Three important findings from three different studies:
1. That people who survive Covid have more antibodies against Covid virus spikes than the nucleocapsid shell.
2. Monoclonal antibodies against the spike are already being developed and are progressing apace.
3. But many antibody tests are looking for the wrong antibodies.
A new study found a different pattern of antibody responses in people who recovered from Covid compared to those who died. Survivors had a antibodies predominantly against the viral spike (S), whereas early in the infection those who would not recover had more antibodies against the outer shell, known as the nucleocapsid (N). This has implications — in vaccines, testing, treatment and possibly figuring out why some people don’t even get sick at all.
Atyeo et al is a small study. But one tantalizing line suggests the pattern of antibody responses was even better at predicting who would die than the age of the patient, which was until now the best clue we had. It appears that some patients had a strong immune response but they were making more of the wrong kind of antibodies, and perhaps these would not able to neutralize, or stop the virus spreading within.
Atyeo et al looked at 22 patients to find out the difference between the immune responses of those who died and those who didn’t. Then they tested how well they could predict who would live and die in another group of 40 patients.
Vaccines that elicit a reaction to the spike will be more useful. Vaccines that don’t may even do more harm than good.
Image: Scientific Animations
On each SARS Cov2 virion there are around 100 copies of the spike but there are 1,000 copies of the nucleocapsid. So viruses may be producing ten times as much N type protein. No wonder then that some people are reacting to the N protein. The researchers wondered if it was sheer viral load that defined who would survive, but say the data suggests that it was the failure to produce S protein antibodies that was more important.
Perhaps it’s bad luck and random chance, but it may turn out that past exposure to particular coronavirus common colds (which leaves some T-cell protection) could either help or hurt the development of the right antibodies. (More T-cells soon, but not today).
Monoclonal antibodies may save the day
Ideally we could just inject the right antibodies into people and give them instant — albeit temporary — protection. But blood plasma from recovered patients is not exactly on tap and may come with “other surprises”. But there are teams working on isolating the “memory B cells” from survivors and then choosing the best so we can clone them up. These are called monoclonal antibodies, and will allow mass production of the right antibodies.
One NIH team have already picked five survivors, and isolated 252 monoclonal antibody potential lines to check. 19 of those turned out to be very useful at neutralizing the virus. Nine directly targeted the hot receptor binding domain on the end of the spike, which is probably the most useful way to stop the virus getting into human cells.
Even if we don’t get a vaccine that worked well, we can always ramp up mass production of these monoclonal antibodies. We can give these to people with weakened immune systems who couldn’t mount their own defense, and unlike a vaccine, we don’t have to wait weeks for them to develop protection. We can also give them to health workers or high risk people to prevent them getting sick in the first place. This protection may last weeks or months.
It’s just one of many tools we now have, and just another reason why I’m so optimistic that we will find a way to beat this virus sooner rather than later. It’s just a question of time.
All the restrictions and quarantines are temporary — and there are hundreds of solutions on the way.
Millions of serology tests may be looking for the wrong antibodies
Antibody tests often look for antibodies targeting the nucleocapsid, but not also the spike. Which means they may overestimate the amount of people with the healthy protective type of antibody.
In the second study (McAndrews et al) used 484 blood samples from before the pandemic, and found about 3% of healthy people who’ve never had Covid have antibodies to the coronavirus nucleocapsid, but they don’t have any antibodies to the Covid virus spike. In samples from Houston in 2020, slightly more, 3.6%, have antibodies to the nucleocapsid, but only about 1.6% have antibodies to the spike.
Abbott and Roche have together shipped over 23 million antibody tests to the US. It appears these confirm only antibodies to the N-protein, with over 200 commercial and hospital laboratory testing facilities currently using these tests. The authors warn that we need better targeted antibody tests to figure out who is immune to Covid. Though the published seroconversion studies are looking for antibodies to the spikes.
To put that in perspective, we already know that a bit under half of the population won’t get a symptomatic reaction to Covid. But we still don’t know why that’s the case or who they are in advance. This research doesn’t change the asymptomatic rate. But people testing positive to the antibody test may not have the protection that they think they have.
GEN Genetic Engineering and Biotech News
SARS-CoV-2 has two main proteins that trigger humoral immune system responses. They are the spike (S) protein and the nucleocapsid (N) protein. The N protein is produced at significantly higher levels in the virus than the S protein is, but previous studies have shown that an immune response to the N protein does not provide protection against coronaviruses related to SARS-CoV-2.
