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Life-saving coronavirus drug 'major breakthrough':
A cheap and widely available drug can help save the lives of patients seriously ill with coronavirus.
The low-dose steroid treatment dexamethasone is a major breakthrough in the fight against the deadly virus, UK experts say.
The drug is part of the world's biggest trial testing existing treatments to see if they also work for coronavirus.
[...] The drug is already used to reduce inflammation in a range of other conditions, and it appears that it helps stop some of the damage that can happen when the body's immune system goes into overdrive as it tries to fight off coronavirus.
[...] In the trial, led by a team from Oxford University, around 2,000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and were compared with more than 4,000 who did not receive the drug.
For patients on ventilators, it cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%. For patients needing oxygen, it cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.
Chief investigator Prof Peter Horby said: "This is the only drug so far that has been shown to reduce mortality - and it reduces it significantly. It's a major breakthrough."
[...] Dexamethasone has been used since the early 1960s to treat a wide range of conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and asthma.
[...] The drug is given intravenously in intensive care, and in tablet form for less seriously ill patients. So far, the only other drug proven to benefit Covid patients is remdesivir, an antiviral treatment which has been used for Ebola.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @02:44AM (10 children)
https://www.c-span.org/video/?426290-1/tom-nichols-discusses-the-death-expertise [c-span.org]
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday June 17 2020, @06:05AM (2 children)
Originally i was just going to post about how the CCP claims steroids don't work and won't work and that they will actually make you die. CCP has been spreading all sorts of rumors against successful treatments this whole pandemic. But then I rambled on about other subjects and didn't go back and change the title.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @02:21PM (1 child)
Fair enough. My intent wasn't to scold you Sulla.
Rather, I made the point because too many folks go on about "fake news," without a clear sense of what that might be.
What's more, the quote I linked is the best definition that I've heard and I'd hope it might spark discussion about how we consume news and information -- at least among those who are willing to have reasoned discussions about such things, rather than just demonizing news outlets they think are "on the wrong team."
The truth isn't a team sport. There are, unfortunately, folks who don't care about facts that don't support their world view. Which is really sad.
As we've seen in the US (and other places, but I live in the US so I see more of that), there are folks who seek to diminish or ignore inconvenient facts, in order to promote their own "side." This is especially true among the twitterati and those seeking to game the social media environment for the personal and political gain of their "team."
Sure, we have differences, sometimes bitter ones. At the same time, we have much more in common than we do differences, no matter how bitter those differences might be.
Treating our neighbors, co-workers and family as "the enemy" because we don't agree about some things is really counterproductive.
That said, there are small, very vocal groups, who espouse division and seek to gain from creating those divisions. This is exacerbated by other folks who seek to widen those divisions to gain/retain power and influence.
I've gone pretty far afield with this comment myself, so I'll try to come back to the original premise:
Sure, there are folks out there (including the Chinese government) who will say just about anything (including straight-up lies) to win points for their "side."
I find it disgusting, regardless of who does it. I forget who said it, but the saw "you're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts," applies in spades.
Let's disagree. Let's argue about policies and priorities. At the same time, let's be willing to agree about the stuff we can agree upon instead of focusing *only* on the few things we disagree about.
In order to do so, we need to be able to agree upon what the *facts* are. Actual "fake news" threatens our ability to do so.
Those that attempt to muddy the waters by calling opinion "fake news" makes it harder to do so. More's the pity.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday June 18 2020, @12:08AM
Ah. I use the term "fake news" for everything.
Kid claims he wasnt throwing stuff on the roof? Tell kid he is full of fake news
Open the fridge to get some eggs but they are all gone? Eggs are fake news
Go to cigar shop but they are closed early for the night? Text owner he is fake news
My usage is probably 95+% inconvenient things are fake news, and 5% referring to actual fake news. I actually had not considered that others use the term seriously.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @03:32PM (1 child)
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/society-is-made-of-narrative-realizing-this-is-awakening-from-the-matrix-787c7e2539ae [medium.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2020, @01:15AM
Garbage -- not worth the read.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday June 17 2020, @06:54PM (4 children)
That's certainly not how the term is commonly used. As commonly used "Fake News" means "makes me look bad or otherwise exposes my lies"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 17 2020, @07:41PM (2 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news [wikipedia.org]
https://www.prattlibrary.org/research/tools/index.aspx?cat=90&id=4735 [prattlibrary.org]
https://www.statista.com/topics/3251/fake-news/ [statista.com]
And as I said in a different post [soylentnews.org]:
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday June 18 2020, @07:06PM (1 child)
Thing is, I don't recall the term "fake news" ever being used against actual false news broadcasts (except by coincidence). In fact I don't recall ever hearing the term used before Trump started throwing it around - we had other terms for it: "spin", "propaganda", "lies", etc. If it's fake, it's not news.
Look at the history of the Wikipedia page you linked - it was first created in Jan 2017
Even the disambiguation page only has one other reference, to "The Fake News Show", a British comedy that began in February 2017 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news_(disambiguation) )
There have been other similar terms coined around the world, but it seems they are almost always used to deny inconvenient coverage, rather than to actually call out falsified information.
As such, my inclination would be to accept the term as having the primary definition of being a denial of unflattering coverage, rather than anything to do with the actual legitimacy of the news.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2020, @07:37PM
There. FTFY.
https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/10/02/trump-claims-he-invented-the-term-fake-news-an-interview-with-the-guy-who-actually-helped-popularize-it/ [washingtonian.com]
I'm sure there's more documentation out there, but I'm not responsible for disabusing you of your ignorance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 18 2020, @06:16PM
The kind of stuff Secondary Infektion [zdnet.com] is doing is fake news.
And that sort of stuff is the commonly understood definition of "Fake News," not the targets of blathering from a certain spray-tanned asshole.