Corona-zona

Hi all. Stepping out of retirement for a moment to say that the day has finally arrived. After four years of successfully avoiding COVID-19 infection I had a positive test yesterday. Symptoms are very mild—I've had worse colds. The provider at urgent care said almost all the cases they are seeing are the same. Mild symptoms may also be due to the fact that I had the original vaccine then the two boosters. All this time I thought I might be a NOVID —one of those people who never get the bug. But no, it must have been my assiduous mask wearing and avoidance of high-risk situations when things were bad. So here's double middle fingers to all the kooks who think masks don't work (I've not been wearing masks for months now). I don't know what variant I have but it's likely JN.1. It is said to be extraordinarily contagious and accounts for 60% of cases worldwide . It also tends to produce mild infections like the one I have.  This article claims that right now every...

I don't know about you, but just looking at that picture makes me want to sneeze! But it turns out it has promise as something more than an annoying fall allergen. Last month Emory University researchers published a study outlining their efforts to screen botanical agents to find any that have a protective effects against SARS-CoV-2. They scored hits with two extracts, one from the flowers of tall goldenrod (Solidago altissima) and another from the rhizomes of the eagle fern (Pteridium aquilinum). To find them, scientists attached SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins to a payload that would make cells fluoresce. This provided a visual marker of when a cell had been penetrated.  They then mixed these "virus-like particles" with specially engineered cells and various extracts from the Quave Natural Product Library. It contains thousands of botanical and fungal natural products extracted from plants collected at sites around the world. They looked for cases where few cells were lit u...

A recent article in the New York Times details problems one pharma company is having getting approval for a new post-infection COVID-19 treatment. This post is your TL;DR for that article. Existing monoclonal antibody treatments have lost effectiveness due to new variants, and the only option for universal treatment at this point is Paxlovid. However, Paxlovid has worrisome interactions with other drugs, meaning some people can't take it. A company called Eiger Biopharmaceuticals developed and requested emergency use authorization from the FDA for a drug called  pegylated interferon lambda. Interferons are proteins that signal to your immune system that there is an invader that needs to be eliminated.   Interferon drugs are tricky because they signal your immune system to attack, and most kinds have receptors throughout the body. However, the company found a type of interferon whose receptors are specific to the respiratory tract. This means the drug could be usefu...

  The ASPR/HHS Test to Treat program is now running in Arizona (Hat Tip u/OverPalpitation4845 on Reddit). At participating locations you can be tested for COVID-19 and if positive walk away with a course of treatment for Paxlovid anti-viral medication. To find a location near you, click here and enter your zip code.  My zip code had 176 locations within a 10 mile radius. You get two kinds of results: Places with test-to-treat programs, and places that can fill Paxlovid prescriptions if you have one from your physician. I looked at some of the locations in less densely populated areas of Arizona. They have few to none of the test-to-treat, but enough of the fill-prescription sites. I guess if you live those areas you need to see your physician to get a prescription. Paxlovid is said to be extremely effective in preventing severe disease. The only problems I have heard about with it are a sometimes nasty taste in your mouth, and a tendency of about two percent of users to hav...

  Back in November, I blogged about new antiviral treatments that could nip a COVID-19 infection in the bud. The best one was Paxlovid, produced by Pfizer, and it reduced the chances of hospitalization by 89%. The big question mark at that time was how fast the drug company would be able to ramp-up production. In January Pfizer agreed to produce 10 million courses of treatment for the U.S. government. It is a key part of a test-to-treat initiative where people testing positive at a clinic or pharmacy would be immediately given a pack of the pills. Since then there have been a few bumps in the road. First, just a couple weeks ago there were reports that pharmacies were struggling to use available supplies because of confusion about who was eligible to receive the treatment. That problem seems to have been resolved with more recent reports that prescriptions are up. A second issue is " Paxlovid mouth " a type of  dysgeusia . It doesn't happen to everyone, but when it d...

