Covid-19

[globaleconomicollaps]

The threads are getting junked up. I see lots of off topic conversations and fighting. I'm going to make a new thread here. Please try to keep it on topic and polite.

In his latest broadcast Chris Martenson discusses this paper:
COVID-19: Attacks the 1-Beta Chain of Hemoglobin and Captures the Porphyrin to Inhibit Human Heme Metabolism

In essence the COVID-19 virus attacks hemoglobin in the blood. The Hemoglobin is the carrier of oxygen in the blood. The virus displaces iron from the hemoglobin causing the blood to carry oxygen less efficiently. A side effect of this is to create an oxygen free radical. If you have heard of Antioxidants, this is the main oxidant they are thinking of. These free radicals are a major source of heart attack ( think of all the videos and photos of people keeling over dead in public ), diabetes, cancer and many other systemic diseases we think of as "western" diseases.

A supporting fact for this idea is that children are more or less immune to the bad effects of the disease. Children have not had time to develop large reserves of iron in the blood. Older adults have higher Blood Serum Ferritin concentrations. In addition men outnumber women in ICUs by as much as two to one. This is consistent with the fact that men have higher blood iron concentrations than women.

Beginning in the 1930's America began fortifying flour with iron filings. Iron filings are poorly absorbed by your tissues but they do circulate around in your blood causing mischief. This practice is now widespread across the globe. This is a map of the places that will have the most deaths from COVID-19:



drawn from this article:
http://www.ffinetwork.org/global_progress/

[shiny!]

Re: Covid-19

With labs tooling up to look at genetic reasons for the different responses to Covid-19 infection, there might be simpler nutritional factors that aren't being looked at. Namely Selenium and Zinc.

In 4 out of 22 Covid-19 deaths in King County, death was caused by cardiomyopathy:
https://www.theeagle.com/news/nation...b72d00156.html

From the NIH:
https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Se...thProfessional

"Selenium deficiency produces biochemical changes that might predispose people who experience additional stresses to develop certain illnesses [6]. For example, selenium deficiency in combination with a second stress (possibly a viral infection) leads to Keshan disease, a cardiomyopathy that occurred in parts of China prior to a government-sponsored selenium supplementation program that began in the 1970s [2,5,8,23].

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I have read (but don't have sources to verify if it's true) that Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin when taken with Zinc might be effective because they drive Zinc into the cells where it disrupts the RNA replication of the coronavirus. This effect of zinc on coronavirus is why OTC remedies containing zinc are at least anectdotally effective in shortening the time of the common cold (coronavirus) when taken at early onset of symptoms.

If true, then perhaps one of the reasons why some people get very sick from Covid-19 while others show little or no symptoms may have to do with their zinc loads.

Since Hydroxychloroquine has risks (especially for diabetics taking Metformin) it seems like simply taking daily Zinc supplementation (no megadosing necessary) might help reduce risk of severe complications from Covid-19.

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Why Hydroxychloroquine might NOT be effective:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipelin...te-for-april-6

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African-Americans in Chicago are being disproportionally affected by Covid-19 compared to whites. Might nutritional deficiencies related to poverty be a contributing factor?

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2020/04...ican-american/

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IMO nutritional testing should be added to the other tests being done for every Covid-19 patient. Doing so might bring to light nutritional deficiences in different communities or segments of the population.

EDIT: Personally I'm taking 22mg of Zinc Picolinate; 200mcg Selenomethionine; Vit. A and D3 (5:1 ratio) and 500mg Vit. C every day.

EDIT: corrected typo.

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: Covid-19

==========================================

African-Americans in Chicago are being disproportionally affected by Covid-19 compared to whites. Might nutritional deficiencies related to poverty be a contributing factor?

https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2020/04...ican-american/

===========================================

IMO nutritional testing should be added to the other tests being done for every Covid-19 patient. Doing so might bring to light nutritional deficiencies in different communities or segments of the population.

EDIT: Personally I'm taking 22mg of Zinc Picolinate; 200mcg Selenomethionine; Vit. A and D3 (5:1 ratio) and 500mg Vit. C every day.

The African-American population in New Orleans have an epidemic of obesity. Obesity is a predisposing factor in COVID-19. It also is frequently found in tandem with malnutrition. Check out this video made by a surgeon who specializes in gastric bypass surgery:

[shiny!]

Re: Covid-19

One point he makes that stands out for me is the definition of "mild case." As in the oft-repeated, "80% will only have a mild case."

A so-called mild case means "doesn't require hospitalization." It can still be a bitch of a disease.

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: Covid-19

One point he makes that stands out for me is the definition of "mild case." As in the oft-repeated, "80% will only have a mild case."

