Author: Kenya West

By Dr.Samson Misango

For those people who love numbers about Coronaviruses, listen up.

In the last 24hrs, 15 samples in Kenya out of 545 that were tested turned positive. Bringing the total to 296 OF THE PEOPLE TESTED.

296 is not the number of cases in Kenya, but the number of positive samples out of the total tested. Anyone trying to use these figures to explain some Epidemiological trends is a liar..

There is no curve from those figures…

The testing is currently targeted at quarantined and suspected people, not the general population.

Quarantine was initially meant for suspected persons, but due to the clumsiness and dumb foolery of our security agencies enforcing stupid Curfew and lockdown measures, in cahoots with some misguided medics, quarantine is now a detention without trial site for any citizen who rubs the security agencies the wrong way.

That means, quarantine is now a reflection of the general population who are trying to have a normal life.

Back to the above figures…for those people who are looking at figures. Let me scare you, then I will unscare you.

15 out of 545 translates to 2.75%. Since Quarantine is now just a general place for any common petty offender, the 2.75% is the concentration of Covid 19 in Kenya.

By extrapolation, in Nairobi with a population of 4.4 million, 2.75% are Covid 19 positive ie 121,000.

Mombasa, with a population of 1.2 million, 2.75% are Covid 19 positive ie 33,000.

Kiambu with a population of 2.4 million, 66,000 are positive..

Nakuru with a population of 2.2 million, 60,500 are positive.

Kakamega with a population of 1.9 million, 52,250 are positive.

Kenya, with our 48 million population, 2.75% are Covid-19 positive, ie. 1,320,000.

Are the figures scary…?…yes..because you have been blinded by our reaction to the confirmed positive cases.

Where are all these people above?

Living with us. YES… WITH US! Mostly in very good health.

Someone wants you to believe that we will Quarantine all the cases as we diagnose them…it is a logistical impossibility…

It is a waste of our resources, just like huduma namba, BBI and many other nonsensical things we like engaging our energy on.

We will never test them all and they will keep increasing and spreading the virus as others recover, but the antibody test results will one day tell the whole story.

What’s my point?

By the above extrapolations, our current testing is not telling us anything because we will keep on detecting more and more people and it is not going to change anything. Apart from stigmatizing positive cases.

THERE IS NO CURVE WE ARE FLATTENING.

Coronavirus is with us….2.75% as of today and increasing, but WAIT….we are not dropping dead from it.

IT IS a highly Infectious BUT MILD DISEASE….and we will transmit it in perpetuity.

The press statements can go on for the rest of the year but we will never reach our real infection levels…we will always have new confirmed cases as long as we do more testing.

We can choose if we want to go on with this national circus of announcing the new confirmed cases for the rest of our lives or go back to our normal lives and accept that it is with us and we are living with it.

We have so many other more important matters to occupy our resources on. And those matters are being worsened by our bizzare fixation with this virus.

We do not need this merry go round with no end in site. If you doubt me, ask anyone in authority “what’s the end game?”

You will most likely be met by the answer “the next two weeks will be critical in our fight”.

DO NOT STIGMATIZE COVID-19 POSITIVE people. Most are not even having symptoms! You must have seen that viral video of the quarantined driver lamenting about being well.

Let no one scare you with new numbers,. Unless they tell you that they have confirmed 1,320,000 people tomorrow…we are chasing ghosts.

Lockdowns are at best a waste of time and at worst an economic, medical and social catastrophe….they will not change what is already here. The horses left the stable months ago and are happily grazing in the fields.

Leave the doors open.

Practice good basic hygiene to prevent the spread of infectious diseases.

CONTINUES…

The true extent of the prevalence of this mild but highly infectious disease will be exposed soon. It is just a matter of time.

Antibody testing shows over 4% of this US community has had the infection. About (get this) 55 times more positive cases than previously confirmed!!

Many without even knowing so….long before the press and politicians started getting hysterical about the infection and began spreading panic, fear and alarm for reasons best known to themselves.

Lazy intellectuals on my wall are bursting their piles when I suggest that we may have over 2% infection rates in our country…already spread out…based on the positive rates in our quarantines (which are not really quarantines but general detention camps without trial)

The lazy intellectuals have had over 6 weeks and nearly 300 patients at their disposal to describe to us about the Covid-19 in our population but they will instead wait to react to any write up that does not support their fear mongering…or to quote some mzungu who will.

