Don't Bet Against Big Pharma Or Hangovers

I have a severe hangover* today, so this is the most I can manage.

Ohioan has a pair of excellent updates to his modeling of the Chinese Bat Soup Flu. You can find his first follow-up here and his latest one here.

Gilead's remdesivir looks like it's showing some good results.

A Chicago hospital treating severe Covid-19 patients with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir in a closely watched clinical trial is seeing rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week, STAT has learned.

Remdesivir was one of the first medicines identified as having the potential to impact SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, in lab tests. The entire world has been waiting for results from Gilead’s clinical trials, and positive results would likely lead to fast approvals by the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies. If safe and effective, it could become the first approved treatment against the disease.

The University of Chicago Medicine recruited 125 people with Covid-19 into Gilead’s two Phase 3 clinical trials. Of those people, 113 had severe disease. All the patients have been treated with daily infusions of remdesivir.

100+ people in the trial is a decent sample size.

Meanwhile, Texas is leading the way in getting back to normalcy.

Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday announced initial steps to reopen the Texas economy during the coronavirus pandemic, including those that in the next week will loosen surgery restrictions at medical facilities, allow all retail stores to provide product pickups and reopen state parks.

That's enough for now. My typing is too loud.

Ow.

* - Wife kitteh's insomnia problems just won't stop. By the end of the day yesterday, I'd had enough. Not of her, but of the effects of this lockdown. Now I'm regretting my, err, "solution" to the problem of being exasperated with the Chicom Flu.