A so-called mild case means "doesn't require hospitalization." It can still be a bitch of a disease.

He says that people with pneumonia are still in the mild group. If I had pneumonia I would go to the hospital.

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: Covid-19

I'm going to post this just because it was mentioned by Chris Martenson. Dr. Martenson is an authority and a "reliable source". I find the article a bit suspicious but it is food for thought. Use your own discretion:

Covid-19 had us all fooled, but now we might have finally found its secret.

libertymavenstock
Apr 5

In the last 3–5 days, a mountain of anecdotal evidence has come out of NYC, Italy, Spain, etc. about COVID-19 and characteristics of patients who get seriously ill. It’s not only piling up but now leading to a general field-level consensus backed up by a few previously little-known studies that we’ve had it all wrong the whole time. Well, a few had some things eerily correct (cough Trump cough), especially with Hydroxychloroquine with Azithromicin, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

There is no ‘pneumonia’ nor ARDS. At least not the ARDS with established treatment protocols and procedures we’re familiar with. Ventilators are not only the wrong solution, but high pressure intubation can actually wind up causing more damage than without, not to mention complications from tracheal scarring and ulcers given the duration of intubation often required… They may still have a use in the immediate future for patients too far to bring back with this newfound knowledge, but moving forward a new treatment protocol needs to be established so we stop treating patients for the wrong disease.

The past 48 hours or so have seen a huge revelation: COVID-19 causes prolonged and progressive hypoxia (starving your body of oxygen) by binding to the heme groups in hemoglobin in your red blood cells. People are simply desaturating (losing o2 in their blood), and that’s what eventually leads to organ failures that kill them, not any form of ARDS or pneumonia. All the damage to the lungs you see in CT scans are from the release of oxidative iron from the hemes, this overwhelms the natural defenses against pulmonary oxidative stress and causes that nice, always-bilateral ground glass opacity in the lungs. Patients returning for re-hospitalization days or weeks after recovery suffering from apparent delayed post-hypoxic leukoencephalopathy strengthen the notion COVID-19 patients are suffering from hypoxia despite no signs of respiratory ‘tire out’ or fatigue.

Here’s the breakdown of the whole process, including some ELI5-level cliff notes. Much has been simplified just to keep it digestible and layman-friendly.

Your red blood cells carry oxygen from your lungs to all your organs and the rest of your body. Red blood cells can do this thanks to hemoglobin, which is a protein consisting of four “hemes”. Hemes have a special kind of iron ion, which is normally quite toxic in its free form, locked away in its center with a porphyrin acting as it’s ‘container’. In this way, the iron ion can be ‘caged’ and carried around safely by the hemoglobin, but used to bind to oxygen when it gets to your lungs.

When the red blood cell gets to the alveoli, or the little sacs in your lungs where all the gas exchange happens, that special little iron ion can flip between FE2+ and FE3+ states with electron exchange and bond to some oxygen, then it goes off on its little merry way to deliver o2 elsewhere.

Here’s where COVID-19 comes in. Its glycoproteins bond to the heme, and in doing so that special and toxic oxidative iron ion is “disassociated” (released). It’s basically let out of the cage and now freely roaming around on its own. This is bad for two reasons:

1) Without the iron ion, hemoglobin can no longer bind to oxygen. Once all the hemoglobin is impaired, the red blood cell is essentially turned into a Freightliner truck cab with no trailer and no ability to store its cargo.. it is useless and just running around with COVID-19 virus attached to its porphyrin. All these useless trucks running around not delivering oxygen is what starts to lead to desaturation, or watching the patient’s spo2 levels drop. It is INCORRECT to assume traditional ARDS and in doing so, you’re treating the WRONG DISEASE. Think of it a lot like carbon monoxide poisoning, in which CO is bound to the hemoglobin, making it unable to carry oxygen. In those cases, ventilators aren’t treating the root cause; the patient’s lungs aren’t ‘tiring out’, they’re pumping just fine. The red blood cells just can’t carry o2, end of story. Only in this case, unlike CO poisoning in which eventually the CO can break off, the affected hemoglobin is permanently stripped of its ability to carry o2 because it has lost its iron ion. The body compensates for this lack of o2 carrying capacity and deliveries by having your kidneys release hormones like erythropoietin, which tell your bone marrow factories to ramp up production on new red blood cells with freshly made and fully functioning hemoglobin. This is the reason you find elevated hemoglobin and decreased blood oxygen saturation as one of the 3 primary indicators of whether the shit is about to hit the fan for a particular patient or not.

