Low-Dose Steroid Hailed as Highly Effective Treatment for COVID-19
Meanwhile, FDA revokes its emergency approval of Hydroxychloroquine as the trends in new infections show some good news.
One of the observations that came out about Wuhan Coronavirus infections is that they lead to inflammation of various tissues.
Therefore, low-dose steroid treatment has been utilized and is now hailed as a highly effective treatment for COVOD-19.
In an unexpected sign of hope amid the expanding pandemic, scientists at the University of Oxford said on Tuesday that an inexpensive and commonly available drug reduced deaths in patients with severe Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus.
If the finding is borne out, the drug, a steroid called dexamethasone, would be the first treatment shown to reduce mortality in severely ill patients. Had doctors been using the drug to treat the sickest Covid-19 patients in Britain from the beginning of the pandemic, up to 5,000 deaths could have been prevented, the researchers estimated.
In severe cases, the virus directly attacks cells lining the patient’s airways and lungs. But the infection also can prompt an overwhelming immune reaction that is just as harmful. Three-quarters of hospitalized Covid-19 patients receive some form of oxygen.
The drug appears to reduce inflammation caused by the immune system, protecting the tissues. In the study, dexamethasone reduced deaths of patients on ventilators by one-third, and deaths of patients on oxygen by one-fifth.
I sure hope President Donald Trump doesn’t tout this one. Otherwise, someone will decide to treat themselves with steroids. Additionally, Food and Drug Administration bureaucrats may choose to make obtaining Dexamethasone for treatment difficult, as they are currently doing with Hydroxychloroquine.
The Food and Drug Administration rescinded the emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients on Monday, saying the drug carries too many risks without any apparent benefit.
The authorization was first issued in March, and applied to patients hospitalized with the illness and those in clinical trials. In April, the FDA warned doctors against prescribing the drug to COVID-19 patients outside of those settings. Monday’s action will not affect clinical trials, which are expected to continue.
The announcement covers both hydroxychloroquine and a related compound, chloroquine phosphate.
I thought it might be an excellent time to step back and look at trends now, given that many states have reopened (at least partially), and the press is trying to gin-up fears of a second wave. The dreaded “rise in new cases” being reported is not quite what it seems:
The average number of daily new cases has been steadily declining since early April; the average daily deaths, meanwhile, peaked in mid-April and have been dropping ever since.
The number of daily cases has shown a slower decline than that of deaths, though much of that may have to do with the number of tests the United States is conducting: since early May the country has recorded anywhere from 300,000 to well over 500,000 new tests per day.
And stories about the “rise in hospitalizations” is based on an incomplete picture as well.
…[A]ccording to the state’s coronavirus dashboard, the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Texas has only increased by around 230 over that time, nowhere near enough to account for the increase in total hospitalizations over the past six weeks.
A likelier explanation is that Texans have simply been going to the hospital for routine and critical procedures more often. State Gov. Greg Abbot banned elective surgeries in the state in March but began permitting them again in mid-April.
In some cases the “spikes” in hospitalizations appear significantly overstated relative to the raw numbers. Fox News this week reported that Montana was among the states that have “seen coronavirus hospitalizations rise by at least 35 percent.” Montana on its COVID-19 dashboard lists a total of seven “active hospitalizations” statewide as of Saturday afternoon.
In Florida, meanwhile, the state’s rising number of cases appear to have had little effect on the death rate there. The state’s COVID-19 dashboard displays a modestly upward trend in cases over the last thirty days next to a modestly downward trend in deaths. Cases began a marked upward trend at the beginning of June, but deaths began to sharply drop off at that point, too.
So, as the Trump rally continues to go forward this week, keep the new trends and treatments in mind as the press pushes news about “spikes.”
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
It is amazing that the hatred of President Trump is so profound that Democrats adherents would rather let people with COVID-19 die than be treated with chloroquine. If as the FDA proffers the side effects are too great for COVID sufferers there must be some activity. Sixty years of experience showed the side effects were not that great. The only explanation would be activity associated with COVID.
Broken Government. Broken Democrat Party.
It has been apparently clear that from the start of this fake Wu Han flu dim panic that the Democrats have done everything they can to drive up up up up up all the death toll from this.
Why it’s almost as though the Democrat party planned and carried this entire fake flu Panic out with the Communist Chinese.
Snark.
A question that members of the Propaganda Press will not ask. How many deaths in New York could have been averted had Governor Cuomo not taken steps to ban Hydroxycholorquine?
Maybe the abortion loving Democrat does not care as much about human life as they say they do.
Neither to the ChiComs.
One-child. Selective-child. #Diversity
The treatment is hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin + zinc, on an outpatient basis, to keep people out of the hospital. To my knowledge there have been no controlled studies of that regimen, mostly ones on people already half dead. Note that you die from sepsis or bacterial meningitis if antibiotics, the standard of care, are administered too late. (So we should stop using those?)
