Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
After all the people saying we shouldn’t take chloroquine because of the side effects, let me take the opportunity to say some words about that curious drug.
I moved to the Solomon Islands, north of Australia near the Equator, in 1984. I ended up living and working there for nine years. The Solomons host all four kinds of malaria—Plasmodium falciparum, P. ovale, P. malariae, and P. vivax. Unlike most parts of the world, at the time the four kinds of malaria in the Solomons were not chloroquine-resistant.
So I took chloroquine prophylactically once a week to prevent the disease. 500 mg (300 mg base), one pill every seven days.
After I’d been there maybe three years, I thought “I don’t want to take this forever. If I get malaria, I’ll cure it, that’s what medicine is for”. So after having taken well over 100 doses of chloroquine, I gave it up.
Of course, after stopping chloroquine, I got malaria. It is a most curious and devious houseguest. Malaria has a bunch of forms, all with different shapes and different abilities, and it changes form like we change shirts. When it hits your bloodstream, it streaks for your liver as fast as it can. Along the way, it is shedding parts of its skin layer. These skin bits occupy and distract a large number of antibodies, which recognize enemies by their skin surfaces. This allows more of the malaria parasites to make it to the liver. When it gets to the liver, it changes form.
After living for a bit in the liver in that new form, it changes form again and goes back out into your bloodstream and gets inside the red blood cells. Where, of course, it changes into another form.
Unlike the other forms, this latest form can reproduce. It starts to produce thousands and thousands of descendants, which eventually rupture the red blood cells and re-emerge into your bloodstream.
Until that point, you don’t even know the tiny criminals have invaded your corporeal mansion. But when they rupture the red blood cells, your body gets the full-blown malarial crisis, shaking and sweating, chills and fever at once. I’d always thought stories about people’s teeth chattering in sickness from the chills were exaggerations.
I was very wrong.
Now, at the time we were living on a 280 acre (110 ha) coral atoll island called Liapari Island, way out in the outback. Here’s the island, on the right …
The Solomon Islands are in the middle of nowhere, north of Australia below the equator. Western Province in the Solomon Islands, with the Western Province capital at Gizo Island, is even more nowhere. And Liapari Island, 17 miles (27 km) by water from Gizo, is the very heart of nowhere.
Fortunately, my gorgeous ex-fiancee is a family nurse practitioner. The doctors there advised quinine. So she took the company outboard skiff, drove it seventeen miles to Gizo, and brought back the quinine. I took the prescribed dose. Horribly bitter pills.
Well, I’m here to say that the damn quinine cure is far worse than the disease. It adds bad pain and weakness on top of chills and fever. I recall that at one point it took me about thirty seconds of hard work just to sit up in the bed. When I laid down, I thought “I can’t be that weak! I just can’t be! It can’t take that long just to sit up!”
So I tried it again.
45 seconds that second time. Crazy weakness and pain. I’d never felt anything like the combination of malaria and quinine, and I definitely don’t recommend it no matter how bored you are.
After that, I never took quinine again. I would take its chemical cousin, chloroquine, instead. But this time I was taking it curatively, not preventatively. It was not fun in the high doses, but it beat the malaria back, and it was much more tolerable than quinine.
Finally, after suffering a couple more bouts of malaria over the next couple years, my mad mate Mike told me that when you feel malaria coming on, and you can definitely can feel it coming on, to take three weekly doses at once (1500 mg, or 900 mg of base), then the same thing 24 hours later, then the same thing on the third day. He swore it fended off the malaria.
So I started using his plan, and I never got full-blown malaria again. Just take nine weeks worth of chloroquine in three days, it aborts the onset of the chills and fever, no problem.
In addition, at the time, I knew dozens and dozens of expatriates in the Solomons and maybe half or more of them used chloroquine for either prophylaxis or cure of malaria.
In summary: yes, as with any medicine, some people suffer side effects from chloroquine. But it is widely tolerated. In addition, it’s cheap because it’s been used since the 1930s, so it’s been off-patent for decades, and the side effects are well known
Do we know scientifically if it works for COVID-19? Nope. But I’ll guarantee you that if I get the ‘rona, I will take chloroquine and azithromycin and zinc. Nothing to lose, everything to gain, and Fauci is both mad and destructive to argue against it.
And to close out the story of the madcap transformations of the malaria parasite, we left it swimming in our bloodstream after rupturing the red blood cells. From there, a mosquito removes it from your body with its magic hypodermic needle, and it moves into the mosquito’s stomach where … yes, you guessed it, it transforms itself once again into a new kind of malarious being. And when the mosquito bites another person, it injects that form into your bloodstream, whereupon it starts racing for their liver to start the cycle again.
There is one final oddity of this most odd of life forms. Sometimes, P. falciparum vivax malaria can … yep, you got it … change into yet another form. It does this in the liver, and after changing forms it promptly falls asleep for maybe a year. Or two. Or more. This form goes by the absolutely wonderful name of a “hypnozoite”, after Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep. Hypnozoites are the source of the world-famous recurrence of malaria years, occasionally decades, after leaving the malarial zones.
When one of the hypnozoites wakes up after a two-year nap, I assume it stretches, yawns, looks at the other still-sleeping hypnozoites, and of course, it being malaria and all, just for fun it changes form. No longer a hypnozoite, it jumps into the bloodstream, reproduces inside the red blood cells until they burst … and that is how after I’d left the Solomons and had been living in Fiji for a couple of years, I suddenly felt that awful familiar feeling.
And being an honest man I must confess, at that moment I said very bad words. Not only that, but I engaged in needless and ultimately pointless vituperation, casting unpleasant but extremely satisfying aspersions as to the ancestry of the whole tribe of mosquitoes and malaria in all their evil blood-sucking cell-destroying forms.
I had been convinced at the time that I was done with malaria, but nooo … my main medical squeeze had to go hunt for chloroquine, there’s no malaria in Fiji. And once I got cured of the immediate malarial relapse, I took another drug that in theory kills the remaining hypnozoites, and me and malaria, we parted ways for good. At least I sure hope so.
And that’s my story of chloroquine and the reason why I say that anyone who gets the virus should at least try it.
My best to all, stay well, wash hands, don’t invite any strange bats to dinner, don’t touch your face, or your bat’s face for that matter, wear a mask, avoid crowds, you know the plan …
w.
PS- Regarding schools as centers of infection, the Solomons uses the British system of boarding schools. Grade school kids go from their villages to the local boarding school, which is often on another island, where they spend the entire semester.
And we always had to gird our loins and break out the mosquito repellent when the kids all returned at semester break, because invariably they brought a surfeit of malaria back with them …
What is the evidence for hydroxychloroquine
We know the first French study was fatally flawed, but I keep hearing that other studies show benefits. Is there decent evidence out there?
New French study about 1000 people…91% effective
Latitude
Did any of those who were administrated it have a ‘BCG’ when young? It was a vaccination administered as a matter of course to schoolchildren in the UK in the 70’s/80’s and beyond I belive, to combat TB.
It’s also administered in much the same way in India.
A recent study by an Indian doctor has found a 50% lower level of infection in those who have had the vaccine, and where it is still detectable, than with those who haven’t had the vaccination.
My description is probably clumsy, but I hope the point is made.
This whole thing is mega complicated.
Scot, I have no idea….I’m getting “Biden syndrome” and can’t remember where I saw that study either….
..did not know about BCG at all…I’ll try to look that up to
in the mean time…
” Sixty-five percent of physicians across the United States said they would prescribe the anti-malaria drugs chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to treat or prevent COVID- 19 in a family member, according to a new survey released today by Jackson & Coker, one of the country’s largest physician staffing firms.
Only 11 percent said they would not use the drug at all.
Meanwhile, 30 percent of the surveyed doctors said they would prescribe the medications to a family member prior to the onset of symptoms if they had been exposed to COVID-19, a highly contagious virus that causes a pneumonia-like infection of the lungs.
“Working in healthcare, we’ve learned the best way to get a candid perspective on treatment options from a physician is to ask: ‘Would you give this to your family?’” said Tim Fischer, President of Jackson & Coker. “Families across the U.S. – and the world really – want to know what they can do to protect and save their loved ones.”
Jackson & Coker conducted the survey of 1,271 physicians from 50 states from April 4 to April 7. It conducted the survey not to influence the debate in treating patients with anti-malarials but to make sure the voice of physicians is represented. It has a margin of error of +/- 3 percent with a 95 percent confidence level of the doctors surveyed.”
found this….
Connecting BCG Vaccination and COVID-19: Additional Data
Our data further supports the view that universal BCG vaccination has a protective effect on the course of COVID-19 probably preventing progression to severe disease and death.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.07.20053272v1
That’s very interesting. Being of that vintage I remember getting the TB shot when in school but that was 5+ decades ago. I don’t know what type it was or if it is still effective (I doubt it) but good to know.
Something more to read up on. Thanks, you’ve filled a few hours of my day for me.
HotScot-
You might be surprised to know that BCG is still being used – to treat bladder cancer. This from a quick google search:
“Bacillus Calmette-Guerin or BCG is the most common intravesical immunotherapy for treating early-stage bladder cancer. It’s used to help keep the cancer from growing and to help keep it from coming back. … BCG is put right into the bladder through a catheter. It reaches the cancer cells and “turns on” the immune system.”
There is a totally kosher, n:1,000 clinical trial underway in the Netherlands (at Utrecht and Nijmegen academic hospitals) to get a proper understanding of what role the BCG vaccination might play in terms of anti coronavirus properties.
If somehow effective, this would be great news as for instance in France, everyone got the BCG until 2007.
BCG trial in South Australia
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-11/trial-to-test-if-tuberculosis-vaccine-boosts-covid-19-immunity/12142230
The BCG trial is 4000 in total in Australia and has been running some weeks.
Yet death rate is tracking high. Is there an immigrant vs native discrepancy? Or is it against the law to mention such things in France?
Case numbers in France were not far behind Italy and Spain ( don’t know if the latter ever had BCG program ). Taking out the noise of individual days, Spain peaks around 8k cases, Italy 6k, France 4k.
While half the case load is huge for the health service, it does not seem to indicate a wide immunity in the population.
France had about 10% of north african origin, maybe that’s now significantly higher thanks to Merkel.
Aus is doing a 4k person trial in our med staff at the moment of the BCG
it will be another option they slam as it too is old and off patent
theory is it is an immune system booster( theyve also used it for Aid patientsI think I reaad somewhere)
amazing that Aus (theortically) didnt have any chimps for lab use
but theyve managed to magick some into being to test a new vax on
I doubt I would be considering their new offerings until a hell of a lot of pepple have accepted and survived the vax let alone the bug
The older known issues meds are far preferable
One of the great MedCram.com videos on the Wuhan Virus discusses BCG and how it seems to boost the immune system in general. The narrator concluded with a paragraph that landed somewhere between wondering out loud and recommending health professionals get the BCG vaccine as a way to help defend them from the pandemic.
There is a Dr Stephen Smith in East Orange, NJ that believes that HQ is pretty much the answer. I believe that his results are above 90%. Then there is a Dr Walsh in or near Los Angeles that has used HCQ for 42 years to treat Lupas. He has been treating coronavirus with HCQ also with very good results. The trick is to use HCQ before there is much lung damage. Many doctors in Europe are calling HCQ the weapon of choice at the moment. Dr Walsh says the chances of side effects are almost nil. Treatment with HCQ is only 4 or 5 days long. 600mg hydroxychloroquine and 250mg zinc per day. Zinc drives out copper so copper replacement after treatment may be a good idea. The media never mentioned HCQ until Trump brought it up. BTY.. hydroxychloroquine is more gentle on the body than chloroquine and is known for less possible side effects. Some people get a little rash. Those warning about side effects of HCQ don’t know much about it. I guess most people never listen to the possible side effects of drugs advertised on TV. I have an older friend that was taking Xarelto and he almost bought the farm from internal bleeding. In spite of the many law suits, it is still widely used.
