Covid-19 News

Title of the article: Woodstock Occurred in the Middle of a Pandemic.

It was the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968-1969, which is estimated to have killed 100,000 Americans and one million worldwide.

These were the days when Americans were younger and healthier and the US population was about 200 million.

From the article at

https://www.aier.org/article/w…the-middle-of-a-pandemic/

Quote

As Bojan Pancevski in the Wall Street Journal points out, “In 1968-70, news outlets devoted cursory attention to the virus while training their lenses on other events such as the moon landing and the Vietnam War, and the cultural upheaval of the civil-rights movements, student protests and the sexual revolution.”

The only actions governments took was to collect data, watch and wait, encourage testing and vaccines, and so on. The medical community took the primary responsibility for disease mitigation, as one might expect. It was widely assumed that diseases require medical not political responses.

It’s not as if we had governments unwilling to intervene in other matters. We had the Vietnam War, social welfare, public housing, urban renewal, and the rise of Medicare and Medicaid. We had a president swearing to cure all poverty, illiteracy, and disease. Government was as intrusive as it had ever been in history. But for some reason, there was no thought given to shutdowns.

Tom britton has done som colloborative works that hints that herd immunity will be reached at 40%. This is something stockholm will reach in june (Currently at 30%) Norway in comparison has something like 3% or such. all these numbers have error bars of cause.

I posted this problem with ivermectin a while back that we would need at least 100 mg doses to obtain therapeutic levels of 5 uM indicated by the biochemistry. Still, as far as we know that high concentration may only be necessary to block the spike protein blocking action, whereas a !ower level may be required to mediate its intracellular cargo protein blocking effect, which interrupts the nucleus - mediated anti viral activity. We just don't know. But I did dig out previously healthy volunteer studies from way back and tests on pregnant women illustrating safety levels up to oral 120 mg doses (tested by WHO) ie ten times the recommended FDA doses. Look the situation here is desperate and if a test drug can be given which is also the case for hydroxychloroquine, without major side effects, I am afraid like Wyttenbach probably agrees, screw the FDA! Don't forget they are heavily influenced by pharma invested interests, and it takes a kick up the backside from Trump to make them see some common sense rather than dollar signs! So ivermectin stays in Anti Bat at 100 mg doses, OK? Biochemistry rules, f*** the FDA!

Well we can relax it looks like chloroquine use in India there is working really well with their mass fever treatment, keeping daily deaths below 100 - and it you don't believe me look at the rest of Africa and Indonesia, and what about Greece, almost totally recovered having had mefloquine, chloroquine and other anti malarial medicines there since the outbreak caused by a decade of debt. Lifesaver! Italy, Spain, France and Germany all recovering due to intensive use of antivirals. When will the US and UK begin to wake up? Instead of being petrified of legal action if they prescribe a drug for some non-approved purpose? When can we go into any pharmacy and buy all the essential Anti Bat components. This will turn out to be as bad as the PPE scandal when the facts of the matter are fully realised. Want me to reiterate them all?

Latest study thinks oestrogen is effective, listening to radio 4. King's college study what are they recommending, we all have a sex change to improve our chances of survival? Because less women die? Duh! Why aren't they doing something useful and direct one testing different quinine analogues or something other than just wasting their time and our money? UCL always kicked King's college and Imperial's backsides when it came to pure advanced or applied research but even my old university seems to be doing eff all about it, just another app?!! Can't even go back there and box their ears!

Quote from Mark U

Title of the article: Woodstock Occurred in the Middle of a Pandemic.

It was the Hong Kong Flu pandemic of 1968-1969, which is estimated to have killed 100,000 Americans and one million worldwide.

These were the days when Americans were younger and healthier and the US population was about 200 million.

From the article at

https://www.aier.org/article/w…the-middle-of-a-pandemic/

Mark U.

I'm glad that you are showing curisosity here, and humility, and (by implication) aware that you can't understand the difference between these two cases: HK Flu and CV.

