Hey nerds and welcome to a bite-sized edition of The Dose! Mostly because I miss y’all, but I’m also super busy. Oh wait, I forgot today’s proverb. Okay, here you go:
Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Unless the job you have is a hazmat worker and the job you want is a rodeo clown. Then please for the love of god dress for the job you have what is wrong with you do you want to die???
COVID-19 Update
Remdesivir Trial Results
The much-anticipated results from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID)’s remdesivir trial have been released today and show patients are responding to the treatment.
Remdesivir, an antiviral medication developed by Gilead, has shown effectiveness in treating other coronaviruses such as the ones that cause MERS and SARS, though it is currently not approved for treating any coronaviruses including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Remdesivir has also in the past been tested as a treatment for Ebola, the disease the drug was originally synthesized and developed to treat, but to much less promising result.
The main objective of the study was to test if remdesivir was effective at improving recovery time for COVID-19 patients when compared to placebo. The preliminary results show that patients who received remdesivir as treatment had a 31% faster time to recovery over placebo, with recovery being defined by patients being well enough to discharge from hospitalization. The results also showed a slight reduction in fatality rates among the patients receiving remdesivir, as the group receiving the treatment showed a mortality rate of 8.0% vs 11.6% for the placebo group, though this reduction is not substantial enough to be statistically significant.
The full data and report from the NIAID trial are still yet to be released and still holds important information for public health professionals to determine how and if this drug will be used to treat COVID-19, specifically with regard to what populations remdesivir would be most effective in and what other effects the drug may have.
Gilead also announced results from its own trial into the efficacy of remdesivir as a COVID-19 treatment today that showed similar efficacy and improved recovery time, however, given that Gilead’s study lacked a control group (as in all patients in the study received the drug and were not compared to patients who did not), experts have noted that their study is of much less scientific and clinical significance than the one administrated by NIAID, given that NIAID’s study was double-blinded (neither patients nor doctors knew whether patients were being given remdesivir or placebo).
BONUS: Swimmy Spiny Boy
Spinosaurus—a large predatory dinosaur roughly the size of a T-rex with large, frilled spines protruding from its back cuz it’s a BADASS—has long been known to have adaptions potentially suited for amphibious life despite contrary evidence pointing to the creatures being largely terrestrial.
A new study out from an international team of researchers supported by the National Geographic Society has now shown that these big wet spiny boys might have been dipping more than the occasional toe in the water. The team’s multidisciplinary investigation of the world’s only Spinosaurus skeleton and found that the dinosaur had a large, fin-like tail that when ran through digital models, has shown to have been well-suited for and adapted to a life underwater.
You can read more in an excellent New York Times story covering the discovery here.
That’s it y’all! Thanks for the quicky. Stay safe, be well, live laugh love, yadda yadda yadda xoxo