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The STOIC study gave an asthma drug to Covid patients, but it worked so astonishingly well, they had to stop the trial early, as it was unfair to keep giving the placebo to people who were ending up in hospital ten times as often as people who got Budesonide.
“We were hoping for 50% reduction [in severity]. We got 90%, which … is off the charts”
–h/t Eric W at WUWT
Though to keep some perspective, out of about 140 people enrolled, 70 got the drug and 70 got the placebo, with 10 of the placebo group going to hospital and only 1 in the Budesonide group.
You’ll be shocked to know that giving the drug early works better than waiting for the virus to replicate wildly. You’ll also be shocked that there were some doctors using this 7 or more months ago, and yet the media didn’t mention it Apart from Newsmax. (Eg See Dr Richard Bartlett talk about this back in July last year, who talks of using a nebulizer, not an inhaler. )
Common asthma drug slashes Covid hospitalisation by 90%, experts say
Vanessa Chambers, The Sun
A […]
How many unnecessary deaths does it take til people get angry? Angry that the Chief Medical Officers and Health Ministers didn’t ask for studies to be done. Angry that most academics sat by and said nothing. And angry that the media just parroted the institutions.
One good antiviral changes everything. If the world had a safe cheap drug, we could not only reduce deaths and disability, but also slow the rate of mutation down and probably slow the appearance of new mutations down.
…
The Chamie-Quintero study from Peru shows the West could be only weeks away from reducing the Covid death toll if we used the safe cheap sheep-dip, lice-killing Ivermectin like less wealthy countries do.
A study across the states of Peru found that after Ivermectin was introduced, deaths started to fall about 11 days later, and within a month after that, deaths were down around 75%.
Ivermectin is a drug so useful early researchers got a Nobel Prize in Medicine for work on it. It’s so well known that in the last thirty years more than 3.7 billion doses of Ivermectin have been given out. It’s so safe we can use it on cats […]
Some things matter. The biggest scandal of Covid — the one worth fighting for — is that there are drugs that work, which are safe and well tested, but they suffer from the crippling problem of being too cheap for our captured public health institutions to use. Because they are old safe, mass produced and out of patent no Pharmaceutical giant will make mass profits, which dooms them to being ignored, under researched, and generally scoffed at in rude dismissive terms.
The biggest failure of our government health agencies right now is the Black Hole of Medicine — the astronomical event horizon beyond which cheap safe drugs disappear without a trace.
3,000 people are dying every day in the USA and 5,000 a day are dying in Europe, mostly from a problem which can be solved to a large extent.
Sure, the media hate HCQ because “Donald”. But it’s not just HCQ and it’s not just Trump — the media ignore all the cheap antivirals and all the rich nations have the same medical Black Hole. This is the work of the Medical Swamp, captured by Big Pharma.
The Age of Antivirals is here and hardly anyone even knows […]
Another day in the strange world of Covid
A new finding suggests Covid-19 doesn’t just bind to the ACE2 receptor, it also binds to a key pain receptor called neuropilin-1 receptor (NRP-1). This could explain why some people with a high viral load are asymptomatic and infectious but unaware they are unwell. It’s like the virus is arriving with it’s own morphine. In theory this might be a successful adaption from the virus’s point of view as it may increase the spread of the disease if infected people wander around able to shed virus for longer.
Despite being fed up with the WuFlu, the efficient perfidy is something to behold (at least to a microbiologist). It’s like a pocketknife.
On the down side, the virus may still be damaging tissues in this painless state, which might explain some of those findings of lung and heart damage even in mild or asymptomatic cases.
There is at least one potentially very nice payoff. The finding from the University of Arizona, may lead to the design of whole new painkillers based on the coronavirus spike that is “better than opioids”. The lead author says he has been contacted by people who had […]
Given that people with dark skin are more likely to be deficient in Vitamin D, wouldn’t studies like these be the best way to show that black lives actually matter? Would you like training in cultural sensitivity or to avoid the intensive care unit?