Alter’s lab compared the immune responses from the recovered individuals to those of deceased patients. They found that those who had recovered exhibited a humoral immune response that responded mostly to S protein, while deceased individuals had a shift in immunodominance such that they had a stronger immune response to the N protein.
A team headed by Chu collected samples from a cohort of 22 hospitalized SARS-CoV-2 patients, 12 of whom recovered, and 10 of whom died.
This immunodominance shift could be detected by measuring five immune response markers: IgM and IgA1 responses to S protein and antibody-dependent complement deposit, IgM, and IgA2 response to N protein. Using these five markers, researchers were able to build a model that could correctly classify clinical samples as belonging to deceased or convalesced individuals.
In order to verify this model, another 40 clinical COVID-19 samples—20 from convalesced individuals and 20 from deceased patients—from a different hospital were evaluated. The results showed the same S protein to N protein shift in immunodominance in samples from the deceased individuals, compared with those from convalesced patients.
Importantly, in the samples analyzed, this immunodominance shift was more predictive of recovery or death than were demographic factors, such as age or sex. “Thus, a minimal set of SARS-CoV-2 humoral profiles, rather than demographic information, appear to significantly resolve individuals who later went on to die from those who recover,”…
Frequently used serology test may not detect antibodies that could confirm protection against reinfection of COVID-19
Note that S-RBD means “SARSCoV-2 spike protein Receptor Binding Domain”
Results showed that 3% of healthy and non-COVID-19 samples collected during the pandemic in Houston were positive for the N-protein antibody, but only 1.6% of those had the S-RBD antibody. Of samples with the S-RBD antibody, 86% had neutralizing capacity—meaning they could prevent reinfection of COVID-19, but only 74% of samples with N-protein had neutralizing capacity. When positive for both, 96.5% exhibited neutralizing capacity.
“These findings suggest that detection of N-protein binding antibodies does not always correlate with presence of S-RBD neutralizing antibodies, and that the presence of the S-RBD antibody is the best indicator of any potential protection against reinfection,” said senior author Raghu Kalluri, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of Cancer Biology. “We caution against the extensive use of N-protein based serology testing for determination of potential COVID-19 immunity, and we believe that accurate and reliable S-RBD serological testing is needed to carefully identify individuals with neutralizing antibodies in order to help advance recovery efforts around the globe.”
_____________________
A note for commenters:
With money, lives and freedom on the line, people are passionate. Whatever your view, please try to use accurate language. Hyperbole can be fun, but not when said in anger.
REFERENCES
Atyeo et al (2020) “Distinct early serological signatures track with SARS-CoV-2 survival.” Immunity Report, Published:July 30, 2020DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.immuni.2020.07.020
Liu et al (2020) Potent neutralizing antibodies directed to multiple epitopes on SARS-CoV-2 spike. Nature. 2020 Jul 22. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2571-7. Online ahead of print. PMID: 32698192
McAndrews et al, (2020) Heterogeneous antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor binding domain and nucleocapsid with implications on COVID-19 immunity, JCI Insight (2020). DOI: 10.1172/jci.insight.142386 [PDF]
I refuse to put any medication into my body that I don’t know is safe.
My governments trust will never recover as too much corruption is rampant.
I see too much deemed safe which my government has turned its back on our own safety to save a buck buying from other countries that don’t have the same standards. And yet this is where our country buys it drugs from over the decades.
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I find it funny how we are seeing more and more mental gymnastics about antibodies, immunity, infection fatality rates, R numbers, death stats etc, while in the real world this problem is plateauing (maybe already) and will shortly go into decline. There is no significant population in the world which is seeing increased infections and deaths, except India which will go on for a little while because there are 1.3 billion people there, but will end up with around 100-150 deaths per million (currently 37), based on their demographic and benchmark with Pakistan etc.
At the moment the global death toll around 770k, just outside the normal range for a global flu season (290k-650k), and is around 0.01% of the global population. Yes, this will increase, possibly even double, but at the end the global survival rate will be north of 99.98%.
Meanwhile, Melbourne and Auckland are currently under lockdown with no political or societal mechanism for their release.
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ImranCan, Who is doing “mental gymnastics”? Both disease and death are currently increasing in these insignificant populations Peru and Argentina, Iraq, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bolivia, Israel, Ukraine, Romania, Morocco, Costa Rica, Moldova, Ethiopia, Venezuela, Syria, Angola, and PNG.
