I didn’t think cough syrups even worked against coughs, but one new paper suggests that bromhexine in common cough syrups reduces both Covid-19 rates of ICU and of mortality.
The era of antivirals has come, not that Big Pharma want you to know that cheap out-of-patent drugs might help. But for years we were told that medical science didn’t have an answer to viruses.
Bromhexine was patented in 1961 and is commonly found in OTC pharmacy cough syrups with names like Bisolvon, Robitussin, and Duro-Tuss (Wiki has a long list).
Theoretically Bromhexine sabotages one of our molecules — with the snappy name of TMPRSS2 (which is shorter than saying Transmembrane protease S2). A protease is a fancy pair of molecular scissors, it chops or tweaks the viral spike and if that doesn’t happen, the virus can’t get into the cell (at least not through its favourite path).
The nice thing about an antiviral acting against our molecules, rather than against the virus itself, is that it’s harder for the virus to mutate to get around it. That means it’s less likely the virus can develop resistance. The downside of targeting our own molecules is that it might fritz things up. Presumably this protease does something useful sometime. To that end, mice that don’t have this protein at all, seem to do OK. And then, there is fifty five years of drug store sales. How bad can cough syrup be?
Bromhexidine, mechanism of action, TMPRSS2, Spike activation. diagram.
It is not at all certain that this drug would thwart the virus. Viruses can get into cells through another method called endocytosis. Possibly bromhexine might not make much difference. Luckily for us, a group in Iran were desperate enough to try it in a small, but reasonable trial, and the results are enticing.
Basically, 39 people were picked at random out of 78 to try the bromhexine. In the half that missed out on Bromhexine, 11 went on to need ICU and 9 died. In the half who got the bromhexine, only 2 went into ICU and none died.
We might feel a bit sorry for the nine in the first trial that didn’t get lucky. We won’t know how unlucky until someone has done a bigger trial. For the moment the p value of avoiding ICU was 0.007. And a p value of 0.027 for avoiding death.
Where are the media?
This paper was published on July 19th. In a world full of journalists, doctors and a million interested onlookers all connected at the speed of light, it’s curious that it hasn’t garnered attention. At this point I can’t find a single news story mentioning these results. There is one Swiss niche group which mentions it (at a dose of 50 – 100mg). And there is a $3,500 market report available from 2 days ago cryptically suggesting the “bromhexine market will grow a significant rate…”. Nearly every pharma company makes it. I’m curious to do this search now, because if the drug is useful, it will be near impossible to search in a few weeks and find “something that wasn’t there”. Not that I’m certain this drug is the answer, but years from now historians will be looking at how well the news got filtered.
There are a few mentions months ago in medical niche outlets (March 2nd), clinical trials in China, and obviously some awareness that this drug might be useful. The wonder then, is that with all the billions being thrown at the virus, it was left up to an Iranian lab to pursue this possibility?
“The efficacy of bromhexine in blocking cell entry of coronaviruses was established in 2017.”“
So we had a three year head start and yet, seven months into a global pandemic and almost no one has studied whether cough syrup might help? There are lessons in there for the ways we structure our research, and how useless our universities are.
And it seems frivolous, but Iran’s death toll peaked the week after this study was published and has declined since then. (There is a swamp of factors: It could be bromhexine, or treatment changes, vitamin D levels, a younger age group, or it could be that Iran doesn’t test enough people, and the true number of infections has declined, even though the official daily new cases is steady on 2,000 a day.) But if word is spreading and Iranian drug stores are running out of cough syrup that would be interesting. Anyone know?
Significant?
Eyeballing table 1 of the paper there’s no obvious reason why the drug group would have done so much better. On average both groups waited about 7 to 8 days after symptoms showed up before going to hospital. Their blood oxygen was 88%. The treatment group may have been slightly less sick, with lower levels of lassitude, headache and tummy aches, was slightly younger (58 not 61) but had more diabetes.
The treatment group was given 8mg, three times a day. Imagine if they had started treatment as soon as they felt sick?
h/t thanks to TedM, who heard it from a Dutch doctor.
UPDATE: As TedM notes, Iran may be using low dose HCQ as standard and Bromhexine may only be useful in combination with HCQ:
In another publication from Iran on the trial is this comment: “Whether this promising result is because of bromhexine alone or combination of low dose HCQ [200 mg/d] and bromhexine is not clear at this point.”
200mg/d is half that in the Zelenko protocol. Both groups were on the 200mg/day HCQ, so it would appear that this dose of HCQ alone is too low to be effective.
The article here: http://www.immunopathol.com/Files/Inpress/ipp-14214.pdf
REFERENCE
Ansarin et al, (2020) Effect of bromhexine on clinical outcomes and mortality in COVID-19 patients: A randomized clinical trial, BioImpacts, 10(4), 209-215 doi: 10.34172/bi.2020.27 http://bi.tbzmed.ac.ir/
One of the interesting things about COVID-19 is that there are so many things that seem to have efficacy, at least in the laboratory. Currently, there are about three-dozen drugs that have been reported to appear to work, including asthma and birth control drugs, not to mention the controversial malaria/RA drugs. With so many different drugs seemingly being effective, one should seriously consider the possibility that what is being observed is the well-known Placebo Effect, along with random statistical variation.
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Placebo effect doesn’t apply in vitro, in the laboratory.
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Perhaps this is a better explanation. https://twitter.com/i/status/1300452499430793216
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“Hydroxychloroquine has been safely used as an anti malarial for 65 years.”
“Safely” means different things to different people. HCQS has a long list of known side-effects. From the following link: “A disadvantage of hydroxychloroquine is its side effects which can be avoided, however, if the dosage is adjusted for each patient.”
https://scitechdaily.com/researchers-developed-new-test-method-for-safer-dosing-of-hydroxychloroquine/
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https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6186886770001
“Gastroenterologist Professor Thomas Borody says the combination of Ivermectin, Doxycycline and Zinc has shown to be almost 100 per cent effective as a treatment for COVID-19 based on the findings of six publications.
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https://m.theepochtimes.com/ccp-scrubs-state-media-report-raising-concerns-over-covid-19-vaccine-from-internet_3482872.html?utm_source=CCPVirusNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2020-09-02
“Amid China’s race to develop a vaccine for the CCP virus, specialists recently told Chinese state-run media about the risks of an adverse reaction known as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), but within hours, the report was removed and reposts were scrubbed from the internet.
“The human body generates antibodies after contracting a virus. Scientists have found that some viruses can manifest ADE, meaning antibodies triggered by the first infection could connect the second viral strain to receptors on immune cells—thereby allowing the virus to enter immune cells.
“This could potentially trigger a patient who is infected by one strain of a virus to suffer a more serious recurrence of the disease if they are infected by a second strain later on.
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“HCQS has a long list of known side-effects”
I read that article and could not make out what were the side effects referred to.
I am aware of three:
1. heart rhythm irregularity, exists in about one percent of hospital patients and even then may not be severe enough to cease medication.
2. damage to the iris, has been observed after use of HCQ for 5 years, users should have a special eye test every six months.
3. contraindicated for psoriasis sufferers, I have found only one reference on this, in a paper one middle-aged woman patient, no change in the condition was observed after use of HCQ.
Any more?
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Lucky
There are many more known side effects! If you have ever received a prescription, you should have received paperwork with it that lists the more common ones. If you don’t have personal experience, then a few seconds searching for Plaquenil on the internet would broaden your knowledge. Try this: https://www.rxlist.com/plaquenil-drug.htm#side_effects
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So how do they manage in countries where Hydroxychloroquine is available over the counter?
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I looked at that site.
Yes, rxlist has HCQ as scary. When was it revised to that level of scare? Who was the employer of the writer?
I looked at a few other medications on rxlist to get a sense of balance. It is too bothersome to write the details but there is no balance with more risky medications getting various levels of warning. In a sense, they all say much the same being written under strict legal supervision. In a few instances the specific risk is stated, that way a medic can give measured advice. Where legalities intervene, medics are told what cannot be prescribed or even advocated. Where risks are stated without evidence, individuals should do their own evaluation. For this medication, the evidence of 65 years use of documented problems shows negligible risk. The recent scare is hysteria. There is too much nanny state bullying. Hydroxychloroquine is at the risk level of aspirin, ibuprofen and paracetamol and should be available to any adult freely without asking for permission.
“There are many more known side effects”
Apart from the new ones added by the woke to try to put down Trump – more than water or mother’s milk – which?
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TedM
Point well taken!
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No, what is being observed is the deliberate withholding of information on drugs that do actually work.
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So shouldn’t those withholding such information be charged with something and imprisoned?
