> Project Covalence’s platform, powered by TrialSpark, is uniquely optimized to support COVID-19 trials, which are ideally run in community settings or at the patient’s home to reduce the burden placed on hospitals and health systems.
What's a "platform" in this case? I'd love to read simpler words. Is it a... piece of software to coordinate things? A physical machine? Else?
> Participate in a clinical trial at no cost to you or your health insurance.
Why would health insurance be involved when running medical trials and why would it cost anything? The pitch doesn't make sense to me. I always assumed medical trials were free for the participants. No idea who their target demographic is which makes me suspicious already.
As all things healthcare, it's complicated.
To cover for the possible adverse effects
Does that not make sense to people in this field?
Here's a brief breakdown of the various terms though:
> trial execution
The act of running the clinical study.
> 21 CFR Part 11 compliant remote data collection
21 CFR Part 11 compliance is a set of standards that must be adhered to when running clinical studies. To be compliant means you meet these standards and people or businesses that want to run studies can be sure that you're following the rules.
> Telemedicine
Medical visits typically done over video chat / phone calls or other digital means as opposed to going physically somewhere to be tested or evaluated.
> Biostatistics
Data science + medical data
> Sample kits for at-home specimen collection
Like 23&Me but for collecting other stuff from people at their homes. E.g. stool samples, COVID-19 swabs, etc. You mail the participant a kit, they collect their sample, mail it back to you, you process the sample, and that informs the data in your study.
> Protocol writing
Writing and codifying the procedure of how the clinical study will be run. Covers everything from enrollment, inclusion / exclusion criteria for the study, study running, and study closing and archiving.
At TrialX [1], we also launched Covid Labs Initiative to Hack The Pandemic [2] by bringing together hackers in Clinical Trials informatics space - Drop us a note hackcovid@trialx.com if interested.
We are seeing an unprecedented activity on-the-ground at various orgs[3,4,5] where we power the clinical trials recruitment. There is a huge interest in patient/volunteer community. Any effort to streamline and accelerate would be welcome.
2. https://trialx.com/covid-labs/
3. https://www.pennmedicine.org/coronavirus/covid-19-clinical-t...
4. https://www.centerwatch.com/covid-19-treatment-information
5. https://clinicaltrials.med.nyu.edu/clinicaltrials/?keyword=C...
So why the separate brand?
I would think that would be a pretty strong signal that covid is not as large a risk if big industries don't think it worthwhile to pursue any longer. Along those lines of thinking have any of the big pharmaceutical companies given serious pursuit of a vaccine or is it mainly smaller outfits?
This is an extremely long (56 word) and complex sentence. I fear that your point may be lost because of its length. Do you mind restating your thesis?
Even worse, funding for general corona virus research also was not available.
That's why even though SARS-1 was in 2003, we're nowhere with SARS-2.
(China hid SARS-1 from about Nov. 2002 to Jan. 2003, similar to SARS-2.)
The expectation is we may be well be in 50% to 100% infection rate if serology yield is 1/5. Pretty scary. This means the disease was extremely rapid, and we would've been absolutely trashed if it had been significantly more lethal. We need to invest massively on R&D against such potential threats. Covid-19 shows that state control wouldn't have done much to prevent global devastation, and that state control can itself cause the devastation. We need technological countermeasures such as one week vaccine development and deployment or transition to more separate economic spheres with permanent and complete travel bans and highly controlled trade between countries or geographic regions.
In places where the pandemic is not under control, there have been vast numbers of excess deaths: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...
We are still far from the peak in most parts of the world.
New York City has a population about 8 million, with 24,000 [1] excess deaths and an antibody positive rate of about 20% [2]. Do you really think it would be acceptable to let another 50,000 people in New York die (0.6% of the population) to reach herd immunity?
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-11/new-york-... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/20/antibody-testing-shows-coron...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_Propaganda_Research
> Swiss Policy Research (SPR) or (before May 2020) Swiss Propaganda Research is a website launched in 2016, which describes itself as a "an independent nonprofit research group investigating geopolitical propaganda in Swiss and international media". The editors of the site are unknown, but they claim that "SPR is composed of independent academics and receives no external funding".[1] The site has been widely criticised for spreading conspiracy theories and especially so during the times of the COVID-19 pandemic when it has become a source of misinformation and disinformation internationally.[2] The site has been categorized by some as a tool of propaganda.[3] It has even been noted that, contrary to what the title suggests, the contents of the site are likely created outside of Switzerland.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/health/coronavirus-vaccin...
- wiped out most small business owners (anybody who rents a store front, etc.
- delayed chemotherapy treatments
- delayed coronary checkups and treatment.
- doctors are reporting high rates of suicides
There will probably be more collateral than corona deaths in the US, especially when you factor in co-morbidity.
