This is a thread about dexamethasone, not "strokes", and we also know that from 8 patients that are intubated the treatment with dexamethasone saves one, compared to those intubated never treated with dexamethasone. We also know that dexamethasone is at best not helping if given outside of ICU.
Once again, dexamethasone has to be given to 8 intubated people to save one, and that's considered the drug with the most visible effect in fighting Covid-19 up to now -- i.e. the most successful drug up to now! You can imagine how little effect other drugs produced in the verified trials.
In that context, talking about ICU and intubated is exactly on topic, hand-waving "strokes" isn't.
Moreover, the comment actually said "strokes / organ damage" not "strokes." Nevertheless, the main effect of dexamethasone is on the intubated patients.
Regardless of what the thread is or isn't about, the comment you quoted made specific claims:
- Strokes (and organ damage) are the result of cytokine storms
- Strokes (and organ damage) in COVID-19 are "extremely rare"
That may be true or untrue, but you are not responding to those claims, you are responding to something else. I'm not even sure what that is, because nobody actually wrote it down.
The comment tried by introducing "strokes" to distract from the topic: dexamethasone which helps intubated patients. Insisting on that non-topic here just doesn't improve the discussion. Discussing "strokes" by "non-elderly" as the special case of all intubated patients as somehow relevant for dexamethasone isn't supported by any research, as far as I know.
And I claim that the number of patients that could be saved using dexamethasone even in the age groups 20-39, if they get infected, is nothing "extremely rare" among "non-elderly": only before end of May, surely more than 100 US patients aged 20-39 could have been saved. If "non-elderly" means "still working" the number is even much higher.
> The comment tried by introducing "strokes" to distract from the topic: dexamethasone which helps intubated patients.
The comment is about what causes strokes: Is it the virus itself, or the cytokine storm? If it is the virus itself, that would be rather unique. The comment argues that it is the cytokine storm.
This is relevant because there is a hypothesis that COVID-19 is uniquely dangerous because the virus itself directly attacks organs and causes strokes.
Furthermore, if Dexamethasone helps with the cytokine storms and the cytokine storms cause strokes/organ damage, it only follows that it also helps with the strokes/organ damage.
Therefore, nothing in the comment suggests that Dexamethasone wouldn't help patients, regardless of age. To the contrary. You appear to be fighting windmills.
No. I responded to user's very clear claims, where he wrote (emphasis mine):
"cytokine release syndrome is highly likely to be causing the (extremely rare) instances of stroke in non-elderly"; "I get incredibly annoyed when people act like (a) these strokes / organ damage are happening in significant quantities"
in his comment replying to dexamethasone effects and I have shown that the "quantities" of those who are helped by dexamethasone are significant. I started by quoting his "extremely rare" and replying "Is it?" (as is "is that really extremely rare" because he is as he writes "incredibly annoyed" in his comment to dexamethasone effects) and showed the numbers.
And you haven't shown anything else.
Note that it was never about "strokes" alone, which was your original claim, but about dexamethasone. For him was "extremely rare": "stroke in non-elderly COVID-19 patients, organ damage, etc." Note the "etc." too. Only you and nobody else here reduced that to "strokes" alone in your first response. Let me state it again, I don't see your comments contributing anything here.
> I started by quoting his "extremely rare" and replying "Is it?" (as is "is that really extremely rare" because he is as he writes "incredibly annoyed" in his comment to dexamethasone effects) and showed the numbers.
He said "strokes are extremely rare", you showed numbers on ICU admissions. Those are obviously two very different things.
> Note that it was never about "strokes" alone, which was your original claim, but about dexamethasone.
The words "extremely rare" only appear in conjunction with strokes. The word "organ damage" also appears later, as "not significant quantities", which is still different. Dexamethasone does not appear in the comment at all.
I don't know where to go from here. This seems to be the hill you want to die on. May you rest in peace.