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Jo, do you have an actual link?
As the reference doesn’t seem to get any hits at all.
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Thanks to Tom. https://bi.tbzmed.ac.ir/Files/Inpress/bi-23240.pdf
I’ll add that in.
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Jo, not to worry, I found the original study here
https://bi.tbzmed.ac.ir/Files/Inpress/bi-23240.pdf
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It is a well written study report.
The standard of medical care in some smaller countries is not hindered by the large pharmaceutical companies that control the agenda in the woke nations.
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From experience, don’t take a big slug of one year expired cough syrup.
Gave me a bad stomach cramp and diarrhea for the rest of the day.
Buckley tastes terrible but really works well.
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It would appear that this treatment, while not a vaccine, has the best results in treating the symptoms. Could it be that because it is from a sanctioned country, western reporting is suppressed?
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Some others. You’ll have heard of some, but maybe not of all:
Zinc, ionophores, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, quercetin, anti-virals, azithromycin, doxycycline, MATH+, B3, (maybe BHT, EGCG, nebulised H2O2) (even Glycyrrhizin: Lancet 2003; 361: 2045–46).
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Anything that messes with the proton balance (pH) in serum will work eg vinegar, baking soda.
Viruses are just replicating chemicals. Change the solution, change their replication ability.
A magnetic field at 90 degrees to the serum flow will work.
Maintaining body temperature at normal will work.
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Interesting.
When I was a kid gargling with TCP was the answer to everything! A cursory search reveals it may not be effective against CV19 directly.
For a bad chest infection we used some vile smelling brown concoction which was placed in a bowl of hot water and then you put a towel over your head and inhaled the fumes. I can’t remember what it was called but it contained some decongestant/disinfectant compounds. It could well have had Bromhexine Hydrochloride in it.
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Maybe Friar’s balsam?
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Yep “Friar’s balsalm” and “vicks vapour” rub in hot water. I didn’t mind the smell at all.
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In fact I still use it,just that you are liable to get a puzzled look when you ask for “Friars Balalm” at your local pharmacy, although some still know what it is and stock it.
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No it wasn’t them, I’m familiar with those.
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“So we had a three year head start and yet, seven months into a global pandemic and almost no one has studied whether cough syrup might help?”
“They” have no interest in using drugs.
The globalists appear to have made it very clear through what appears to be echoed through wef.ch web site that they only want to “solve” this “crisis” via the vaccine path only.
If you look at Victoria, similiar to the Russian prison prisoner management methods of keeping prisoners in a stress position at all times during thier movement, as managed by guards ( waddling like a duck not walking, having arms up behind your back etc ) that Victoriastan is placing maximum psychological stress on people so they take a vaccine.
In one paper yesterday, they ran some puff piece saying “90% of people would take a vaccine”, and while i think its more like maybe 50%, not 90%, you can clearly see the agenda to effectively force people down the vaccine route.
Why?
But also HCQ has been effectively banned, to effectively force people fown the vaccine route.
Its all about control. Vaccines are a big chunk of the 50 year plan of what appears to be globalist control grid on society.
No vaccine, no school for your child etc etc.
You have had your choices systematically removed.
What they didnt count on us that people are now openly rebelling. Watch this space i think…
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Yes things will get more interesting now that COVID restrictions and mandatory vaccinations are outlawed and nullified by Common Law Assembly in one place (Google search it as I’m being prevented from posting the link for some strange reason).
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Peter, if you copy the source link/URL into say Notepad, then copy out of Notepad back into the web site, that should work.
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That’s what I always do. The post is/was in moderation. I requested it be deleted as it’s now sort of superfluous.
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Any Medical professional or politician that has knowingly and willingly withheld the distribution of HCQ is now accountable for deaths from Covid-19, suppression of medical attention and suicides.
They’re a bloody disgrace and poor excuses for human beings.
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I think Australians should be demanding of Morrison now that he have his medical advisers give us the complete rundown on their evidence that shows the HCQ+Azithromycin+zinc to be ineffective….and likewise with Ivermectin…although tonight it sounds as though they’re relenting somewhat on Ivermectin.
It’s absolute contempt for Morrison to just flick it off with no reasons given.
They should point us to the results of studies that they’ve used to justify banning HCQ …because all of the studies I’ve read that they’ve put forward so far have flaws…eg either they’re observational instead of random controlled…and/or they’re unclear about the stages of infection of participants and duration of the treatment….and they all leave out zinc which is absolutely crucial for the HCQ to work ….with no explanation re why it’s left out.
This may be a reason for reticence re zinc…..and if so they should say so….there’s already been too much withholding of information…ambiguity…contradictory advice etc…not by Trump as they like to allege…but by the medical authorities themselves including CDC and FDA…and here by Morrison and Hunt as well as the authorities.
The authorities breed suspicion even while they’re claiming to inform us.
Research on zinc shows that….
[ ‘ papilloma viruses have evolved mechanisms to alter zinc homeostasis to favor viral replication and persistence’ ]
But it looks as though HPV is the only virus that applies to.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6628855/
If this is the reason …we need to know now because zinc is also part of the Ivermectin regimen…and because many older people are deficient in zinc.
One way or another there needs to be less PR and more explanation.
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In another publication from Iran on the trial is this comment: “Whether this promising result is because of bromhexine alone or combination of low dose HCQ [200 mg/d] and
bromhexine is not clear at this point.”
200mg/d is half that in the Zelenko protocol. Both groups were on the 200mg/day HCQ, so it would appear that this dose of HCQ alone is too low to be effective.
The article here: http://www.immunopathol.com/Files/Inpress/ipp-14214.pdf
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And no zinc.
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TedM. Thank you. I shall add a note in the post.
Many countries are using HCQ as standard. I’m convinced it helps when used the right way, but if it was used here in both treatment and standard groups, that still suggests that Bromhexine may provide a large advantage.
I still wonder why India does not do better when it manufactures 70% of the worlds HCQ. If anyone has insight into whether HCQ is used properly in India it would be good to know.
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Jo, in reference to your last paragraph, considering the time elapsed since C19 started it’s run, assuming the data/knowledge gained as a consequence, this is a MOST significant question that needs to be answered. Not that it is expected that it will be directly known on this blog, so far there has been no response offered. Seems to me that as there is constant research by many being done on this topic, if publicly published, we might by now be better informed. As things now stand, when considering the data from places like India, Brazil, even the USA, etc., one has to wonder if the use of these numerous anti-virals for prevention, is no more than wishful thinking.
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Dr John Anderson, who has a daily blog update on Covid-19, cites a new (8/24) pro-HCQ study:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uzXHnUViro&feature=share
Belgium Low-dose Hydroxychloroquine Therapy and Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19: A Nationwide Observational Study of 8075 Participants (International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, 24 August)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920303423
He claims no-effect studies used too high a dose.
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Thanks – re-assuring. However, there is going to be a lot of face lost if this form of treatment was to become an available option in Aus.
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Cough syrup, Ivermectin, HCQ, Zn,…… All good to know for treatment and any others that appear to work.
Barring any drastic change, Sweden is seeming to prove that the lockdowns were totally unnecessary
https://www.iceagenow.info/lockdown-or-no-lockdown-covid-19-death-curve-looks-to-be-self-flattening/
FWIW, I’m not in favour of mandatory experimental vaccines and RFID chips, as those smack of Govt Over Reach.
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A smirking W Gates III begs to differ. He wants to see you chipped and drugged.
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No way Jose I will take either. Bill Gates and his lot can go jump.
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Bulldust or anyone. Where is the evidence that Gates has some sort of chipping and ulterior motive for a vaccine? I have searched and nothing ever leads to an original source. Even the craziest conspiracies have some sort of out of context quote or inference chain but this one seems to have nothing.
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On the mandatory vaccination: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE518ans5dM&feature=emb_logo
as for chipping I did see a video where he proclaimed many years ago the need to tag everyone for a couple of reasons. I’ll see if I can find it.
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that video follows on from a conversation and he does not say mandatory vaccination once. At all.
Looking forward to the microchip thing he said a long time ago and not specifically about plans he has to act on it.
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He said “But for the world at large, normalcy only returns when we’ve largely vaccinated the entire global population. And so although there’s a lot of work on testing, a lot of work on drugs that we’re involved with, trying to achieve that ambitious goal, which has never been done for the vaccine, that rises to the top of the list.”
If that’s not pushing for mandatory vaccination then nothing is.
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Apart from the fact that this edits into a conversation your selected quote is an opinion that normalcy wont return without vaccination. It is only a leap of imagination that infers what you think he is really thinking.