“The media never mentioned HCQ until Trump brought it up.”
Do you mean just the American media? I read about the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 long before I read about Trump mentioning it.
Must admit, the first mention of HCQ I heard was from Dr. Roy Spencer. Long before it became a household name, or before Trump mentioned it, Roy asked the question about it, if there was anyone with some information or experience of its merrits against CoVid 19. It was very slow to surface in discussions for a long time after that.
Now, there has been a lot of talk about the BCG vaccine, here in Ireland, for the past couple of weeks. It seems to be gaining traction.
Either way, stay safe folks and wash your hands.
Eamon.
It was first recommended by chinese medical authorities. Then Trump picked it up whereupon it instantly became non-PC to use, and at least some hospitals in Sweden stopped using it.
Isn’t the Gov of MI forbidding it’s use?
But worldwide, 94% don’t die from it.
In Australia, 98% don’t die from it.
Regardless of treatment.
That is from Johns Hopkins data website.
1000 people (a select group out of a wider statistical population) … presenting advanced symptoms, I presume.
Would you spin a wheel with only a 2 percent chance of death if it lands wrong for fun? What would it take for you to spin it? Food for thought.
I’m 64 today, and yes I would spin that wheel if it meant not hobbling the economy my children and future generations have to try to live in. In a monstrously indebted world, this self inflicted wound could easily get out of control, and make 1929 look like a Weekend at Bernie’s.
Would you lock everyone up to bring the number to zero?
“We know the first French study was fatally flawed”
Who told you that ?
Reality is a complete other story :
https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/covid-19/
Yes, the French one does not even count as a study. Open label. Low n value (few patients). Even less controls. Unblinded. Systematic and confirmation biases.
Bad science.
Embrace: Better to be anecdotally alive than scientifically dead!
-etcb
Unless you just can’t stand the thought of your pearls getting soiled …
Like Jenner and smallpox. Not?
Observations are not bad science. What you mention is not bad science as long as all are known. It just should lead to more and better science.
Leukemia drug tried in blind study, doctors went holy crap, and gave control group the drug immediately extending lifespan of fatal disease by five years. Became standard treatment. Was that bad science since it was nonblind?
Whatever you say, Cap’n Hydrino.
Petie_Barde
The study was even more flawed than Andrew Wakefield’s MMR study
Things like
the leader promoting the effectiveness before the study started
Not having a control group because it would be unfair on the people not on HCQ
Removing people who died from the study and then claiming 100% success rate
Have a look here :
https://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2020/04/08/cmaj.200528
Label warning: they are “extremely toxic in overdose.” Get a doctor’s prescription.
So are vodka, scotch and gin. No prescription required, however. Thank heavens.
Add sugar and water to that list…
Water is extremely and frequently fatally toxic in overdose.
So is water
Label warning: they are “extremely toxic in overdose.” Get a doctor’s prescription.
— So is water
Yes, in my younger long distance running days I literally ran into a couple of people who got themselves into medical distress by taking on way too much water before and during a run. It certainly can be fatal at the extremes.
What exactly were the “fatal flaws”? Seriously. I hear that but when I looked all I could find was “it wasn’t double blind” and “there was no control group”. The second study had 78/80 cured in days. Or is that study “fatally flawed” as well. Doctors on 3 continents (so far) have reported excellent results NOT when used alone but when used in the trifecta.
“What exactly were the “fatal flaws”? Seriously. I hear that but when I looked all I could find was “it wasn’t double blind” and “there was no control group”.” Well, those are pretty much fatal flaws in a medical study, particularly when most people eventually recover from covid, making it hard to know whether giving patients chloroquine helped anyone or not.
Yes, 90+% recover on their own. Since most have little symptoms, they recover at hone with reporting.
Green Tea would probably “work” against COVID. Which is why every snake oil dude has a “treatment” now. We might as well repeal the Pure Food and Drug Act…
Victims often die from untreated bacterial infections, often of undiscovered type. Sometimes the invader is normal bacterium present in most peoples’ gut. Once friendly (Clostridia, Klebsiella, etc.), they become unfriendly if they colonize the inflammation site in the lungs. Hence the azithromycin which should be used prophylactically or immediately if the cough is severe or fever spikes (sign of another infection). AZT is great for these bacterial pneumonias. I have no idea if the chloroquine work from the anecdotal studies.
Be very careful where you go with that reasoning.
In 2014, Ioannides at Stanford published a seminal overview that shows that supposedly top drawer biomedical research published in top drawer journal is irreproducible in 8 out of 10 cases.
I was in the audience at the conference where he presented the data – he was treated to boohs and hisses and has been treated as toxic in research circles ever since. His data however is rock solid.
It was a VERY “small study,” indeed.
They had only eleven patients: “There were 7 men and 4 women with a mean age of 58.7 years (range: 20-77), 8 had significant comorbidities associated with poor outcomes (obesity: 2; solid cancer: 3; hematological cancer: 2; HIV-infection: 1)”
There was no control group, no comparison with other treatment protocols, and (obviously) no blinding.
By climate science standards, it was quite rigorous: they actually tried to measure something, rather than just write computer programs to make guesses for them. But by medical standards it was very, very weak.
re: “It was a VERY “small study,” indeed.”
Notice the title:
Note also, NO mention of … what?
Zinc.
Note: As we have found out in other journal write-ups, jumping-in to treat “Severe COVID-19 Infection” patients is not the way to go. TOO MUCH damage to the lungs/blood? has been done at that point (and ALSO damage to the lungs from the intubation/ventilators we are FINDING OUT NOW.)
“particularly when most people eventually recover from covid”
OK then the observation above is “pretty much fatal flaw” for the justification of the lock-down.
It is generally unhelpful to speak in euphemisms when trying to make a point concisely.
So if you want to know exactly what was problematic, drop the idea of ‘fatal flaws” and focus on particular details.
At this stage, anyone unwilling to look up the criticisms of the work is probably not the type to pay close attention to details.
How much do you want to get straight and unfiltered info?
The place for that is the source.
This is the internet
There is nothing to lose, so what’s the problem?
“There is nothing to lose, so what’s the problem?”
The problem is that Trump would be correct.
👍
Bingo.
The hate is strong in them.
It is not an anti-viral drug.
But it could reduce lung inflamation for patients in bad shape.
Nations with high maleria rates have low covid19 rates.
Perhaps from the warm weather, or perhaps from anti-malaria drugs.
If it’s not an antiviral drug and works by reducing lung inflammation…
…how come it kills SARS in a test tube?
Even if it doesn’t work in the human body, at worst it’s going to have no harmful effect on pretty much anyone who takes it. The only reason it’s opposed is because powerful people don’t want a cheap, simple cure for this disease when they can instead use it to push their political agenda.
Low incidence in the S. Hemisphere in places where there is no malaria. New Zealand, for example. It is summer there. In N. Hemisphere it was winter when it began. Coronaviruses are normal viruses for the “common cold”, these as respiratory ones. Rhinoviruses are head cold common cold viruses. Dozens of each of these. See CDC,gov for types of viruses and their seasonality.
“HC” appears to operate against COVID19 by moving zinc into the cells, where it disrupts the virus’s reproductive path. Thus the inclusion of zinc in the treatment.
Or perhaps a side effect from having a malarially-exposed population regardless of drug consumption? Host populations that are undesirable to virus spread. Perhaps Singapore would be successful regardless of their much touted mitigation regime.
You have never been to Singapore I gather? It has been malaria-free for about 40 years now.
I am interested in knowing more about Quinine in Covid. Does quinine itself help get Zn into the cell through ionophoric processes? That is what I understand is the mechanism for why hydroxychloroquine is effective. The Zn in the cell, where the virus uses the cell to replicate its RNA to make more virus, disrupts the RNA replication at the source.
So the question is: Is quinine a Zn ionophore?
Mario
Not so fast. Just because the original was open label and a small n: and the respected researcher who ran it happens to look like a Druid, doesn’t mean the outcomes weren’t indicative and worth pursuing.
You just described Rasputin!
Sorry. Don’t get that. My chloroquine blood titre must be low.
Not fatally flawed but not statistically significant and scientifically correct. However, it was still valid as a pretrial.
In these days of suffering they were looking for a quick fix. They think they found it. More trials and tests are proceeding.
What is the evidence for lockdowns and completely dismantling the economy? I haven’t seem any papers where they did double blind studies.
+1
How many clinical trials, over how many years, were done before penicillin was released for general use?
Dr. Vladimir Zelenko’s clinic in NYC has seen over 1,000 COVID patients. As of the last report, they’ve treated 383 of the high risk ones with HCQ, zinc, and azithromycin, and had only 3 put on ventilators, and 2 deaths. It’s on YouTube. There is also a video of Dr. Cardillo of LA who uses the same drug cocktail, and says patients usually are free of symptoms in less than a day.
Thats bullshit Andy. There ought not have been any studies. We knew enough to be treating Sars-2 right away since we had treated the Sars-1 with it. The studies were all stalling tactics. Its just the deep state sending everything down the memory hole. 70 years experience with the drug and no-one has found evidence that its NOT zinc enabler.
Fauci actually did not argue against it, at least not for long – he said he would take it if he had the virus. Fauci did argue that the nornal tests should be made, and they are, along with the use of hydroxychlorine as an off label treatment. One doctor who treats Lupus patients said he has prescribed hydroxychloine for 42 years without seeing any side effects other than skin rashes.
I thought Fauci and Trump said pretty much the same thing, just one with a glass half empty attitude and the other trying to pep up the country.
That was it exactly.
Fauci had his lab-researcher hat still on, not recognizing that people would die.
He did piddle on Trumps parade when Trump tried to hold out some good news of a medication that could possibly treat this virus. One that has had know side-effects for about 90 years.
Instead of trying to offer calm and hope to a society that was panicking, which the media was there to foment, he snatched away the only positive thing that the president was holding out.
Disagree.
Fauci is only an expert in HIV a couple of extremely rare immune diseases in the same box as HIV/AIDS. His position, at best, has been admin at NIAID. NIAID has a charter that includes infectious diseases but Fauci has never, ever, in his career had anything other that titular head of any respiratory disease.
He’s a great example of government failure at it’s best. How someone that has spent 30+ years in the politically correct HIV/AID’s focus while simply ignoring detection, treatment and control over respiratory viruses which literally kills tens of thousands each and every year. In the US, in 2017, about 16,000 people died having a diagnoses of HIV as CDC reports “These deaths may be due to any cause.”
Since the mid-1990’s US deaths from respiratory viruses range from 32,000 to over 60,000 per year. Meaning they were the leading death in the US for NIAID’s charter. Yet Fauci did absolutely nothing (maybe sign the budget request).
Fauci is, simply, not any kind of infectious respiratory virus expert. Dr. Birx worked in Fauci’s lab and led HIV vaccine work. Neither is a respiratory infectious pathogen expert.
What we have are two highly skilled HIV experts running a response as if it were an HIV transmitted disease. Everything they have proposed is rooted in HJIV transmission “mitigation” from social distancing to self-isolation with mostly ineffective (from published meta studies of clinical trials at PubMed) items of hand washing, masking tacked on. Even Fauci’s latest brainstorm of having Certified ID Cards issued to those testing positive for the antibodies screams of methods to contain HIV. They are the so called Deep State at their worst and are, frankly, highly destructive and even more contagious for the population.