I—and I assume, readers of this blog—have never thought of ivermectin horse paste as an effective treatment for COVID-19. That's because we are not the kind who swallow conspiracy theories that the medical establishment is somehow involved in a conspiracy to keep an effective treatment from the public. I would bet my bottom dollar that if ER physicians thought it was effective, they'd have been handing it out like candy during January.  People who do believe such things have gone bonkers, as has been well documented in this blog. Medical professionals have received threats of deaths and physical or sexual violence over their refusal to administer a drug unapproved to treat the disease that had no known effectiveness for that purpose. Not that facts will matter to the COVIDiots—because, y'know, the whole medical establishment is in on the conspiracy. But we now have a study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine proving that ivermectin is ineffective at pre...

  Governor Ron "Florida Man" DeSantis is picking a new fight with the Biden administration over antibody treatments. Whereas before he was bitching about not being allowed to hog them, now he's bitching about not being allowed to waste them. Antibodies treatments for COVID-19 are a big deal in Florida. That state has a surplus of politically-motivated individuals who refuse to be vaccinated, and there is a huge overlap between this group and the group of people who vote for the governor. Last year DeSantis and other Lemon Socialist governors were hawking antibody treatments  as the perfect solution for saving their COVIDiot supporters. Florida was hoovering up all the Regeneron doses it could get, way more than its share. Then back in September the Biden administration took steps to ensure more equitable distribution of these doses among states. DeSantis promptly threw a hissy-fit . Fast-forward to the past week, when the FDA has rescinded its Emergency Use Authorization...

A couple of months ago, I blogged about some Phoenix-area physicians who were enrolling participants in a clinical trial to test some coronavirus pills. The drug, molnupriavir, interferes with the virus's ability to replicate itself successfully. The trial was successful —so successful that they called an early end to Phase III. The drug worked so well an independent review board concluded it would be unethical to continue giving half the participants a placebo. The two pharma companies developing the drug, Merck and Ridgeback,  said that it reduces the chances of hospitalization or death by 50%. Treatment consists of four capsules taken twice a day for four days. Even better news is that the drug messes with the virus's reproductive machinery, which is common to all coronaviruses and is also something that is unlikely to change through mutation. So it should work against SARS-CoV-2 and all its variants, as well as future variants and future SARS-type viruses. In fact, it ma...

About two months ago, I blogged about COVIDiots taking ivermectin horse paste for their COVID-19. In that post I noted that there was a clinical trial underway in Brazil to test its effectiveness. The study, called the Together Trial was an international effort to test ivermectin, along with hydroxychloroquine and an antidepressant called fluvoxamine. The implication at the time was that they were seeing good preliminary results for the latter, but not the former two. This week a study published in the medical journal The Lancet concluded that fluvoxamine is indeed effective at preventing hospitalizations. It was a randomized trial with a placebo as the control conducted among people who tested positive for the virus.  Results showed that 11% of the people who got the drug were hospitalized, versus 16% of the people who got the placebo. That's a 5% reduction in absolute risk, and a relative reduction of 32%. Nothing to sneeze at. Fluvoxamine is a cheap drug that is widely avail...

  I know I've said this before, but just when you think people can't get any crazier, they find a way.  According to a story by NBC , there is a movement afoot among anti-vaxxers to convince people that hospitals are killing their loved ones on purpose . Or at least the hospitals are keeping them from getting life-saving "miracle cures."  Naturally, they're organizing on that cesspool of social media, Facebook. Groups have sprung up urging people to get their loved ones out, and providing advice on how to do so. Once out, they can receive treatments like ivermectin horse paste , iodine gargles , and (a new one to me) inhaling nebulized hydrogen peroxide. A physician quoted in the article calls this "vigilante medicine," and it's an apt metaphor.   The vigilantes are trying to science-up this course of treatment by calling it a "protocol." Any day now I expect injections of disinfectants and powerful lights inside the body to be added to the...