In any case how does that link to microchips and drugs? That is what I am really wondering about. Gates is an advocate for vaccines which hardly makes him an evil person.
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GeeAye
Are you seriously unaware of the recent video where he and Melinda smirk when saying the world will pay attention when the second wave hits? The fact that one shot of the vaccine is unlikely to be enough, and that one or two boosters are likely necessary?
How about this for a W Gates quote?
“Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it.”
https://np.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/fkupg49/
And remember our Government is going along with it … implying that vaccines will be virtually mandatory. They had to backtrack from that remark somewhat, but anyone with a working brain can see where we are headed, as long as the sheeple keep submitting.
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Sorry BD none of that suggests he has an agenda to poison and chip us. None of it is even close. Is the smirk evidence?
This is pure paranoia as far as I can tell.
He suggests digital certificates which one would be more reasonably assume to be on a phone. He never explicitly says people should be chipped and he does not even come close to saying that he will be the one doing the chipping.
FYI in case you think I am less than neutral for some reason I’m an apple fan and loath MS and carry no stock, especially after some of their acquisitions back in the day.
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Well I can’t help the wilfully blind GA.
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‘Responding to a question during a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” session, Bill Gates pointed to major changes for ordinary people that could have privacy and civil rights implications. “Eventually we will have some digital certificates to show who has recovered or been tested recently or when we have a vaccine who has received it,” said Gates.’
https://newspunch.com/bill-gates-coronavirus-means-need-digital-certificates-prove-who-received-vaccine/
‘In 1999, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation donated $750 million to set up Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance. Gavi, in turn, has partnered with the ID2020 Alliance, along with the Bangladeshi government, to launch a digital identity program called ID2020.’
‘ID2020, which also launched in 2019, is designed to “leverage immunization as an opportunity to establish digital identity.’
https://fort-russ.com/2020/05/dr-mercola-horrifying-id2020-quantum-dot-tattoo-bill-gates-and-rockefeller-tracking-plan/
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what are you on?
He is asked about the future and he gives us his guess. So what? If I guess that the world will be engulfed in a war in 20 years does that mean I am promoting war?
Do you have any non-conspiratorial sites that present actual evidence of intent?
00
Bulldust or anyone. Where is the evidence that Gates has some sort of chipping and ulterior motive for a vaccine? I have searched and nothing ever leads to an original source. Even the craziest conspiracies have some sort of out of context quote or inference chain but this one seems to have nothing.
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an observation about double posts. They seem to occur when there is a long hang time between hitting the “post comment” button and the comment appearing. I wonder if this one will double?
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Are you sure that you didn’t get frustrated by the delay and push the Post Comment tab twice?
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I am sure. I was working in another screen while it took its time.
Firefox on Win10 if that helps someone
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I’m in western USA (Washington State), where joannenova dot com seems to take a long time to react to a click to comment. Meanwhile, from the UK, Paul Homewood’s site seems to be very fast. I’ve decided not to engage in back-and-forth. When heading for this site I usually open something else to read.
Life is sufficiently frustrating that I dislike the erratic actions from the various hosting platforms I visit.
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I have just tried to post a comment here, but it doesn’t seem to have arrived and I don’t know whether I am being too impatient or the post has not worked.
The green post comment had an orange surround, so does that mean the comment has been accepted?
When posting on Paul Homewood’s site the Post Comment button turns into PostING Comment when pressed, so one is not in a quandary as to whether the comment has been accepted.
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A starting point. I cant verify it all, but HCG is a rather odd thing to have in a vaccine.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/mass-sterilization-kenyan-doctors-find-anti-fertility-agent-in-un-tetanus-vaccine/5431664
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that is an article about vaccines and says that Gates kicks in funds when there is a shortfall in a region. They are providing money for some extra vaccines in an existing program. How can that be extrapolated to drugging and chipping the world?
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Gee Aye,
You might want to check this out . . . . .
https://www.corbettreport.com/gates/#comment-81567
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what about it? That was a long read and was pure projection – they sure seem to know a lot about the private thoughts of one man.
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There are also good reasons that hCG was detected and I’ve found rebuttals that make sense such as here https://www.who.int/immunization/monitoring_surveillance/resources/milstien.pdf
And I bet if I were to go to your favourite global conspiracy websites you’d find these rebuttals posted by scientists.
15
I think critically about such things, and I love the fact your article says no hcg was found, when in fact it clearly was.
Having done Engineering, I like to cross reference things, but also apply much common sense to what I say. If I look at the evidence its a reasonable call to say that the vaccines contained hcg. Its also one of the wests dirty little secrets that much illegal pharma testing happens in africa. This is also why we see ebola “outbreaks” around occasionally. Ebola in the wild doesnt infect humans.
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“Its also one of the wests dirty little secrets that much illegal pharma testing happens in africa”.
So much for the ethics of Big Pharma.
Then take a closer look at the SSRIs used to “treat” anxiety and depression. Based on a mechanism which, to me, appears to be the reverse of what the treatment implies.
Where money is involved, never accept the offered claims.
KK
20
your choice OS to always go for the alarmism.
00
Swedish medical doctor, Sebastian Rushworth:
“Covid is over in Sweden. People have gone back to their normal lives and barely anyone is getting infected any more. I am willing to bet that the countries that have shut down completely will see rates spike when they open up. If that is the case, then there won’t have been any point in shutting down in the first place … Shutting down completely in order to decrease the total number of deaths only makes sense if you are willing to stay shut down until a vaccine is available. That could take years. No country is willing to wait that long.”
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So it is better to kill everyone first and get it over with, is it? No-one in Sweden is going to admit they were wrong and they killed 6000 people for nothing. The only countries that make Sweden look good are the US, UK and Brazil. Not a great club to be in. And anyway, Sweden has always had a dark side.
Yes countries that locked down are seeing a new wave wave of cases, but no-one is dying. As I pointed out yesterday, daily infection numbers in France and Spain are now higher than they were at the previous peak in March and April, yet their death rates are now almost 100 times lower. Is this because of more testing, only the young getting infected, or is the virus mutating into something less deadly? Or is it due to better knowledge and treatments? In which case buying time for more effective treatments, or a vaccine, or for the virus to become less deadly, is the wise thing to do. Not give up immediately and let everybody die.
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It all comes down to how much importance one places on life taking into account all factors, not just the virus. There has been more suicides as a result of the lockdowns. There also has been far more hardship due to lost jobs, businesses and the like. It’s not as simple as most people think. I take the view the lockdowns were necessary up front but for some time now the evidence has been piling up to show they were only effective at flattening the curve and not eliminating the virus, so in the longer term the total number of deaths might be much the same regardless of the approach adopted, but is still too early to tell. At least Sweden are happy with their decision and they can move on with the lives, albeit at a price. We on the other hand are still living under a form of tyranny and fear with our economy still running on fumes and not looking good on the suicide front.
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” There has been more suicides as a result of the lockdowns”
Not in Victoria. as of August 27th.
Worst state in Australia due to Covid, and no increase at all.
You may be right in other places, and it is obvious that figure may change, but it’s also obvious that if they havent happened yet and we can take action to prevent that.
Please post evidence rather than just declaring it to be so.
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Why the focus on it by governments? In any case stats are everywhere if one does a Goodle search, and point to a significant rise in suicide rates since 2000 due mostly to debt issues and whether one will have a job or business. Given the sudden jump in jobless and failed businesses, the suicide rates only have one way to go; up. Common sense and logic dictates that so I don’t have to wait for the stats to prove it in the coming months/years.
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https://academic.oup.com/qjmed/advance-article/doi/10.1093/qjmed/hcaa202/5857612
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So no evidence then?
I note that study says “COVID-19 survivors may also be at elevated suicide risk. “. We won’t know the answer to that for years, so we should just let it RIP and hope?.
It’s possible isn’t it that if society says “we don’t care” about people over 60 and with co morbidities — that may increase suicide rates even more?
The mercenary society that doesn’t value the lives of the old, the sick and their healthworkers may be worse for suicide statistics than any pandemic restrictions with food deliveries, phones and zoom.
Suicide is a complex phenomenon, and anyone who “knows” what will happen is not speaking scientifically.
Please write accurately.
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but Jo… he said “common sense and logic” first so he owns that and you don’t, and it means he is right.
It’s an old climate debate trick.
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Yes not enough evidence, just like there is not evidence to show that lockdowns do work or that the alternatives medicines work even though many believe, including myself they do. There is not enough evidence to prove much of what is being discussed here. So does that mean we stop discussing? Don’t like alternative views?