Total and complete incompetence. In the words of the Left, we must Move On from these faux respiratory pathogen “experts” and go to people that are experts in these viruses. After all, I’d bet anyone that Fauci learned of the new strain from news reports, just like his BFF Hillary and Obama learned things.
Later, the Facui and Brix should be relegated to a special cure HIV task force (as a reward) and, if we keep CDC, appoint people that actually care about the biggest killers of US citizens. Including how to detect new strains, etc.
What is the CDC for, anyway? What do you get from it?
The CDC inoculates us against the brain disease we might otherwise get from you, NG.
However, like any other authority, blind trust in them has been shown to be ill advised.
The world is not black and white.
People who are completely wrong about one thing may be and often are exactly correct and insightful regarding something else.
The people to be wary of are those who represent their ideas as factual, and the latest video they have watched as a “finding”, and some half baked idea they like as a what “is known”.
“Fauci had his lab-researcher hat still on…”
[snip] Same hat he had on when he killed all those people with AZT. They are asking us to forget everything we know about this drug.
“So I started using his plan, and I never got full-blown malaria again. Just take nine weeks worth of chloroquine in three days, it aborts the onset of the chills and fever, no problem.”
Just what we did after taking weekly quinine for the first 3 years in India, except it was a combination of chloroquine and something called Daraprim. I must confess to some scepticism about chloroquine for the most recent lurgy.
Our son just got out of quarantine after coming back from a working holiday in Oz at a highly inflated airfare. He is here for the duration with girlfriend because no work in either hospitality or management consulting. He will be able to get the odd few days casual construction work here. Basically the lockdown puts them back to square one in terms of employment.
Thx for advice. Don’t those meds also give you the shits?
Not me, Henry, but eeryone’s different …
w.
My v key skips to. ate that. Oops now h key skips too. Have to whack them hard. Damn Dell keyboard.
You know you could fix that and get rid of annoying cables for about $23
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B079JLY5M5
Vwls rnt ncssry fr rdng sntncs.
re: “Vwls rnt ncssry fr rdng sntncs.”
M nm s m. Cn ___ rd ths?
What did I write above? (see below)
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My name is Amy. Can you read this?
ll bt m
Your clarification of the dormant form of malaria is very interesting – since I grew up in Kalimantan, I had malaria enough times that it is part of me. I have just recovered from a severe (and nearly fatal) ecoli blood infection that brought on a malaria attack just to keep things interesting. You have not exaggerated the experience in the slightest.
Since the Wuflu arrived here in BC, I have been dosing myself (and advising others to) with Schweppes Tonic Water, for the quinine in there. So far so good, and no side effects.
Yes, I had wondered about that, since I’m fond of the taste.
I drank it lots more when younger, straight, not mixed with gin or anything.
But at my current age, I really wish there was a version of the old Schweppes without so much sugar. Having a look, I see that there are several.
Willis
Great post on Malaria and Hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine! I, too, would try One of them along with azithromycin and maybe zinc (zinc, esp if I had GI issues, which some have with Covid-19—-diarrhea can deplete zinc stores from the body.)
Minor correction: P. Falciparum malaria causes most of the severe life-threatening cases in the world, but does not cause relapse from hypnozoites. Hypnozoites are seen in P. Ovale and P Vivax, and require treatment with a drug like primaquine, in addition to the usual anti-malarials.
You certainly in the Solomons may have been infected by multiple different malaria species.
Regards
Keith Winterkorn, MD
Emphasis added.
Brilliant. Truly brilliant. I hope you meant to do that!
I remember taking Chloroquine in the 1990s when I worked for some months in India. It made me nauseous for the day and I recall it gave me a dose as well. Unfortunately near the end of my time there I realized it was supposed to be taken on a full and not empty stomach – apparently it made all the difference!
Maybe that explains the run on toilet paper. Pardon the pun.
Salute!
No schitz, Henry.
From my personal experience and the hundreds of fellow warriors I knew and flew with and supported in that sorry war, upset stomach was largest complaint. Never saw or heard of a rash or cramp or anything, and we were getting aviation physicals on a frequent basis.
My not so humble opinion is the medical folks are in the CYA mode to avoid lawsuits when some stoopid dweeb takes a bottle of pills or aquarium treatment. The FDA has come clean and said, “take the stuff” , with the note that it has not been proven an effective treatment for the corona critter. It took years and years for folks to get stevia sweetner on the grocery store shelf next to “splenda” and “sweet and low” and other sweetners that had clear labels of potential problems. They finally got it for sale as an herbal supplement or whatever. And how ’bout CBD?
Oh well, hope the Easter Bunny is nice for your kids and grand kids.
Gums sends…
Ah Willis is a great story teller. Very entertaining and informative anecdote.
The red blood-cell thing is apparently the link to COVID which seems to breaking the iron ion off the haemaglobin. Recent reports of hypoxia being the real disorder which needs treating rather than lung dysfunction and the for forced ventilation could be critical and reports of severe lung damage killing many patients may explain the horrible odds of coming out of the other end of being put on a ventilator.
Hypoxia also fits with accounts of the heavy male/female death toll reported in China where most of the older generation males are heavy smokers. They are thus already in a state where upto 60% of their haemoglobin it locked up with a CO molecule and permanently out of action. They have an oxygen transport problem without COVID.
Progress on this issue would be a game changer. If you have not understood the pathology , you are poorly equipt to cure it.
I’m wondering if sickle cell disease has anything to do with the Black Community being more impacted with the Wuhan virus?
I suspect the cause of that is being majoritarily poor and fat ( without trying to dress it up in medical terms for PC correctness. ). Poor diet, lack of vitamins, BMI all seem to be factors. Though a genetic factor like sickle cell is worth considering.
Plus Black Americans have much higher rates of hypertension and vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D deficiency has a critical role in regulation of the renin-angiotensin system so the two are not unrelated.
And sickle cell is protective for malaria.
Throw in a steadily growing body of evidence that in what appears to be a substantial number of cases the actual cause of death is a cytokine storm, and we have yet another manifestation of the bug.
An RTO in our platoon didn’t take his pill and ended balled up wrapped in his poncho liner shaking uncontrollably. That guy was scary sick.
At the time we were taking a combo pill – Chloroquin and Primaquin.
LOL! Reminds me of the time the doctor was in our bedroom tending to my brother while I was curled up on my bed, wrapped in blankets doing the shaking. We both survived, but I couldn’t donate blood for decades afterwards. Sneaky little hypnozoites!
Ah Willis is a great story teller. Very entertaining and informative anecdote.
The red blood-cell thing is apparently the link to COVID which seems to breaking the iron ion off the haemaglobin. Recent reports of hypoxia being the real disorder which needs treating rather than lung dysfunction and the for forced ventilation could be critical and reports of severe lung damage k-i-lling many patients may explain the horrible odds of coming out of the other end of being put on a ventilator.
Hypoxia also fits with accounts of the heavy male/female death toll reported in China where most of the older generation males are heavy smokers. They are thus already in a state where upto 60% of their haemoglobin it locked up with a CO molecule and permanently out of action. They have an oxygen transport problem without COVID.
Progress on this issue would be a game changer. If you have not understood the pathology , you are poorly equipt to cure it.
So if hypoxia… would a regular oxygen mask be better than a ventilator… as long as one’s automatic breathing function still works? My e-cig (normal not illegal) doesn’t have any CO molecules.
The German hospital which first raised the point about problems with intubation and ventilators found that it was use of the standard Protocol – high pressure and low oxygen – that caused mechanical damage to the lungs. They switched to High oxygen content and Low pressure which apparently avoided mechanical damage.
https://www.the-hospitalist.org/hospitalist/article/220301/coronavirus-updates/protocol-driven-covid-19-respiratory-therapy-doing
Yes, vaping is not smoking. I think there was also some evidence glycol was helpful.
Note that BoJo was given oxygen but not put on a ventilator. They seem to waking up to the danger of that. Multiple reports from different countries seem to be pointing to hypoxia being the problem not lung failure and that forced ventilation may be doing as much ( or more ) harm than good.
re: “Note that BoJo was given oxygen but not put on a ventilator. ”
You mean – NO heavy sedation? NO ten inch tube put down his airway?
Lucky man …
“Hypoxia also fits with accounts of the heavy male/female death toll reported in China where most of the older generation males are heavy smokers.”
Except:
“Smoking may reduce the likelihood of being hospitalised with coronavirus, claims a study.” “could be linked to the down-regulation of ACE2 expression that has been previously known to be induced by smoking.”
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/04/02/study-smokers-less-likely-to-be-hospitalised-with-covid-19/
Could female menstruation have an effect on amount of iron causing some type of effect on this disease
How dare you suggest that only women menstruate ! Are you transphobic or something ??
😂
The amount of blood loss is small: around 80 ml of the 5 liter one has.
80/50,000 = 0.16%
I would say: no effect.
Oh I’m so sorry, only after posting I realised making a big mistak:
80/5,000 = 1,6%
Still not much, so still no effect imho
“I will take chloroquine and azithromycin and zinc. Nothing to lose, everything to gain, and Fauci is both mad and destructive to argue against it.”
I think Fauci didn’t want chloroquine to become toilet paper.
He probably knew doctors take chloroquine because it lower chance of getting the Chinese virus. And with 300 million Americans start taking it, not to mention hoarding it, there would be chloroquine for medical workers.
And once a supply stock was secure for Medical workers, he was saying follow medical advise from your doctor.
Though it’s possible Fauci thought there was side effects, and if 320 million Americans take it, it could cause more problem than the Chinese Virus.
But apparently if take it in proper doses, there is very minor side effects which are rare.
Good Lord, are we so incompetent that we can’t ensure an adequate supply of chloroquine? Probably the answer is yes, because we’re in lockdown, the economy is going to hell, people are scared shitless, people are dying, but we can’t seem to get off our butts and get enough test kits out.
Fauci’s role: fear-monger-in-chief. That’s job #1.
“Good Lord, are we so incompetent that we can’t ensure an adequate supply of chloroquine? ”
Here’s a hint: the US government has allowed pharmaceutical manufacture to decay to the point where 97% of US antibiotics come from China.
Well, to listen to the ‘press’ in 2017 we lost drug manufacturing facilities in Puerto Rico during hurricane Maria. But, then there is this:
Title: Puerto Rico Pharma: Battered but Unbroken
One year after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico’s pharma industry is standing its ground.
https://www.pharmamanufacturing.com/articles/2018/puerto-rico-pharma-battered-but-unbroken/
Excerpt from within: PHARMA’S TROPICAL HUB
Puerto Rico may often be thought of as a picturesque getaway, but in the pharma world, it’s one of the globe’s most vibrant hubs of manufacturing.
The island became a leading destination for pharmaceutical companies after 1976, when Congress passed a tax code to make it more attractive for businesses. Called Section 936, the law exempted companies from paying corporate taxes on profits made in Puerto Rico, and was enacted to help bolster the island’s sputtering economy. It paid off. Soon, companies flocked to Puerto Rico to set up shop, including most of the biggest players in pharma: Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck, Mylan, Eli Lilly and Company, and many others.
Amgen built its flagship site in Puerto Rico, which is also the biggest pharma facility on the island. About 90 percent of the company’s products now pass through the sprawling complex with 1.7 million square feet of manufacturing space and about 2,000 employees.
In particular, Puerto Rico became the place to make high-profit blockbuster drugs. Today, 11 of the world’s top 20 drugs are manufactured in Puerto Rico, including Humira, Enbrel and Lyrica.