A clue comes from this:

In comparison to other pandemics, the Hong Kong flu yielded a low death rate, with a case-fatality ratio below 0.5% making it a category 2 disease on the Pandemic Severity Index.

And then you work out the numbers: deaths per month.

The annual burden of flu in the US is typically 12K - 60K. That is over one year, but mostly concentrated into winter months. So that 100,000 over two years is at upper end of expected, but still only say 10K / month. Perhaps a bit more at peak.

The CV death burden so far is 80,000 in two months - so that is 40K per month 4X larger than typical severe (e.g. HK flu) flu burden.

And, in some places e.g. NY where epidemic got out of control, it has been higher than that, relatively.

So the question is what death and dying burden you think cab be accepted. I quite understand utilitarians who reckon when health systems collapse like they did in NY and are currently stretched to the limit in various places is not as big a problem as lockdown. Maybe you think double that number of ill and dying people (say 8X typical bad flu or 80K/month) is such a problem as to need political action? A utilitarian would certainly reckon that for the good at all just letting all these CV cases die at home would be the best thing to do. Say a presidential decree that says even though you have health insurance you should not be treated? Note that in past US pandemics cities that locked down harder and earlier recovered better with less economic damage.

The second problem is numbers. Flu tends to be self-limiting because there is some immunity in the population. This thing appears not to self-limit in that way since no-one is immune. But we cannot be entirely sure yet. Still it seems that most of the population will catch it, if it behaves like other species jump virusses and remains transmissable. We know this virus is very very transmissable, unlike flu hot weather seems not to stop it much. Even locked down US cases are not falling by very much so what could stop the full 6,000,000 deaths if they happen before a vaccine? Current rate of death is terrible for health systems that can only just cope, but not so bad. Maybe 500,000 before the pandemic is stopped by a vaccine. Much less than it would be at a higher infection rate - taking all of population before a vaccine is ready, and overwhelming health systems so that most of those dying must do so without medical help. That pushes up the percentage death rate significantly and is where I get my 2% from.

The jury is still out, if you unlock the US, on how fast people will die. But current rate is 4 X higher than was seen in the HK flu you quote. Jed thinks the epidemic will increase exponentially in absence of lockdown which is what it has done in most other countries but not all. Those that have done better have had more universal health systems and better housed populations (Sweden) or much younger population (many developing countries) or extraordinarily good track and trace (countries with previous experience of SARS who did not forget this).

Let me ask you: what level of death at home (since health systems could not cope) would you say is acceptable? Is there a limit? We know that maximum would be around 2% of US population, or 6 million. Also, how do you choose which of this 6 million gets the limited medical care available? Do doctors play God? Or does Trump? Or what?

While I see the logic that killing 2% of the population, mostly old, only a much smaller (0.1%?) number of young people and babies, is in absolute terms a smaller cost than the consequences of the current lockdown, is it something any civilised country could do?

It is fine, if you think the best thing to do is track and trace and test the epidemic to death. But the US is not I think trying (or at least not able) to do that at the moment - one thing that so greatly upsets Jed.

THH

Quote from Dr Richard

Well we can relax it looks like chloroquine use in India there is working really well with their mass fever treatment, keeping daily deaths below 100 - and it you don't believe me look at the rest of Africa and Indonesia, and what about Greece, almost totally recovered having had mefloquine, chloroquine and other anti malarial medicines there since the outbreak caused by a decade of debt. Lifesaver! Italy, Spain, France and Germany all recovering due to intensive use of antivirals. When will the US and UK begin to wake up? Instead of being petrified of legal action if they prescribe a drug for some non-approved purpose? When can we go into any pharmacy and buy all the essential Anti Bat components. This will turn out to be as bad as the PPE scandal when the facts of the matter are fully realised. Want me to reiterate them all?

Maybe the low deaths in Greece come, like NZ, from a keeping the infection rate very low with extreme early lockdown?

