I served medical research for just short of twenty years before taking a sabbatical to build high end homes (family back east were home builders). I did this because I was fortunate to own many properties that became prime, wildly prime. So I took leave, hired a GC, worked direct with structural engineers, surveyors, land use attorneys. It was far afield of my academic and clinical training but it was fun. The GC was incompetent, I fired him and took over for what I thought would be a temporary time until I found one that was suitable. I found out I was saving on average 40% to 50% in costs and labor by managing subs, schedules, and materials myself.
I made millions.
I don't love money, I just wanted to be independent and write some of my own ticket. But I'll tell you it's really quite amazing that once you come into $$$, all of a sudden your friend population quadruples and all the family members that you argued with become suddenly so sweet and nice. And old girlfriends return too. It's just amazing how that works.
Then I lost a pile of money and things returned to normal. it's amazing, one year I was a total genius everyone wanted to know and the next year I was the biggest loser that no one would look at. Amazing!
The reason I did this is because where I was at the time was on fire with startups and entrepreneurs. My PhD was research track (I never saw myself writing tests and grading papers on a FT basis, etc.) I became familiar in the venture capital and angel investor communities. I wrote business plans for young newbie PhDs wanting to be the next Microsoft or Amazon. I contracted and coached as their business development officer meaning head gopher to go fetch investors.
Then I saw I could be an angel investor myself. So the builder career detour expanded and was rewarding until the mortgage meltdown ten + years ago. I wasn't over-leveraged. I didn't even have outside construction financing on some projects. What I lacked were buyers because no one but no one could get credit. Even if the market had a correction, a downturn of 30%, I would have still profited.
The area I was working in was very high end. I created a dictum in real estate that worked well "when a downturn hits, the high end keeps moving, all the rest get stuck". And here I was in high-end and stuck. Because this was no downturn, this was a collapse. Ok, so kick my ass for not factoring in a collapse. Might as well live under a rock because a meteor is going to blow up the field next to you. I pulled through Ok but i was robbed. So I studied those who robbed me.
But first I met up with people that were telling me the oil patch was where the new biz was, where the money had to be bet. In 2012 hydraulic fracturing technology has existed for about 17 years and was becoming so advanced it was projected to threaten the entirety of OPEC (and here we are). So I became a student, self-study, reading around the clock, going out into the field, talking with ranchers and farmers that had oil pumps on their lands. Coming back. talking to my angel investor community, we put together a venture with a T. Boone Pickens company that was going to make us one of the top dog Angel Investor groups on the west coast
And we were there, working our butts off around the clock for years, we were ready waiting only on the Obama's Commerce Department to issue the export licence. Long story short, you can guess the outcome.
Success in America is no longer so much about hard work, smart planning, and reasonably fortunate circumstances. Today it's mostly politics and what's worse it's about politics with some real a$$-kissing federal morons and worse, their sycophant grants and contracts recipients. Waiting for the export license, I realized I was traveling down a path to catching the a$$-kissing disease myself. So I taught myself to keep my cards close and show a poker face.
Here's why this discussion is important. We have in every facet of our society, a demographic of liars, of people that are so unprincipled they will kiss whatever a$$ they need to kiss to stay on the gravy train. For a long time these elements have existed but today it has metastasized and threatens the health of us all, the health of our republic, the health of our elections. Just look at how this President is treated. This is the worst ever treatment, the worst ever derangement syndrome. It has come to the point where it has to be stopped.
This is more than a virus, this is about moral deficiencies.
To work hard and smart is honest work, to work to profit off the suffering of others deserves impalement in the public square.
And guess who is in the limelight working to profit off the suffering of others?
The Pandemic Industrial Complex.
Including their lapdog lab lizards who are fluent enough in clinical lingo to weave some real whoppers, why? Because grant money. How much money is out there now? More than you can imagine. Who controls the narrative? Don't think for one moment I couldn't go grab a $100k in the current crisis inside a month of shopping my wares. Just like Hollywood whores, like studio rapists, there are similar morally deficient cretins inside the scientific community. Part of my job was to root them out and get them blackballed because scientific integrity must prevail over scientific misconduct. Only today this contingent of liars has become more pronounced.
So before and after drifting into the oil patch, I studied the national banking system which became forever in my crosshairs. I am a reluctant student of the national banking system, its central banking masters, and the shyster lawyers that orbit around it. Each day it seems I need to go my icon of Christ and pray to calm the thoughts of ripping their effing throats out. Don't worry, I am calm, I stay hidden in the light from these shysters. My curren attorney (rated a super lawyer) tells me "they're a$$holes" to which I respond, "Dud! In other news, water is wet!". But we are winning, they don't know it yet. They know hey are having trouble but we've made it so they think their setbacks are someone else's fault. Talk about 'Glorious'. I don't let them know I'm a Christian, albeit a poor example sometimes. I don't let them know because to me they are not redeemable. And if they get cute and try to soften me up with Jesus talk, I just shrug my shoulders and say, "huh?" I figure if they are redeemable, Our Lord will let it be known, Until them we are in a covert war.
When POTUS took over the Fed (and he has, most are not clearly aware yet), I then knew my current provisional patent work on extending existing banking transaction platforms with decentralized peripherals was God's work because it would help people, not national bankers (regional and local banks are Ok in my book) but ordinary people. In meetings with such bank lawyers, I smile, they never know I an an existential threat to their whole way of life, that I have a wall prepared to hang their law licenses like mounted game trophies.