The problem with hydrocholoquine is that it is not a high-profit blockbuster.
re: “The problem with hydrocholoquine is that it is not a high-profit blockbuster.”
Understandable. That was then. Now is now. Do we all know what the term “retooling” means? I’m assuming the production facilities in PR are still operable; time to produce HCQ for awhile … order those raw, precursor chems now …
There is a vigorous campaign in Canada to deny the use of the chloroquine and azithromycin and zinc cocktail. Our public broadcaster has daily articles about the total lack of any evidence for its use and the horrific and often deadly side effects and conversely stories about Canadians with diseases like Lupus helped by chloroquine who will be left to suffer horribly when the supply runs because of stupid people demanding in unproven cure all. Not only has the public been subjected to this but medical practitioners have been warned in writing that any use of chloroquine and azithromycin and zinc for treating COVID19 is off label and could result in license discipline. I have no idea how many Canadians doctors are refusing to use this drug in an off label fashion due to the threats. As to why there is such a campaign, I am stymied unless our government wants us to be as sick as possible and have as many die as possible.
I’m in Canada also. I brought up hydroxochloroquine with my GP because I’d read about its use in a completely different condition which I have. He flipped out. Started lecturing me about all the awful side effects, how dangerous it was, could cause blindness and liver failure…and the capper…Trump is promoting it because he has a financial stake in its production. The medical community here has lost its mind over this.
Get a new doctor. I’m also Canadian and it seems like 90% of the canadian population suffers from TDS. While at the same time we have a foppish Mr Selfie fltting around the globe giving billions of taxpayer money away to get his name in the papers. Why can’t we get a PM that puts Canada first.
“Why can’t we get a PM that puts Canada first.”
Because there is no Canada. It’s a myth.
Not in the sense that there’s no place marked as ‘Canada’ on the map, but it’s not a nation, it’s a collection of many competing nations shoved together in the same country by the declining British Empire. One of the largest of which is a suburb of China.
You can put your nation first. You can’t put a multicultural mess of competing nations first.
Much the same, of course, applies to the US and UK. Or anywhere there’s been mass immigration. Diversity is our destruction.
But what about cultural enrichment, you are forgetting cultural enrichment !
You need to find a doctor who is not a brazen liar.
david read other news sources…..Trump has no financial stake in it at all
As little as $99, indirectly.
…it’s so dangerous it’s sold over the counter like aspirin
…no doctors, no prescriptions….just a little piece of paper with instructions
…in about eight different languages
You can buy it in Tijuana
Latitude-
You can buy any legal drug in Tijuana without a prescription. Prescriptions are not required in Mexico.
bet he wouldn’t think twice about giving you a script for a statin drug
“The medical community here has lost its mind over this.”
No actually it had no mind for some time, but YOU never bothered to check if it still had one.
There are probably ten drugs that are an effective treatment of lupus. One or another can substitute for chloroquine over the period it’s needed for the covid-19 outbreak.
I don’t doubt that a government guaranteed purchase program would stimulate a rapid ramp-up production of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.
My suspicion about why chloroquine is talked down, is that grievance culture has so permeated the culture that anything that impacts some small group is seen as oppression by the privileged majority. That corrosive attitude seems almost reflexive in the press.
If by public broadcaster you mean the CBC, I think we all know the reason — the “Virus in Chief” currently occupying the White House.
“As to why there is such a campaign, I am stymied unless our government wants us to be as sick as possible and have as many die as possible.”
How many people take too many vitamins? Generally, taking vitamins does not have much in terms of serious side effects. And of course being deficient in vitamins, as the name “vitamins” suggest they are vital, can cause serious health problems. But with vitamin D added to milk [or milk substitutes} , iodine {a mineral] added salt, common deficiency is “roughly” solved.
I sometimes take way too much vitamin C- but not vast amounts which could a be problem- I believe there is not particular problem taking a lot of C. And I am almost routinely and daily taking about 5 mg of Zinc, as Zinc is needed immune system and I don’t want to be deficient in Zinc while being in a global pandemic, the max recommended for male is 11 mg of Zinc on a daily basis- so 5 mg in a pill should be enough, maybe I will take 2 a day if I am particularly worried about getting the Chinese virus. But more than 40 mg is not recommended, though if I took 100 mg of zinc once it probably would not have any bad effects, and probably not even a 1000 mg over time period of few days. But probably many people have and may regularly taking more this and they imagine it’s good for them- and might be doing them harm in some way. But imagine evidence of any harm is anecdotal, rather than double blind and large and varied group study done for years.
Or generally it’s unlikely larger doses of zinc has a “public health benefit” and could have harm. But everyone seems to agree it’s needed for the human immune system.
But it seems if promoted the use of supplemental zinc as something the public needs to take {or they will DIE from Chinese flu] I would expect there would a shortage of Zinc supplements- even though many people are crazy about taking vitamins {and mineral Zinc} and there is vast supply of it.
You will have hoarding and some even people taking dangerous levels of Zinc.
As far as Pandemic and most humans are somewhere near the peak of it,
it seems the chance catching SARS-CoV-2 virus is high and chance of dying from it is low, and it’s even lower because you could already have it, and not know you have it- or had it and not know you had it {that might give you immunity from it].
It seems SARS-CoV-2 spreads very fast, and one reasons it appears to spread fast, is takes days to get symptoms, and some percent of people don’t develop any symptoms {and the degree that they could spread it is not known}.
But at near it’s peak, Europe has hundred of deaths per million. US is 62 per million at moment, and Canada is at 17 per million.
But hundreds per million is a low risk, but in a classification of groups, I would be in a higher risk group, or much high chance of dying from the Chinese Flu and even higher chance of at least getting seriously ill.
But I would say that we are still flying blind with this Chinese Flu and it seems we will be still partial blind, and trying to move towards getting out of having the economy shut down.
I think it’s the same as the masks, they said they don’t work so don’t bother at the same time all the front line medical staff are freaking out that they don’t have masks.
I think it all come down to our socialized system, there are only so many dollars to spread around so they don’t want us plebes using up the limited supply.
Every 65 year old who dies from CoVID saves the Canadian Treasury several million dollars. The average person uses 85% + of their lifetime Health Care costs in the last three years of life. They also save a bundle on unused Long Term Elder Care. The Canada Pension Plan pays only a one time $1500 Death Benefit for funeral expenses. The Treasury absorbs the entire balance of the lifetime contributions of the deceased, plus all the interest earned on them. When this disease hits the elderly so hard, one would be foolish to believe that the Government can be an honest arbiter of treatment options with such a massive conflict of interest.
Don’t believe everything you read or see on MSM. There are a large number of doctors in Canada that were educated in India or Pakistan. They are quite familiar with hydroxychloroquine and are prescribing it to patients.
Justin.
Do some online research about food supplement ionophores and then go to your local health food shop.
It’s interesting that *chloroquine is both an abominable toxic and a nice drug for regular or permanent use by some subgroups of the population.
Well, now I know! Great story as always, Willis. Thanks for the valuable info!
On PBS this morning, a doctor (didn’t catch his name) said he got the corona virus, tried chloroquine and azithromycin (sp?). They did not help, and later he read up on their effect on cardiovascular disease and rued taking them.
If hydroxychloroquine works because it is a zinc ionophore, then taking it without supplemental zinc may not work at all.
The doctor is still alive so how does he know it didn’t work?
The networks interview 100 doctors. 99 say it works. 1 says it doesn’t. That 1 is put on the air, the other 99 are never mentioned. This goes on day after day to the point where absolutely no one can trust the news anymore.
if thats what he took 1) he’s no doctor 2) thats not the complete cocktail …*(thus the #1)
The relatively under recognized relationship between malaria and pneumonia deserves a closer look. Maybe the curious, if casual, relationship between anti-malaria treatments and the current Corona virus will stimulate this work.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17154671/
Orange man bad.
Orange man like chloroquine.
Ergo, chloroquine bad, Q.E.D.
Sic transit ratio.
Interstng story willis
Did the natives have a natural immunity to Malaria or did they also have to take various malaria drugs?
Tonyb
I’ve read that people with Sickle Cell Anemia have some resistance to malaria, and that the genetic change which causes it has survived in Africa because of that property. I’ve never heard of it occurring outside Africa.
It may occure everywhere. But just in Africas malaria region, is an evolutoinary advantage and was able to spread there.
No, that is not what happened. If that were true then that defective gene would be found in most peoples of the tropics, and it isn’t. And, it would manifest as the Sickle Cell Disease in people of other tropical descents who emigrated outside the tropics. In North America the only people to my knowledge who carry the gene, fall ill with, or die from Sickle Cell Disease is black people of African descent.
Actually, sickle cell anemias *are* found throughout *all* malaria endemic areas, which prior to the last half of the 20th century, was much of the whole world. There are *more* forms of sickle cell hemoglobins than just hemoglobin S. I want to say for SW Asia, the predominant form is C. For SE Asia, the predominant form is E. NB that persistent hemoglobin F (the fetal form) is somewhat protective, as well. For the Americas, it is S due to importing sub-Saharan Africans.
Sickle cell anemia does occur in other malarial areas.
Since it kills homozygotic carriers the frequency is a balance between mutation rate, malarial deaths and anemia deaths.
Sickle cell anaemia is an advantage for those with 1 copy of the gene if they live in a malaria region. If 2 people, both heterozygous for SCA have children, on average, 1/4 will lack the gene, 2/4 will be heterozygous like the parents, and the 4th will be homozygous for SCA with very little chance of survival without modern medicine – even then considerable disability. What this says is that malaria resistance is so much of an advantage that you get ahead even if you lose 1/4 of your children just from this. Check out WIKI on recessive genes.
There are a number of other anaemias that confer malaria resistance around the Mediteranian region. Again they are a dissadvantage for homozygotes. These traits also show how bad malaria is for everyone, and those who have either treatment or prophyaxis have a big advantage over the rest.
Thanks Fran for the expansion !
Cheers !
I spend 1,5 years living in Gabon and i took my malaria pills religiously with no side effects.
Once I asked the lady that cleaned my room if she had any children?
Yes she said proudly, 5!
2 living and 3 dead from malaria when they were infants.
That was a real ‘welcome to the real world’ moment for me (i was fresh out of university at the time).
Most people from the ‘western’ world have no concept of the suffering the people in the developing world go through on a daily basis.
The damage done by western do-gooders by banning/restricting insecticides, fertilizers, fossil fuels and other amenities which could help untold numbers of ordinary people overcoming poverty and disease is the greatest injustice of the modern age. At least in my opinion.
So to answer tonyb’s question, no the native people don’t take various malaria drugs, they get sick and many die.
Hopefully some good will come out of this corona crisis and the healthcare systems will get some much needed (global) attention and governments stop wasting money on non-existant problems.
All the best stay safe and happy in these troubeling times,
Willem
HYPOTHESIS: RADICAL GREENS ARE THE GREAT KILLERS OF OUR AGE
By Allan M.R. MacRae, B.A.Sc., M.Eng., April 14, 2019
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/04/14/hypothesis-radical-greens-are-the-great-killers-of-our-age/
A person by the name of Norman Borlaug would approve, if here were still alive.
Not sure we will ever hear of the results of chloroquine for a defense for “rona”. Does not seem that it should be so political. Great story as always.
The NHS in the UK are conducting clinical trials of chloroquine right now:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/chloroquine-and-hydroxychloroquine-not-licensed-for-coronavirus-covid-19-treatment
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/11/nhs-hospitals-trial-anti-malaria-drug-endorsed-donald-trump/
This is not being ignored..
Willis, is there any evidence that quinine and its cousins work differently in different people?