Facing weaknesses head on

Given all this, it seems extraordinary that a country of about 11 million people, with only 565 intensive care unit beds at the beginning of March 2020, could manage to deal with the coronavirus crisis.

So, what has happened in Greece? At the beginning of February, a national experts committee on public health was established and the ministry of health appointed Sotirios Tsiordas, a professor of pathology and infectious disease, as its COVID-19 spokesperson.

The government immediately designed a preventative strategy to tackle the pandemic, taking the existing weakness of the health system into specific consideration. The decision to close schools and universities and ban large social gatherings came within days and before even one death attributed to COVID-19 was recorded.

The government managed to almost double the ICU capacity to 910 beds by the end of March via public sector coordination, smooth cooperation with the private sector and philanthropic donations.

Persuading the population to follow the government’s instructions has been one of the most difficult aspects in all countries. In Greece, the government opted for an early and consistent message – this is an emergency and the priority is to save human lives. The economy is the next most important issue to deal with, but the government has been clear that it comes second.

...

What can be learned from Greece is that the health system alone is not enough to confront a pandemic. Other aspects of governance such as decisive leadership which communicates physical distancing measures effectively and steadily seems to be equally important. But the fight against the pandemic is not over. Loosening the measures taken will be equally challenging and different expertise will be needed to direct governments, as economies shrink, on how to deal with people tired of the lockdowns.

I don't believe it - I think the Greeks were fairly similar to other European countries with a similar lax attitude at the beginning. Now in hindsight they are saying how clever they were with all their committee meetings agreeing on this one fixed consistent message, with politicians reaping the benefit of what is extremely good fortune. Check with their pharmacies - do they or don't they have a full complement of anti malarial drugs available to the population, and how many Greek citizens stockpiled chloroquine related drugs 'just in case' of fever? Does no-one understand, malaria is a killer, so as in Nigeria or Kenya or any other malaria infested region, nobody is checking to distinguish between a fever induced by malaria or COVID19, if they have the drugs or antidotes they will take them without any doctors prescription when it's a matter of life and death. A recent outbreak of malaria was reported in Greece, along with other mosquito borne nasties like dengue fever and West nile viruses. This 'obscure correlation' between malarial region and absence of CO VID 19 is clear cut now especially since there are as many OAP 's in Greece as in Italy, and similar pollution. Or just look at the success of the Chinese and Koreans after they took the biochemical data seriously and the whole population was supplied with these as well as Avigan. I bet they are all using ivermectin too in this combination with Zn azithromycin or doxycycline and other Chinese herbal meds. All I'm simply saying is that widespread use of Anti Bat could put an end to this pandemic but we do not have early enough interventions which doctors like Zelenko or Raoult proposed early on. The potential advantage of using such antivirals to combat this pandemic in Europe and the US has been lost. Even now none of the biochemical evidence is being applied in a sensible efficacious way.

Some new (and older related) items on Covid-19 politics and treatments possibly of interest --

The race to find a SARS-CoV-2 drug can only be won by a few chosen drugs: a systematic review

of registers of clinical trials of drugs aimed at preventing or treating COVID-19

https://www.medrxiv.org/conten…101/2020.05.05.20091785v1

Modern Medicine Attempts To Closet Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) & Forgo Targeted

Therapy Of High-Risk Groups In Setup For Mass Vaccination

https://www.lewrockwell.com/20…tup-for-mass-vaccination/

Early Hydroxychloroquine Is Associated with an Increase of Survival in COVID-19 Patients: An Observational Study

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202005.0057/v2

Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin plus zinc vs hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin alone: outcomes in hospitalized COVID-19 patients

https://www.medrxiv.org/conten…101/2020.05.02.20080036v1

A Divide and Conquer Strategy against the Covid-19 Pandemic?!

https://www.medrxiv.org/conten…101/2020.05.05.20092155v1

Melatonin Helps Lessen Severity Risk In COVID-19 Patients By Preventing Cytokine Storms