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This is not evidence, only heresay. Sam Newman was interviewed by Alan Jones last night on Sky News. Newman was also monstered by the police for publicly stating that 250,000 people should get out and protest against Andrews. Newman stated that he had been speaking to a couple of ambulance drivers about the conditions in Victoria and they noted that the rate of suicide had gone up. It makes one wonder if the suicide figure is just another thing the government is hiding.
10
So you complain about heresay and then you back up your statement with…
heresay.
00
I’d rather have my big boy trousers on and accept you are going to have casualties in what in effect is a bio war.
The alternative is to hide under your doona for the next 2 years while the economy becomes 4th world and govt runs out of people who work and pay tax…..
Dangerous Dan has a plan…its called socialism…its a form of 100% disfunction masquerading as politics. If Dan can keep people spooked, they will stay huddled in their houses while Dan and his mates steal everyones rights and liberties.
However, we see hope – the people of Broady and Dandenong have started the push back. The cops are in a no win situation whereby soon they will have to choose between a draconian police state based, on no real proof covid is actually dangerous to healthy people ( CDC stats say 94% of deaths are due to underlying medical conditions )
People in Victoria should be incandescent with righteous anger by now…..
To be honest, the passing of the state of emergency, by those who should know better, remind me of the situation around the Enabling Laws in 1930s Germany…..except in this case the dire economic situation appears to have been directly engineered by Dangerous and his mates.
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Strawman arguments. You are building your case from a poor understanding of how epidemics work. I would ask you why you agree with the stricter measures for COVID-19 but not the other dozen pandemics over the past 100 years.
There is still no HIV vaccine. Should we ban sex and keep waiting?
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Well said.
50
It also opens up the door to why the draconian measures now? As some have already pointed out is there an ulterior motive? Perhaps.
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The evidence suggests there is no “perhaps”….
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‘Perhaps,’ a chameleon word…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUVT1NZtZPo
00
The effects of lockdowns will cause untold suffering for years to come.
If you value your health and basic freedoms resist the tyranny.
10
My anti-viral of choice is a good sip of Sambuca and failing that, I suck on a Black Cat. Certainly smothers a cough. Both available OTS.
20
Murray, sucking on a Black Cat might smother a cough, but surely it would give you a fur ball. I’d just stick to the Sambuca. ToM
30
A rare, honest look at actual C-19 statistics. Australian.
A very short but very powerful piece. Please distribute widely.
We definitely need a C-19 Nuremberg-style trials. It can run back to back with a similar inquiry into supposed anthropogenic global warming. Penalties for those found guilty of lies or misrepresenting the truth should be appropriately severe for the horrendous destruction caused in both cases.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2020/08/coronavirus-a-look-at-the-numbers-that-matter/
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Thanks David,
The gist of the article is that the average age of death of those dying with or of Covid19 is the same as the average life expectancy for Australians.
The number of deaths so far in Australia is about 650 so about enough for meaningful stats.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Mortality is almost entirely restricted to those over 70 and most of the 70-79s survive. On the basis of QALY’s (quality adjusted life years) alone we would not shut down our economy for any other cause with such a small impact.
I think the virus has changed from the early days of January to March. Back then younger people including medical staff were dying (overseas). Now the mortality rate has plummeted from 20% down to 5% world wide and I think it will be 4% by tomorrow. The virus has changed but the mindset of our authorities has not yet changed.
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I do not believe the virus has changed significantly in terms of mortality. Treatments have improved. Exposure of medical staff has reduced. It does not take the death of many having the virus for medical staff to get serious about PPE. (My son had to have a quiet chat to co-workers about their lack of care with PPE in the early days of the second wave. He has been in Covid wards for 2 months now and has so far avoided infection). One of the factors now in Melbourne hospitals is that a significant portion of the nursing staff have recovered from Covid infections. That obviously now reduces their risk and the risk of infecting other staff or their patients. I think that would be a common situation in most hospitals throughout the world now.
There have been changes in aged care in developed countries to keep the virus away from residents.
In Australia there was 7,000 cases detected and 100 deaths – 1.4% in the first wave. Now there are 26,000 cases detected and 663 deaths – 2.5%. So Australia has seen an increase in mortality going by the raw numbers. But the nature of the second wave was dominated by infection in aged care homes. Any resident in an aged care facility is inevitably at high risk of death. People with symptoms were avoiding testing so they could continue their cleaning or food prep work across any number of aged care homes. It made for an unfolding disaster for residents.
Sweden made a dramatic reduction in the death rate by keeping the virus out of aged care homes.
50
It’s also death rates are low due to summer vitamin D levels. If that is the case then death rates in southern countries will not be low (seems to be the case in Australia, and South America).
So without a major Vitamin D program, we may be looking at a low point in the death stats but that doesn’t auger well for the coming northern winter.
Will deaths rise just in time for the US election?
33
At the very least, why aren’t nursing home residents, if not everyone, being given zinc plus vitamin D? How hard would that be to implement?
And if they wanted to be really innovative they could give HCQ prophylaxis although that is illegal and our morons in parliament would have to change the law. Failing that, quercetin which is still legal or a variety of other zinc ionophores.
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My eldest son, living in the UK, now thinks he and his family have had CV19. The three of them had a dose of something that the toddler brought home from day care before they locked down. My son described it as severe flu but did not tell us that at the time. They are awaiting the improved antibody testing that AstraZaneca are working on to see if they have antibodies.
Since the toddler has been back at day care he has had two CV19 tests after having some form of illness. The last was more gastric than respiratory but he was still required to get a negative test before returning to day care.
Notably my son and his wife have taken Vitamin D supplements since they arrived in the UK based on the DHS advice.
Point is there would be a large proportion of medical staff in the UK who have already been infected. That makes them less likely to be hosts for spreading the virus. I expect a good deal of initial spread in the UK occurred through hospitalisation, hospital staff and their families. Remove the hospital staff from the equation and the spread will be slower second time around. UK is reporting around 1000 cases per day but the number of daily deaths is lower than Victoria. I expect they have put a great deal of effort into keeping the virus out of aged care; like Sweden.
Victoria was knobbled by four primary factors (a) diversity being the prime selection criteria for security guards posted on hotel quarantine, with no regard for competence in infection control and use of PPE (b) Eid al-Fitr family gatherings at the time of restrictions being eased after the first wave (c) the high proportion of new Australians each working in multiple aged care homes doing low paid work such as cleaning and (d) a paper and pencil contact tracing system that was grossly understaffed and leaderless.
Now Victoria has a good proportion of front line medical staff immune to the virus; military oversight/assistance with contract tracing and quarantine and much improved practices in nursing homes that have not yet achieved any natural immunity amongst staff. (My wife finds it hard to believe some people can be sooo stoopid – someone taking a Covid test because they are coughing and spluttering then fronting up to their cleaning job at a number of aged care homes)
There is a much more granular approach in Victoria now to the transmission pathways. For example, ride sharing has been determined to be a significant cause of transmission. Victorians are now being told where people with the virus have been – two months ago that sort of detail was not offered. It has only been the past month that known infections have been reported by postcode.
I am ever hopeful that Dan will go sooner than later but I am not holding my breath. He has lost his teflon sheen but nailing him down is like catching a greasy pig.
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🙂
10
Placing charges of crimes against humanity on the perpetrators would be a start.
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Jo.
“If that doesn’t happen” ?
Is that right? Does the viral spike have to get chopped before it can enter target cells?
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KK — it is not a random chop. There is some very specific cleavage of some sort. The spike has three identical parts and they hinge to open and close. It’s a sophisticated machine with I hear, remarkable binding properties, like it was designed or at least highly evolved to bind to human ACE2.
IF the virus needs that TMPRSS2 in order to get into cells, or even if the lack of it slows the virus down, that may be a major advantage to us.
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O.K.
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Big Pharma and its allies and news agencies are assiduously blocking all information about and access to the many effective existing treatments against Covid-19 in order to increase the clamour for a Vaccine against Covid-19 and assure continued government research funding for Big Pharma.
In Australia, the whole government response to the Covid-19 problem has been uncoordinated, random, arbitrary, short-sighted, self-defeating, irrational and will be the cause of future economic hardship, suicides and depression.
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You may be right about the whole of Government response in Australia, but I don’t see how that connects to Big Pharma. We don’t have any Big Pharma Australian companies.
Also the vaccine research is being conducted in Universities and publicly funded institutes such as Walter and Eliza Hall etc. If they actually make a vaccine that works, how does Big Pharma benefit?
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Peter C, we most definitely have branches of most Big Pharma players in Australia. We have labs research, and manufacturing points (not as many as we should). We do trails of their products too.