Covid provokes an inflammatory response by the body, sometimes fatal, especially for people with co-morbidities. Therefore, any number of anti-inflammatory drugs may help, like the subject of this article. HCQ has been used forever for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory conditions. Not only are side effects not that great, serious one are very rare; and this is for lifelong use at higher doses than for Covid’s 5-day treatment regimen.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the President has not taken great care to avoid surrounding himself with people afflicted with TDS, an incurable disease; and people are dying because of it.
(I am old enough to be at risk from Covid, so have studied it at great length – but am not in the medical field.)
The dexamethasone treatment is not “highly effective.” The “up to 5,000 deaths could have been prevented, the researchers estimated” is purely speculative and the percentages that have leaked out are unimpressive. But most importantly, note the difference in attitude and evaluation between dexamethasone and hydroxychloroqine by the FDA. There has been no more scientific justification for the former than the latter, and in fact much less. It is so obvious that the FDA and the crooked powers that be are unjustifiably touting dexamethasone and trying to bury the hydroxy with openly dishonest studies. The FDA and the rest of them are totally corrupt and willing to let people die to further their own ends. But I believe truth will prevail in the end: sooner or later real scientists will be able to determine, through actual biochemistry -physical explanations – specifically how these drugs actually work in the human body, and all of the statistical shell games of the FDA and their co-conspirators will be exposed. Will there be justice then? Of course not.
Hear. Hear.
Sure that sterold drug is copyrighted and much more expensive than the quinine drug too.
Dexamethasone is long out of patent. It was approved for medical use in 1961.
Expensive Remdesivir also seems to have limited benefit.
A lot of people on the left want PDJT supporters to die. At the same time, most of those people want to prevent PDJT rallies because, well, covid dangerous. I’m not letting the left use the “grandma will die!” argument anymore. If outrage over killing grandmas was an actual thing, Governor cuomo would have been removed from office by now.
In Obama’s Greatest Depression Evan the Leftists ware cheering on the suicide of White men in the mid-west states.
Ephesians 6:12
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Evah
The early statistics that the lockdown was based upon lacked one very important thing – a reliable and accurate denominator. The numerator was iffy too but without a denominator you have zero to infinite as your range of error.
.
The new statistic being used relies on what the definition of “Spike” is. The 1,000 bed University of Michigan Hospital was prepared to service up to 1.500 Covid patients. It peaked at 229 and is currently treating 8 Covid patients in hospital.
.
If this hospital goes from 8 to 12 over the next week, it could be seen as “spiking” 50%. This makes for a very scary headline, “Metro Detroit Hospital Sees 50% Spike In New Covid 19 Patients As Michigan Opens Up”. The bi-line would read, “Governor Whitmer is considering a second round of executive orders as her worst fears are coming true.”
.
Fifteen people in the hospital and the fact that very few people are testing positive (UofM hospital tested 4,500 people last week and only 30 were positive and a fraction were hospitalized) and almost none are dying (the other day there were only 2 reported deaths in all of Michigan) does not make for a panic but it does make for good headlines.
Ephesians 6:12
…we wrestle… against….spiritual wickedness in high places.
If this drug is used as a low dosage anti-inflammatory treatment, that turmeric in the cabinet might have a similar effect. (Don’t know, just speculating based on how it improves osteoarthritis symptoms for the wife and me). Taking it with a meal containing a good amount of black pepper helps absorbancy. Hmmm, maybe this is why the codger/codgette have done okay with the Wuhan bug.
.
The easiest way to answer is no, turmeric would not help.
If including turmeric in your diet helps your arthritis and your doctor doesn’t have a problem with it, then continue on.
And you may want to have your Vit D levels checked and adjust your time out in the sun or with supplements to improve the levels. There have been reports of lower Vit D levels in older people and how it impacts C19.
I went to the East Virginia Med School link for C19 treatment and discovered that the paper that mentioned HCQ is no longer there. An update has been posted.
https://www.evms.edu/media/evms_public/departments/internal_medicine/EVMS_Critical_Care_COVID_19_Protocol.pdf
What is interesting is that the prophylaxis “cocktail” still includes zinc and quercetin, which is an ionophore. There is a comment about HCQ and refers to the need for zinc.
I need to find my old printout to see what other changes have been made to the protocol.
I saw a report stating almost all the elder deaths were people wno were very lacking in vitimin D.
Thought that made sense because our nursing homes do not roll people outside for sun-bathing.
Quinine, zinc, etc… routine is good to remember for all viruses.
An expert researcher stated that the effects of consuming quinine is cumulative so it should not matter that 2 liters of tonic water a day equals the amount needed to prevent malaria.