I have an amazing treatment/cure for my chronic condition (I won’t go into the details because it would immediately identify me). It doesn’t seem to work for everybody though. The Chinese members of the family tell me it’s because I have a cool body type and the ones it doesn’t work for have a hot body type.
The reason for my question to you is just part of building up something like a knowledge base so I can make up my mind on the body type ‘thing’.
Can I add, that I think this comment from “LOL@Klimate Katastrophe Kooks ” a few days ago belongs in this thread? (I cannot vouch for its accuracy, but I offer it as further ‘food for thought’.)
———————
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/04/08/coronavirus-wuhan-coronavirus-guest-post-four/#comment-2959870
LOL@Klimate Katastrophe Kooks April 8, 2020 at 11:36 pm
Quinine has a half-life in the body of ~18 hours, so after 5 or so days, it’s below testable levels. It only imparts a prophylactic effect when present in sufficient levels in the body.
I started by pre-dosing with 83 mg / day of quinine, then increased that to 110 mg / day. I’ve been exposed by a guy at work coughing all day as I worked with him (he thought it was just a cold… I want to catch the colds, so I can get over them quickly, so I didn’t mind the coughing). We now have three people at work out with Covid. I’ve been trying to catch Covid, so I could get it done and over with and gain immunity, but the worst symptoms I had was a slight tickle in my throat and a feeling of general tiredness for a day, then it was gone.
I’m no young buck, I rarely get enough sleep, I slug down 1 L per day of Mountain Dew, I’ve chewed tobacco since 4th grade (I’m a farm boy)… about the only things I do which are good for my health is eat healthy food, take a daily multivitamin, and work a physically demanding job. I’m not obese (190 pounds, 6’1″), my job keeps me pretty muscular. I obviously don’t have diabetes nor any other health maladies (except for nerve damage in my feet from walking too much in steel-toed boots while carrying heavy equipment in a multi-million square foot building, so the soles of my feet always tingle… but that’s another (long) story about a shite-head boss who increased our work load (with make-work) for no good reason and with no net effect, all to ‘get back at’ a supervisor he didn’t like… that boss is now gone… I swear, I had nothing to do with his being fired). 😉
Anyway, here’s my research…
Quinine was used in India in the form of a drink known as Indian tonic water to treat / prevent malaria. The British, colonizing India at the time, added gin, giving us gin and tonic.
Chloroquine is an amine acidotropic form of quinine that was synthesized in Germany by Bayer in 1934 and emerged approximately 70 years ago as an effective substitute for natural quinine [4]. Natural quinine was so cheap that mass production wasn’t sufficiently profitable until after 1941.
By the 1930s Dutch plantations in Java were producing 22 million pounds of cinchona bark, or 97% of the world’s quinine production. When Japan invaded Java in 1941, natural quinine supplies dried up, necessitating mass production of synthetic derivatives. [8]
Chloroquine *is* quinine produced synthetically and altered slightly to produce a new molecule for patenting purposes. The end product in the body is still quinine. Newer molecules (such as hydroxychloroquine) decrease toxicity due to rapid absorption by making the molecule harder for the body to break down, allowing longer dosage schedules.
Quinine is eliminated mainly by hepatic metabolism [1]. Seven metabolites have been identified with 3-hydroxyquinine being the major metabolite [1]. Other majority metabolites are (10R)-10,11-dihydroxyquinine and (10S)-10,11-dihydroxyquinine [2].
Quinine acts against malaria by targeting its purine nucleoside phosphorylase enzyme (PfPNP) [3], but it has other effects in the body which act against coronavirus.
Namely, it targets angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) [4], interfering with sialic acid biosynthesis [4]. SARS, MERS and Covid-19 use sialic acid moieties as receptors, so quinine (and its synthetic counterparts) prevent viral attachment to cell receptors.
Hydroxychloroquine / Chloroquine / quinine can also act on the immune system through cell signalling and regulation of pro-inflammatory cytokines. [4]
It also acts to increase zinc uptake, which has anti-viral effects. Quinine used to be sold, prior to the FDA banning it for this use, as a treatment for leg cramps. The mechanism of action is increased uptake of zinc, calcium and magnesium by reducing hepatic metabolism [10]. Now it is recommended to directly ingest zinc, calcium and magnesium for leg cramps rather than taking quinine. [9]
This may be why people infected with Covid-19 experience a loss of the sense of taste (and smell, since the two senses are intricately connected) [11][12]. They become zinc deficient.
It generally takes 4 to 5 days to completely flush quinine from the body [5]. The consumption of 10 oz. of tonic water can result in a quinine positive urine sample for a period of up to 96 hours (4 days) after intake. [5] Approximately 20% of quinine is excreted unmetabolized [6]. It has a half-life of approximately 18 hours [6].
Quinine in tonic water in the US is limited to 83 mg / liter [7].
Thus, we can make a simple linear extrapolation, assuming a half-life of 18 hours and ingestion of 83 mg / day. This means that after 24 hours, approximately 27.67% of the amount from the prior day remains in the system. Thus it accumulates until the body is excreting as much as is ingested. That occurs after approximately 5 days, when the dosage varies between 124.5 mg immediately after ingestion to 41.5 mg immediately prior to the next ingestion.
Is that enough to have a prophylactic effect?
Well, the National Institutes of Health state that chloroquine is “a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection” [13] and since SARS binds to the same cellular receptors as Covid-19, and since chloroquine is a synthetic version of quinine, it would appear that it should work.
Pretreatment with 0.1, 1, and 10 μM chloroquine reduced infectivity by 28%, 53%, and 100%, respectively. [13]
The EC90 value of chloroquine against the 2019-nCoV in Vero E6 cells was 6.90 μM, which can be clinically achievable as demonstrated in the plasma of rheumatoid arthritis patients who received 500 mg administration. [14]
Interpolating the dosage of 500 mg to 6.9 μM concentration, for a dosage of 124.5 mg daily (83 mg from tonic water, the remainder being that remaining in the body from prior dosages), that should give a concentration of ~1.71 μM, reducing infectivity by ~60% immediately after ingestion of 1 L of Indian tonic water, decreasing over the next 24 hours to ~.47 μM, with a reduced infectivity of ~40%, per [13].
That would be more effective at ‘flattening the curve’ than any measures taken thus far. Covid19 has a R0 of ~2.2… so we could conceivably reduce that (assuming an average reduced infectivity of 50%) to ~1.1, effectively completely ‘flattening the curve’.
Given that no doctor is going to give you chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic measure, using Indian tonic water containing quinine to reduce infectivity would seem to be a prudent preventative measure.
The wrap-up: It would appear that quinine interferes with sialic acid biosynthesis, which the Covid19 virus takes advantage of to attach to cell receptors. If the virus has a more difficult time attaching to cells, that allows the body to clear the virus without having to simultaneously deal with a rapidly-spreading infection.
[1] https://www.drugs.com/npp/quinine.html
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2710.2007.00788.x
[3] https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/01/22/quinines-target
[4] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920300881
[5] https://friendslab.com/quinine-use-and-detection/
[6] https://www.drugbank.ca/drugs/DB00468
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_water
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinine
[9] https://healthfully.com/287838-leg-cramps-magnesium-calcium.html
[10] https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-19765/cal-mag-zinc-ii-oral/details/list-interaction-details/dmid-455/dmtitle-aluminum-and-magnesium-antacids-quinidine-quinine/intrtype-drug
[11] https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/131/2/305/4687001
[12] https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-symptoms-loss-of-smell-taste-covid-19-anosmia-hyposmia-2020-3?op=1
[13] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/
[14] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0
My not-so-patented technique for getting over pretty much any cold or flu quickly:
1) Antihistamine if your nose is running… it works just as well for colds and flu as it does for allergies. For mild colds, it removes nearly all of the symptoms for me. You’ll have to experiment to see which antihistamine works best for you… Loratadine 10mg / day works wonders for me.
2) Hot showers… and I mean hot… if you can stand under the water without dodging around to prevent the water stinging you, it’s not hot enough. Breathe deeply, that water vapor loosens any mucus in your lungs, allowing you to cough it out more easily.
3) 4 thick blankets… this takes a bit of experience to get right. The first few times, you can easily overheat yourself. When going to sleep, lift your feet to tuck the blankets under them, then roll left and right to tuck the blankets under your left and right sides, then cover your head and sleep in your little cocoon. Regulate your temperature (and allow enough oxygen in to breathe) by peeling back the top 3 blankets to about chest level, adjust their height if you get too hot or cold, or if you need more oxygen. Try to maintain ~104 F body temperature. Once you’ve done it a few times, you’ll know where to position the blankets. The first few times, though, use an oral thermometer and monitor your temperature. You’re going to sweat a lot… a plastic liner on your mattress is recommended.
4) This is a new addition for coronavirus infections… quinine in the form of tonic water. 2 L per day for the first 4 days (loading stage), then 1 L per day after that (maintenance stage). Right now I’m doing 1 L per day, along with a 12 ounce can (because my wife found some Trader Joe’s lime-flavored tonic water in 12 oz. cans and bought it to try, and no one else wants to drink it… I hate lime, it tastes vile to me, but I slug it down in a couple drinks to avoid the bad taste) as a prophylactic measure against WuFlu.
5) Zinc and vitamin C supplementation. Don’t take more than the RDA for zinc. If you start getting diarrhea, you’re taking too much vitamin C… that starts happening for me at around 10 grams (10,000 mg) per day, so I generally take 4,000 mg / day when a cold or flu is in the incipient stage. Costco has a really tasty chewable vitamin C tablet (Kirkland Signature Chewable Vitamin C, 500 mg).
6) If you start getting lung congestion, sleep with your head lower than your feet, to allow gravity to assist in moving the mucus out of your lungs. An inversion table works wonders set at 45 degrees or steeper, but you have to get used to the blood rushing to your head. Even just putting 4×4 wood blocks under the foot-end of your bed will help a bit. If your nose is running, this’ll make it run even more, so the antihistamine is a necessity.
Most colds I’m over and done with in less than 3 days… the last flu I caught was brutal, I had lung congestion so bad that I was short of breath, but I got over it in 3 days. It hit me like a load of bricks… one minute I felt fine, a half hour later I felt terrible, with alternating hot and cold flashes. I finished the work day, went home, dosed up on vitamins and water (this was before I started using tonic water), and went to sleep for two days. Woke up with lung congestion, took a hot shower, coughed out huge amounts of phlegm, ate some food, dosed up on vitamins and water again, went back to sleep, and was back to work the next day feeling fine.
Amazing comment. This could be a post. Thank you.
What, no chicken soup? 😉 That stuff works miracles. 🙂
I would add a note that because they regulate how much quinine is in the tonic water, I have a sodastream and use their tonic syrup and just mix it strong then drink with orange juice
Added bonus as my girls hate carbonated beverages I just mix theirs with tap water
Lots of quinine for all and my canadian health care system can go pound sand
Shhh Pat !
Don’t say it too loud. Justin Trudeau might hear you.
He won’t understand … but he might hear.
A new paper says to take 75-100mg od zinc, well above the RDA- but only if you have symptoms:
The Zinc supplements makes sense. as it the Zinc that stops the covid virus from connecting to the molecule in our cells to replicate.
Zinc in our cells stops covid from reproducing.
The Chloroquine is only required to get the Zinc into the cell.
Another option is just take more Zinc supplement.
Question: Maybe we are all Zinc deficient?
Chloroquine is a Zinc Ionosphere that allows a small amount of the positive zinc ion (Z+2) into our cells which are negative polarity. The positive Zinc ion stops the covid virus from replicating.