2) That little iron ion, along with millions of its friends released from other hemes, are now floating through your blood freely. As I mentioned before, this type of iron ion is highly reactive and causes oxidative damage. It turns out that this happens to a limited extent naturally in our bodies and we have cleanup & defense mechanisms to keep the balance. The lungs, in particular, have 3 primary defenses to maintain “iron homeostasis”, 2 of which are in the alveoli, those little sacs in your lungs we talked about earlier. The first of the two are little macrophages that roam around and scavenge up any free radicals like this oxidative iron. The second is a lining on the walls (called the epithelial surface) which has a thin layer of fluid packed with high levels of antioxidant molecules.. things like abscorbic acid (AKA Vitamin C) among others. Well, this is usually good enough for naturally occurring rogue iron ions but with COVID-19 running rampant your body is now basically like a progressive state letting out all the prisoners out of the prisons… it’s just too much iron and it begins to overwhelm your lungs’ countermeasures, and thus begins the process of pulmonary oxidative stress. This leads to damage and inflammation, which leads to all that nasty stuff and damage you see in CT scans of COVID-19 patient lungs. Ever noticed how it’s always bilateral? (both lungs at the same time) Pneumonia rarely ever does that, but COVID-19 does… EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

— — — — — — — — — — — — -

Once your body is now running out of control, with all your oxygen trucks running around without any freight, and tons of this toxic form of iron floating around in your bloodstream, other defenses kick in. While your lungs are busy with all this oxidative stress they can’t handle, and your organs are being starved of o2 without their constant stream of deliveries from red blood cell’s hemoglobin, and your liver is attempting to do its best to remove the iron and store it in its ‘iron vault’. Only its getting overwhelmed too. It’s starved for oxygen and fighting a losing battle from all your hemoglobin letting its iron free, and starts crying out “help, I’m taking damage!” by releasing an enzyme called alanine aminotransferase (ALT). BOOM, there is your second of 3 primary indicators of whether the shit is about to hit the fan for a particular patient or not.

Eventually, if the patient’s immune system doesn’t fight off the virus in time before their blood oxygen saturation drops too low, ventilator or no ventilator, organs start shutting down. No fuel, no work. The only way to even try to keep them going is max oxygen, even a hyperbaric chamber if one is available on 100% oxygen at multiple atmospheres of pressure, just to give what’s left of their functioning hemoglobin a chance to carry enough o2 to the organs and keep them alive. Yeah we don’t have nearly enough of those chambers, so some fresh red blood cells with normal hemoglobin in the form of a transfusion will have to do.

The core point being, treating patients with the iron ions stripped from their hemoglobin (rendering it abnormally nonfunctional) with ventilator intubation is futile, unless you’re just hoping the patient’s immune system will work its magic in time. The root of the illness needs to be addressed.

Best case scenario? Treatment regimen early, before symptoms progress too far. Hydroxychloroquine (more on that in a minute, I promise) with Azithromicin has shown fantastic, albeit critics keep mentioning ‘anecdotal’ to describe the mountain, promise and I’ll explain why it does so well next. But forget straight-up plasma with antibodies, that might work early but if the patient is too far gone they’ll need more. They’ll need all the blood: antibodies and red blood cells. No help in sending over a detachment of ammunition to a soldier already unconscious and bleeding out on the battlefield, you need to send that ammo along with some hemoglobin-stimulant-magic so that he can wake up and fire those shots at the enemy.
The story with Hydroxychloroquine

All that hilariously misguided and counterproductive criticism the media piled on chloroquine (purely for political reasons) as a viable treatment will now go down as the biggest Fake News blunder to rule them all. The media actively engaged their activism to fight ‘bad orange man’ at the cost of thousands of lives. Shame on them.

How does chloroquine work? Same way as it does for malaria. You see, malaria is this little parasite that enters the red blood cells and starts eating hemoglobin as its food source. The reason chloroquine works for malaria is the same reason it works for COVID-19 — while not fully understood, it is suspected to bind to DNA and interfere with the ability to work magic on hemoglobin. The same mechanism that stops malaria from getting its hands on hemoglobin and gobbling it up seems to do the same to COVID-19 (essentially little snippets of DNA in an envelope) from binding to it. On top of that, Hydroxychloroquine (an advanced descendant of regular old chloroquine) lowers the pH which can interfere with the replication of the virus. Again, while the full details are not known, the entire premise of this potentially ‘game changing’ treatment is to prevent hemoglobin from being interfered with, whether due to malaria or COVID-19.

