hypervalent_iodine

Moreno has been banned for the rather insistent tendency towards racist rhetoric. 

42 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

Why do you think this? (bolded part)

52 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Oh yeah, I think that is the follow-up to a follow-up (the second by Molina study showed no beneficial effects). But critically, the study was more set up like a case or observational study rather than a efficacy test. At this point the data looks inconclusive to me. 

Inconclusive is one way of putting it. Their first paper with was highly suspect and contained a lot of concerning ethical elements. Their follow ups don't seem to add very much, and is at odds with a lot of the other data that has been published regarding HCQ. Derek Lowe's coverage on it has been quite informative: 

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/16/more-small-molecule-clinical-data-against-covid-19-as-of-april-16

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/11/the-latest-hydroxychloroquine-data-as-of-april-11

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/29/more-on-cloroquine-azithromycin-and-on-dr-raoult 

I don't think there has necessarily been any political meddling. They are working with the data that they have, but I also think that this is where the issue potentially lies, since I don't believe there has been significant testing done in children to know what risk they actually pose to other people.  

I completely agree with you on your points about school closures - the long term economic effects would be disastrous. In addition to your points I would also comment that universities, which are already struggling with the loss of international student money, would surely go bust if they also lost an entire graduating year of domestic students.  

18 minutes ago, druS said:

This seems inconsistent with the advice from the Chief Medical Officer in Australia. The view is that the risk of transmission in schools is low and that teachers greatest risk is from other teachers, that parents greatest risk is exposure to other parents during drop off. I understand that schools are a something of a petri dish for many virus, but the view here seems to be that this virus is different.

Or the motivation to keep schools open is different. 

There was a paper circulating a little while ago that caught my attention, published in Nature. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2223-y

To be honest, I am pretty baffled that it was published in Nature. The top leads identified in their screening assay are known as pan-assay interference compounds (PAINs). IOW, they are nuisance compounds and generally not something you would pursue in a drug design campaign. In fact, the seminal paper that discusses PAINs is a Nature paper (https://www.nature.com/news/chemistry-chemical-con-artists-foil-drug-discovery-1.15991), which makes this even more confusing. I can't imagine anyone with a med chem background would have reviewed this, as the red flags should have been very obvious. In any med chem journal, this paper would have been rejected since you have to screen for PAINs as part of their submission guidelines. I'm worried that this signals a general lowering of the bar when it comes to these sorts of publications, which will only make things more difficult in the long run. Derek Lowe has written some good blog posts on the matter:

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/10/more-on-screening-for-coronavirus-therapies

farsideofmoon has been suspended for 2 weeks for repeated thread hijacking. 

As of a few minutes ago, I went ahead and merged many of the threads and posts regarding Coronavirus into three threads:

I understand that many have questions regarding coronavirus / COVID-19, but I think we can do without 20 different threads on the topic. To reduce clutter, I have created the above threads, and would ask members to please direct their questions / findings to the relevant one. If anyone objects or thinks I have missed something, please let me know. I myself am working from home; time is a luxury I have far too much of at the moment. 

fizzicle has been banned as a sock puppet of pittsburghjoe. 

Bmpbmp1975 has been suspended for one month to give everyone a break from the incessant trolling. 

dad has been banned for ignoring staff warnings to quit it with the thread hijacking.

On 2/5/2018 at 8:23 PM, hypervalent_iodine said:

Tony2018 has been banned as a sock puppet of YuanshenHao

TonyWang is also banned for the same reason.

Both singingspirit05 and poo thrower have been placed into the mod queue. The former for using this site as their pulpit and the second for making a stream of incoherent posts against the spirit of this forum. 

ritastrakosha has been permanently banned as a result of their constant deluge of nonsensical and somewhat offensive posts. 

On 1/6/2020 at 9:23 PM, Strange said:

what-about-bob now also banned as yet another sock puppet.

Add to that list, 4D-Math. 

After an extended visit to purgatory, it has become clear that petrushka googol has no intention of posting anything except bizarre nonsense. Staff have therefore made the decision to enforce a permanent ban. 

Andrew26 has been permanently banned after a particularly abusive post, as well as sock puppetry. 

anaccountnow has been permanently banned. 

Gater has been permanently banned.

Silent and squiggle have been banned as sock puppets of Art Man.

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Amazing Random has been suspended pending staff deliberations.

spamming, soapboxing and sockpuppetry (AUDI R6)

This has been updated to a permanent ban. 

seriously disabled has been permanently banned for an accumulation of infractions involving thread hijacking. 

Giving the ban hammer a real workout this morning. sinae10867 has also been permanently banned for posting utter nonsense. 

PervPhysProf has been banned for after a stream of incoherent and also some weirdly racist nonsense.