And the only reason Australia and NZ are not also on this list is because of (………). you-know-what.
As for the poor people of NZ having “no political mechanism” — when did they cancel their election? Polls around the world show that leaders who stop the virus spreading are more popular than those who don’t. Isn’t it possible that democracies might choose to favour health over a spreading virus, prefer hospitals that are not overwhelmed, and that some people believe the economy will do better in the long run with short sharp eliminations, hard borders and long stretches of zero community spread where people are free to go to restaurants and gyms safely and to visit aged relatives? And, as stated, temporarily, until (to get back to the topic) a biotech solution gives us normal freedom back soon.
Please Imran, if you are going to post up at #1 on a topic, think first, and please try to stay on topic. If you don’t know a lot about antibodies and immunity, you don’t have to comment at #1.
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The big hurdle is to re-open properly and not hastelly.
The huge mistake is our politicians believe everything will be back to the old normal and are gearing their reopening to it while including a huge number of new laws with huge fines.
Spending massive amounts of new debt money into this old system rather than closing and reassessing how this is failing in other countries and creating a new system.
In Ontario, Canada, they are changing the medical rules to fit the school system to jamb all the kids back into the old system adding new teachers, nurses and janitors into the same school system with massive more money being spent.
Do you see a failure happening here?
I do…
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Like our Nurses who accidently spread this Pandemic from place to place, our buses are still scheduled to pick up our children to multiple schools and do multiple runs with the same buses.
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Jo
I must disagree on the interpretation of rising deaths and cases. The only countries from your list that have increasing infections AND deaths are :
1) Argentina (although the infections may have peaked now)
2) Philipines
3) Ukraine
And I’m not even looking at the rest you quoted – they are even smaller than Australia.
You are right, in that I didn’t specify “significant”, but of the 3 above, only the Philipines is >1% of global population but it has very low and sporadic deaths. Yes, there are still ~6000 global Covid deaths every day, but this is out of 170,000 daily deaths that happen normally in the world. And the Covid number is about to decline. There just isn’t the growth in deaths / cases (or potential growth) anywhere to support it.
We must look at the macro picture here …. we have 20 million confirmed Covid cases in the world which is just over 0.25% of global population. And the pandemic has stopped growing. So far we have 770,000 deaths but this is barely more than a bad flu season. It will grow but is unlikely to double and will be less than global TB deaths, and we will end up less than 2 % of a normal years global death tally. Sorry, but these are the hard numbers.
Regarding your other point, I was the second person to post a comment and I just replied to the first but maybe should have started a new thread. My apologies. But my point was that there is a lot of medical hand wringing going on, but actually this Covid ‘epidemic’ is not a problem – for the reasons I gave. The policy responses are, but not the disease itself. That was my point.
And I’m not sure about how well favoured politicians who force lockdowns are. Yes, it seems like everyone loves them right now, but a week is along time in politics.
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Actually, quite good news. We now have a non-challenge target to evaluate vaccines with. Plus a possible extra treatment.
All of this from a standing start 8 months ago.
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Excuse my ignorance but what is the definitive Covid 19 test, as far as I can understand there’s the PCR test which doesn’t work and was not designed for single strand RNA, the anti-gen and anti-body tests that are also lacking. There has to be an electron microscope blood test that identifies that particular virus and if so what is it called?
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? PCR works on ssRNA. You just have a reverse transcriptase step which is part of the design for this virus.
IS this something you read somewhere? If so, your ignorance is not excused as you didn’t cross check before posting.
Your last sentence is baffling. Are you referring to EM using Ab gold (or similar) labeling of virus particles directly in samples? That’s a lot of faff for thousands of samples/day.
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Thank you Gee Aye.
Tim, welcome to the world of molecular biology — where the complexity of techniques that have been used for more than thirty years can be cherry picked to imply they are unsuitable despite their widespread use in laboratories all over the world.
It isn’t perfect but in nearly every nation the rapid growth of positive PCR tests is followed with a parallel increase in morbidity and mortality 1 – 3 weeks later. The only exceptions to this appear to be nations where infections run predominantly in a young healthy demographic, using masks, or the underlying comorbidities are low, or the nation is using strong anti-virals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymerase_chain_reaction
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Gee, if I wanted to be insulted I could talk to the wife but I came here to ask a question. I read it didn’t work, checked and found some similar opinions including that the guy who invented PCR stated it was unsuitable. So part of cross checking my cross checking was to ask the question here.