No longer can the media and armchair pseudo-physicians sit in their little ivory towers, proclaiming “DUR so stoopid, malaria is bacteria, COVID-19 is virus, anti-bacteria drug no work on virus!”. They never got the memo that a drug doesn’t need to directly act on the pathogen to be effective. Sometimes it’s enough just to stop it from doing what it does to hemoglobin, regardless of the means it uses to do so.

Anyway, enough of the rant. What’s the end result here? First, the ventilator emergency needs to be re-examined. If you’re putting a patient on a ventilator because they’re going into a coma and need mechanical breathing to stay alive, okay we get it. Give ’em time for their immune systems to pull through. But if they’re conscious, alert, compliant — keep them on O2. Max it if you have to. If you HAVE to inevitably ventilate, do it at low pressure but max O2. Don’t tear up their lungs with max PEEP, you’re doing more harm to the patient because you’re treating the wrong disease.

Ideally, some form of treatment needs to happen to:

Inhibit viral growth and replication. Here plays CHQ+ZPAK+ZINC or other retroviral therapies being studies. Less virus, less hemoglobin losing its iron, less severity and damage.
Therapies used for anyone with abnormal hemoglobin or malfunctioning red blood cells. Blood transfusions. Whatever, I don’t know the full breadth and scope because I’m not a physician. But think along those lines, and treat the real disease. If you’re thinking about giving them plasma with antibodies, maybe if they’re already in bad shape think again and give them BLOOD with antibodies, or at least blood followed by plasma with antibodies.
Now that we know more about how this virus works and affects our bodies, a whole range of options should open up.
Don’t trust China. China is ASSHOE. (disclaimer: not talking about the people, just talking about the regime). They covered this up and have caused all kinds of death and carnage, both literal and economic. The ripples of this pandemic will be felt for decades.

Fini.

It strikes me that a natural, low impact, way to prevent the disease would be to give blood. Reducing one's Blood Serum Ferritin levels should be one's first priority. I guess for most people this is not actionable advise at this point. If the disease persists in the community for years, as I think is likely, then this should be our first line of defense.

One of the common treatments for COVID-19 is antibiotics. These target harmful bacteria( or as described in the article certain biochemical pathways). I think that the antibiotics are prescribed to treat opportunistic infections. This dovetails with my observation about high levels of oxygen free radicals in the blood. People with HFE hereditary haemochromatosis ( a disease of elevated blood iron) frequently die of infections. Bacteria love iron.

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: Covid-19

I just noticed that this includes all of the major English speaking countries except for India.

[shiny!]

Re: Covid-19

That is very interesting!

[Techdread]

Re: Covid-19

China’s recommendation to use chloroquine in treatment was quickly followed by a warning.

Two days after the treatment guideline update, health authorities in Hubei province -- China’s worst-hit region where the outbreak started and which accounted for majority of its over 80,000 patients -- asked hospitals to closely watch for, and immediately report, any adverse side effects of chloroquine phosphate, according to a report in local media outlet The Paper.

The drug is known to have short-term side effects such as nausea, diarrhea and tinnitus while long-term use can irreversibly impair eyesight. It’s forbidden for pregnant women as it can cause congenital defects in babies.
China Health Commission revised the dosage in a Feb. 29 notice tightening chloroquine use. The drug cannot be given to pregnant women, those with heart disease, terminal liver and renal disease, retina and hearing loss and patients on antibiotics such as azithromycin and steroid.
It can now be given only to patients between 18 to 65 years of age for a seven-day treatment course. Patients weighing over 50 kilograms (110 pounds) can take 500mg twice a day -- the usual dose -- while those weighing less will be administered the drug just once a day after two days of use, according to the latest guidelines.


Then came Raoult’s work at the IHU-Mediterranee Infection hospital in Marseille. The iconoclastic doctor, who wrote a paper in early March comparing the new coronavirus to the common cold, was giving hydroxychloroquine -- a medicine he’d worked with for decades -- to growing numbers of Covid-19 patients.
He published results on March 16 showing that the drug reduced the presence of the virus in the respiratory tract of 24 patients. In some of them, he combined the medicine with an antibiotic called azithromycin, a drug the Chinese authorities had explicitly advised against using with chloroquine.
Readers around the world seized on the results. Three days later, Trump made his first endorsement of the medicine after it was touted on Fox News. He tweeted that the combination could be “one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.”


Doctors and clinical trial experts have pointed out several weaknesses of Raoult’s study (and a subsequent one where all but two of 80 patients improved). They cite the small number of people taking part, the questionable inclusion and exclusion of some patients and the lack of a control group, which means the results could be an accident.
“The only way to know if you’re doing something worthwhile is to run a controlled study,” said Derek Lowe, a drug-discovery scientist. “It’s sad but it’s true.”
Another complication is that patients hospitalized with Covid-19 tend to be older and have other types of sicknesses, compared with those who normally take these medications for malaria or chronic diseases.
“We need to see this drug in a whole array of patients,” said William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. “This is not a trivial drug.”

