O/T:- ...Has the key to a coronavirus vaccine been staring us in the face?

[tarquinbeech]

The figures are horrible. However if you drill down into them by socio economic group it is the lower socio economic groups who are much harder hit in particular black people. This is something of a sweeping statement but I would expect lower socio economic groups to live in less sanatised conditions as they have less money to clean etc. This makes something of a mockery of Jackals statement above ( no offense Jackal). I am not sure what the stats are on older folks being less likely to have the TB jab perhaps there is a correlation there as well.

Q, whereabouts can I find info on US deaths by ethnicity or socio-economic groups?....genuinely interested.

Personally I would expect US deaths to include the poor first ie those without health insurance.
If I was a rich White dude with a 2 million dollar life insurance policy and a gold-standard all-state health policy, it stands to reason I would expect to be treated on hand-n-foot, whereas if I was black street hustler from Baltimore, I'd probably get run over by the rich dude's ambulance as I was coughing my guts up outside Camden Yards.
I spent 3 years there, and the first thing they ask for is your health insurance....or your credit card.

[queenslandpie]

Q, whereabouts can I find info on US deaths by ethnicity or socio-economic groups?....genuinely interested.

Personally I would expect US deaths to include the poor first ie those without health insurance.
If I was a rich White dude with a 2 million dollar life insurance policy and a gold-standard all-state health policy, it stands to reason I would expect to be treated on hand-n-foot, whereas if I was black street hustler from Baltimore, I'd probably get run over by the rich dude's ambulance as I was coughing my guts up outside Camden Yards.
I spent 3 years there, and the first thing they ask for is your health insurance....or your credit card.

I read it here but its not actual stats its news https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...8f8_story.html

[tarquinbeech]

I read it here but its not actual stats its news https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...8f8_story.html

Thanks for that:
A handful of states report coronavirus cases and death by race and ethnicity. In Illinois, black people are 14 percent of the population but account for 30 percent of the confirmed cases and 41 percent of the deaths. In North Carolina, where African Americans represent 22 percent of the population, they make up 37 percent of cases and 22 percent of deaths. Data from Louisiana, where black people make up 33 percent of the population, shows they are represent than 70 percent of covid-19 deaths.

Health-care and government officials in Michigan and Wisconsin also have acknowledged that African Americans have died at disproportionate rates from the disease. In Albany, Ga., which has the highest number of deaths from covid-19 in the state, more than 90 percent of the fatalities are African Americans.

[tarquinbeech]

TB is an infection caused by bacteria - Covid-19 is a virus, they are not the same. Below is an interesting read I found by someone who knows the difference;

Correct, nobody has said they were the same....here is merely one definition:
Bacteria and viruses are both microscopic microbes. Both of them can cause diseases in plants and animals. Both these types of microbes contain enzymes required for the DNA replication and protein synthesis. But, viruses require a host organism for the production of viral coat proteins. Therefore, they should invade a second organism for their replication. On the other hand, bacteria can reproduce independently by binary fission. Both microbes consist of a huge diversity compared to other life forms. The key difference between bacteria and virus is the consideration of each form as a living or non-*living organism

Both bacteria and viruses can attack or invade the human body, and we have an immune system specifically designed to fight back.
We were discussing (as are various governments around the World) whether the deliberate "triggering" of our immune system FROM ONE UNRELATED DRUG OR VACCINE, might have benefits in fighting another....let me give you one specific example.

Here is a copy-n-paste of general blurb on cancers:
Strictly speaking, cancer is not contagious. But a fair number of cancers are clearly caused by viral or bacterial infections: lymphomas can be triggered by the Epstein-Barr virus, which also causes mononucleosis. Liver cancers can be caused by Hepatitis B and C. Cervical cancers can be caused by human papillomavirus, the major reason behind the development of a vaccine against it. For some of these cancers, nearly 100% of the cases have an infectious link---when researchers check to see if a virus or bacterium is working in the tumor or has left signs of its presence in a patient's blood, the answer is nearly always yes.
A new paper in The Lancet takes a look at the very best data on the prevalence of infection-caused cancers and comes up with some striking numbers. Overall, they estimate that 16% of cancer cases worldwide in 2008 had an infectious cause---2 million out of 12.7 million.
Hepatitis B and C, HPV, and Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that triggers stomach cancer, caused the lion's share of those cases, about 1.9 million together.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/hea...es-or-bacteria

Now the kicker.......The human immune system can not only recognize and eliminate pathogens, but also cancer cells. Therefore, treatments with weakened pathogens can help the immune system fight cancer. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin have genetically modified the BCG tuberculosis vaccine so that it stimulates the immune system in a more targeted manner. As a result, the new vaccine provides significantly better protection against tuberculosis. A clinical study with bladder cancer patients has now shown that treatment with VPM1002 can successfully prevent tumor recurrence in almost half of the patients who did not previously respond to BCG therapy. The results could lead to the early approval of the drug in bladder cancer therapy.