A free antiviral shining down on you?
In the Castillo study in Spain, 76 patients were randomly assorted into Calciferol treatment ( 0.532 mg Vitamin D ). Of the 26 who didn’t get it, 13 were admitted to the ICU. Of the 50 who got Vitamin D doses on days 1, 3, and 7 — only one ended up in the ICU. It’s worth noting that all patients got HCQ as well, and azithromycin too.
A second study tested 500 people to find out if they were deficient and followed them to see if they caught Covid.
Why has it taken 6 months of pandemic to do these small studies?
Before the pandemic came there was already ample evidence suggesting that it mattered. Vitamin D influences over 200 genes. Its levels also correlate with lower rates of cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, heart disease, dental caries, preeclampsia, autoimmune disease, depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. […]
I didn’t think cough syrups even worked against coughs, but one new paper suggests that bromhexine in common cough syrups reduces both Covid-19 rates of ICU and of mortality.
The era of antivirals has come, not that Big Pharma want you to know that cheap out-of-patent drugs might help. But for years we were told that medical science didn’t have an answer to viruses.
Bromhexine was patented in 1961 and is commonly found in OTC pharmacy cough syrups with names like Bisolvon, Robitussin, and Duro-Tuss (Wiki has a long list).
Theoretically Bromhexine sabotages one of our molecules — with the snappy name of TMPRSS2 (which is shorter than saying Transmembrane protease S2). A protease is a fancy pair of molecular scissors, it chops or tweaks the viral spike and if that doesn’t happen, the virus can’t get into the cell (at least not through its favourite path).
The nice thing about an antiviral acting against our molecules, rather than against the virus itself, is that it’s harder for the virus to mutate to get around it. That means it’s less likely the virus can develop resistance. The downside of targeting our own molecules is that it might fritz things up. […]
Coronavirus may leave a trail of benefits in its wake. Who knew that there were so many cheap antivirals around? Will people get fed up with the limited choices on offer next time there is a quarantine.
While newspapers in Australia were pretty keen to share the discovery of an antiviral role for HCQ, not so many were interested in the followup studies.
Ivermectin, like hydroxychloroquine is a kind of superdrug — in the sense of being in worldwide mass use. Some 3.7 billion doses are estimated to have been given since its approval. It has been called the Japanese Wonder Drug. It’s the farm drench, a head lice treatment, and works against worm, mites and ticks too.
It was estimated to reduce viral loads in vitro massively but most people didn’t think it would work at lower safe doses. Then Bangladeshi doctors claim it was “astounding”. Last month US tests suggest that it reduced deaths by 40%. (Rajter)
These are all every priminary results. More studies are promised for Ivermectin. Especially in Peru, where a grassroots movement of Doctors has ensured it will be used.
A US clinical trial of the drug ivermectin found that it reduced […]
Good news on the HCQ front
The Henry Ford HCQ study is by no means decisive, but with death rates seemingly halved (sorta, maybe, kinda) — it does show how crazy it is to ban hydroxychloroquine. It also shows it’s low risk, and with all the conflicting studies out there, that there are a lot of ways to stuff things up.
With 10 million cases around the world it seems a bit incongruous that it’s taken so many months to get a trial this basic done with 2,000 patients. When the world only had 10,000 patients in January we already knew that the three drugs that were “fairly effective” were Remdesivir, Chloroquine and Ritonavir. As far back as February 13, the South Koreans were already recommending hydroxychloroquine and telling us the anti-virals should be “started as soon as possible.” They warned that after ten days, doctors “do not have to start antivirals”. South Korea was the experiment that worked — but we ignored it.
Speaking of slow research, the UK hydroxychloroquine trial that was stopped has restarted again as of three days ago. This is a trial to see if HCQ can prevent coronavirus in 40,000 healthcare workers.
