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It might be - ironically - due to that Indian group's preprint with crappy method that suggested the virus was intentionally hybridised from HIV and coronavirus.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1....

If you took that preprint at face value, before the flaws were pointed out e.g.

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/ewtmnq/uncanny_sim...

https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/ewtt6f/uncanny_sim...

Then mixing up a cocktail of flu and HIV anti-virals would be a smart move.

If this result pans out, it might just be a remarkable piece of serendipity from some shitty science.

discuss

dylz|6 years ago

It has nothing to do with the crap preprint. There are journal articles about HIV medication treating SARS-CoV from over a decade ago.

quickquackquock|6 years ago

> It has nothing to do with the crap preprint.

I am glad you are here to tell us exactly how it went down in Thailand.

Those same papers were also available for the last month of treatments being attempted and yet we see this news from Thailand of 'recovery in 48 hours' about 48-72 hours following widespread sharing of that (crap) preprint. It may be coincidence, it may be serendipity.

I don't think either of us knows what happened here, but one of us certainly thinks they do.

Presumably you are right, but in my own experience, a recent headline on social media is as likely to prompt an idea as a journal article published 10 years ago.

Which is why we are all here on hacker news looking for ideas, instead of all busily reading issues of journals published in 2010. Am I wrong?

Interesting comment here btw:

https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/extdrc/thailand_...

"Although 2019-nCoV is NOT an influenza virus, but a coronavirus strain, it contains hemagglutinin-esterase proteins on its surface, which unlike Influenza A and B's HA that binds sialic acid, binds 9-O-acetylsialic acid instead. I assume that the similarities between these two receptor molecules are what lead doctors to use this influenza drug, in hopes that it also inhibits coronavirus HA-esterase to some degree."