We further have the advantage that thanks to public-private shared agreements our universities are not public at all but they do partnership deals with Big Pharma to turn our university researchers into half price Pharma researchers.
With zero 100% public funded unis and zero 100% private independent universities we have no competition and all academic institutions don’t want to offend either Big Government or Big Pharma.
Thus any academic who does research that either major funding group doesn’t like, will find they get moved sideways, laughed at in tea rooms and generally lose grants and promotions.
Say a researcher raves too loudly about Vit D say — hypothetically, I expect a Pfizer or Roche etc partner could phone up the VC and do some loud doubty complex medical jargon to scare the pants off any VC who was not an expert in the field.
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The easy way to waste 3 or 4 years is to get a null result doing a PhD on the efficacy some chemical that a commercial company is banking heavily on having a positive outcome.
Could you imagine a CSIRO researcher tuning a climate model that causes the model to have zero response to CO2 changes. The individual would be unemployable. Or a BoM researcher creating an homogenising routine that caused a cooling trend. Even worse, write a paper that makes the case for CO2 increase being a function of temperature; poor Murry – literally. (Does anyone recommend any of the books he authored these days)
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Thanks Jo.
Since I am the the main (only) defender of Big Pharma here I will respond with some questions.
1.
a; Branches for sales; yes.
b. Lab research; Where? grants to our Unis? “We further have the advantage that thanks to public-private shared agreements our universities are not public at all but they do partnership deals with Big Pharma to turn our university researchers into half price Pharma researchers.” How are they half price?
c. Manufacturing points; If only we had that. The only manufacturer I know of is Mayne Phama (not big by any means, They make a few generics).
2.
a. I don’t really know what that all means.
b. Actually our Vice Chancellors seem more than happy to give the Minister for Education the finger when it comes to the academic free speech legislation. So they don’t mind offending our government minister. As for offending Big Pharma I have no information.
Could be True. Gee Aye might like to comment.
Hard to respond. All I can say is that the VC’s seem scared of there own academic staff, much more than the funding institutes, with the exception of the CCP.
I should say in conclusion that I have no personal knowledge of or about the Big Pharmaceutical Companies. Every thing that I say is informed only by the supply of valuable drugs to clinicians. The starting point for all this was Penicillin. Howard Florey at Oxford Uni tried to make the drug using the University facilities. His efforts, although admirable fell far short of demand. The project was handed over to the US brewing industry who made enough for everyone.
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Good questions Peter. A useful approach that I can’t do justice to tonight. I’m not against Big Pharma necessarily. My problem is more with a system that isn’t serving us.
I want fully public funding to research the things that companies wont Eg. Vitamin D — where there’s not much profit.
I want private research to compete with that so it can expose the public funded dead ends or slow speed etc.
But at the moment we have a conglomerate mix. I am not sure if this captures what I mean:
“Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics confirms around 16,000 Australian businesses have formal
partnerships with a university. That would translate to an average of 410 industry partnerships at each
of our 39 universities. And that’s before you get to the vast number of less formal relationships between
universities and industry. ”
https://www.universitiesaustralia.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Clever-Collaborations-FINAL.pdf
It would be good to test and flesh this out and put the correct lingo into it. With the medical world there is also the AMA/TGA etc to consider.
20
From the same link:
The idea was to make businesses subsidize the public research I think. Instead I hear from inside unis that it means public research subsidizes the business…
Plus Universities are now profit making foreign student machines with all the vested interests in that – which compromized their advice in the early Covid days. Dont’ stop those viral flights!
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if that happens I must have missed it. I’m not even sure what Jo is trying to characterise that equates to that in an academic or research environment.
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That is reassuring.
I think it was getting very late when Jo responded.
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Gee Aye,
can you name one university in Australia that receives zero or insignificant funds from the corporate world?
Can you name one private university that is not mostly dependent on government funds?
We should have two very different research type institutions that compete with each other and have different incentives. We would then see one sort criticize the other in public. Do we?
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Gee Aye, does your work involve a politicized topic? If so, are you at any point trying to publish results that disagree with the main consensus.
If the answer is “No” to the first part, then you will have missed the pressure because there is no pressure on you.
Since we know your opinion on climate science largely agrees with the majority at university, the pressure on those who disagree with you would be largely invisible wouldn’t it?
By definition…
20
I’m a curious person so no to your final “question”.
I don’t see the point of limiting and constricting institutions and removing the richness that comes from private and public partnerships. The distinction is artificial. Any research is a human pursuit by and for humans and private and public monies that are run by and for humans (we hope) can co-exist as a consequence.
00
As I’ve said before it’s interesting how conservatives (rightly) embrace simple, cheap effective treatments such as this, but the Left are strongly opposed to such cheap out-of-patent treatments.
In the past the Left were always opposed to so-called “big pharma” but now actively embrace them and fight against simple cheap cures such as HCQ which is illegal to use or highly restricted for C-19 in Australia.
In fact, the Left are prepared to see hundreds of thousands die by their restriction or prohibition of HCQ (Zelenko protocol) just so Trump’s experts’ suggestion is not adopted which would be seen as a victory for Trump.
One good thing about C-19 is that it has further revealed the evil of the Left and the fragility of Australian representative democracy which now barely exists and doesn’t in Victoriastan.
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The level of “incuriosity” by those leading the medical fraternity and our politicians regarding all these early anti-virals is amazing. Sure, let’s wait for an effective safe vaccine and give people the choice to get jabbed – similar to the seasonal flu shots. But, in the meantime we could at least be using eg. HCQ+ Zinc in an attempt to save all those old peoples lives. Use the Zelenko protocol. Clearly Zinc has some mild anti-viral properties which are well known and so does HCQ. Add them together with the ionophore action and you have a very potent anti viral which could help in a lot cases. But more importantly would give a lot of countries a less torturous path out of lockdowns.
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No modern medical training encourages curiosity amongst practitioners. Unless there is a double blind study to provide statistically significant results for a particular ailment then it is considered untested and will not be prescribed.
Can you imagine the response if you presented to your GP with Covid symptoms and suggested you buy some OTC cough medicine and give it a couple of days! And he will let you know if you are positive after they get the swab results back. Or you present at hospital with severe Covid symptoms and the emergency physician gives you a dose of cough medicine, hands you the bottle and says give this a couple of days and come back if the symptoms get worse!
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Ross, the docs are run off their feet, and as RickWill points out — there is always the legal culpability angle of using any treatment that doesn’t stand up in court.
The scandal is that our medical researchers and dedicated “science journalists” are not speaking up when it is their job to do so.
I include desk top academics like Brendan Nelson / Anthony Fauci as top of the list of people paid to look at exactly these sorts of potential treatments.
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Hydroxychloroquine, Parachutes And How to Understand ‘The Evidence’
Not as far OT as the heading would suggest.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3676982
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Good analogy.
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Jo, when you mentioned Iran, the first thing I thought of was Rita Panahi. If you dont know her, she’s the journalist who writes for the Melbourne Herald Sun and also appears on Sky News. Her family fled Iran (post Shah stuff) and came to Australia. Might be worth passing onto her and she may still have some contacts in the country to check out pharmacist bromhexine supplies.
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Good suggestion Ross. I didn’t think of that.
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Breaking News Release: Tuesday, August 25, 2020 COVID restrictions and mandatory vaccinations are outlawed and nullified by Common Law Assembly; Citizens are encouraged to resist police state measures as officials are threatened with fines and imprisonment.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/9RncRz985YeU/
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This post can be deleted as it’s now superfluous.
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‘Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights.’
‘Article 6 – Consent
1. Any preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic medical intervention is only to be carried out with the prior, free and informed consent of the person concerned, based on adequate information. The consent should, where appropriate, be express and may be withdrawn by the person concerned at any time and for any reason without disadvantage or prejudice.’
http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=31058&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
00
I had a look at Chemist Warehouse:
https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/search?searchtext=bromhexine&fh=1
Bisolvon has twice the concentration as Robitussin. None of the others shown have a meaningful number for the Bromhexine concentration.
The doses of 50-100mg given in the trial would require quite a lot of Bisolvon as it has 8mg/5ml. I guess if one were to take 10ml three times a day then that gets close to 50mg in just 1 day.
At $10 for 200ml it appears it would make sense to keep a bottle on hand.
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If you check IndiaMart, bromhexine HCL is available for 18.55 AUD / Kg. ( 1000 RS/Kg) Technical grade, not for injection. 95% – 97% purity.
371 AUD/Kg, USP / NF grade, pharmaceutical. (20,000 Rs / Kg) 99.9% purity.
That’s if you want the pure stuff. Not advising. Just curious about the details of it all.
