Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells • Hacker News Board

Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells

#101

Post by WithinReason » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

analyte123 wrote: post #64

space_fountain wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some quick googling doesn’t back this up and my understanding is that ivermectin has only shown itself to be effective at doses that are higher then are remotely safe. It also just isn’t the sort of thing there would be incentive to lie about. Probably then the straightforward story is true no it’s only effective as prescribed as treatment for parasites. If you’d like to provide some sources though or more explanatio…

As far as I can tell ivermectin has only been "studied" against TMPRSS2 in silico . The better-studied purported mechanism of ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2 involves something called importin [1]. On the other hand, bromhexine, which is a cough medicine used OTC around the world does inhibit TMPRSS2 and may have action against SARS-Cov-2 [2]. Bromhexine is a prodrug for ambroxol, which is also an OTC cold medicine in…

> in silico

you mean they only studied it in a computer simulation?

Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells

#102

Post by meepmorp » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #30

ashtonkem wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

mRNA vaccines look extremely promising too. It’s entirely possible that some classes of cancer will be effectively eliminated in our lifetime because of it, along with HIV and/or Malaria. The latter would probably be the biggest reduction in human death and misery since the invention of the Polio vaccine

I wonder if the final stage will rather be direct production and injection of tailored antibodies instead of going around the corner by having ordinary cells express proteins that then trigger the immune system.

Does "going around the corner," mean vaccines?

Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells

#103

Post by __blockcipher__ » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

sterlind wrote: post #94

Symmetry wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad we couldn't arrange it so that one vaccine could be the "Trump vaccine" that Republicans could get and another could be the "Fauci vaccine" for Democrats. Then people could express their political affiliations in their medical choices but still get vaccinated. There were a lot of Democratic politicians talking about not trusting rushed vaccines a year ago and if that could have focused on specific vaccin…

My partner is ex-Christian Scientist (a faith-healing cult that doesn't believe in disease or medicine.) Zir whole family finally relented and got vaccinated, but they all got J+J. I don't know why that vaccine in particular (maybe because it's single-shot, so they only have to deal with hypocrisy once?) but that vaccine is popular with that cohort.

Just out of curiosity- they used to be a christian scientist and now they’re not and go by xe/zir style pronouns? That’s quite a journey if so.

As for J&J, yes it’s generally the fact that it’s one and done so it feels less risky to people that didn’t want to get vaccinated. Then there’s the whole mRNA thing as well.

Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells

#104

Post by __blockcipher__ » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

spfzero wrote: post #93

LurkingPenguin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the “vaccinated individuals can have high viral loads” line is particularly bad https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.09.28.21264262v... https://www.ucdavis.edu/health/covid-19/news/viral-loads-sim... How is a statement about what some researchers are finding "particularly bad"? If vaccinated individuals routinely have viral loads as high as those seen in unvaccinated individuals, it warrants more re…

I think partly what's going on is that some people have immune systems that have a hard time generating an effective response, whether or not they area vaccinated. Vaccination gives the immune system a chance to respond and memorize, as best it can. If it can't do that effectively, there is higher likelihood of a serious outcome.

I think this is very unlikely to significantly explain what we’ve seen. It’s much more likely just the natural result of artificial immunity waning much more rapidly than naturally acquired. As well as the fact that natural immunity involves exposure to the whole virus and therefore much broader types of epitopes for the immune system to “learn”.

Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells

#105

Post by space_fountain » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

LurkingPenguin wrote: post #92

space_fountain wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welp, this is making me realize I was just wrong. My understanding of the science was something like you can find asymptomatic vaccinated individuals with similar viral loads to asymptomatic unvaccinated people, which is a bit meaningless when you're choosing a threshold for "infected" and when random chance will just see some people at any level. So to be clear it's not that I think the questions shouldn't be invest…

> Because essentially what this means right is that they sampled people's viral loads, and then cut out everyone below a value they choose to mean "infected". Huh? Please cite the part of the study you're referring to to argue that the title of the study means the exact opposite of what it says. Every manufacturer of a PCR test specifies a Ct cutoff above which the result is considered false. > It's still true that e…

> The study says the exact opposite:

Maybe I'm misinterpreting the study. I interpreted that as being among the fraction of people who are infected both because that's what the title says, and because they say later that "75% of the positive samples were from unvaccinated individuals" which would seem to be inconsistent with the groups having similar viral loads.

I thought we were dealing with a random variable composed something like this

VIRAL_LOAD = INFECTED ? LOAD_FOR_INFECTED : LOAD_FOR_UNINFECTED

And the study is saying that the random variable `LOAD_FOR_INFECTED` isn't correlated with vaccination status. That's indeed an interesting fact, but since `INFECTED` still was correlated (I think) overall for some random person `VIRAL_LOAD` would be too. Honestly a table would make all of this more clear.

Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells

#106

Post by space_fountain » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 6:44 PM UTC

ralusek wrote: post #91

space_fountain wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some quick googling doesn’t back this up and my understanding is that ivermectin has only shown itself to be effective at doses that are higher then are remotely safe. It also just isn’t the sort of thing there would be incentive to lie about. Probably then the straightforward story is true no it’s only effective as prescribed as treatment for parasites. If you’d like to provide some sources though or more explanatio…

I have no opinion whatsoever regarding whether or not ivermectin's purported mechanism of action against COVID is valid. However, this: > It also just isn’t the sort of thing there would be incentive to lie about is not true. There are two incentives to lie about this, if you are in any way associated with drug or vaccine manufacturers. 1.) Ivermectin is out of patent and dirt cheap; basically not profitable at all 2…

You're discussing incentives that maybe some major drug companies might have, but they aren't the only ones around. I guess, the more accurate position is that there are strong upper bounds to how effective a secretly suppressed drug could be. Imagine that ivermectin just cured covid for a minute. The would be incredibly easy to prove in a study. I mean just observational studies would be glaringly obvious. What ambitious young scientist wouldn't want curing covid on their resume? So you have to believe, either the vast majority of scientists, the press, or government are complicit in this conspiracy and I don't see strong incentives for any of those groups.

Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells

#107

Post by space_fountain » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 6:59 PM UTC

nekt wrote: post #84

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, that is not an NIH study; it may be listed on PubMed but it appears to be conducted by researchers at the Integrative Biochemistry & Immunology Laboratory, Department of Animal Science, Kazi Nazrul University. PubMed indexes most biomedical literature, not just research conducted by the NIH. And again, computer simulations suggesting that ivermectin may interact with a specific protein is not the…

Im unsure of what you are trying to say. Are you trying to say ivermectin has no impact on TMPRSS2? Ok here is another the google machine gave me. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7372205/ What is most telling about all of this is that there is no honest discussion. My only initial comment was that this blocks the same protein that ivermectin does. Multiple studies confirm this, its easy to search for the…

He's saying that none of these studies have shown in the real world that ivermectin effects TMPRSS2. And I've been trying to have an honest discussion from the beginning. I said I'd failed to find what you were claiming, but tried to make it clear that I was listening if you did have some evidence. Luckily you did, but analyte123 pointed out it was weak.

This paper seems to to be a survey of other papers so doesn't actually provide any new evidence itself. It also has a few grammar issues which makes me more skeptical of it, but whatever. The claim made as I understand it is that there is only very weak evidence that `ivermectin` might effect `TMPRSS2` (aka computer models). Since we've done randomized controlled trials we can be fairly confident that ivermectin doesn't work to treat covid. The best evidence I've heard of for it working came from cell cultures where at very high concentrations it was able to prevent covid from entering cells so maybe the mechanism there even is related to TMPRSS2, but I'm just not really sure of what discussion you were expecting.

Your comment read to me like you see this as vindication that ivermectin is likely to be an effective drug, when it sounds like TMPRSS2 has been consistently targeted as a treatment for covid by a number of different drugs and you've still only shown at best weak evidence that ivermectin even effects it

Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells

#108

Post by ralusek » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 7:04 PM UTC

space_fountain wrote: post #106

ralusek wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no opinion whatsoever regarding whether or not ivermectin's purported mechanism of action against COVID is valid. However, this: > It also just isn’t the sort of thing there would be incentive to lie about is not true. There are two incentives to lie about this, if you are in any way associated with drug or vaccine manufacturers. 1.) Ivermectin is out of patent and dirt cheap; basically not profitable at all 2…

You're discussing incentives that maybe some major drug companies might have, but they aren't the only ones around. I guess, the more accurate position is that there are strong upper bounds to how effective a secretly suppressed drug could be. Imagine that ivermectin just cured covid for a minute. The would be incredibly easy to prove in a study. I mean just observational studies would be glaringly obvious. What ambi…

Well that's the thing, is that there are literally millions of people in entire countries being prescribed it. India has dished out millions of doses for COVID, and there are many doctors and researchers completely convinced by clinical evidence. It's not as if there are no people picking up a signal, or that no studies are showing utility, it's that the available studies are methodologically questionable. But as you are aware, there are more formal studies taking place at the moment, and the official scientific consensus is that we don't yet know.

Again, my argument against you was that you said that there was no motivation against it, and I said that wasn't true.

Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells

#109

Post by abecedarius » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

analyte123 wrote: post #64

space_fountain wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some quick googling doesn’t back this up and my understanding is that ivermectin has only shown itself to be effective at doses that are higher then are remotely safe. It also just isn’t the sort of thing there would be incentive to lie about. Probably then the straightforward story is true no it’s only effective as prescribed as treatment for parasites. If you’d like to provide some sources though or more explanatio…

As far as I can tell ivermectin has only been "studied" against TMPRSS2 in silico . The better-studied purported mechanism of ivermectin against SARS-CoV-2 involves something called importin [1]. On the other hand, bromhexine, which is a cough medicine used OTC around the world does inhibit TMPRSS2 and may have action against SARS-Cov-2 [2]. Bromhexine is a prodrug for ambroxol, which is also an OTC cold medicine in…

Already in 2020 (I forget just how early), __ice9 on twitter was pointing out bromhexine and stressing the importance of blocking both ACE2 and TMPRSS2 binding ("dual-entry inhibition"). This is not an area I personally know about, but it's worth bringing up for the enthusiasts for censorship.

https://twitter.com/__ice9/status/1368634545717788677

If it works, the OTC nature is important. Hard for any drug to be very effective if the get-an-appointment-see-a-doctor-get-a-prescription-get-it-filled system takes you well past peak viral load before you even start using it.

Re: Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells

#110

Post by space_fountain » Fri, Oct 15, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

newbamboo wrote: post #70

space_fountain wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some quick googling doesn’t back this up and my understanding is that ivermectin has only shown itself to be effective at doses that are higher then are remotely safe. It also just isn’t the sort of thing there would be incentive to lie about. Probably then the straightforward story is true no it’s only effective as prescribed as treatment for parasites. If you’d like to provide some sources though or more explanatio…

From the featured article “Janetka co-founded a biotechnology startup company called ProteXase Therapeutics” I guess you could see what their business plan is?

But that doesn't incentive say a PHD candidate at Harvard to agree right? They're not making any money from this new startup and they'd probably get a lot of positive news coverage if they could show a cheap cure to covid. Certainly now things are a bit locked in place so it would be harder, there would be some repetitional damage at stake, but I'm just very unconvinced a cabal of biotech startups really has the power to keep a lid on something like this