I prefer to mix up my own tonic water using soda stream and a variety of tonic syrups. My current favorite is Jack Rudy – https://jackrudycocktailco.com/
– but I’ll take suggestions for other tonic syrups. And, I need to get more vodka to go along with the tonic!
I have read that tonic water is basically irrelevant to Covid. However, more vodka might be useful in keeping you from worrying about getting it.
JB4 – I know that tonic water does not have enough quinine to impact C19. I just like tonic water and the vodka helps.
A point to note – an ER doc prescribed quinine for severe muscle cramps from the steroids they ordered a week earlier for an allergic reaction to a sulfa drug. I’ve noticed that drinking tonic water helps with mild leg cramps at night. And, that’s without the vodka!
Thanks.
I considered tonic syrups until I discovered the local stores were carrying an increased inventory of tonic water.
Notamem- once you start using a syrup to make your own tonic water, you will not go back to the cheap stuff. It is nice to figure out the level of tonic flavor, as well as different flavor options.
I am currently savoring a vodka tonic with the tonic having a citrus flavor (lemon, lime, grapefruit flavors).
So, after all this junk of the last few months. The fall back position is just what the old country doctor would do when presented with an illness. Just give a shot of what steroid is on hand and a prescription for an antibiotic. If they get bad put in hospital. Why the reverse quarantine, shutting down the world economy, and all the other illegal junk of the first part of the year.
The direct answer to your ending question is that a projection from the Imperial College London of up to 2.2 million deaths in the USA if nothing material was done scared Trump and others; and he did not have the quality medical advisors to tell him the projection was possibly/probably garbage. The speculative answer is that this was Phase III of the effort to remove Trump, after Russia and Impeachment.
No speculation needed – it was.
…we wrestle… against….spiritual wickedness in high places. Ephesians 6:12
First of all, why are we still fixated on COVID-19? I made a prediction way back in February that this virus would turn out to be the equivalent of a very strong flu, such as Swine Flu. Well, surprise, surprise, surprise, that is exactly what it is turning out to be. And, that is using the “extremely liberal” cause of death guidelines being employed. Just another media hoax.
As to drug treatments, as with most diseases, certain treatments work better at certain points in the infection cycle. For extremely severe cases, certain steroids seem to produce reasonably good effects. Quinine based treatments seem to produce better effects in the early stages of the infection or as a prophylactic. Even having a more alkaline blood chemistry seems to inhibit cellular infection.
And, in the last month, the number of deaths, which are COVID related have dropped into the celler. As to the b=number of reported COVID cases, this depend upon the type of testing being done. Currently, there is only one test which accurately determines if a patient has an active infection. Most of the tests, both the nasalphyrangial swab and the serology tests only indicate exposure, not active infection. So, it depends on what test is being used to determine infection rates.
Wouldn’t this be a rather obvious approach? I mean I already thought steroids would have been utilized for symptomatic therapy from the first lung X-Ray showing the swelling/inflammation.
An update on the situation in Oklahoma. Yes, we had another increase in cases up to 259 new cases! Oh no!! Is it time to panic yet? (/s)
Of those 259 new cases – 68% of them were in Tulsa and OK counties. And, of the new cases, 122 or 47% were in the 18-35 age range. And, 51, or 19.7% were 36-49. So, those two age groups total 67% of the new cases.
Hmmm, what was happening in the past 10-14 days? This increase is not only related to the re-opening of activity or the Memorial Day weekend stuff (May 22 – 25th).
But, there are only 181 total patients in the hospital (confirmed or under investigation). There are plenty of ICU and Med Surg beds, the PPE levels are good, testing supplies are good.
The State did issue a special warning for the weekend –
https://coronavirus.health.ok.gov/articles/health-commissioner-issues-guidance-weekends-large-scale-events-gatherings .
Funny thing, there wasn’t a special warning for any protests over the last two weeks.
I discount EVERYTHING from Tulsa which has a RINO mayor and a “communist” city council.
There’s a magic bullet that’ll cure all this b.s.
It’s caliber is usually 9mm or .223.
Cases? Cases? Whenever the media starts talking about “cases” you know they are idiots.
Take, for example, these reports on Florida and Arizona.
https://tallahasseereports.com/2020/06/15/two-charts-show-positive-trends-for-florida-in-coronavirus-battle/
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-health/2020/06/09/number-covid-19-going-up-arizona-increased-hospitalization/5328560002/
“Cases” are increasing rapidly, while hospitalizations and deaths are remaining on a slowly decreasing trajectory. The scare headline for the Arizona report is “Arizona COVID-19 spread is increasing and action is needed, experts warn”. Deaths in Arizona are at the amazingly low average rate of 20 per day while the population of the state is 7.3 million.
“Experts” I don’t think that word means what they think it means.