Now can someone explain how someone can test positive in the morning and negative in the evening?
Apart from ‘he got better’.
Ahd how can five players from a football team test positive and next day the tests were declared ‘false positives’
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Thanks Tim. My reading confirms that there are several sources who say-
-the inventor of the test said it was unsuitable for identifying corona viruses,
-there are many strange anecdotes such as Tim Spence recounts,
-the website of a SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test kit manufacturer says in red letters
” for research purposes only. Not to be used for diagnosis. ..
the genetic sequences amplified may be indistinguishable from those of other covid and non-covid viruses, etc..”
I do not have the direct ref. so perhaps someone can confirm, I may have got it from here.
“widely used”, a majority vote to define truth should not be accepted on this site.
I understand that nothing else is even claimed to work, and the political pressure demands a test, so here it is, works or not.
One ‘advantage’ of this test is that celebrities (Hollywood, UK royalty) get the test then claim some kind of hero status for having the condition.
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Thanks equally to you Lucky. This site is a gem and a mine of accurate, quality information so I don’t wish to rock the boat.
But just like many others, I have an enquiring mind and that is the basis of science, I don’t like to see opinions so set in concrete.
I have doubts about all this, maybe because I live in Spain which has most mortalities per capita and the data collection and presentation have changed half a dozen times during the crisis. I can’t believe there is no definitive test where the virus cannot be visually identified or chemically identified, the latter sounds OK but I’m not seeing convincing evidence and hearing that PCR shows positive for coronavirus types other than Covid19.
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A bit of background about the PCR test. https://uncoverdc.com/2020/04/07/was-the-covid-19-test-meant-to-detect-a-virus/
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I can’t remember if I postted this before on this site or not, but it’s worth another turn on the merry-go-eound.
Perhaps medically qualified people here could comment? – there are many, amny comments on the article site itself.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/06/27/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/
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Of course they are scientifically meaningless. They are a clinical test not an experiment testing a hypothesis.
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Lucky… What are you motives.
Let’s take one part of your post. There are dozens of manufacturers of covid19 test kits. There are many more labs who basically make their own – I could make one myself as I have access to all the components and equipment, the knowledge and experience to do the lab work. It isn’t that hard. The fact that a manufacturer makes a kit that is recommended for research only and not for a clinical setting means nothing.
As for the “other covid types” comment of Tim, where to begin. Routine independent test for the virus after a positive PCR test is not done for obvious cost and time reasons- and there is no need. However thousands of covid positive people have had follow up work done for various reasons such as genomic tracing, clinical studies etc and every single on of them confirms that the virus is present. Why is that?
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The RT PCR test..
1. My motives- Human freedom, truth, support the honest careful, attack the pompous and subservient.
2. Find a manufacturer who can verify and guarantee the results.
3. Many can make test equipment that does not work.
4. The test result is confirmed by use of the same test.
5. “not perfect”. Hardly a good description. The onus of proof is on the proponents of a test method to show that it has some measure of reliability.
Seems that the test is sufficient for politicians to ruin our economy, destroy jobs, lock people in their homes, close off parks and beaches, and for police to throw ‘offenders’ to the ground and detain with headlocks.
Also, yes Mullis is dead. He died earlier this year, his comment about the non-applicability to corona virus identification and confirmation was made while he was alive.
Well I do doubt the suggestion about his rolling in his grave. my lack of imagination I suppose.
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Mullis died August last year. Do you write anything that is correct? Since no one is now reading this thread your disinformation campaign is not working here.
1. How noble
2. Done repeatedly.
3. What does that even mean?
4. Who is going to f*** repeating the results of tens of thousands of tests per day? A positive is overwhelmingly correct and indicates an infection.
5. The onus has been met except in your fantasy world.
Again… Mullis died 12 months ago. Cremated too so not much rolling around.
02
Pretty rude there Gee, no proof of any “campaign” just questioning and answering yours. Besides you did not answer Spences questions. Hmm maybe it is you on a campaign?
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His questions are not possible to answer as he did not provide any information. Did those things happen? What were the circumstances? Do they matter?
Furthermore I explicitly addressed his initial post which was built on a false premice and also contained no specific information that could be addressed beyond what I wrote.
Just claiming “the PCR test doesn’t work”, is no basis for anyone to bother commenting other than to reply with, “yes it does”.
I still don’t understand the “baffling” question. Do you know what he was asking?
00
Smith and Mullis are both dead so they can hardly be commenting on a test happening this year.