Back to my med experience. I worked with many, many, many MDs who relied on my reputation to get their study plans written for grant approval. I also became a reviewer and editor of medical and science journals. So there was a critical eye constantly in development and I had mentors. I was both admired and feared. Don't think I didn't suffer the same when coming up through the ranks. Discipline, harsh discipline is the only means of keeping purity levels meeting standards. That goes for scientific pursuits as well.
My background was med school with a PHD in a health related field with specialization in medical technology because that's where my full scholarships were, duh! I was also picked up as a theorist because I was good at it. I still like it and do it. It's like high-level crossword puzzle solving, it keeps me entertained.
I was groomed early to design and write clinical trial protocols serving in and consulting with cancer and health centers around the world. I was a protege of two of the top clinicians and three of the top research scientists in the world. I was honored to work with them. Much of what I know in the field is due to them. Needless to say I know the field, the lingo, the personality types that occupy its offices.
During and after my training and clinical trial experience, I was called to review submitted manuscripts for publication to journals. There's a pecking order to publishing in journals. Famous scientists, MDs, professors get published in peer-reviewed prestigious journals. If I thought to criticize any of their work, I best keep it at a whisper. In the less prestigious pubs, up and coming aspirants scamper around trying to get published in any way possible because their grant resume backgrounds require it. After 24 years of the culture of Clinton-Bush-Obama, these scamperers learned how to tote the party line, not the rigorous science line but an ideological line dressed up in science lingo. They now occupy the top political offices. POTUS has to suffer them. Me, I couldn't stomach it.
I now know why the Executive Officer in my USN days had in his stateroom a framed cartoon drawing of a vulture with its beak dripping in blood. The caption read "Patience my Ass! I'm gonna go out and kill something!"
But still I force myself to read material that goes against my tentative conclusions because like everyone, I don't like to be wrong. Just maybe my eyes will be opened to a new view or something to add compatibly with a current view.
Let me put it this way, we have an internal enemy. POTUS is trying to unite everyone but he's letting the high office occupiers destroy themselves because it helps America. He's allowing them to expose themselves. How many of us are now aware Bill Gates is a twisted little boy with psychopathic tendencies?
Now let's look at an example of science 'research' on Hydroxy that has the science lapdogs going apesh*t.
What is wrong among the following blurbs? I'm not going to give you the answer right away. Let's see if people can catch it:
There were 7 men and 4 women with a mean age of 58.7 years (range: 20-77), 8 had significant comorbidities associated with poor outcomes (obesity: 2; solid cancer: 3; hematological cancer: 2; HIV-infection: 1).
At the time of treatment initiation, 10/11 had fever and received nasal oxygen therapy. Within 5 days, one patient died, two were transferred to the ICU. In one patient, hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin were discontinued after 4 days because of a prolongation of the QT interval from 405 ms before treatment to 460 and 470 ms under the combination. Mean through blood concentration of hydroxychloroquine was 678 ng/mL (range: 381-891) at days 3-7 after treatment initiation.
Repeated nasopharyngeal swabs in 10 patients (not done in the patient who died) using a qualitative PCR assay (nucleic acid extraction using Nuclisens Easy Mag®, Biomerieux and amplification with RealStar SARS CoV-2®, Altona), were still positive for SARS-CoV2 RNA in 8/10 patients (80%, 95% confidence interval: 49-94) at days 5 to 6 after treatment initiation.
These virologic results stand in contrast with those reported by Gautret et al. and cast doubts about the strong antiviral efficacy of this combination. Furthermore, in their report Gautret et al also reported one death and three transfers to the ICU among the 26 patients who received hydroxychloroquine, also underlining the poor clinical outcome with this combination.
You may go away. I have nothing to say to rude idiots and i don’t care what you think of me. Good day
Since no one else has replied. It looks to me like that study was stacked to produce a failure. But why would someone do that?
Not ashamed to show my ignorance.
My first question is are they right in using a qualitative and not a quantitative PCR kit? (Is there a quantitative kit for SARS-CoV-2?) I did not think anybody was claiming the virus would completely disappear in such very ill patients after 5 or 6 days of HCQ/Azy. Raoult was claiming only “clinical improvement.” People do get better on their own. Did the HCQ actually do it? He addressed this, somewhat unconvincingly I admit, in the March 28 report of the 80 patients by comparing the improvement of his 80 patients with 195 Wuhan patients. I looked up the RealStar SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR kit and I really cannot understand why this would be the appropriate way to evaluate the effectiveness of this drug regimen. It is just shows the virus is present. Please correct me. It would truly be a miracle drug if it destroyed the virus completely in only five days in every patient.
I don’t have a problem with stacking the test with really bad cases. We want to save those too.
I wondered at the blood concentration (day 7 at 891ng/mL?) but I don’t know enough to see a problem there.
The last paragraph I find to be disingenuous as Raoult was very clear that those patients were not receiving Azithromycin.
______________________UPDATE_______________________________
OK I went back and read Gautret et al. from 17 March 2020 and he says he is using the same PCR test and that all six who received both HCQ and Azi were “virologically cured” at day six, and that one patient who had only received the HCQ was cleared next day when Azi was added! The second paper with 80 patients was the one with “clinical improvement.” The blurbs while claiming to be interested in virologic and clinical outcomes did not include information on clinical outcomes.
Ready for yours if you would kindly. And I am out after your final. Thanks.
So in your cataclysmic and voluminous load of bullcrap, it appears to me you have never practiced bedside medicine. Wow, most people who know what the hell they are talking about simple say, I am a physician and have practiced whatever specialty for how ever many years. It appears to me that you have had a whole lotta jobs. You know the old saying: Jack of all trades, master of none.