It has been proven in vitro that the Zinc when it enters the cell (all of cells require Zinc and we are Zinc deficient) it make the ACU-2 molecule which the covid must connect to positive.
That stops the covid virus from replicating.
So that is the mechanism. We only need Chloroquine to get zinc into the cells….
A small amount of Chloroquine gets the required amount of Zinc into our cells is…
Chloroquine —–30 mg/day
Zinc—————30 mg/day
… that has been shown to stop the covid virus from replicating,
If low dosage Chloroquine is tolerable for say a year this would provide protection for until there is vaccine other solution.
High dosages of Chloroquine are dangerous and purposeless.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182877/pdf/pone.0109180.pdf
This is more on the Chloroquine and Zinc question.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4182877/pdf/pone.0109180.pdf
One of the now recognised symptoms of COVID-19 infection is a loss of sense of taste and smell.
This is curious because from the online website What is Zinc? We find that :
It may be that the symptom of loss of smell and taste with COVID -19 infection arises because all of the Zinc inside the infected cells in the nostrils and taste buds has been used up by these cells in fighting the viral infection.
Great stuff Jim. I suggest one addition. Anecdotally, North Atlantic fisherman (rough waters) tend to not get colds or the flu and their landlubber families do. This gave rise to a saltwater nasal spray, first out of Sweden, if I recall, however I use a more drastic cheaper method. As soon as I feel a tickle in my throat and other subtle beginnings, I make a cup of warm water with ~1/3 a tsp of salt – should not “burn” the nostrils. I snuff this sharply up my nose from a puddle in the palm of my hand and repeat until the cup is empty.
Most of the water comes out your mouth but a small bit goes down your throat. You blow your nose several times when you are finished. Your sinuses all get partially flooded too and sometimes an hour or two afterwards, you feel a warm trick into your nose as the sinuses decide to drain. You even feel a saltiness in the eyes, probably from the back up of the “tear drain”.
This you do a couple of times the first day day and once the following morning. Continue longer if you wish. On some occasions I get up in the night for a repeat. Since these bugs get started in your mucous membranes this first aid may kill them right off, or at least let your natural defences get a head start. The Mountain Dew may have a synergistic effect, too!
I have been drinking tonic for a couple of weeks and I drink a bottle of “Ensure^TM, the regular. It carries 40% of daily disage of zinc and all the vitamins and minerals.
Cheers all and good health, Gary
re: “This gave rise to a saltwater nasal spray”
My sister uses a Nettie pot; I have not tried that and am hesitant to do so (Ima pain-fearing chicken).
I did get her to start using Cayenne Pepper, which for me, in part, has helped ward off debilitating sore throats for ~25 years now.
Jim, my daughter introduced me to the big slug of tabasco and a deep, hot as you can bear, bath immediately and the sweat you get probably tops up the tubwater a few mm. This recipe she got from a Chinese foreign student 30yrs ago.
My mother used to slap a mustard plaster on our chests and that put out sweat and snot I’ll tell you. There were no antibiotics when I was a young schoolboy and l had friends quarantined for 40 days (from the French for 40 – quarante) with their families. Neighbors dropped off boxes of groceries on the front step for them.
This quarantining self could have been better worked out once they had stats that the elderly and people with other health issues could have been quarantined and the rest allowed to work. Add the HCQ and most of the problems probably would have evaporated. Oh well 20-20 hindsight and all that.
Once this is all over, I’m going to put together a little health kit. Another thing that should be done is for governments to get China to regulate their ‘wet’ food markets and stop small producers from raising the menagerie of creatures they do inside their own small homes. Most of the major cross-over viruses seem to come from China.
“If low dosage Chloroquine is tolerable for say a year this would provide protection for until there is vaccine other solution.”
There is never going to be a vaccine. Thats a fantasy and like vaccinating against the common cold.
The British gin is a bastardised copy of the old Flemish genever – which is still much nicer.
Never really liked gin – it tastes like an industrial solvent.
Phil,
There are now many dozens [possibly a couple of hundred?!] different artisan gins being made in the UK. All differ a bit in their herbs, I gather.
But gin is now fashionable – until we were held hostage by the Wu Flu from China.
Auto – note, I don’t blame Poisoner Putin for this one.
Chloroquinine has a half-life of 22 days, considerably longer than quinine’s half-life of 14 hours.
I bought a half dozen 12 packs of cans of Tonic Water over the last two weeks. Each can contains 20 mg. of quinine hydrochloride. I read somewhere that’s only about a third to half the level it used to have in the old days. What I don’t know is … and likely know one knows yet, …
A) is it of any benefit against CoVID ?
B) if it is does it need to be mixed with gin to work ?
I would just run with option B), but in the same dosage as Willis took his curative potion, that is – 90 says worth of g+t in 3 days.
Then you just won’t care if it cures the Wuflu or not.
Cheers!
If God is kind he put Zn in gin!
I should have added a smiley face at the end of option B). I was joking about.
It contains a ton more sugar. If you try dosing yourself with that I suspect that you won’t die of covid-19, but of diabetes.
When I first heard about this, I orders a three month supply of chloroquinine from my usual source in India ($9 worth!!). But I was too late. Planes stopped flying and India banned its export, so eventually they gave up and refunded my money.
BTW, surprise, surprise, it seems that the companies that assemble the raw ingredients into pills in the US have now suddenly bumped up the price by several hundred percent.
That should be a hanging offence.
If not gin… then snake oil?
Rum!
Vodka also works with tonic. Gin is the default.
The gin is to make the medicine go down pleasantly and was a British colonial concoction that became a nice summer drink around the world.
To get an effective dose of quinine you’d need to drink about 56 gallons of tonic water per day
That’s also going to be a lot of gin
Quite wrong, that’s all that used to be available and Eurpean coloniaists actually learned about in Africa or India, I’ve forgotten which. It works for malaria, that is certain (modern meds are more effective and easier to stomach, but based on the same chemistry).
Why on earth do people live in areas with malaria?
That was not a fun story.
Would have been a lot less harrowing if the part that went, “After I’d been there maybe three years, I thought ‘I don’t want to take this forever. If I get malaria, I’ll cure it, that’s what medicine is for’. So after having taken well over 100 doses of chloroquine, I gave it up,” hadn’t happened.
Perhaps, James, and perhaps not. I had several considerations.
First, I don’t like taking any such very strong drug long-term.
Second, in addition to prophylaxis, chloroquine was used there for treatment. I figured if I got malaria while taking chloroquine, and some folks did, if I were taking chloroquine to prevent the disease, whatever strain I’d get wouldn’t be cured by chloroquine.
Third, I started reading that long-term use (years to decades) could damage your eyes.
Overall, I figured that occasional chills and fever, with drugs to cure them, was the better path.
w.
Malaria has a long history of existing just about everywhere from pole to pole.
Because we can.
We are humans and can live anywhere, provided of course the global temperature doesn’t change by more than 0.1 degrees because that would kill us all stone dead.
Why on earth do people live in areas with malaria?
≠========
Until we put in place public health and sprayed with DDT, malaria used to be in almost every country.
If I remember correctly, one of Mussolini’s much-touted success stories was ending malaria in Rome by draining the swamps outside the city.
I’m surprised the left haven’t vilified him post-mortem for destroying natural wetlands.
Save the malarial mosquito!
Used to be common in the UK – centuries ago and went by the name of the Ague. Seems that the Little Ice Age brought an end to it in the UK as it killed off most / all of the mosquitoes that carried it.
Oliver Cromwell suffered from malaria and he lived well inside the Little Ice Age. Besides one of the worst places for mosquito infestations is the Arctic tundra during the summer. If mosquitoes can survive the Arctic winters they wouldn’t have been worried by the LIA.
The way I heard it was that the species of mosquito that carried malaria in the UK prefers cattle blood to human, so that when cattle raising became more common the transmission cycle got broken. Add to this that the marshes got drained to make farmland reduced breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Think I read about in Lamb’s book on climate history.
Until DDT huge tracts of the USA and the Mediterranean were infested by Malaria.
DDT knocked out the populations in Europe and the Americas before it was banned, leaving pools in Asia and Africa.
Louisiana was, I believe, pretty bad…
“Why on earth do people live in areas with malaria?”
Up to about 1850 that was “almost eveywhere except the Arctic”. The largest malarial epidemic ever was in the 1920’s in Siberia.
Thank you all for the replies. This is an awesome sight.
Nothing to lose, everything to gain, and Fauci is both mad and destructive to argue against it.
Didn’t Trump make the phrase “You’re fired” sort of a personal tag line?
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer…until you give him enough rope to hang himself.
Here in the US there is a concerted effort by the Deep State and main stream media to delay as log as possible the use of Hydroxychloroquine! Universally they respond that the drug is not tested yet. No one reporter asked if there is any evidence that it worked or asked, since the side effects are mostly mild, why it is not being tried more often. By the time the proper trials are over the virus will have run its course.
Now a cynical person like myself would think that the US left WANTS to see as many deaths as possible. I.e. never let a good crisis go to waste.
Cynical? Is it not the U.S. Left’s ideology that results in fewer potential human lives from even existing?
People are being entirely too forgiving of Fauci. The data in favor of HQ is too detailed now to avoid the obvious reality that this treatment is successful for the Wuhan.
You were probably not infected with P. falciparum as this is frequently fatal due to cerebral occlusions. From what I have heard, the other three only make you wish you were dead, and your description of your illness fits that!
I had the good fortune of working with William Trager when he developed the technique of cultivating blood stages of P. falciparum in vivo. That has certainly helped in the study of drugs against this disease.
Hopefully what we are seeing with chloroquine and hydroxy chloroquine may lead to better treatment of these viral infections as well.
Actually, I did have falciparum, twice. Once was the relapse. P. falciparum is the recurring one.
w.
Willis,
you always bring back memories for me, we spent four years in the Zambian copperbelt, Malaria, Yellow fever and Sleeping sickness to name just a few, fortunately either my immune system, which was only just over 25 years old did a good job or I was never bitten by an infected mosquito, then there was the putzi fly, Ughh, revolting insect, we always made sure any clothes dried outside, which they always were, had been ironed well to kill off any eggs laid in the seams.
I did come down with some form of severe hepatic infection that laid me low for three months, jaundiced with yellow eyeballs, just the thought of eating anything greasy or drinking alcohol would make me nauseous, the cause was never ever diagnosed, even with significant testing over the years since, however no apparent long lasting health effects as so far I’ve made my three score and ten plus some. I’ve learned to listen to my body ever since that episode.
Willis: Great article and story. Well worth the read… a full course in a short story!
I have been telling people that quinine does not work like hydroxychloroquine because quinine is not an ionophore. Am I wrong about that? Also, that drinking tonic water has a very low amount of quinine and would not be enough to even help malaria… as well that malaria today is resistant to quinine anyway.
If you did not need extra zinc at the cellular level , then it would not matter if it were not a zinc ionophore. Any other therapeutic effect would still be present.
Glutathione level is very important. That’s why zinc is critical.
Yes farmerbraun: Glutathione is important, which requires glutamine, an amino acid I supplement when under stress. But my question was whether or not quinine is an ionophore and would act like hydroxychloroquine. I asked because people are suggesting tonic water with quinine will do what hydroxychloriquine does. I think they are not similar in that respect.
I really hate it when “Scientists” use the statement that there are no accepted studies that … , as a way of claiming that the opposite is true, when in fact there have been no studies at all.
That’s the case with hydroxychloroquine, no properly conducted studies have been completed, hence they don’t know either way, yet many are using this to claim it doesn’t work.
