Wuhan municipal health commission on Monday. In an ambitious effort to guard against a resurgence of cases, Wuhan is testing its entire 11 million population for the virus and has found some 200 asymptomatic cases in the past two weeks.

The presence of infected people who show no outward signs of being sick but can nonetheless infect others has been an obstacle in worldwide efforts to contain the coronavirus, and a major reason why the pandemic spread so widely and quickly. In countries where testing remains inadequate, there is no way to detect such carriers and isolate them before they infect others.

In identifying the city’s asymptomatic carriers, Wuhan’s testing blitz could allow the city where the virus first emerged to eradicate the pathogen from its population. But its method is likely out of reach for other countries and even bigger Chinese cities as it requires a massive mobilization of resources and the full cooperation of residents.

Wuhan-dwellers were likely more willing to come forward for testing given the scars that the epidemic has left on the embattled city, which was sealed off for almost three months to contain the virus’s spread even as its local medical system nearly collapsed under the strain of the outbreak. Of China’s over 4,600 reported Covid-19 deaths, about 80% were in Wuhan.

Many countries, from developing ones like India and Indonesia to western nations like the US and UK, are still struggling to provide tests for everyone with symptoms, not to mention those without.

During the mass testing process, Wuhan found several dozen asymptomatic cases on a daily basis. The number has tapered down to single digits as testing came to an end, according to daily data released by the local health commission.

Despite having wrested its epidemic under control, China remains on high alert for sporadic infections which run the risk of a causing secondary outbreaks. A city in its northeastern province of Heilongjiang halted most of its train services last week after five asymptomatic cases were reported on a single day.

In nearby provinces Jilin and Liaoning, a cluster of over 40 infections caused authorities to levy lockdown measures over a region of 100 million people. How that cluster began remains a mystery.

HHTel wrote: ↑Thu Apr 16, 2020 5:14 pm It appears that the 'new' Songkran has been set for 4th - 7th July.

Dates not set yet it seems, only "possible" per today's article.

https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/ge ... y-possible

That original date of the 4th July (Independence Day US) was bandied around back in the middle of April.

Could still happen in July and being the rainy season, an excellent opportunity for Buddha to join in the water celebrations!

PeteC wrote: ↑Mon Jun 01, 2020 4:05 am ^ That is a huge positive development if accurate.

The above was in response to covid-19 dramatically weakening.

We're all hoping that this really does happen just like SARS did. However, there is one downside. Who was it that said "At some point, the virus is going to just disappear with the warm weather"?

If that happens, we'll never hear the last of it and the November election will be as good as won!!

I'm not sure if this is Fake News, but Richard Barrow doesn't normally deal in crap. Open so much yesterday, and close it again today It only affects Bangkok at the moment, but others normally follow.

If they are feeding us true information daily about lack of new infections, where is the justification?

No Daily Brief tomorrow.