Fact: Mandera now has Covid positive tests because Amref facilitated testing for them. They have positive numbers because they have had testing done, not because they are a hot spot….I challenge anyone with contrally information to declare so. And as a reward to Mandera county for their testing efforts, they are now on lockdown…?…

This is so surreal…you can’t make these stuff up.

I wonder how people in Amref now feel..?

Fact: The more testing we do, the more positives we will get, in whichever county…there is no curve to flatten.

Then someone will suggest that we close that county because of increased numbers …wah!

You really can’t make these stuff up…

Rushing to close stable doors after the horses already bolted…why?

Maybe to justify the Ksh40 billion that have been “spent” and keep the circus in town, or maybe just being plain incompetent, or maybe both.

Whatever the reason, let us not stigmatize Covid positive patients or punish counties with aggressive testing..

There is no curve to flatten…let us live with this mild virus.

Stop spreading fear, panic and alarm.

Practice good basic hygiene to stop the spread of infectious diseases.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s musings about whether disinfectants and ultraviolet light can be inserted into patients’ bodies to treat COVID-19 have alarmed doctors and drawn warnings from the makers of Lysol, Dettol and Clorox.

Here are some other claims that have circulated about how to treat COVID-19 or stop the transmission of the new coronavirus, and the facts according to doctors and health experts:

TREATMENT

Fiction: Disinfectant injected into people infected with the new coronavirus could help clear COVID-19, the disease it causes.

Fact: Drinking or injecting bleach or other disinfectants is extremely dangerous and could result in death.

Fiction: Ultraviolet light inserted into the body could help kill the virus and speed recovery.

Fact: While UV light is known to kill viruses contained in droplets in the air, doctors say there is no way it could be introduced into the human body to target cells infected with COVID-19.

Fiction: Antibiotics can prevent and treat the new coronavirus.

Fact: Antibiotics do not work against viruses, only bacteria. They will not prevent or treat infection with the new coronavirus.

There are currently no specific proven medicines for COVID-19 infection, but those infected can relieve and treat mild symptoms with over-the-counter fever-reducing medicines such as acetaminophen, also known as paracetamol, and aspirin.

TRANSMISSION

Fiction: The new coronavirus can be spread by mosquito bites and in Chinese food.

Fact: No. The new coronavirus is a respiratory virus that spreads primarily via droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or breathes out, or through droplets of saliva or discharge from the nose.

PROTECTION

Fiction: Regularly rinsing your nose with saline can prevent infection with COVID-19.

Fact: There is no evidence that regularly rinsing the nose with saline has protected people. There is some weak evidence that the practice can help some people recover more quickly from the common cold, but it does not prevent respiratory infections.

Fiction: Some social media posts suggest that spraying alcohol or chlorine all over your body can protect against COVID-19 infection, or that gargling bleach or drinking excessive amounts of water can somehow “flush it out.”

Fact: There is no evidence to back these claims.

Good hygiene practices including frequent hand washing and avoiding close social contact can help reduce the risk of infection.

Fiction: Hand dryers are effective in killing the new coronavirus.

Fact: No. Hand dryers are not effective against COVID-19, but frequently cleaning your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub, or washing them with soap and water, is. Clean hands should be dried thoroughly with a clean towel or air dryer.

Fiction: Cold weather, hot weather, snow, eating garlic or taking a hot bath have also been suggested as ways people can prevent themselves from becoming infected.

Fact: There is no evidence behind these claims and no evidence as yet to suggest that COVID-19 will be affected by weather or the seasons.

The best way to protect yourself is by washing your hands frequently and avoiding contact with anyone who might be infected. This way, you can eliminate viruses that may be on your hands and avoid infection that might occur by touching your eyes, mouth and nose.

A conspiracy theory suggesting the coronavirus is tied to the spread of 5G cellular communications technology has spread across the internet with the help of social media accounts ranging from small-time wellness influencers all the way to A-list celebrities like Woody Harrelson.