However a statistical analysis of co-morbidities of serious covid patients should quickly and authoritatively provide strong evidence that some medications for chronic diseases that are seriously underrepresented in serious Covid-19 patients seem to stave off the worst effects of the virus. There is a claim that lupus is underrepresented which would point to hydroxychloroquine being effective, but I haven’t seen the evidence of this underrepresentation.
That’s all we need, an effective treatment against the worst effects, we don’t need a vaccine.
Willis: Great article and story. Well worth the read… a full course in a short story!
I have been telling people that quinine does not work like hydroxychloroquine because quinine is not an ionophore. Am I wrong about that? Also, that drinking tonic water has a very low amount of quinine and would not be enough to even help malaria… as well that malaria today is resistant to quinine anyway. Posted again because error message.
Safe for me, but for thee?
““To our utter surprise, both HCQ and CQ when combined with metformin resulted in a surprising death rate in 30-40% of mice. In contrast, there were no deaths in the single treatment groups,” said the authors.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/victoriaforster/2020/04/05/researchers-warn-that-covid-19-treatment-touted-by-trump-may-be-toxic-when-combined-with-diabetes-drug/#d72630d55f82
Nicholas McGinley,
Check out this video about Diabetes Drugs and treatment of COVID-19 with hydroxychloroquine.
It is by a real doctor that deals with real people.
https://youtu.be/D6td4Clc_DA
So, I’m guessing no one with diabetes ever went to Africa or took malaria drugs as prophylaxis? Perhaps they did, but no one ever looked into the death rate of diabetics falling ill prior to their trips to malaria prone hotspots.
I took chloroquine every week for 3 years in the early 60s in Penang. As did my whole family. None of us ever suffered side effects.
“What are the dangers associated with chloroquine?
Doyon: Chloroquine has been used for the management of malaria for decades. Both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have some usefulness in the management of certain inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. It must be emphasized that chloroquine is a very toxic medication, and when you ingest too much of it you will develop symptoms including loss of hearing, loss of vision, and potentially cardiac arrhythmias. Chloroquine is a prescription product and should always be taken under medical supervision.
Zhong: A previous study has shown chloroquine can exacerbate acetaminophen-induced liver injury in mice due to its ability to inhibit autophagy and mitochondria function. Whether hydroxylchloroquine can make liver damage worse in combinational use with acetaminophen is unknown. What are the up-limited doses of acetaminophen and hydroxylchloroquine for COVID-19 patients? Unknown. The knowledge is so urgently important for tens thousands of people who are suffering COVID-19 in the US and needs to be addressed quickly.”
https://today.uconn.edu/2020/03/qa-ibuprofen-chloroquine-covid-19/#
For those not convinced that HCQ is benign, with not significant side-effects, as attested by laymen, I suggest reading the following:
https://www.drugs.com/mmx/hydroxychloroquine-sulfate.html
Note especially, “Doses of chloroquine phosphate as small as 0.75 to 1 gram in children, and 2.25 to 3 grams in adults, may be fatal. It is assumed that hydroxychloroquine is equally toxic.” And, “Since there is no specific antidote, treatment of hydroxychloroquine overdose should be symptomatic and supportive …”
re: “Doses of chloroquine phosphate as small as 0.75 to 1 gram in children, and 2.25 to 3 grams in adults, may be fatal.”
Strawman; I have not seen recommended dosage levels that extreme by anyone.
Who was ever talking doses measured in GRAMS ?
The highest I saw here was I think 800 mg … milligrams.
My twofer cans of Tonic Water daily is 40 mg … milligrams.
Jim & sendergreen
“…, my mad mate Mike told me that when you feel malaria coming on, and you can definitely can feel it coming on, to take three weekly doses at once (1500 mg, or 900 mg of base), [1.5 grams!] then the same thing 24 hours later, then the same thing on the third day.”
— Eschenbach
1.5 grams is dangerously close to the toxicity threshold, which almost certainly varies with individual sensitivities, and does vary with the weight of the person taking it. LD50, which is the level at which 50% of test subjects die, is given as milligrams toxin/kilogram of body-weight. That is, what a 100 kg man may survive will probably kill a 50 kg woman or child. How many laymen realize that? Would they be tempted to give their sick child the same dose recommended for an adult if they had a bottle of HCQ?
“The highest I saw here was I think 800 mg.” = 0.80 grams > 0.75 grams
Unfortunately, in our culture, there is an attitude that if a little bit is good, a lot is better.
I have not seen anything in the news about how much the two people took of the aquarium cleaner (chloroquine phosphate), but the death of the husband and severe illness of the wife suggests in the “grams” range.
People in India have been drinking cow urine, many people have died in the Middle-east from drinking methanol, and two are known to have died from chloroquine in the US. This all strikes me as being only slightly removed from believing that a rabbit’s-foot charm will bring good luck, despite it obviously having brought the rabbit bad luck. There is a reason that civilized people quit using witch doctors and demanded that physicians use medications that have been shown, by controlled experiment, to actually work. The natural recovery rate for COVID-19 is so high, and often so rapid, that the ‘lives saved’ by HCQ can be explained easily by the assumption that the people would have recovered without the HCQ. The fact that HCQ apparently doesn’t work on those severely ill can be explained by the fact that these are people who didn’t recover naturally; hence, giving them an ineffective treatment will not work.
Clyde copies :
“my mad mate Mike told me that when you feel malaria coming on, and you can definitely can feel it coming on, to take three weekly doses at once (1500 mg, or 900 mg of base), [1.5 grams!] then the same thing 24 hours later, then the same thing on the third day.”
So not a clinical or prescribed dose but one from … Dr. Mad Mike ?
A graduate of the Philosophy Department of the University of Woolamaloo. We’ll just call him “Bruce”
Clyde, here is the story of the second US doctor to become infected.
45 years old, “In 21 years on the job, almost all at EvergreenHealth, he said he had taken only five sick days.”
“His colleagues at the hospital put him on the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, whose effectiveness for the coronavirus is still unknown, but Dr. Padgett’s condition continued to worsen.
By March 16, his heart was struggling, his kidneys were failing and his lungs were not providing enough oxygen to his body. The levels became so dire that he was on the verge of injuring his brain through oxygen starvation.
Dr. Padgett’s team at EvergreenHealth decided to transfer him to cardiac specialists at Swedish Health Services in Seattle. Dr. Matt Hartman, a cardiologist there, said it was clear that Dr. Padgett’s condition was rapidly worsening and that if they did not do something, he would not survive.
“We didn’t know if this was someone who was just going to die no matter what we do,” he said. “We think with his age, and the fact that there’s no other major comorbidity or problem, that we should at least give it a try.”
The team decided to hook Dr. Padgett up to a machine known as an ECMO that could essentially serve as both an artificial heart and lung, taking his blood out of his body, oxygenating it and returning it to him. While such procedures are most often done in the surgery suites, in this case it was all done in the intensive care unit, to prevent the spread of the coronavirus elsewhere in the hospital.
“We brought the operating room to him,” said Dr. Samuel Youssef, a cardiac surgeon at Swedish.
The team also began consulting with oncologists. Indicators of inflammation in Dr. Padgett’s body were “astonishingly high,” suggesting that he was potentially dealing with a “cytokine storm,” a dangerous phenomenon in which the immune systems of otherwise healthy people overreact in fighting the coronavirus.
News to stay informed. Advice to stay safe.
Click here for complete coronavirus coverage from Microsoft News
The doctors administered the drug tocilizumab, often used for cancer patients who can have similar immune system reactions. They added high-dose vitamin C after seeing reports that it might be beneficial. These experimental treatments had also been tried on another patient, a 33-year-old woman, with some success.
Over that week in mid-March, there were signs of improvement. As his inflammation numbers came down and his lungs started to provide more oxygen, the team began scaling back the ECMO machine, until they finally removed it on March 23.”
It is harrowing, and an important read.
““It goes from kind of initially feeling like this was a flulike illness where the vulnerable are the ones that are going to get sick, and now understanding that the vulnerable are getting sick and there’s going to be some young, healthy people that get cut down with this,” he said. “That’s the scary part. I think of my colleagues still on the front lines. That’s what I fear for them.”
Dr. Padgett said he was still working to recover physically and mentally. He worried now about whether he would regain full cognitive function, noting moments of memory and attention problems””
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/he-was-a-doctor-who-never-got-sick-then-the-coronavirus-nearly-killed-him/ar-BB12zNAs?ocid=msedgntp
“Doses of chloroquine phosphate as small as 0.75 to 1 gram in children, and 2.25 to 3 grams in adults, may be fatal. It is assumed that hydroxychloroquine is equally toxic.”
Bad assumption. Different drugs. Different chemistry. Chloroquine phosphate is used as a fishtank cleaner. Hydrosychloroquine is an over-the-counter drug in most places.
Pauligon
You are claiming to be more of an authority than those who run the drugs.com website? They certainly provide more detailed information than you do, and also provide citations, which you don’t.
While chloroquine phosphate is used as an aquarium cleaner, that is not its only use. Your claim is like saying that because antibiotics are given to hogs, antibiotics should not be used by humans.
Phosphate toxicity: new insights into an old problem
Iamknot Amedic — That is obvious!
The article you linked to is basically about dietary phosphate intake, and does not speak to the the toxicity of of chloroquine phosphate. Indeed, the summary says, “Of relevance, phosphate toxicity induced by excessive exogenous phosphate administration can be fatal …. Although the lethal dose of phosphate in humans is unknown, …” He is talking about calcium phosphate, the mineral apatite, principally. Although, sodium phosphate enemas are referred to. The closest that the phosphate ion comes to being independent is in phosphoric acid, used in flavored drinks. The other forms of phosphate, bound to a metallic cation, are less soluble and vary in their individual toxicities.
In a Frank and Ernest cartoon one asks the other, “If we are at the top of the food chain, how do you explain mosquitos?”
re: ” how do you explain mosquitos”
Embrace the term “parasite”.
Neither Frank nor Ernest apparently realize that mosquitoes don’t eat people.
“Toronto, Apr 09: The drugs chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, being used to treat and prevent COVID-19 despite weak evidence for their effectiveness, may have adverse side effects on patients like irregular heartbeats and reduced blood glucose levels, a new study says.”
https://in.news.yahoo.com/hydroxychloroquine-drug-may-lead-irregular-113618165.html
And it would have the same adverse effects on those people with malaria.
I’m getting daily low doses with Tonic Water. It’s sugar-ed like a coke so lowering blood sugar levels isn’t a concern.
Heart Arrhythmia? Again low dose, and the key … I have four daughters and haven’t slept since 1987. : )
Not scared yet.
I believe it’s the azithromycin which has potential coronary side-effects. But other similar drugs have been used to replace it in this combination and seem to work as well.
The media nonsense is all just Project Fear.
“I am a medicinal chemist who specializes in discovery and development of antiviral drugs, and I have been actively working on coronaviruses for seven years.
However, because I am a scientist and I deal in facts and evidence-based medicine, I am concerned about the sweeping statements the president has been making regarding the use of chloroquine or the closely related hydroxychloroquine, both antimalarial drugs, as cures for COVID-19. So let’s examine the facts.”
https://www.minnpost.com/other-nonprofit-media/2020/03/could-chloroquine-treat-coronavirus-five-questions-answered-about-a-promising-problematic-and-unproven-use-for-an-antimalarial-drug/
But, he’s not a clinician.
cli·ni·cian /kləˈniSHən/
noun
a doctor having direct contact with and responsibility for patients, rather than one involved with theoretical or laboratory studies.
And neither am I.
Thank you for pointing that out.
No one should ever make any medical decision based on anything I have opined on…ever.
That is for sure.