  Today, several updates on matters previously discussed on this blog. Florida Fires Back at Idaho Last week, I reported that Idaho was challenging Florida for the title of top COVIDiot state by appointing to a health board a medical doctor who opposes masks and vaccines and supports ivermectin.   Well, Florida was not about to take that challenge lying down! Governor Ron "Florida Man" DeSantis did them one better by making another such medical doctor the state's surgeon general . Take that, Idaho! Doctors Who Spread Misinformation Are Starting to Face Discipline I have never understood how medical professional organizations have been able to look the other way while their members dispense disinformation about pandemic-related topics like masks and vaccines. As noted earlier, many of these physicians are doing it to make money . Idaho even  appointed one of them  to a medical board. It seems the professional organizations are finally losing patience with t...

  As noted in an earlier post , states like Florida have a problem. They have low vaccination rates because conservative politicians inflame their followers by railing about the government and framing vaccination as a matter of freedom. Meanwhile con-men (and women) target the same audience with disinformation about vaccine dangers in order to make money selling supplements and quack treatments. As a result, lots of Floridians are unvaccinated; accordingly, lots of them are getting sick and dying. According to data compiled by the NY Times , in recent days Florida was the fourth-worst state for COVID-19 hospitalizations and the worst in the country for deaths. This leaves a guy like Governor Ron "Florida Man" DeSantis in a precarious position. One one hand, it's overwhelmingly his supporters who are suffering and dying. On the other hand, he can't possibly come to his senses and take effective steps to get people vaccinated after he's dug himself so deep into tha...

  Physicians in Mesa and Tucson are participating in a clinical trial of a new drug called molnupriavir. Where do they get these names?!?   The drug, produced by Merck, is a wide spectrum antiviral. It is proposed to work by inhibiting viral replication by a mechanism known as lethal mutagenesis.   Specifically, the drug messes with the virus's ability to replicate accurately. This causes the virus to build up genetic mistakes and leads to a process called an "error catastrophe" that prevents it from replicating and spreading.  I got that information from an article in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.  If you want to know how, exactly, the virus does this, the article goes into great detail about it. Be sure to dust off your old molecular biology and organic chemistry textbooks first. Some of the  criteria  for participating in the clinical trial are: You live in a household where someone else has a case confirmed by testing or by h...

  The "Three COVIDiots"—Governors Doug Ducey, Ran DeSantis, and Greg Abbott—have a problem. Constituents who vote for them won't take a vaccine that's been proven safe and effective over 367 million times in the U.S. They are suffocating and dying in ICU's.   What to do? You'd think the governors might take steps to increase vaccine uptake. For example, they could require vaccinations or recent negative tests for state employees, like they are doing in California . They could require the same for people to access fun stuff, like they are doing in New York .  But their own politics are denying them this sensible public health option—the only one that will get us out of this nightmare. So they need to think of something else. If only there were some way to save people after their stubbornness and stupidity has already gotten them sick. Antibodies to the Rescue! All three like the idea of antibody treatments, like the one that (unfortunately) saved the life of ...

  A study recently published by researchers at the University of Arizona and SUNY Stonybrook has found that patients with severe COVID-19 also have high levels of an enzyme found in snake venom. The compound is called secreted phospholipase A2 Group IIA. In deceased COVID-19 patients, its concentration is 9.6 times higher that in patients with mild COVID-19, and five times higher than in patients with a severe case, according to the study . One of the study's authors, Dr. Floyd Hilton, says the enzyme is naturally present in our bodies in low concentrations and plays some role in preventing bacterial infections. For unknown reasons, it increases with COVID-19, and in severe cases this is leads to disintegration of organ tissue: These high levels of this enzyme are looking at those tissues in the organs and saying, "you look like a bacteria, let's shred your membranes. Let's put these organs out of their misery." Phospholipase A2 is a  common component  of the ven...