As for an insult, “excuse my ignorance”, is a well worn way to lead into an unfounded attack on something or someone.
The PCR method is not perfect but so what? Get to your point instead of
01
7 May 2013. Dr. Mullis, being alive, and well after Corona viruses became known, wrote,
“PCR detects a very small segment of the nucleic acid which is part of a virus itself. The specific fragment detected is determined by the somewhat arbitrary choice of DNA primers used which become the ends of the amplified fragment.“
More recently, Dr. David Rasnick, bio-chemist, protease developer, founder of EM lab Viral Forensics said,
“You don’t start with testing; you start with listening to the lungs. I’m skeptical that a PRC test is ever true. It’s a great scientific research tool. It’s a horrible tool for clinical medicine. 30% of your infected cells have been killed before you show symptoms. By the time you show symptoms…the dead cells are generating the symptoms.”
His advice for people who want to be tested for COVID-19,
“Don’t do it, . . No healthy person should be tested. It means nothing but it can destroy your life, make you absolutely miserable.”
The PCR test for Corona is as good as…
the Scientology personality test, you have high IQ and good judgement, etc. and then tells you need to give all your money to Scientology.
10
Mullis is therefore wrong. It is not arbitrary but is specific and cross checked against a huge data base and is then tested for false positives and sensitivity.
Mullis also was not a bench scientist and had nothing at all to do with the development and application of PCR in the last 30 years (ie since 1990) so he is hardly an expert to quote.
Now go find the millions of references that directly contradict the 2 you managed to dig up to support your prior proposition.
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I gave this article 10 stars, both for the detailed but pretty clear explanation of the various immune responses and for the very beautiful diagram if the virus.
It does help a bit if you know what IgM, IgA and complement stand for but that can be the subject of a future article.
We are all becoming virus experts now. Thanks Jo.
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What about using this cure, while we wait for a vaccine?
https://app.spectator.com.au/2020/08/no-guts-no-glory/pugpig_index.html
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Ivermectin. Quite unacceptable. A cure threatens the police-state demagogues.
It is to be tested at the Peter Doherty Institute, Vic. This Inst. has a reputation something like the US FDA.
One source of criticism of the PCR test-
https://bpa-pathology.com/covid19-pcr-tests-are-scientifically-meaningless/
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“Wasn’t sure whether to put this here, or the current COVID thread. Just when we though we knew all about RNA…
https://sciencenorway.no/cells-dna-rna/rna-scientists-have-discovered-a-new-layer-in-the-genetic-code-of-life/1633809
”
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2020/07/28/w-o-o-d-27-july-2020/#comment-132239
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Jo, (I assume it was Jo who wrote this piece) a great summary of antibodies, monoclonal antibodies and serology testing. Really great lit review which would have taken me hours to read from other sources – if I was so inclined. There’s no doubt the world is putting too much emphasis on vaccines as a possible silver bullet for COVID. We should already know this – solutions for complex situations most often require complex, multi faceted remedies. Looking ahead you can see that living with COVID ( or the next COVID) will require a mixture of preventative medicine (centred around nutrition, VitD, Zn etc), early anti- virals HCQ, Ivermectin, Quercetin + Zinc) complemented by vaccines and possibly monoclonal antibody injections. We cant stay lockdowned and masked up forever- its a degradation of humanity.
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Thanks Ross, thanks Peter C.
I agree with 99% of all you say Ross. It is a crime that we are not using a mix of cheap effective strategies to minimize the spread and the toll. The medical Swamp has been exposed by this pandemic but it has been at work for years. Ditto also, what St John of Grafton says below.
Just want to add that people dying on alone in ICU is a degradation of humanity too, and the difficult choices here are between two kinds of hard rocks.
We have never seen an explosion of research on one biomedical topic like we have in 2020 and we will figure this out.
With the threat of bioweapons also now very real, getting on top of this biomedically and putting good pandemic plans in place, repairing supply lines, fixing manufacturing locally, all ought be a top priority.
The next pandemic might be a lot nastier. China inadvertantly, unwittingly, may have helped the rest of the world prepare just in time.
72
2 things
1) budesonide for when covid19 gets past HCQ help timewise. Extra vitamins C & D in any case.
2) Age vs deaths show <65 years can go back to work. Rarely is this plot shown and I think it is on purpose.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-07/comparing-coronavirus-deaths-by-age-with-flu-driving-fatalities
10
While we’re waiting for the right antibodies, for goodness sake let’s get stuck into the virus with well tested and relatively cheap ammunition such as Chloroquine and Ivermectin in combo with Zinc and Azithromycin.