Evidently there are people here who are far smarter with a far more keenly honed intuition that I could ever want to assert, as well as having, based on their willingness to offer medical advice, actual bona fides to do so.
Keep up the good work, and all the best to you.
“With years of experience researching Malaria, Professor G Padmanaban is the right man to clarify why the anti-malarial Hydroxychloroquine is being pushed to the frontlines against COVID-19.”
” In the case of COVID-19, the side effects of HCQ treatment are not fully known. Since, some countries have adopted the same and doing trials, adequate data on efficacy and safety would soon be available. The public needs to be aware that it is a prescription drug and clinicians should decide when to use it. Self-medication needs to be strictly avoided.”
https://www.thebetterindia.com/223475/coronavirus-covid19-hydroxychloroquine-malaria-trump-modi-india-iisc-expert-nor41/
re: “Self-medication needs to be strictly avoided.”
HOW do you get a prescription drug dispensed from a pharmacy w/o a doctors’s prescription?
Uhh … just asking …
Jim-
Easy. You have a friend or relative with rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. Plaquenil (hydroxychloroquine sulfate) is routinely prescribed for both. Most people get a prescription for three months supply. So you just ask them for a few days worth when you feel like you have the virus. And remember to take a zinc supplement with it.
Taking it long term as a preventative is a different story.
re: “You have a friend or relative with rheumatoid arthritis or lupus.”
(Criminally) Involve another in a ruse? We’re talking conspiracy now … and this assumes the other party will participate.
Jim
You said, “…this assumes the other party will participate.” Which they often do! After all, if everyone is hearing that the only reason HCQ isn’t being used is because of some kind of conspiracy by Big Pharma, or oppression by those with TDS, it is easy to rationalize saving a friend or family member’s life, even if it means committing a misdemeanor.
re: “because of some kind of conspiracy by Big Pharma”
Persons of that sort of persuasion are not entirely rational IMO; Recall the adage: Conspiracy theories are the favored tools of the weak-minded.(Attributable to one Vic LaRoca, now SK)
“In the case of COVID-19, the side effects of HCQ treatment are not fully known…..”
[snip] He’s been brainwashed by the deep state zeitgeist. They are pretending to forget everything they knew of three generations of medicine just in the last three months. As we have seen , the writer behind this thread took 3 weeks supply in 3 days. And he didn’t even have a heart attack or anything.
Hi Sendergreen..
No one else seems to have responded so here goes..
A) Do not know for certain whether I have had Covid, cos here in the UK we cannot get tested until very ill. (too late for a lot of people).
B) I came into contact with a guy from Madrid 30 days ago. After passing some papers to me he stated that he had not quarantined and had got back from Madrid 2 days previously. I was very annoyed by him, as I am 76 years old.
I was concerned and 3 days later my temperature went above 37.8C up to 38.6C.
Decided I probably had been affected.
Went into isolation.
Had always drunk Whisky and Dry. Never G &T’s.
Decided I had nothing to lose as knew that Tonic Water contained quinine and I was aware that China and other countries were buying up supplies.
Added ginger (drove off all the horrible CO2) and a little lemon juice to supply a better taste.
4 hrs later my temperature had dropped to 38.1C. Another drink….
Net morning I was back to my normal 36.6C. This was at day 4.
I have continued with a tipple each day and have had no real problems although I did start a bit of a cough at day 12.
My wife who has the immune system of an Ox has had no symptoms but also started a slight cough (unknown for her) after day 13. (ie 1 day behind me). I found even walking to be a tough exercise until a few days ago.
I do not know yet whether I did contract it.
My recovery from whatever I had has been fantastic.
My advice – take it – it can do no harm and will at least speed up your recovery.
Thanks much Dave. I’m already 64 in the U.K, won’t be 64 here in Ontario Canada for another 3 and 1/2 hours.
I’m having 1-2 cans (355ml) of Tonic Water a day. All I had so far was one early morning scare. I woke up with the back of my neck feeling hot, and some slight pain. Thought oh-oh. I passed one of my daughters holding my breath on the stairs. She said “Dad you got one ripping sunburn on the back of your neck”. Forgot that I’d been out on the first sunny day in weeks here. It was only 40°F (4°C ?) outside so I didn’t notice I was UV’ing in the grocery line-ups (queue). I’ve never been relieved to have a sunburn before.
Zinc supplements have been touted as a treatment or prevention of coronaviral disease.
This comment is not about subjects that have a zinc deficiency that actually need supplementation.
In mammals the immune response to infectious, mainly bacterial disease, is to increase temperature, so run a fever,shut down, so curl up and sleep and strip zinc from the circulation. Zinc is used as a substrate by bacteria so they can grow fast.
With coronavirus, in the mouse, so not man, a zinc metallo enzyme aids the entry of coronavirus into the cell being infected.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28148786
So for the normal mouse, it would not be a good idea to supplement with zinc.
Perhaps ‘of mice and of men?’
Thank you, Willis
Amazing post
Very informative and also entertaining
I grew up with malaria but not as bad as your experiences but I can’t really remember the details as well as you do.
Failed to say that I have added a Zinc supplement from day 5.
Interesting to see whether
1) I have had it?
2) Have I developed Antibodies?
Has my ‘medication’ worked or was I lucky and had a mild version of the Virus?
Anecdotal evidence, but it is creating some deliciously funny political angst! Democrat Michigan State Representative Karen Whitsett contracted the Chinese virus and became very ill. After hearing President Trump speak favorably about hydroxychloroquine, she convinced a MI doctor to prescribe it for her, even though the democrat governor of MI had ‘banned’ its use because ‘orange man bad’. Rep. Whitsett made a rapid recovery and has publicly credited President Trump for advocating for the drug and ‘saving her life’. As Ms. Whitsett is a ethnic democrat female, her testimony has left the TDS afflicted rock throwers in a bottled up foment of impotent frustration. The links below provide an interview story in the Detroit Free Press and a video interview with Laura Ingram.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2020/04/06/democrat-karen-whitsett-coronavirus-hydroxychloroquine-trump/2955430001/
https://youtu.be/Ql3LJP7OP_s
Quoting another poster on FR:
“Better to be anecdotally alive than scientifically dead!”
-etcb
Thank you. That one made my otherwise dreary day!
I’m an hours drive from Detroit and I have to give the lady an “eyes right” salute for her bravery. The modern Democrat Party is resoundingly socialist, and will not treat her well from this moment on.
I saw that and it is nice to see someone honest about it. Kudos to the lady!
We have some information of whether hydro-chloroquine works for covid19. How useful this information is or how reliable this information is we don’t really know. But it is information non the less. Some doctors will prescribe it based on this imperfect information and some won’t. It is a matter of a doctor’s individual judgement.
If I get covid, I will find a doctor to prescribe it. That doesn’t mean it works, but based on my assessment of the risk reward trade off I’ll take it.
When the explorer Jacques Cartier was exploring Canada in 1535 and his crew began to suffer from scurvy with 25 dying from it and the rest weak with their teeth following out, he was told by the Indians to boil pine needles and drink the soup. Well it worked. I doubt the Indians had done any double blind studies. They knew it worked from experience and generations had passed down the cure. Only much later did we find out pine needles are rich in vitamin C.
SteveK
You said, “Some doctors will prescribe it based on this imperfect information and some won’t.” Yes, the last news item I read on this indicated that about 30% of physicians are using HCQ in their treatment protocol. That is not exactly a resounding endorsement of the efficacy as assessed by clinicians.
In my jurisdiction the Government has laid out the threat to go after the medical licence of docs who prescribe it. Part media hype, part control issues. Like the bylaw officer here who wrote up an $880 ticket for a guy walking his dog in an empty park.
Why would this guy let the bylaw cop get closer than 6 feet and take a ticket covered in the Chi Com V?
RusselDyer replied:
” Why would this guy let the bylaw cop get closer than 6 feet and take a ticket covered in the Chi Com V? ”
My guess is that the guy only had some lapdog the size of a nerf football, with a vestigial jaw. : )
If you want to know more about COVID-19 and Hydroxychloroquine check out the youtube sites of “MedCram” (Dr. Seheult), “Weightless4life” (Dr. Bon Truang), “Dr. Eric Berg DC” and look up Dr. Zelenko from a community in New York State.
Dr. Seheult has many short but informative videos on many aspects of COVID-19. He is an ER doctor that deals with COVID-19 patients regularly and uses hydroxychloroquine with Zinc and Z-Pack with his patients.
Dr. Bon Truang is a medical doctor that uses hydroxychloroquine with Zinc and Z-Pack with his patients. He has many videos about COVID-19 and its effects and treatments. He also has a video dealing with how to treat diabetics on certain drugs. He has videos covering a few patients and their individual cases.
Dr. Eric Berg DC has many videos that discuss COVID-19.
Dr. Vladimir Zelenko has treated over 600 people in his community for COVID-19 using hydroxychloroquine with Zinc and Z-Pack. Some of his patients that were young and healthy were not treated with hydroxychloroquine because they could recover on their own. They were monitored by phone daily to be sure that they didn’t get worse. He believes in keeping people out of the hospital by treating early. Anybody that had any of the risky health conditions were automatically put on hydroxychloroquine with Zinc and Z-Pack and monitored.
All of them have found that early treatment is important for survival.
Link to Medcram video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7F1cnWup9M
In Vietnam, they gave us chloroquine as big orange horse pills. Wife got the same years later on a deployment to Honduras. Only side effect that I felt, and others experienced it too was it disrupted your GI tract. However, knew guys in our unit who didn’t take them and they ended up with malaria, which is not pleasant at all. Years after that, took a 3 week dive trip to the Solomons and I was also given chloroquine to take as a prophylaxis, only this time the pills were much smaller and white. Didn’t experience the same side effects from those.
“In Vietnam, they gave us chloroquine as big orange horse pills. Wife got the same years later on a deployment to Honduras. Only side effect that I felt, and others experienced it too was it disrupted your GI tract. However, knew guys in our unit who didn’t take them and they ended up with malaria, which is not pleasant at all.”
I got real sick in Vietnam and I’m not sure if I had the Hong Kong flu or if I had malaria.
I took the malaria pills for a while, but they tasted very bad, and I eventually quit taking them.
I don’t recall how my not taking the malaria drug correlates with the illness. I can’t say if it was before or after.
My symptoms were a *very* high fever and I shivered and shook and sweated for close to three days. I didn’t go see a doctor although I was thinking about it on the third day but the fever finally broke and I recovered pretty fast after that.
The illness lasted just a few days and within a week or ten days I was back to normal. I didn’t take any kind of medication while I was sick.
I wouldn’t want to do that again.
A first person experience is very compelling. Thanks Willis.
Perhaps a compromise of sorts can help get things moving.
Only lockdown or ‘herd’ immunity (by surviving covid-19 or vaccination) will work. Apply lockdown to those with fragile health and develop herd immunity in the rest with preventative practices & early aggressive treatment (best bet is hydroxychloroquine) of those testing positive.
I am with you. Get the country back to work!
No. How about treating those who are ‘fragile’ with HCQ and the Z pac as soon as they are diagnosed. If they want to self-quarantine in stead they can.
I am OK with that (I’m in the ‘fragile’ group) but IMO what I recommended should reduce the peak number of hospitalizations and might be acceptable to more politicians. The Z-pak is in case of secondary bacterial infection but might be worth it. As far as I know, it wouldn’t hurt but attending doctor should decide.
Did you read this ?
Drug Ivermectin
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220302011?via%3Dihub
And this
https://chemrxiv.org/articles/COVID-19_Disease_ORF8_and_Surface_Glycoprotein_Inhibit_Heme_Metabolism_by_Binding_to_Porphyrin/11938173