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Drugbank says: Bromhexine is an expectorant/mucolytic agent. Bromhexine is not available in the United States. It is marketed under the trade name Bisolvon(R) in Germany, England, Belgium, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Australia, and South Africa.
International/Other Brands
Amiorel (Boehringer Ingelheim) / Bisolmed (Boehringer Ingelheim) / Bisolvon (Boehringer Ingelheim) / Bisolvon Chesty (Boehringer Ingelheim) / Fluibron
https://www.drugbank.ca/drugs/DB09019
00
So if 5ml of Bisolvon contains 8mg Bromhexine the dose is one teaspoon 3 times/day.
40
The reviews of these products on the Chemist Warehouse site make interesting reading:
https://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/51698/bisolvon-chesty-forte-liquid-200ml—cough-liquid
On Bisolvon:
On Robitussin:
When you hear how CV19 infection develops beyond the initial symptoms it seems reasonable that anything that eases congestion in the lungs could interfere with the development of the infection into serious lung issues.
Will be an interesting outcome if all the economic damage could have been avoided by prescribing cough medicine!
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I used to take Bisolvon as a tablet. Is that form still available?
00
cough medicine is for coughs, not covid, we will have to wait a few years and run some expensive studies to ensure its safety, in the meanwhile we will take it off the shelves and ban dr’s from recommending it.
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And asI have commented before, when you consider the age of those mosr seriously affected by this illness the only winner is centrelink.
02
Yeah but with no economy, Centrelink has no money to hand out.
Once that happens, it will get ugly fast. Look at any 3rd world country when food is scarce…
Same result.
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When that happens some will beg for China to take us over. Perhaps that’s the plan.
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Third-world problem solving: Look harder for a $0.30 solution than you look for the $3k solution…
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US CDC says : 94% of “covid deaths” due to pre-existing medical condions
https://fox8.com/news/coronavirus/new-cdc-report-shows-94-of-covid-19-deaths-in-us-had-underlying-medical-conditions/
Its official – covid is a pussy cat. End the lock downs now.
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Actually we could save a lot of money here Steve. Why do we bother treating anyone over 60 or who has High blood pressure, cancer, asthma, heart disease, diabetes, needs a transplant or is — lord help us — overweight.
If we give up on half the population and just let em die, the medicare budget could be shaved by 80%.
End medicare waste now!
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Red herring Jo.
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No spot on, assuming you recognise the satire.
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In the chaos, I feel sorry for the people who needed elective surgery but were denied it.
I think 12 months from now i suspect the collatoral damage in terms of deaths will be 10x more than covid ( assuming you use the same faulty ” death from covid” metric currently employed )
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I agree Original Steve.
A moment of silence lest we forget those dying/dead from the horrific collateral effects of the lock-downs on the front line. It is, i suspect, not an underestimation that the collateral deaths from the brutal lockdowns, directly and indirectly are quite a lot more than 100x times, perhaps thousands of times that of death/human suffering by corona directly.
Some how it has been construed the front line is in hospitals. In my opinion, lest we forget, the front line is all of us.
We are all, and have been, on the front line.
Primum non nocere..Amen
10
This is satire IMO (in my opinion)
419,673 views
•Sep 2, 2020
From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0y6M-N8wOE
00
I do not understand the rhetoric here so I will use my own interpretation to make a point.
Over 60s are treated with disdain by the public, government and the health service.
The health service leeches off the over 60s in gross over-servicing, it is ok they think as the patient (victim) may not be paying their own money. There is gross dishonesty in advice on medications and procedures. Governments when the chance comes, as it did with the CCP19 virus, shovel the aged out of hospitals, or even family care into death camps they call care homes, – NY City, UK, Victoria, and Sweden.
Policy from the top is as suggested, deliberate creation of divides between the 60+ and others, as well as between those on secure government incomes and small businesses. Hospitals cleared out all,
“High blood pressure, cancer, asthma, heart disease, diabetes, needs a transplant..” especially the 60+ to make room, they said, for younger people with the virus. Now we see the persecution of a nurse in UK for reporting empty floors. She was given an “award for patient care during these difficult times”, but there were no patients, empty wards. Whatever the clashes and the panics, lockdowns make it all worse.
20
Or instead, watch videos from frontline healthworkers in Italy, Spain, NY, Iran and Brazil, India etc. Traumatized.
The nations that didn’t stop the virus at the border had no choice — unless 50% of the population lived in single person apartments (like in Sweden) — lockdowns didn’t “make it worse”, they were the only thing that stopped the ICU docs and nurses from still living in hazmat suits and diapers for 12 hours shift, losing skin off their face to repeated masking, and sleeping in cars in their car parks so they wouldn’t infect their family at home.
In parts of South Africa, the docs just left. Didn’t turn up to work.
In Victoria, dealing with a tiny outbreak compared to overseas, medical staff were still flown in from SA and WA because the system was overwhelmed. What if every state in Australia needed medical staff at the same time?
00
Jo, please explain how all of us locked down in our trenches, if we are lucky enough to have a trench, not ‘the front-line’?
00
Spend a few minutes finding out what medical workers are dealing with.
PS: Death rate of US healthworkers infected = 0.5%
00
Good grief Jo.
The greatest death rates are in nursing homes. and not among health care workers, though they too are on the front line equally with all of us.. The old and the frail and those with comorbidity, lest we forget.
10
Good Grief indeed ES. Did you think I didn’t know that?
00
That article is, I think, making a wrong interpretation of the figures:
The new figure for deaths from c19 is 9,210, 6% of total deaths.
The figure for deaths in which c19 was detected (sic), or inferred, or thought to exist (eg. in the body of a motor-cycle accident victim) was 16%.
The 9,210 figure is lower than the previous official 185,000 (approx).
No need to exaggerate.
The dramatically lower new figure shows the danger of forming policy on data.
10
Very misleading. Based on death certificates, which usually list every condition the coroner is aware of. If you bleed to death in an auto accident and you also have high cholesterol, then you died with a pre-existing condition. What does that prove? That car accidents actually kill very few people? That we should eliminate speed limits?
30
Why no media? Probably because other results are not as clear cut.
There is a short review of bromhexine here. For the paper Jo originally cites they state:
There is also some evidence that bromhexine is bad during a case of covid. This preprint showed:
So, we have a theory as to why bromhexine works. However, no good data that it works. Indeed it may actually make covid worse.
10
Thanks Tony. And as Tom points out, if they use HCQ in Iran as standard, then it may be that Bromhexine will only work in combination.
It is a small study, and it wasn’t blinded, but it was randomized, and there was a big difference in results.
21
Hi Jo,
Yes if HCQ works by blocking viral entry via endomsomes, the issue is that it has other redundant pathways like TMPRSS2/ACE2 receptor binding. So, HCQ needs to be paired with another substance. Bromhexine is one possibility, camostat mesylate, aprotinin, and nafamostat are some other possibilities that are hopefully being trialled and with any luck will see some results soon.
20
A very good point. Makes sense then to cover both entry paths.
So western medicine will trial Bromhexine, find nothing useful, declare it a dangerous substance and our death rates will probably still rise in winter due to preventable Vit D deficiencies.
“Great”
00
Slightly sideways on topic:
I see Abbott is uttering that which cannot be spoken of – to wit, at what cost the shutdowns?
https://thewest.com.au/news/coronavirus/coronavirus-crisis-tony-abbott-suggests-elderly-victims-be-left-to-die-naturally-ng-b881655453z
Over at WUWT Willis is doing the maths and says they are 10 times as harmful as the virus:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/09/01/the-real-cost-of-lockdowns/
Now that two ‘deplorables’ have broken the ice, can we start to have a conversation as to better approaches?
40
Better approaches? We already know one – relax the lock downs and maintain strict policies on cleanliness, distancing, etc.. It will go a long way to minimising other health issues. While we are at it make it an offence to spit on the street or anywhere else where people walk.
50
And now we are starting to see the first glimpses of the carnage wreaked on the economy:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-02/australian-recession-confirmed-as-economy-shrinks-in-june-qtr/12619950
Only 7% decrease in GDP… never mind the massive spike in deaths of despair that are bound to follow. Think of the couple of grandparents that got to live a few extra years.
Sacrifice the young to save the old. And before you jump down my throat people, I am well above the average age in Australia. Difference is I keep fit and reasonably healthy, so I am lacking co-morbidities.
Shall we discuss the 6% statistic out of the USA? Only 6% of CCP virus deaths had no co-mobidities. The average number of co-morbidities was 2.6. We are happy to lock entire states indoors for the virus, but we don’t ban smoking, drinking or driving to name a few. I’ll let you try and figure out which are more deadly.