The claim is a remixed version of existing conspiracy theories about 5G that have been spreading in fringe circles, suggesting it causes cancer and other ailments. And, even compared to most conspiracy theories, the notion makes no sense.

Conspiracies often rely on mysterious, but obviously false, premises that are very difficult to fully disprove. QAnon conspiracy theorists, 9/11 truthers, and chemtrail people push hidden government plots that are so classified that normal people wouldn’t be able to verify or disprove them. Anti-vaxxers shroud their theories in convoluted pseudoscience that can be difficult to parse.

Coronavirus conspiracies about 5G, though, don’t even add up in the face of simple, widespread or easily learned knowledge about the virus or the technology.

Normal cell towers that broadcast out previous generations of mobile data, like 4G and 3G, sent their signal for miles in each direction. Frequencies for 5G are disseminated through “small cells,” which are little boxes that can be placed on street lights and other utility polls. The small cells usually spread signals no more than a mile and a half, and often up to a range of just several blocks. Given that 5G has only been rolled out in certain places, if such digital broadband signals were a cause of the coronavirus, there’d be block by block hotspots of outbreaks that left other parts of cities totally unscathed. The majority of the country without any 5G would have no cases at all.

Unsurprisingly, it’s not working out like that. Cities in the U.S. that don’t yet have any 5G have still seen COVID-19 infections. El Paso, Texas doesn’t have 5G yet, but still has 531 recorded cases, according to numbers compiled by the New York Times—that’s over seven times more than nearby Las Cruces, New Mexico, which does have 5G. Maine’s Cumberland County, home to Portland, doesn’t yet have 5G either but has almost 400 recorded cases.

The rollout of and spread of 5G can be so targeted that it’s likely that entire communities, even in cities that already have the technology, may never gain access. Cellular industry analysts predict that telecom providers will not end up deploying the protocols in poor communities with lower broadband demand, similar to how the companies have already digitally redlined poor communities, even in dense urban areas, with poor broadband infrastructure.

So if 5G were causing coronavirus, it would be sparing the most vulnerable, who are concentrated in places where 5G coverage is more limited or still nonexistent. But it’s not: the virus has hit poor communities of color harder than other groups in the U.S.

Doug Brake, the director of broadband and spectrum policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington think tank explained that if there was any link between the two, maps of coronavirus outbreaks would correspond tightly with maps of 5G coverage. They don’t, and where there is overlap, it’s simply because dense, highly populated cities are both the kind of places where the virus spreads easily and where 5G has first been adopted.

When you look internationally, the theory gets even more harebrained. “It’s a global pandemic. It’s in all sorts of countries where 5G hasn’t been rolled out. It’s a tenuous claim in the first place,” Brake says.

Iran, one of the countries hit hardest by the coronavirus, has not even implemented 5G yet, and doesn’t have plans to until 2021, according to state media. India, which has also seen outbreaks, doesn’t have widespread 5G coverage yet. On the other hand, South Korea, which has managed to contain its outbreaks, has already implemented 5G.

Regardless of all this easily accessible information, which isn’t shrouded in secrecy or difficult to understand science, conspiracies about mobile broadband frequency continue to spread—with no clear end in sight.

By BBC.

The first human trial in Europe of a coronavirus vaccine has begun in Oxford.

Two volunteers were injected, the first of more than 800 people recruited for the study.

Half will receive the Covid-19 vaccine, and half a control vaccine which protects against meningitis but not coronavirus.

The design of the trial means volunteers will not know which vaccine they are getting, though doctors will.

Elisa Granato, one of the two who received the jab, told the BBC: “I’m a scientist, so I wanted to try to support the scientific process wherever I can.”

The vaccine was developed in under three months by a team at Oxford University. Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the Jenner Institute, led the pre-clinical research.

“Personally I have a high degree of confidence in this vaccine,” she said.

“Of course, we have to test it and get data from humans. We have to demonstrate it actually works and stops people getting infected with coronavirus before using the vaccine in the wider population.”

Prof Gilbert previously said she was “80% confident” the vaccine would work, but now prefers not to put a figure on it, saying simply she is “very optimistic” about its chances.

So how does the vaccine work?

The vaccine is made from a weakened version of a common cold virus (known as an adenovirus) from chimpanzees that has been modified so it cannot grow in humans.

