Peter Lederman in Second Bout With COVID-19

All - it’s illegal and unethical to discuss in a public forum someone’s health issues by sharing private medical details and making speculations on his health.  Let’s all pray for his speedy recovery but please let’s stop this now 

All - it’s illegal and unethical to discuss in a public forum someone’s health issues by sharing private medical details and making speculations on his health. 

It's not illegal to discuss the state of someone's health.  Unethical is your opinion.  Now if someone was sharing his medical chart, or one of his healthcare providers was disclosing information, that would be a different story.

Nobody has shared "private" medical details.  If you read the original post, Peter shared his medical condition with a member of the media.

As a former virologist - it would be extremely unusual for Peter to have a bad secondary infection so close to the first...We also don't know his vaccine status. A doctor at UCLA who follows long haul COVID patients has observed - as have others - that treatment with the vaccine after infection helps a significant percentage of those suffering symptoms (of course if they have not been vaccinated) - up to 40%.  That's been noted by others as well, and has benefited a higher percentage of patients in a few unpublished studies so far than any of the MAbs. 

I wish Peter well, and hope he is at a good research hospital where they can get him the best care. If not, perhaps he should consider transferring? And gets his vaccine(s). 

What @lewm said. @dover1, there was no validation that there was a  "gain of function" research that led to SARS CoV-2019. Had the virus been completely engineered, there would be easily discernable "splice" sites that could be detected on sequencing, and we don't see that. Yes, this SARS virus can recombine, but not nearly as much as flu does (hence why we require shots every year). Also, flu mutates much more rapidly, as lewm observed because of SARs' proof reading ability. In any case, most mutations would be neutral or inhibitory to virus' s infectiousness and replication, so there's that. Yes, China hasn't been completely transparent, and we may never know exactly what happened, but best evidence is that this wasn't engineered.

None of this helps Peter though, and I really hope he is getting the best care from experts - I also like teaching hospitals. Please let us know if there is anything we can do, in addition to buying more Soundsmith :-)  - do we know the hospital? Can we send him cards, flowers, etc.? 

@ediver 

Peter is now home and getting better (from one of the builders/employees). Soundsmith will be back in full operation Monday from what I understand, but they are way behind in getting things built, repaired, and shipped out.