- Melatonin may blunt the NLRP3 inflammasome driven Covid-19 cytokine storm

https://www.thailandmedical.ne…reventing-cytokine-storms

Melatonin alleviates acute lung injury by inhibiting the NLRP3 inflammasome

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com…0.1111/jpi.12322/abstract

Flavonoids interfere with NLRP3 inflammasome activation

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29960001

The ketone metabolite β-hydroxybutyrate blocks NLRP3 inflammasome-mediated inflammatory disease

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25686106

COVID-19: Why Not Traditional Medicine, Says Minister as Clinical Trial of Ashwagandha Begins

https://www.india.com/news/ind…u-guduchi-begins-4022395/

Pyridoxal 5'-phosphate (P5P) to mitigate immune dysregulation and coagulopathy in COVID-19

https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202005.0144/v1

Russian Study Indicates That Glutathione Deficiency Affects COVID-19 Susceptibility, NAC Supplements Help

https://www.thailandmedical.ne…ty,-nac-supplements-helps

Yes I will propose a list to update previous posts, and any other ideas for additions or contraindications to our Anti Bat cookery course can be knocked around. So,

Drug. Dose/day Efficacy.EC90 Availability. Side Effects. Recommended by. Mechanism of action. Used in which countries

HCQ

Zn

Azithromycin

Doxycycline

Ivermectin

Avigan

Low Mwt Heparin

Sutherlandia

Tobacco

Marijuana

Echinacea

Sceletium

Angelica

Nigella,

Liquorice

Monolaurin

Quercetin

Which would be the deluxe Anti Bat version. For simple efficacy only the first six or so taken together would probably suffice. Any other suggestions before we make up a full table?

Whoops, forgot high Vit C multivits and especially D/D3. There's probably more useful Chinese herbs and other antivirals but nothing would be as effective as the HCQ/Ivermectin/Zn/Azithromycin or Doxycycline combination. Fortunately the Ivermectin/HCQ combo has had clinical trials against malaria without severe side effect s, ivermectin targeting the mozzies and the HCQ or mefloquine targeting the Plasmodium parasite. Can't see why the WHO are not yet recommending antiviral treatments since they have tested just about everything on third world subjects already in mass drug or fever treatments. Remember they added chloroquine to the table salt?

Quote from Wyttenbach

This already has been investigated as some people took the horse version ......

The main side effect was that they became neigh-sayers.

(I don't know if that translates much!)

Quote from Lou Pagnucco

The ketone metabolite β-hydroxybutyrate blocks NLRP3 inflammasome-mediated inflammatory disease

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25686106

This is interesting because people use this over the counter drug to enhance performance, both mental and physical and possibly lose weight. I tried it after checking scholarly papers which suggest that short to medium term use does not alter the principal lab tests of body function. You can also determine whether you are controlling your diet (when doing this, eat very little-- mainly healthy fats with a bit of protein- it takes away appetite for up to 8 hours) enough by testing your urine with ketone detector strips (Amazon: Bayer Ketostrips (OTC in the US). In my subjective and unscientific experience, it works quite well and some of my friends agreed. Even one who had early dementia (cause undetermined). But there is an annoyance. In some people, it is a mild laxative which can be welcome. But in other people, it is a wildly efficient laxative leading in the extreme to liquid stool diarrhea for a day or two after stopping it. Interesting substance. Not sure anyone will test it against COVID-19 though. It's way off the midstream of pratice.

Alan Smith is mane-ly right.

The Lancet goes political.and takes the moral hgh ground.. May 9,2020

COVID-19 in Brazil: “So what?” ,,COVID-19 no Brasil : “ E daí ?”

" Yet, perhaps the biggest threat to Brazil's COVID-19 response is its president, Jair Bolsonaro."

.. also a stark sign that Brazil's leadership has lost its moral compass, if it ever had one.