Yes, VPM1002 is a variant of the original BCG or TB shot that we got as children, to fight a bacterial disease.....and it is now being used to fight cancer, admittedly it is only showing promise against bladder cancers which is normally one of the cancers caused from a bacterial infection.....but what I'm trying to say is that there are numerous examples out there where one drug can have multiple uses, and my guess is that there are 10,000 scientists from all over the world scrambling through their "library" of old tried-n-tested drugs to find one to fight Covid19

Evaluation of VPM1002 as a Bladder Cancer Therapy

Bladder cancer is the ninth most common cancer in the world, and is four times more common in men than in women (77). The main risk factors for developing bladder cancer include smoking, Schistosoma infection (bilharzia), and exposure to industrial chemicals (77, 78). Tumors can be non-muscle invasive, i.e., confined to the mucosa of the bladder wall, or muscle-invasive. More than seventy percent of bladder cancers are detected while they are still non-muscle invasive (79). Due to its immunostimulatory properties, repeated intravesical BCG instillation is the standard adjuvant treatment for intermediate to high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) after transurethral resection of the tumors (80–82). BCG therapy reduces the risk of recurrence and the progression to muscle invasive bladder cancer. The repeated instillations require much higher doses and volumes of BCG than vaccination against TB does, and some patients have adverse events that lead to discontinuation of the therapy (83, 84). Adverse events include fever, bladder irritation, decreased bladder capacity, incontinence, hematuria, flu-like symptoms and in approximately 5% of cases, BCG infection (85, 86). Patients undergoing traumatic catheterization are at risk for intraluminal BCG dissemination, resulting in a potentially lethal systemic infection (87).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5610719/

[tarquinbeech]

Correct, nobody has said they were the same....here is merely one definition:
Bacteria and viruses are both microscopic microbes. Both of them can cause diseases in plants and animals. Both these types of microbes contain enzymes required for the DNA replication and protein synthesis. But, viruses require a host organism for the production of viral coat proteins. Therefore, they should invade a second organism for their replication. On the other hand, bacteria can reproduce independently by binary fission. Both microbes consist of a huge diversity compared to other life forms. The key difference between bacteria and virus is the consideration of each form as a living or non-*living organism

Both bacteria and viruses can attack or invade the human body, and we have an immune system specifically designed to fight back.
We were discussing (as are various governments around the World) whether the deliberate "triggering" of our immune system FROM ONE UNRELATED DRUG OR VACCINE, might have benefits in fighting another....let me give you one specific example.

Here is a copy-n-paste of general blurb on cancers:
Strictly speaking, cancer is not contagious. But a fair number of cancers are clearly caused by viral or bacterial infections: lymphomas can be triggered by the Epstein-Barr virus, which also causes mononucleosis. Liver cancers can be caused by Hepatitis B and C. Cervical cancers can be caused by human papillomavirus, the major reason behind the development of a vaccine against it. For some of these cancers, nearly 100% of the cases have an infectious link---when researchers check to see if a virus or bacterium is working in the tumor or has left signs of its presence in a patient's blood, the answer is nearly always yes.
A new paper in The Lancet takes a look at the very best data on the prevalence of infection-caused cancers and comes up with some striking numbers. Overall, they estimate that 16% of cancer cases worldwide in 2008 had an infectious cause---2 million out of 12.7 million.
Hepatitis B and C, HPV, and Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that triggers stomach cancer, caused the lion's share of those cases, about 1.9 million together.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/hea...es-or-bacteria

Now the kicker.......The human immune system can not only recognize and eliminate pathogens, but also cancer cells. Therefore, treatments with weakened pathogens can help the immune system fight cancer. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin have genetically modified the BCG tuberculosis vaccine so that it stimulates the immune system in a more targeted manner. As a result, the new vaccine provides significantly better protection against tuberculosis. A clinical study with bladder cancer patients has now shown that treatment with VPM1002 can successfully prevent tumor recurrence in almost half of the patients who did not previously respond to BCG therapy. The results could lead to the early approval of the drug in bladder cancer therapy.

