Some additional comments on the design of the study conducted by the University of Kentucky

While we are cur­rent­ly work­ing on oth­er urgent mat­ters and have hard­ly any time to fol­low up on the the throat dis­in­fec­tion com­plex, let us – very briefly – make the fol­low­ing addi­tion­al com­ments with regard to the study under­way in Kentucky. If noth­ing else, they may serve as a men­tal check to the study inves­ti­ga­tors (who we will make aware of them, of course).

International researchers pick up loico’s idea of throat disinfection to counter COVID-19

A group of researchers from the UK (Cardiff and Cambridge), the US (Denver, Colorado), Spain (Barcelona), and Canada (Ottawa) has now picked up the idea we have put for­ward almost exact­ly two months ago for pre­ven­tive throat dis­in­fec­tion with viru­ci­dal agents that are known to be effec­tive against coro­n­avirus­es and safe to use in the throat. The WHO should now even more seri­ous­ly con­sid­er includ­ing it in its rec­om­men­da­tions.

And if COVID-19 were about to fuel the next big upswing in economic prosperity and quality of life?

COVID-19, many believe, has thrown the world into unprece­dent­ed dis­as­ter, and to those believ­ing so, the future looks bleak at best. But what if the oppo­site will prove to be true? Speculation is a noble occu­pa­tion, futures stud­ies an aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline, so we haz­ard a brief pre­view of the enor­mous eco­nom­ic and soci­etal gains for which the COVID-19 cri­sis may have just sown the seeds.
Heinrich Wilhelm Gottfried von Waldeyer-Hartz, eponym of Waldeyer's tonsillar ring in the pharynx, considered “the first line of defense against exogenous aggressors”. Photograph: Wikipedia

Additional thoughts regarding the benefit of throat disinfection during COVID-19-like epidemics

While in recent weeks we have been focused on estab­lish­ing and com­pre­hend­ing as deeply as pos­si­ble the immuno­log­i­cal “big pic­ture” in viral epi­demics from so far only part­ly inter­con­nect­ed evi­dence in the spe­cial­ist lit­er­a­ture, in order to derive action­able rec­om­men­da­tions, we briefly sum­ma­rize what has emerged in terms of feed­back as well as addi­tion­al insight with regard to our first arti­cle since it appeared.

COVID-19: Why herd immunity will likely occur much sooner than currently expected

Intelligent if uncon­ven­tion­al meth­ods employed by researchers have like­ly enabled a more real­is­tic view on the actu­al infec­tion rate and the relat­ed ques­tions of when herd immu­ni­ty will be achieved and what the real­is­tic death rate of COVID-19 actu­al­ly is. Understanding the true dynam­ics of the pan­dem­ic is cru­cial to tak­ing the most ade­quate pol­i­cy deci­sions going for­ward.

The logic of surviving the Coronavirus pandemic

In this arti­cle, we sug­gest what we con­sid­er, in large part poten­tial­ly instead of dras­tic quar­an­tine for basi­cal­ly every­one, to be the most log­i­cal and most promis­ing approach to sur­viv­ing the Coronavirus pan­dem­ic, both on an indi­vid­ual and on a sys­temic lev­el. We draw con­clu­sions from infor­ma­tion uncov­ered and dis­cussed by the med­ical sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty and by med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, and give prac­ti­cal instruc­tions on what to do.