Stop.Acting.Out.Of.Fear
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This wasn’t addressed at you PeterS… more at the fear-mongers in general.
50
Understood. Surely it’s time to relax the lock down rules and look after the vulnerable and maintain appropriate health standards and procedures for all. But a few here are hell bent on keeping the lock downs in place indefinitely. Very odd.
50
Some of us know that impatiently loosening the lockdown too soon guarantees more lockdowns to stop hospitals getting overwhelmed again in Oct Nov.
Those of us who really want to stop the lockdowns (and who didn’t want them in the first place) have a plan that works for living a 99% free existence. Here in WA, praying we don’t stupidly let in the virus, we are living the dream. And I’m so grateful.
No random school closures, no gyms shut down, all businesses operating as per normal, including resturants and pubs, except for ones that depend on overseas travel have to make do with domestic tourists instead. We can visit elderly relatives. We don’t wear masks.
Temporarily we can’t fly overseas or to visit friends in the East easily.
11
“While we are at it make it an offence to spit on the street or anywhere else where people walk.” — Please stop licking the sidewalk. It’s disgusting.
20
🙂 🙂
00
There is a recurring rant against the lockdown and supporting the mass death approach of Sweden, even in the very good magazine, the Spectator Australia. And in the Australian.
In the Australian economists have the same opinion, posing as moralists. Apparently profit and business matter more than life.
The argument is that, as today, all deaths are in aged care, so just let them die. In America socialists like Kamala Harris are going to legalize and taxpayer fund abortion, even full term abortion in the US. It’s a scissor action by socialists, which is what totalitarians call themselves.
Consider that in Australia there are 3.8 Million people in this age group 65 and above and only 6% of those are in aged care. At a 50% death rate, it is apparently fine to let 2 million people die. Why did these people fight in WWII and Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam?
These are people who have contributed all their lives and look forward to retirement and to travel and enjoy the fruit of their labours and there are people wishing them dead so they can go to the pub?
Then you get the appalling disregard for life and the mismanagement of Victoria by Daniel Andrews and his Communist friends have damaged the whole of Australia. That’s obvious enough. Who puts infected people in Bourke Street and Lonsdale street quarantine? When was a quarantine centre in the city centre? It is like putting an equine quarantine in a stud farm, much like our hotels.
I hope to see him and his ministers tried under his own new law enacted in July 2020 of mandatory manslaughter for chief executives for the culpable deaths of 1,000 people, plus firefighters.
In the mean time, daily infections are going down in Victoria, under 100 now. But everything Melbournians hold dear, like the AFL Grand Final and the Spring Racing Carnival have been cancelled or gone interstate.
But never fear, generous and caring Daniel Andrews is still giving Melburnian public servants a paid holiday on the Grand Final Eve Friday to celebrate the football final we are not having and to attend a parade through Melbourne which cannot happen, both thanks entirely to his appalling and dictatorial mismanagement. The farce continues.
And to even be caught outdoors without an acceptable excuse is a $10,000, even $100,000 fine for ‘corporates’. This is a police state. Meanwhile older people are dying in their dozens every day, thanks entirely to Andrews and friends. A criminal trial is required, not one of these faux ‘Yes Minister’ investigations controlled and edited by Daniel Andrews. I understand Worksafe Australia is attempting to do so. Meanwhile our fully paid parliamentarians have just given Andrews full dictatorial powers for another six months and gone back on holidays, so there is no parliamentary oversight. Shades of 1936 and Germany.
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Well said TdeF. And as I keep saying: what kind of civilization do we want?
Will young men be willing to sign up for a defence force to die for a nation that won’t protect them in their old age or save their grandparents now?
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Yes let’s keep the lock downs for as long as it takes to eliminate the virus. Civilisation as we know it would cease but who cares?
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PeterS, making inaccurate absurdio statements isn’t going to solve real world problems is it?
Binary thinking = baby reasoning.
Perhaps you’d like to restate your view with accurate words? I dunno. Or maybe you just like flaming out, like therapy instead of discussion?
PS: Civilization is still here in WA. NT. SA. Tas. NZ too. Taiwan. Micronesia. Fiji.
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The Federal Treasurer has just commented that people on Federal welfare support in Victoria exceed in number all of the people in the other States and Territories on that support.
Victoria is the economic basket case right now.
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I believe it is inevitable that Australia will degenerate to become like Venezuela unless some drastic action is taken.
But we have no worthy leader like Trump and not even a system that encourages competent leadership. No one in power even understands the true nature of the problems we face. (Or if they do understand it is part of their deliberate plan to destroy Australia just as Obama tried to do to America.)
Never have I as an Australian felt so insecure and pessimistic for the future.
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In the end we will learn our lessons the hard way then perhaps the trials can begin. For example, Turnbull and Morrison will have to be put on trial for refusing to follow Trump’s lead and exiting the Paris Agreement, which has nothing to do with changing the climate but everything to do about trying to topple the West leaving other countries like China and India to build as many coal fired power stations as they like.
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Australia has just set a record yearly trade surplus of $77bn and current account improved $17.7bn in just the June quarter.
Australian output is high, enjoying good prices for key exports, and consumption is low. Despite the talk of gloom, the country is powering on better than most. The money is not driving any inflation. Farmers are facing record crop production;albiet some labour difficulties and prices are down due to reduced global demand but that is good for Australian consumers.
It is not surprising that China wants to address the trade imbalance by limiting food imports from Australia. Probably a good time to restock the cellar if you do not already have enough stock for your lifetime.
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That’s a misinterpretation.
The argument by most who push for relaxing the lockdown and opening up the community more is that the opening up be done with various protocols to reduce the chance of spread (such as distancing and hygiene measures) and protect the elderly and most vulnerable.
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“Protect the elderly and the most vulnerable.”
That sounds wonderful! ‘Protocols’.
Great idea. Exactly the sort of thing Daniel Andrews would say.
So thank the 4 million retired people across the country and imprison them in solitary confinement at home forever and let the virus run rampant. A couple of years should do it?
Now how do you actually protect the older people again? No family, no friends, no travel at all, no pubs, no shopping, no restaurants, no going out, no birthday parties or children or grandchildren, no life.
Or is that just a who cares?
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And remember it will damage if not kill everyone in time. The degree of damage at any age varies dramatically but includes permanent loss of lung function, heat damage, kidney damage, bowel damage and a near death experience with weeks in hospital and months in recovery. Not what you could call fun. And that’s for a lot of people. It nearly killed new father Boris Johnson and will have reduced his quality of life, even if he doesn’t say so.
Plus the last pandemic, the Spanish flu, also was very selective in the first pass, 90% of deaths were only men between 20 and 50.
The second time it killed everyone. And deaths were double.
This idea that it is not dangerous is an illusion, not reality. And we have had enough of death and disaster for a lifetime. Until there is a vaccine, elimination will save tens of thousands of lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of disasters if not millions.
Then we want to make sure it never happens again. No more flu. No more killer viruses. We have the means. What we need is the determination. And spend at least what we spend preventing fruit fly and phylloxera and Dengue Fever and starlings reaching WA.
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TdeF,
You say we have the means. I’m curious to know just how we arrive at no more flu, and no more killer viruses.
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We have the microbiology, the gene mapping, the ability to edit genes, the understanding of how viruses work. That is in fact how this monster was created in the Wuhan Institute of Virology operated by the Chinese army.
Like computer viruses, they can be blocked, removed. We can detect the enemy, see the enemy and we know how it infects and so we can block it. And if they can be stopped from reproducing, they die. This inanimate chemical relies on our own internal systems for its reproduction. Block reproduction and it ceases to exist.
And if we can do it for Wu Flu, we can do it for every virus. It’s about allocating and prioritizing the resources, as in war time in the Manhattan project when the US thought that Germany were very close to having the atom bomb and it was a fight against time. Luckily Hitler did not believe it was possible. It’s all that saved us. And I give great credit to the German scientists who played dumb.
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Plus the rumours of a rapid test. If we can detect the virus, we can move to isolate and exterminate it. If we have to wait until someone shows symptoms, we lose. 80% of people show no symptoms. Even those who do take ten days and by that time another three people have been infected.
However if we can detect it rapidly, we can corner it and isolate it and exterminate it, by denying the virus new virus factories. Then two to three weeks later it is gone.
Except in Victoria, where people infected were walked around the city as part of the mandatory lockdown of travellers. It beggars belief. Why wasn’t the quarantine in a remote location? What complete idi*t mandated walks around the city?