[…]
The most popular drug with doctors all over the world will seemingly now not even be allowed in the US for Covid related treatment: HCQ No Longer Approved Even a Little for COVID-19
Molly Walker, MedPage
The FDA rescinded its emergency use authorization (EUA) of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat COVID-19 patients, citing concerns about efficacy and risks associated with its use, and saying the drug no longer meets the criteria for an EUA, the agency said on Monday.
Moreover, the FDA now says the benefits of the drug “no longer outweigh the potential risks,” citing the serious cardiac adverse events associated with the drug.
Comments underneath reveal just how contested this will be.
It’s a strange situation where patients in many poorer nations are being offered drugs that patients won’t be able to get in the richest nation in the world:
Substantial fractions of physicians treating Covid-19 patients in Europe and elsewhere report use of HCQ+AZ: 72% in Spain, 49% in Italy, 41% in Brazil, 39% in Mexico, 28% in France, 23% in the US, 17% in Germany, 16% in Canada, 13% in the UK (45), much of the non-US use […]
Fascinating. Could one shot of radiation calm Covid infected lungs and stop the severe cytokine storm?
In a trial in the US, five very sick Covid patients with a median age of 90 were given a “low dose” (which is not so low) of 1.5 Grey (150 Rad) of Photon beam radiotherapy (in a front and back beam configuration.) It took only 10 – 15 minutes, and four of the five showed “rapid improvement” in 24 hours. Their oxygen levels and alertness improved. They were sent home from hospital 12 days later.
The good thing about this is that apparently most hospitals already have this equipment, so they could start helping people right away (assuming it works, which we don’t know yet).
Radiation isn’t anti-viral, it’s anti-inflammatory
In theory, the shot of radiation is not “killing the virus” but is changing the immune response — and may be able to stop the deadly cascade of the cytokine storm. It calms the immune system in at least three ways (see the chart).
Anti-inflammatory treatment for Covid-19.
The curious thing about this is that it is an old treatment, and an old idea. “Hormesis” is a phenomenon where low grade […]
We discussed the inadequacies of the large Lancet study of hydroxychloroquine supposed used on 96,000 Covid patients from 671 hospitals. It was largely useless because it ignored zinc, wasn’t randomized and was mainly used on people who were already very ill, with a terrible 12% death rate. But it is far worse than that and has now been retracted. The number of deaths listed in Australia was higher than the official Australian tally on April 21. The number of Covid cases in Turkey was 80 times higher than official numbers.
All over the world the study spooked doctors and governments (with WHO help) into stopping the use of HCQ in their large trial across in 17 countries .That trial has since been restarted.
The authors have now retracted the paper after Surgisphere refused to transfer the full dataset “due to confidentiality”.
The Guardian investigated the company that came out of nowhere with this enormous dataset which was used in both The Lancet paper and a New England Medical Journal paper. It turned out to be small, with a handful of employees and that include a science fiction writer, an adult content model, and few scientific qualifications. When The Guardian contacted […]
Remember the Japanese wonder drug Ivermectin that killed Coronavirus in the lab? Some trials on patients in Bangladesh and the US are showing some promise. This is the drug I called “sheep dip” (but which is really more of a cow or horse drench now). It’s famous for stopping River Blindness and saving the eyesight of thousands. It’s also used against roundworms, lungworms, mites, lice, scabies and hornflies, as well as cattle-ticks. So it’s another drug, like hydroxycholoroquine that has been road tested for safety’s sake up the kazoo.
The cost of Ivermectin is around 15c in the third world, and $50 for one round for a human in New York. (But even that is a lot cheaper than a $5000 a day ICU bed.)
As I said — there may come a day when you can cure coronavirus and treat the kids headlice at the same time. Handy.
So it’s good to know some trials are occurring, and even better to know that some doctors are very enthusiastic about the results. In terms of medical clinical trials, these are small. I’m not sure the enthusiasm is matched by the data. I’d only say “it’s not dead yet”. But in […]
Border closures and Quarantine appear to be reducing all respiratory diseases
It’s a striking pattern all over the world. Measures taken to reduce the spread of Covid have, not surprisingly, reduced the spread of all respiratory diseases.