Yes, VPM1002 is a variant of the original BCG or TB shot that we got as children, to fight a bacterial disease.....and it is now being used to fight cancer, admittedly it is only showing promise against bladder cancers which is normally one of the cancers caused from a bacterial infection.....but what I'm trying to say is that there are numerous examples out there where one drug can have multiple uses, and my guess is that there are 10,000 scientists from all over the world scrambling through their "library" of old tried-n-tested drugs to find one to fight Covid19

Evaluation of VPM1002 as a Bladder Cancer Therapy

Bladder cancer is the ninth most common cancer in the world, and is four times more common in men than in women (77). The main risk factors for developing bladder cancer include smoking, Schistosoma infection (bilharzia), and exposure to industrial chemicals (77, 78). Tumors can be non-muscle invasive, i.e., confined to the mucosa of the bladder wall, or muscle-invasive. More than seventy percent of bladder cancers are detected while they are still non-muscle invasive (79). Due to its immunostimulatory properties, repeated intravesical BCG instillation is the standard adjuvant treatment for intermediate to high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) after transurethral resection of the tumors (80–82). BCG therapy reduces the risk of recurrence and the progression to muscle invasive bladder cancer. The repeated instillations require much higher doses and volumes of BCG than vaccination against TB does, and some patients have adverse events that lead to discontinuation of the therapy (83, 84). Adverse events include fever, bladder irritation, decreased bladder capacity, incontinence, hematuria, flu-like symptoms and in approximately 5% of cases, BCG infection (85, 86). Patients undergoing traumatic catheterization are at risk for intraluminal BCG dissemination, resulting in a potentially lethal systemic infection (87).
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5610719/

....and here Banjo, are 9 drugs successfully repurposed to fight other diseases.....it's a bit like discovering that your Notts goalie is actually your best penalty-taker!


Raloxifene: The FDA approved Raloxifene to reduce the risk of invasive breast cancer in postmenopausal women in 2007. It was initially developed to treat osteoporosis.
.
Thalidomide: This drug started out as a sedative in the late fifties, and soon doctors were infamously prescribing it to prevent nausea in pregnant women. It later caused thousands of severe birth defects, most notably phocomelia, which results in malformed arms and legs. In 1998, thalidomide found a new use as a treatment for leprosy and in 2006 it was approved for multiple myeloma, a bone marrow cancer.
.
Tamoxifen: This hormone therapy treats metastatic breast cancers, or those that have spread to other parts of the body, in both women and men, and it was originally approved in 1977. Thirty years later, researchers discovered that it also helps people with bipolar disorder by blocking the enzyme PKC, which goes into overdrive during the manic phase of the disorder.
.
Rapamycin: This antibiotic, also called sirolimus, was first discovered in bacteria-laced soil from Easter Island in the seventies, and the FDA approved it in 1999 to prevent organ transplant rejection. Since then, researchers have found it effective in treating not one but two diseases: Autoimmune Lymphoproliferative Syndrome (ALPS), in which the body produces too many immune cells called lymphocytes, and lymphangioleiomyomatosis, a rare lung disease.
.
Lomitapide: Intended to lower cholesterol and triglycerides, the FDA approved this drug to treat a rare genetic disorder that causes severe cholesterol problems called homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia last December.
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Pentostatin: This drug was created as a chemotherapy for specific types of leukemia. It was tested first in T-cell-related leukemias, which didn’t respond to the drug. But later NIH’s National Cancer Institute discovered that the drug was successful in treating a rare leukemia that is B-cell related, called Hairy Cell Leukemia.
.
Sodium nitrite: This salt was first developed as an antidote to cyanide poisoning and, unrelated to medicine, it’s also used to cure meat. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute is currently recruiting participants for a sodium nitrite clinical trial, in which the drug will be tested as a treatment for the chronic leg ulcers associated with sickle cell and other blood disorders.

[tarquinbeech]

....the other 2 were zidovudine (AZT), the first antiviral approved for HIV/AIDS in 1987 and, more recently, farnesyltransferase inhibitor (FTI), which was used to successfully treat children with the rapid-aging disease Progeria in a 2012 clinical trial.

Here in excellent TedTalk explaining the work being done to repurpose ready-made drugs....14 minutes long
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_0aEezKvBE