Prophylaxis of the general population in Malaria prone countries with Chloroquine routinely controls Malaria. This shows that it is mostly well tolerated. Anecdotal evidence shows that Chloroquine was similarly well tolerated in Australia for overseas travellers in the past. I’ve taken Chloroquine with no problems and I’m confident in taking it now as a prophylactic measure against CV-19.
There is growing evidence from plenty of sources that Chloroquine and other readily available medicines have efficacy against CV-19. Unfortunately, it is looking increasingly certain that the authorities which we trust with our health and wellbeing during this pandemic are deliberately ignoring existing and well proven remedies to eradicate this disease in favour prloonging the pandemic for totalitarian reasons.
It’s time to get serious about making our bodies off limits to CV-19 with effective remedies we already have. Or, do the authorities need more time to procrastinate at our expense?
100
Attacking the coronavirus spike in the nose with a nasal spray:
‘Australian researchers are testing a treatment for coronavirus they hope will provide relief for those infected with COVID-19 and limit its spread.’
‘A trial on coronavirus patients is being established with a Melbourne hospital and could start next month.’
‘BromAc has been under development for 11 years for use in cancer treatment and includes two components that together dissolve the spike of COVID-19, rendering it unable to infect other cells.’
‘One of the core agents is a pineapple stem enzyme tested in the lab after it was observed that pigs eating pineapples were resistant to particular gastro conditions.’
https://7news.com.au/news/health/tests-underway-for-covid-19-treatment-c-1243689
The enzymes would be bromelain. The other main ingredient is acetylcysteine.
https://mucpharm.com
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/n-acetylcysteine-a-rapid-review-of-the-evidence-for-effectiveness-in-treating-covid-19/
‘Bromelain Enzyme from Pineapple Fruit as an Antiviral Agent Against HIV, Hepatitis C and Human Papiloma Virus’
‘As this viral envelope was damaged buy the proteolytic activities, the virus had either lost its capability to reproduce or was destroyed altogether, since, the viral outer layer was damaged.’
https://medwelljournals.com/abstract/?doi=jeasci.2018.3125.3130
‘Bromelain activates murine macrophages and natural killer cells in vitro’
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11485347/
‘The key feature of enzymotherapy is the immunomodulatory activity. There exists a strong evidence for the favourable modulation of pathogenic autoantibodies, inhibition of the neogenesis of immune complexes and cleavage of their deposits, normalization of the T cell system, network of cytokines, adhesion molecules and inflammatory cascades.’
http://europepmc.org/article/MED/8620329
Enzymes and viruses:
http://www.enzymestuff.com/conditionviruses.htm
Proteolytic enzymes have been used for a long time to dissolve biofilm and the protective coating on pathogens. I’ve found them invaluable for making progress against long term infection.
Bromelain is also used as a meat tenderiser, so will prolonged usage of Bromac nasal spray tenderise the sinuses?
30
Jo, why the heck are we testing so much? What is the outcome of continuing such a futile activity? When is it enough? 10 million tests? 20 million tests? everybody? Mortality rate less than 1% and the symptoms are generally mild and the more we test, the lower the death rate will be. This is absolutely bonkers and bordering on madness to continue these lockdowns which is simply economic suicide!
We have got to learn to live with it and stop the lockdowns, stop non elected public servants having massive power trips and enforcing doctrines onto the public while our spineless elected officials just stand by and agree because they are cowards themselves. I’m over it, I’ve had enough and watching our Victorian police behave like the gestapo and fining people for just doing everyday activities just makes me sick.
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Echoing or broadening Jo’s post is Dr John Campbell’s daily post! He is also enthusiastic: “A torrent of good news” from new science studies weigh in on behalf of optimism: Coved-19 infection produces immunity, this is stable, even for those with mild and asymptomatic cases.
From this we infer good a good disease management future for us: herd immunity is possible, vaccines can be devised to advance this effect, and viral elimination may be achievable. Again, as emphasised elsewhere, it ain’t just the flu!
Put differently, our patience shall be rewarded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5Z6wdu1eI0
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Robust T cell immunity in convalescent individuals with asymptomatic or mild COVID-19
specifically:
Small sample size but promising data coming out showing T-cell cross-reactivity (possibly due to common cold coronavirus exposure) with COVID-19.
00