The Oxford team has already developed a vaccine against Mers, another type of coronavirus, using the same approach – and that had promising results in clinical trials.

How will they know if it works?

The only way the team will know if the Covid-19 vaccine works is by comparing the number of people who get infected with coronavirus in the months ahead from the two arms of the trial.

That could be a problem if cases fall rapidly in the UK, because there may not be enough data.

Prof Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, who is leading the trial, said: “We’re chasing the end of this current epidemic wave. If we don’t catch that, we won’t be able to tell whether the vaccine works in the next few months. But we do expect that there will be more cases in the future because this virus hasn’t gone away.”

The vaccine researchers are prioritising the recruitment of local healthcare workers into the trial as they are more likely than others to be exposed to the virus.

A larger trial, of about 5,000 volunteers, will start in the coming months and will have no age limit.

Older people tend to have weaker immune responses to vaccines. Researchers are evaluating whether they might need two doses of the jab.

The Oxford team is also working with researchers in Kenya about a possible vaccine trial there, where the rates of transmission are growing from a lower base.

If the numbers could be a problem, why not deliberately infect volunteers with coronavirus?

That would be a quick and certain way to find out if the vaccine was effective, but it would be ethically questionable because there are no proven treatments for Covid-19.

But that might be possible in the future. Prof Pollard said: “If we reach the point where we had some treatments for the disease and we could guarantee the safety of volunteers, that would be a very good way of testing a vaccine.”

Is it safe?

The trial volunteers will be carefully monitored in the coming months. They have been told that some may get a sore arm, headaches or fevers in the first couple of days after vaccination.

They are also told there is a theoretical risk that the virus could induce a serious reaction to coronavirus, which arose in some early Sars animal vaccine studies.

Sean Elias – Oxford Vaccine trial

But the Oxford team says its data suggests the risk of the vaccine producing an enhanced disease is minimal, and data from animal studies has been positive.

Scientists there hope to have one million doses ready by September, and to dramatically scale up manufacturing after that, should the vaccine prove effective.

So who would get it first?

Prof Gilbert says that has not been decided yet: “It’s not really our role to dictate what will happen, we just have to try to get a vaccine that works and have enough of it and then it will be for others to decide.”

Prof Pollard added: “We’ve got to ensure we have enough doses to provide for those in greatest need, not just in the UK but also in developing countries.”

Another team at Imperial College London hopes to begin human trials of its coronavirus vaccine in June.

The Oxford and Imperial teams have received more than £40m of government funding.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock has praised both teams and said the UK will “throw everything we’ve got” at developing a vaccine.

UK chief medical adviser Prof Chris Whitty has said neither a vaccine, nor a drug to treat Covid-19, is likely to be available within the next year.

US President Donald Trump proposed unusual methods for treating the novel coronavirus at a White House briefing Thursday, including ultraviolet light and injecting disinfectants.

“So supposing we hit the body with a tremendous — whether it’s ultraviolet or very powerful light. And I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going test it. Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way.

“Sounds interesting,” Trump told reporters.

His remarks came minutes after William Bryan, acting head of the US Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, said solar light appears to kill the virus both on surfaces and in the air.

“We’ve seen a similar effect with temperature and humidity as well, where increasing the temperature and humidity — or both — is generally less favorable to the virus,” said Bryan.

Later, Trump came up with another treatment, this time suggesting the use of disinfectants.

“And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? As you see, it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that. You’re going to have to use medical doctors with that, but it sounds interesting to me.

Trump asks if he can inject people with disinfectant to get rid of coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/UQEiNwPYrh

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) April 23, 2020

“And so we’ll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute, that’s pretty powerful,” he added.

Trump asked the doctor leading the White House’s coronavirus response team, Deborah Birx, whether she had heard of using solar light in treating the disease.

“Not as a treatment. I’ve not seen heat or light,” she replied.

“Please don’t inject or consume disinfectants,” tweeted Chris Hayes, the host of a news and opinion show on American cable television channel MSNBC.

As of Thursday evening, the US had more than 867,000 cases and over 49,000 deaths. Nearly 80,000 have recovered.

The virus has spread to 185 countries and regions, infecting over 2.7 million and killing more than 190,000 since emerging in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.