This years flu season is smaller than the last five years
Good news: due to the pandemic it’s likely many people are not catching Influenza and other respiratory diseases.This shows a rather predictable result that quarantine reduces the spread of respiratory diseases. It’s a banal and uncontroversial finding.
Chris Gillham is a part of the unofficial BOM audit team here, and below he looks at WHO data across 17 countries for Influenza. (The WHO Chief of course is a belt-n-debt-trap apologist for China, but this is not their modeled interpretation, just the data). Laboratory indicated influenza cases are down an astonishing 87% in 17 nations compared to the five year period.
Quarantine is textbook microbiology, and for most of history, the best way to reduce the spread of disease. In many countries 12 days after major isolation measures started, viral growth flattened off the dreaded exponential curve. Despite that, some commentators still wonder if the lockdowns achieve anything for Coronavirus. And so […]
Across the US all-cause mortality is down as as people avoid catching the flu, getting run over, and other risks. But in New York where coronavirus has hit hardest, all-cause mortality is at record highs.
This is nothing like the seasonal flu
For the whole month of March, deaths in New York were twice as high as normal. This includes not just extra coronavirus deaths but all other causes. Deaths were even higher than the number of known coronavirus deaths, leaving cardiologists worried that there may have been an increase in other conditions like heart attacks or strokes, because people were afraid to go to hospital or couldn’t get help in time.
This is an underestimate. The authors expect this number to rise as more paperwork gets completed. It’s still only a small excess in a giant country, but it hints at the scale of the event were no quarantine measures put in place, no flights stopped, and the virus allowed to spread naturally. The current epidemic is stabilizing in New York, but if major action wasn’t taken, this would be the early weeks of a pandemic about to sweep across all fifty states. And this would not be the […]
“A single treatment able to effect ∼5000-fold reduction in virus at 48h in cell culture.”
–Caly et al 2020
It’s another day in freaky chemistry — researchers at Monash University found that one of the main components of sheep drench is also very good at reducing Coronavirus, at least in test tubes. Ivermectin’s an unsung hero of the world of biochemistry, called a “Wonder Drug” and a “Blockbuster” because it works against roundworms, lungworms, mites, lice, scabies and hornflies, as well as cattle-ticks. Most importantly, it kills the worm that causes River Blindness, saving the vision of thousands in sub-saharan Africa, and places like Ecuador.
That’s doesn’t mean it will work in vivo — and it may be a month before human trials begin so we can find out.
Possibly, in a few months you might be able to kill off Coronavirus and deworm yourself at the same time.
Though the human experiment is already probably happening in countries where it is being used already and coronavirus is circulating. Surely we can track those cases?
And at least in Australia, unlike Chloroquine — which we don’t have much of — with 70 million sheep I can’t […]
There is a third way — Why are we so fatalistic?
It’s not a choice between Let It Rip and the slow bleed of “Flatten the Curve”. It’s not a choice of health versus money. The third option no one is mentioning is to Crush The Curve: we go hard, fast, and do a major short sharp quarantine. It’s not radical, it’s just textbook epidemiology, it saves more lives and it saves the economy too.
SlowMo, Boris and Trump are still two weeks behind the virus. It’s time to get the Third Option on the table.
Flattening the Curve is a fatalistic slow bleed that must last months. It rescues us from the demolition derby that the Let It Rip disaster is cursing on Italian hospitals, but it’s deadly for the economy. All leaders who are keeping schools open while turning student dorms into triage units are locked into this limited thinking. It’s the Influenza-plan rejigged.
There is another way — (as I’ve been saying) — we stop dithering and acting two-weeks-late, and jump ahead of this inanimate code. We aim for extinction — hunt every infection down, keep most people at home, reduce the spread, then finish by following […]
I seem to have the uncanny ability to predict what frontline experts will recommend days in advance. It’s not genius. Just medical training and that the solution to this is so Bleeding Obvious, and politicians are still 2 to 3 weeks behind an exploding epidemic of an inanimate nucleic acid code.
