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Antiviral compound blocks SARS-CoV-2 from entering cells

medicine.wustl.edu

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

#121

Post by __blockcipher__ »

randomopining wrote: post #95
LMYahooTFY wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what metric? The vaccines were authorized under emergency use with trial participants comparable to samples conducted with Ivermectin. How is it not worth considering for a drug that's already known to be safe to administer and cheap? Beyond that, there are practicing doctors advocating that they've had good results. This should be more than enough to consider it's use, and not dismiss it as some 'thing of t…

"The Phase 3 clinical trial of BNT162b2 began on July 27 and has enrolled 43,661 participants to date, 41,135 of whom have received a second dose of the vaccine candidate as of November 13, 2020." Wow so there was an ivermectin study with 44k people? Where is it? I agree that it should be able to be studied and probably used. But what's going on is that people are looking for an ALTERNATIVE to the vaccine... which is…

Fun fact: the trial you referenced failed to show any benefit of COVID vaccination in reducing all-cause mortality in the population they studied:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v...

> During the blinded, controlled period, 15 BNT162b2 and 14 placebo recipients died; during the open-label period, 3 BNT162b2 and 2 original placebo recipients who received BNT162b2 after unblinding died. None of these deaths were considered related to BNT162b2 by investigators.

There was actually one more death in the experimental group, albeit that's not significantly significant.

So some combination of the following must be true:

(1) The vaccination is effective at reducing COVID mortality, but COVID mortality for people in the trial was such a joke that eliminating 95% of COVID mortality doesn't actually change one's risk of dying in a non-negligible manner

(2) The vaccination is effective at reducing COVID mortality, which does spare lives, but it ends up killing just as many from adverse events / side effects

(3) The vaccine isn't effective and they doctored the numbers.

My money is mostly on (1) with a sprinkling of (2), personally.

---

And since people like to be binary thinkers, this is where I mention that I'm not an Ivermectin shill and as a medical nihilist I'm strongly skeptical of treatments in general. And while I haven't looked at the IVM data very much at all, what I have seen is incredibly weak evidence at best, as well as a bunch of really crappy associative arguments from the IVM crowd ("Africa uses IVM and Africa has less COVID mortality than the US!" as if that proves anything)

To quote (slightly paraphrased) the great Jacob Stegenga:

> If we consider the ubiquity of small effect sizes in medicine, the extent of misleading evidence in medical research, the thin theoretical basis of many interventions, and the malleability of empirical methods, then our confidence in medical interventions ought to be low.

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

#122

Post by dukeofdoom »

wongarsu wrote: post #24
gizmo686 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A limiting factor for the effectiveness of anti-virals for Covid is time. Maximum viral load happens often happens before any symptoms are present, and the most severe diseases occurs weeks after infection as a result of the bodies inflammatory response instead of the virus itself. This means that by the time you know that a patient will have severe Covid-19, it is likely too late for any treatment that is based on i…

I imagine the willingness to get tested would also be a lot higher if the result of a positive test was a reasonably quick antiviral treatment instead of weeks of quarantine. Sure, there will always be sceptics, but for large parts of people, organisations and governments having less perverse incentives might improve things a lot.

Rapid antigen tests take take about 20 minutes.

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

#123

Post by weaksauce »

WithinReason wrote: post #101
analyte123 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

correct

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

#125

Post by speeder »

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.

I wanted JJ because not mRNA and is accepted in several countries.

The JJ mechanism of action is better understood and less risky, in my view at least it is more acceptable for emergency approval.

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

#126

Post by space_fountain »

walterbell wrote: post #117
__blockcipher__ wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

In addition, intramuscular vaccines only provide blood/serum antibodies, while nasal infection also provides nasal/mucosal antibodies. Those who recover from Covid infection gain sterilizing immunity (less than 1% will be reinfected) that stops future infections in the upper respiratory tract. That's why the CDC website says Covid (leaky, non-sterilizing) vaccines only provide protection (in blood) against serious il…

I think these things are hard to be sure about, but there still is good evidence that covid vaccines are sterilizing in a lot of cases. The rate of infection is still lower for vaccinated people right when controlling for other demographics?

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

#127

Post by bawolff »

LurkingPenguin wrote: post #58
mywittyname wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I'm pointing out the obvious, but another, extremely effect and quick "treatment" is vaccination. And it works great without the constant need for testing. I have to imagine that anyone willing to undergo treatment at the very start of getting covid, would have also been willing to be vaccinated. The vaccine-hesitant aren't going to go for treatment until the outlook is dire. Additionally, in my experienc…

> I feel like I'm pointing out the obvious, but another, extremely effect and quick "treatment" is vaccination. Does every discussion of about post-exposure prophylaxis have to have comments about vaccination? > And it works great without the constant need for testing. A primary reason for testing has been to help stop the spread of the virus (test positive = isolate), not necessarily to let people with mild symptoms…

> Research indicates that individuals with breakthrough infections can have viral loads that are as high as unvaccinated individuals, and some percentage report courses of illness that are virtually identical to a typical course of illness in unvaccinated individuals

But that's totally expected (depending of course on how you define "some"). If the vaccine had 100% efficacy, it would be shocking. The fact that it doesn't is not a surprise.

I'm assuming the point you're trying to make is vaccines aren't as good as expected. If the point is just that there is still value in developing treatments even with vaccines, than yes i agree with you.

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

#128

Post by InitialLastName »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #103
sterlind wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It could just be GP's preferred way of anonymizing their SO without having to resort to the dreaded singular specific "they". Call it light-weight anonymization to make it more difficult to be casually doxxed.

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

#129

Post by weaksauce »

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…

> 2.) Emergency use authorization for the vaccines relied on there being no available alternative treatment

That's simply so factually wrong it's tough to take it as serious. having a treatment that might lessen the severity of some percentage of the people that get covid has absolutely nothing to do with a prophylactic EUA for a vaccine that is wildly efficacious against mild and severe covid cases and stop you from getting it in the first place. Let's do a thought experiment even if that were true... that would mean the other vaccines that are under an EUA would have been revoked the moment Pfizer got their full approval which didn't happen. This is "there are naval insignias on the flags therefore we are not a constitutional democracy" level of conspiratorial thinking.

> 1.) Ivermectin is out of patent and dirt cheap; basically not profitable at all

that's the reason they threw it at the virus in the first place. They were looking for anything that might help.

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

#130

Post by anonfornoreason »

adolph wrote: post #115
tombert wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't even heard about the curing cancer part, that's awesome if it's true. I think I'm going to temper my expectations to "faster and more vaccines increasingly exotic diseases" for now. I would absolutely love to be proven wrong though.

Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy is a way to get immune cells called T cells (a type of white blood cell) to fight cancer by changing them in the lab so they can find and destroy cancer cells. CAR T-cell therapy is also sometimes talked about as a type of cell-based gene therapy, because it involves altering the genes inside T cells to help them attack the cancer. ... In CAR T-cell therapies, T cells ar…

They also can only target cancers that have specific markers that are unique to the cancer and not normal cells, lest the treatment kill non cancer cells. Early experiments here did lead to patient deaths (in advanced already going to die cancer patients). Not all cancers have these unique markers so this therapy only works on a few types,m.

Fantastic podcast covering topic by interviewing the father of these therapies:

https://youtu.be/pVMl0LgdnOU

Podcast available on Apple podcasts etc. The Drive episode 177.

can't recommend enough.

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