Unorthodox Approach
Raoult insists he’s right -- and that in most cases not using hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin may be unethical. He argues there’s no need to put a group of patients on a placebo to draw conclusions on the medicine’s impact.

“In infectious diseases, it’s extremely easy to measure whether the virus disappears,” meaning there’s no real need for large patient samples or to follow the traditional method of comparing two random samples of patients, one of which gets experimental drugs and the other a dummy, Raoult told France’s Radio Classique on April 1. “This isn’t science, it’s a habit,” he said of placebo-controlled studies. He declined to be interviewed for this article.

That line of argument leaves clinical-trial experts wringing their hands. Because four out of five patients are able to clear the virus from their system on their own, a comparison is the only way to show “how much is related to the drug and how much is related to the patient’s own immune system,” said Navin Jacob, a pharma industry analyst at UBS AG in New York. “It could be that the drug actually did the job; we just don’t know.”

So for science to catch up with the hype, some Covid-19 patients will need to show altruism in the face of a disease that currently has no treatment. Instead of demanding the drug for themselves, they’ll need to volunteer for studies where they might not get it.

Trump could be right, but he should not have touted this drug on tv.

Dubee, the doctor from Angers, said patients are responsive when he explains the need for reliable scientific data. But he’s heard from colleagues who are struggling to enlist people because some want only hydroxychloroquine.

The study he’s leading will enlist a maximum of 1,300 patients age 75 or older who will be randomly split in two groups: one will get the active drug and the other a placebo, in addition to standard treatment. Some people in both groups will get azithromycin, which will put Raoult’s results to the test. After 14 days, scientists will compare how many people died or had to be put on a ventilator in both groups.


A slew of similar trials are looking at the same thing around the world, including studies backed by the World Health Organization and National Institutes of Health, as well as more than a dozen trials in China. Some early results could be coming in weeks, but doctors say it may be months before the matter is settled.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-10/malaria-drug-hype-reels-in-macron-as-hope-gets-ahead-of-science

[Mega]

Re: Covid-19

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: Covid-19

New York digging mass graves for the dead.

Unclaimed bodies in New York up 8x over last year (source).

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Covid-19

New York digging mass graves for the dead.

Unclaimed bodies in New York up 8x over last year (source).

Does anyone know who is responsible for managing bodies in a slow motion mass casualty event?

Is it City? State? Or Federal in this particular case?

What is the risk of this being specifically politicised for optics with the election in 6 months?

I have a friend running a pop up military hospital in NYC(but no feedback yet), but I do know the US military hospital in Seattle closed after 9 days with no patients.

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: Covid-19

Does anyone know who is responsible for managing bodies in a slow motion mass casualty event?

Is it City? State? Or Federal in this particular case?

What is the risk of this being specifically politicized for optics with the election in 6 months?

I have a friend running a pop up military hospital in NYC(but no feedback yet), but I do know the US military hospital in Seattle closed after 9 days with no patients.

I had some questions about the video. It looks to me like the trench will hold about 500 bodies. Is this the first trench they have dug? How many dead do they usually bury in a week? Does New York regularly dig mass graves? I note that these bodies are only unclaimed bodies. Anyone with next of kin will hold a private service so we are not getting a good view of the numbers.

This is a chart showing cumulative deaths in France from all sources:



from here:
https://www.insee.fr/fr/information/...figure1_radio1

Note that the totals are still below the yearly for 2018. They are going up at a good angle but still surprisingly low. I don't think this is the whole story. The lockdown here is very strict. Lots of missing deaths like motor vehicle deaths and deaths from falling off a ladder are pushing the numbers down.

[shiny!]

Re: Covid-19

Trump could be right, but he should not have touted this drug on tv.

I respectfully disagree. By touting this drug on TV, Trump put tremendous public pressure on the normally slow and cautious medical establishment. If he hadn't made so much noise about it, the NIH, CDC, FDA etc. would still be dragging their feet pending results of clinical trials, and disallowing our doctors to prescribe it.

[jk]

Re: Covid-19

I respectfully disagree. By touting this drug on TV, Trump put tremendous public pressure on the normally slow and cautious medical establishment. If he hadn't made so much noise about it, the NIH, CDC, FDA etc. would still be dragging their feet pending results of clinical trials, and disallowing our doctors to prescribe it.

they can't disallow a doctor to prescribe any licensed medication for any indication whatsoever- i.e. "off-label."