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Youre asking for something unrealistic.
This is a war, there are going to be casualties. Some comments ive seen by medicis indicate that as this thing is a chimera, a vaccine is incredibly difficult and vould take 2 years. We dont gave 2 years. And any rushed vaccine is likely dangeroys. And where the hell is hcq and icemectin? These should be in use right now!!
Id rather take a hit than have the whole damn country shut down for years, unless you enjoy dangerous buffoons like Herr Andrws locking you in your house for years.
No thanks. Time to push back on these idiots, assuming you want a future for your grand kids?
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Casualities? Rubbish. Consider that if it’s a war, Australia has 663 dead.
Victoria 576
New South Wales 52
Western Australia 9
Queensland 6
South Australia 4
Spot the problem.
Total deaths should be under 130. And that’s too high. And we have saved another 1,000 from the flu.
New Zealand with a comparable population to Melbourne has 22.
You can chalk those 576 people up to Daniel Andrews. If it’s a war, he’s on the wrong side. We should be in the clear now after six months of absolute power in one man and we are far worse off.
Excuses like casualities in war are not good enough and he has none. All of the problems in Australia are now due to one man’s arrogance and scheming and failure. He should have resigned and instead his party and the Greens just gave him another six months of absolute power and went back home.
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And your solution is? Drumroll…. and *crickets*
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Bulldust. The AFL Grand Final is in Brisbane. Nuff sed.
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And just read. NZ has 5 million people. 22 dead. Everyone is fine. Elimination works. No one is locked up! No one has to die to save the pubs or the crickets.
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Or you can be the police state of the world. As reported just now in America. Only in Comrade Dan’s Victoria! Unbelievable.
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Just pointing out that your characterisation of the argument for easing lockdowns that it is uncaring or dismissive about the elderly is a false characterisation.
However, now that you bring up the practicalities:
Isn’t that what the situation is now? But for everyone and not just the elderly and vulnerable.
If lockdowns were eased then the elderly can choose whether their family visits or not, and whether they hug or not, and whether they sit in close proximity for hours or 10 mins or not.
Nursing homes are a bit trickier with meal services and levels of care and interaction required. There are processes that might need to involve less choice or compromised choices.
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So they can choose whether they risk their lives with the probability of a fatal and awful death? Sounds like a solution.
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So? The recommendation is that the public service under the great leader should decide who can take risks and who can not, who can work or trade or travel, what all must wear, who can have a treatment that can prevent an awful death, where that death should be, who can visit the victim in dying days, who can attend the funeral, and as according to the other directives now the policy under the tyrant.
Or, people are free to choose treatments, sports, hobbies, care, advisors, medications, where they live, or work, or visit.
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Or, it is reasonable to ask aged care workers and old folk to be locked in for months on end unable to see relatives or friends?
Which healthy young workers will volunteer for that?
Which nation has protected it’s old folks while letting the virus run free?
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Strop I am in agreement. Our reliance on continual lock downs is both misdirected and dangerous on a number of fronts. Too bad we have to learn it the hard way.
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It should be obvious by now that cheap, effective treatments for this Corona virus are being deliberately withheld. This is immoral, wicked and criminal.
Two of a rapidly growing number of links on the subject are worth a look:
https://www.prageru.com/video/ep-146-the-left-is-weaponizing-medicine/
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/hydroxychloroquine-follies-joseph-hippolito/
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It is sobering to contemplate the actions people will take from a rumor.
Not saying this post is about a rumor. But this is the first I’ve heard of this chemical. Thanks, Jo, for reporting on it.
Iranians bought into the rumor about alcohol, that it might prevent the illness from the virus. One report has 700 people dying from drinking a methanol (wood alcohol) concoction.
I thought they did not use alcohol, or maybe they do and claim they don’t. Anyway – chemistry can be a friend and savior.
By the way, I hate cough syrup.
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42 seconds (honest) for the comment to show.
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This flu is potentially much worse than the Spanish Flu, in which 10% of the world’s population died. In the modern context that would be 700 million people. Twice the population of Europe or America. So why is it under 1 million people?
We know what it is. We can track it. We know how to stop it spreading and there is an endless array of tools which can and will be tried, including simple cough medicine. And if you are drowning in your own secretions, it seems obvious enough. And one of them or a combination will work to reduce symptoms, buy time for the body’s defences to act. Plus we have magic antibiotics to stop the secondary infections from opportunistic bacteria, like say pneumonia.
Plus we can trace the infection from the DNA of a molecule with only 30,000 components and trace it. Soon we will know a great deal more but desperation in Iran, India, Africa, Brazil will produce more. None of these medicines or machines like ventilators existed in 1918. And by 2021 we will be the masters, I hope. At the minimum loss of life.
And letting people die in the name of the economy makes Churchill surrending to Hitler look like the right decision. We will beat this thing and if a people cannot go surfing or fishing or to parties or out to restaurants, too bad. Sacrifices have to be made. And if that’s too hard, people need to look hard at why.
If you don’t like it, move to Victoria where we are locked in our houses by the very police who did not enforce lockdown of people carrying the virus. With fines of $10,000 and $100,000 for going outside. Thanks to Dictator Dan, the man who lied.
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And I believe we will soon find a vaccine, even a number of them. There are just so many companies, countries, techniques, ideas and hundreds of billions of dollars riding on this. This research is motivated by much more than profit, but profit will do. I hope Big Pharma does well but more importantly, we learn how to eliminate these viruses from an increasingly crowded world. And I am still wanting to see that very fast testing.
Very fast testing alone would allow us to reduce quarantine and clear people travelling and even have a lot of activities like spectator sport going again. And then testing for all the other nasty viruses including the flu and common cold and all the rest like rabies and measles and aids, to mention only a few.
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I don’t know why you had a red thumb. The trolls are out. About four of them now. It was a perfectly reasonable comment and most people hate cough syrup. Still it must be better than Cod Liver Oil.
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Three then. They cannot help themselves. Lazy people with no rationale, no argument, no reason, no facts and no logic, the AnitFA of a blog site. Blogger’s Lives Matter too!
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From https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Bromhexine-hydrochloride
Humm, maybe I’ll stick with my usual habit of when I have a stubborn chest infection, eat lots of raw garlic (at least 2 whole garlic per day), and drink lots of fluids. Helps with loosening the mucus and usefully keeps other people away while I recover. 🙂
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From https://mucolytic.com/bromhexine-or-bisolvon/
From a plant that is widely used in medicinal preparations in India.
From https://www.wildturmeric.net/adhatoda-vasica-medicinal-uses-health-benefits-side-effects/
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Very interesting thanks Tomomason.
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“Where are the media?”
90% of the media is owned by 6 corporations.
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Drugbank says: Bromhexine is an expectorant/mucolytic agent. Bromhexine is not available in the United States. It is marketed under the trade name Bisolvon(R) in Germany, England, Belgium, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Australia, and South Africa.
International/Other Brands
Amiorel (Boehringer Ingelheim) / Bisolmed (Boehringer Ingelheim) / Bisolvon (Boehringer Ingelheim) / Bisolvon Chesty (Boehringer Ingelheim) / Fluibron
https://www.drugbank.ca/drugs/DB09019
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I like how some people suddenly care about side-effects. In this case they are not as bad as the ones in other, drugs such as statins, which are worse than no drugs at all. There’s medicine, then there’s health, then there’s medicine cheerleaders who think that medicine is a branch of science.
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For the inbox. The combination used in Iran was recommended for trial April 1, (no jokes, please) in an American research journal.
https://biomedgrid.com/pdf/AJBSR.MS.ID.001283.pdf
Note the comments inside of it concerning prostate cancer. . .
20
It might be a Bradykinin storm rather than Cytokine storm.
https://elemental.medium.com/a-supercomputer-analyzed-covid-19-and-an-interesting-new-theory-has-emerged-31cb8eba9d63
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It might be a Bradykinin storm rather than a Cytokine storm.
https://elemental.medium.com/a-supercomputer-analyzed-covid-19-and-an-interesting-new-theory-has-emerged-31cb8eba9d63
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The formal list of adverse reactions to Hydroxychloroquine can be found in the “Patient Information Leaflet” (PIL) which is included in every pack of every prescription drug in the UK and I suspect in every modern country.
https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/files/pil.1764.pdf
The list of possible side effects are many and scary but every PIL has a list like this. Look up your own favorite medication!
For completeness, here is the PIL for Bromhexine:
https://www.medicines.ie/medicines/bisolvon-oral-solution-31446/patient-info
Interestingly, I could not find Bromhexine in http://www.medicines.org.uk.
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