FDA/acc

NIH gets $50B/yr. Their $1.6B RECOVER long COVID Initiative completed ZERO clinical trials in 4 years. So millions continue to suffer, die, or develop early onset dementia. The $3 MILLION Oxford UK Recovery trial used efficient pragmatic trials to test 18 therapies, discovered 4 that worked and saved over a million lives. Trial cost = $500/patient (80X cheaper than typical $48k/patient for NIH trials) Question: why doesn't the NIH use 1% of its budget to create a prize to build a system to automate and scale the Oxford pragmatic trial approach and 80X the rate of medical progress with the same resources?

So the Trump admin have bowed to the factory farming lobby and put a nightmare piece of language into the new Farm Bill, that will DECIMATE farm animal welfare laws, and states’ rights. We have to stop this. It’s the most anti-MAHA thing ever 👇 Cc @RobertKennedyJr

Nearly everyone thinks standard animal agriculture practices are unacceptable. These are not factory farming processes. They are standard in all animal agriculture.

For those who unfortunately have Long Covid either from the infection or vaccine we now have opened a trial with Anktiva Bioshield to explore if the NK cells we activate can clear the cells that may persist with virus . @ cssifm.org

What we do to animals is indefensible. Defending it just makes you sound like a psychopath.

People don't like diseases. But they also want the government to do everything possible to eliminate any incentive to cure diseases. It's quite puzzling! 😕

@MattWalshBlog @grok how many people unalive themselves every year?

The problem isn’t just that mental illnesses are massively overdiagnosed. It’s that lots of people WANT to be diagnosed. They seek it out. They take pride in the label. They think it makes them interesting. And it gives them a built in excuse whenever they act like assholes.

Answer: 1. Governments like money. 2. Tariffs are the most popular way for them to take your money. 3. So governments create tariffs. What I don't understand is why everyone in a country full of relatively luxurious jobs wants to work in a sweatshop?

I am so tired of posting this chart

If we were to shift all taxes to tariffs, it would reduce the effective federal tax rate for billionaires from around 30% down to 0.4%. And it would indirectly effectively bring the federal tax rate for the median income person from 15% to 33% through higher prices.

It's astonishing how many find this a difficult concept.

@johanvawe @neyts_johan @NeytsVirology May I have some, sir? 🥺

A new, potent drug to treat acute #COVID and maybe also #LongCOVID? Congrats to @neyts_johan @NeytsVirology and all #Rega colleagues! rdcu.be/efiv2

Look at the distribution of z-values from medical research!

@atranscendedman This is awesome, but it's yet another insanely simple, low-cost, 0-risk trial the NIH should have run four years ago.

Brazilian study: 25% of mild COVID cases led to cognitive issues. Vitamin B12 reduced key inflammatory markers in blood, suggesting a potential treatment for long COVID brain fog. nature.com/articles/s4159…

@atranscendedman How do you push them to act? It's like talking to a statue.

The same approach is largely applicable to Long COVID and deserves serious investigation If you see what UCSF and PolyBio are doing, you know the playbook Now let’s push the FDA, pharma, and NIH to act now, not years from now The groundwork exists. Combination therapies work

The disagreement about whether "negative emotions" are positive and transformation is actually a semantic argument based on a different internal definition of "negative emotions" and whether they're temporary or permanent. I had like a 6 month period where I escaped depression, and during that time, I experienced a very different kind of "negative emotions" induced by circumstantial factors. These "negative emotions" did induce positive transformational action to alleviate them. However, the chronically depressed individual "negative emotions" are relatively permanent. The brain often finds external factors to justify them. But in reality, they just continue regardless of success or positive change, and are just crippling.

Out of curiosity, do you experience feelings of guilt, resentment, shame, etc. often? Are they a load-bearing part of your motivational system? Because my experience has been that the kinds of people who are optimistic about the transformational power of negative emotions are usually people who either don't experience them much or who have some kind of religious pathology.

@longcovidlabs Indeed! There are so many cheap ones and almost none have been seriously trialed. The neglect given the cost-to-potential-benefit ratio should be enough to make anyone a conspiracy theorist. x.com/thinkbynumbers…

We're going to discover SO much about the role of chronic pathogens in the coming decade! Antiviral drugs are now being trialed for Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis, and Long COVID💊