The editorial neglects to consider what happens to the favelas during an economic shutdown..

or to mention that Bolsonaro has ensured a large HCQ supply from Modi..

https://www.thelancet.com/jour…-6736(20)31095-3/fulltext

Quote from THHuxleynew

I'm glad that you are showing curisosity here, and humility, and (by implication) aware that you can't understand the difference between these two cases: HK Flu and CV.

A clue comes from this:

In comparison to other pandemics, the Hong Kong flu yielded a low death rate, with a case-fatality ratio below 0.5% making it a category 2 disease on the Pandemic Severity Index.

THH, I reference an article detailing response to a past pandemic and you conclude that I can't understand differences between pandemics! I am well aware of the differences thank you. There were reasons to be concerned about Hong Kong flu. It hit very fast and hard, faster than Covid-19. For instance from Wiki,

In Berlin, the excessive number of deaths led to corpses being stored in subway tunnels, and in West Germany, garbage collectors had to bury the dead due to insufficient undertakers. In total, East and West Germany registered 60,000 estimated deaths. In some areas of France, half the workforce was bedridden, and manufacturing suffered large disruptions due to absenteeism. The British postal and train services were also severely disrupted.^[7]

The outbreak in Hong Kong, where population density was greater than 6,000 people per square kilometre, reached maximum intensity in two weeks; it lasted six months in total from July to December 1968.

In contrast, Covid-19 is a relative slow burn. It takes a long time for people to get sick, and a longer time to die. This means a larger window of opportunity for potential treatment. It should mean less panic. But no. Our treatment protocols - at least in the west - are woefully inadequate, a failure of our technocratic, media proselytized, corporate elite, before which so many fearful souls continue to bow and give offerings in the hopes of a future deliverance from plaque and pestilence.

Quote from THHuxleynew

While I see the logic that killing 2% of the population, mostly old, only a much smaller (0.1%?) number of young people and babies, is in absolute terms a smaller cost than the consequences of the current lockdown, is it something any civilised country could do?

Roughly 0.9 percent of the population dies every year in the US. Should a civilized, so called enlightened country be shut down and cowering in their houses if that number should increase to, say, 1.1 percent? Ridiculous!

There should be only very restricted, targeted lockdowns - particularly senior care centres - as well as common sense restrictions to reduce the R0 value.

In some circumstances entire city lockdowns are warranted, such as city lockdowns performed hundreds of years ago in response to the plague (which could kill one third of the people it infected). But countrywide or statewide decrees to lockdown in houses for something like covid-19? Again, ridiculous!

Regarding ivermectin - If its anti-viral effects are due to blocking nuclear import, then perhaps other drugs identified as nuclear import/export inhibitors in this paper may also be effective. In vitro tests would be interesting --

"Controlling the Gatekeeper: Therapeutic Targeting of Nuclear Transport"

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30469340

Note that one nuclear import inhibitor is the abortion inducing drug Mifepristone (RU-486).

Also worth noting is that several natural export inhibitors (e,g., curcumin) are identified which (I believe) theoretically could also hinder viral replication.

Quote from THHuxleynew

The jury is still out, if you unlock the US, on how fast people will die. But current rate is 4 X higher than was seen in the HK flu you quote.

THHuxleynew : You miss the point again 97% of all death are older than 65. The death rate among this class is 10 -1000 x larger than e.g. for people that are younger than 18!! Flu kills in all age classes.

Only hot spots and "third world regions" as e.g. in New York or tiny parts in Germany do show a larger death rate among younger due to sanitary problems. If you treat the working slaves like cattle they will be slaughtered like cattle.

Without hot spots and western third world spots corona will soon die out because no more old and vulnerable victims are alive. In Switzerland up 98% do show no or only mild symptoms.

Quote from Mark U

There should be only very restricted, targeted lockdowns - particularly senior care centres - as well as common sense restrictions to reduce the R0 value.

Guess what the ruling Swiss idiots will do next Monday. The vulnerable are allowed to freely move again...