WA hospitals call for state border closures to deal with coronavirus fears (COVID-19)
Top doctors across WA’s biggest hospitals are sensationally calling for the state to effectively close its borders to protect West Australians from the coronavirus pandemic.
In a remarkable letter obtained by The West Live to be discussed exclusively on this morning’s show, it can be revealed the Combined Medical Leads Advisory Group has raised concerns about the “extremely limited” availability of testing infrastructure and supplies in WA.
The group, which includes senior medicos from FSH, RPH and SCGH, also warns there is “limited evidence of effective anti-viral treatment”, “no effective vaccine” and that rationing is already in place at hospitals.
It recommends that to “flatten the curve” that attention should be paid to “extending isolation restrictions to all personal interstate travel”.
Just to spell this out, all states […]
Fun subject of the day: How Coronavirus kills
No seriously, this is matter-of-fact, youtube-at-its-best, concise, cartoony, and smart.
Think of doctors as Body-Engineers. The problem to solve today Engineer-readers — is how to keep blood supply oxygenated when lungs are highly inflamed, filling with fluid, and the delicate thin membranes of lung tissue can’t cope with the sheer forces of rapid collapse and expansion. As well, if oxygen levels drop, even unconscious patients will breathe involuntarily — out of synch with artificial ventilation machines. The sensation of suffocation creates the urge to breath faster and harder. . The great news is ICU staff are getting much better at keeping people alive when they get ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) which can happen with other diseases (like Influenza). Seems, the ICUs can keep 84% alive while they wait for the inflammation to subside and the damage to heal. Though the DIY version at home probably won’t be so effective.
Not enough beds
Obviously, this explains my obsessive interest in the percentage needing ICU care and also the Ro (rate of reproduction or spread). With a shortage of ICU beds, slowing the spread makes a life-and-death difference to state the bleeding obvious. […]
US and Australia close borders and everyone outside China starts tracking contacts…
The official deaths tally has risen to 259, but for the first time the “total recovered” at 287 now exceeds the total deaths. Evidently it’s quicker to die than to recover.
Australia remains the “leader” of the Western nations with 12 confirmed cases. Thankfully, it and the US have finally got serious and both announced today that they would stop people from China from flying straight in. Citizens can return with a two week isolation or quarantine period, but foreigners cannot. This is very good news (as far as virus control goes). Now all the same nations will be furiously, laboriously tracking and tracing the hundreds of potential contacts. In a few weeks we’ll know how contagious it is, and how deadly. And maybe, with much money and dedication we’ll even stop it.
Though in a few weeks a host of secondary countries may develop their own epidemics and virus-free countries will need to block them too.
What’s really remarkable here is how useless, to the point of negligence, the World Health Organisation is.
US and Australia close borders to Chinese arrivals
BBC News: The […]
Doctors are at it again trying to scare people about “climate change”. But all around the world, in every study in every city humans die more from the cold than they do from the heat (and by six to 20 times more). That’s thousands of lives and it happens every single year. Don’t these doctors know anything?
Attributable fraction of deaths: Heat, cold and temperature variability together resulted in 42,414 deaths during the study period, accounting for about 6.0% of all deaths. Most of attributable deaths were due to cold (61.4%), and noticeably, contribution from temperature variability [TV] (28.0%) was greater than that from heat (10.6%). Cheng et al.
The awful truth that incompetent self-serving doctors forgot to mention was that cooler room temperatures allow viruses to survive longer, which is just one of many reasons the Flu Season is always worse in winter.
Break my heart, if “climate change” is real the only thing the docs have to worry about is whether they’ll earn less money in winter.
Here’s the headline:
Health system needs to be protected from climate change: doctors
Here’s the real news: The health system needs to be protected from climate-change-doctors. We can’t afford […]
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