There are so many cheap antivirals. Yet, after five years and billions of dollars we've basically completed ONE RCT (of course on the most expensive one). It's such a paradox that because these would be the most affordable for patients. This explains why no company's willing to pay for trials on them. But does anyone know why the @NIH hasn't completed any cheap trials on any other than Paxlovid? Single RCT: Paxlovid (15-day course, STOP-PASC Trial): Subjects: 155 total (102 treatment, 53 placebo) Improvement: No significant benefit compared to placebo; similar mild improvements observed in both groups. Symptoms Targeted: Fatigue, brain fog, shortness of breath, body aches, gastrointestinal, cardiovascular. Limitations: Modest sample size, mostly vaccinated cohort; endpoints not validated for PASC; possible insensitivity to subtle changes. Cost: Approximately $4,000 for a 15-day course; insurance coverage for long COVID treatment may vary. Source: jamanetwork.com/journals/jamai… The Rest are Uncontrolled Trials: Paxlovid (Extended Course, Case Series):Subjects: 13 Improvement: 5 patients (approximately 38%) experienced sustained improvement; others had transient relief or no effect. Symptoms Targeted: Fatigue, cognitive dysfunction ("brain fog"), elevated heart rate, joint pain. Limitations: Uncontrolled case series; outcomes inconsistent; small sample size; no placebo group; potential bias due to self-selection. Cost: Approximately $2,000–$8,000 for extended 2–4 week courses; cost may be a barrier if not covered off-label. Source: nature.com/articles/s4385… Paxlovid (5-day course, Case Series):Subjects: 4 Improvement: 3 out of 4 patients (75%) experienced short-term improvements; one patient had no lasting improvement and experienced rebound symptoms. Symptoms Targeted: Fatigue, brain fog, myalgias, chest pain, diarrhea. Limitations: Very small sample size; no control group; potential placebo effect and natural recovery cannot be ruled out. Cost: Approximately $1,300–$1,400 for a 5-day course. Source: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11… Acyclovir (Case Reports):Subjects: 4 Improvement: All 4 patients experienced persistent improvement or resolution of neurological symptoms during treatment; relapse occurred upon discontinuation in some cases. Symptoms Targeted: Neurological and cognitive symptoms, especially encephalopathy (e.g., confusion, agitation, brain fog, memory issues). Limitations: Very small case series; no control group; findings may not generalize to broader long COVID population. Cost: Approximately $70 for 60 tablets of 400 mg each (about one month at 2–4 tablets per day). Source: amjcaserep.com/abstract/index… Valacyclovir + Celecoxib (14-week Open-label Trial):Subjects: 39 (22 treated; 17 matched-control females) Improvement: Significant improvements in fatigue, pain, orthostatic intolerance, and general health scores in the treated group compared to controls; exact number of individuals improved not specified. Symptoms Targeted: Fatigue, chronic pain, autonomic dysfunction (e.g., POTS symptoms), overall well-being. Limitations: Open-label design; small sample size; all participants were women; used matched untreated controls rather than randomization; potential placebo effect. Cost: Approximately $150–$200 total for a 14-week course (valacyclovir + celecoxib) at the doses used. Source: batemanhornecenter.org/wp-content/upl… Paxlovid + Tocilizumab (IL-6 inhibitor): Subjects: 1 Improvement: Marked improvement in long COVID symptoms after Paxlovid course and continuation of IL-6 inhibitor; symptoms reappeared when IL-6 inhibitor was discontinued. Symptoms Targeted: Fatigue, cognitive impairment (brain fog), headache, neuroinflammation. Limitations: Single-patient report with unique circumstances (immunosuppressed patient with evidence of viral antigen persistence); not generalizable without further study. Cost: Paxlovid approximately $1,300; Tocilizumab is expensive (~$1,000–$2,000 per infusion; ~$30,000/year for rheumatoid arthritis). Source: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36213654/ #LongCovid

@makemevisible24 Because the @NIH has not yet used 1% of their budget needed to create a decentralized trial system for automating comparative effectiveness pragmatic trials integrated with EHRs and intervention randomization at point of care.

Why is it so difficult to find a drug that can give energy to brain and lessen sensory sensitivity? I've spoken to so many people on here and found nothing that's reduced light and sound sensitivity. And the usual lda and ldn didn't work for me.

@davidgasquez @juanbenet @hypercerts @Filecoin @gitcoin Indeed! Especially with the singularity. when everyone can do everything there's going to be so much duplication of effort and wasteful over-competion. It's weird how humans tend to make grants to organizations instead of directly to the tasks they want the orgs to do.

@thinkbynumbers @juanbenet @hypercerts @Filecoin @gitcoin Not thinking about anything in particular right now. Would be great to have something on top of @hypercerts and ways to create them from multiple sources (Gitcoin, Dework, GitHub, ...)

Watching so many communities destroy value out of missing coordination structures — constant conflict & dunking on each other instead of actually solving problems. The problem is not just human anymore — LLMs training on our text will give us a few generations of billions of conflict-addled AI agents. Wish people understood Paretotopia / Paretotropism better — perhaps that’s a very high value thing to articulate better @KEricDrexler @erightsmarkam @allisondman let’s do it Some links for the readers: - effectivealtruism.org/articles/ea-gl… - foresight.org/summary/robin-… - youtu.be/LOOwfFXfPA0?si…

@SpeakOutNow16 @SalvMattera What is this magical program you speak of?

very curious about sources and availability of antivirals - monoclonal antibodies - anyone having success in treating underlying immune dysfunction? Also as a ps for people I would like to shout out a government program i didn’t know about (and no idea how long it will last) to get paxlovid . I was denied by my insurance but read about this program and called walgreens and they ran it through. Not even the 25 dollar copay and certainly not the out of pocket 1600 pfizer wants .

I haven't written a good COVID thread in awhile, but plan to start back up soon. Any particular topics anyone wants me to cover?