Information through Dr Kendrick re the Coronavirus - Thyroid UK
Information through Dr Kendrick re the Coronavirus
That is one personal view. Here is another published in a peer reviewed journal.
News release – Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine
** Embargo: 00:05 hrs (UK time) Wednesday 12 August 2020
Covid-19: herd immunity in Sweden fails to materialise
Sweden’s policy of allowing the controlled spread of Covid-19 viral infection among the population has so far failed to deliver the country’s previously stated goal of herd immunity. Commenting on recent antibody testing clinical and research findings, authors of a paper published by the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, write that Sweden’s higher rates of viral infection, hospitalisation and mortality compared with neighbouring countries may have serious implications for Scandinavia and beyond.
Rather than imposing a hard lockdown in March as most European and Scandinavian countries did, Sweden’s strategy in dealing with the pandemic has been to rely on people’s individual responsibility to curtail the spread of the disease. This follows the Swedish sociocultural concept of ‘folkvett’; the common sense of the people as a collective.
The health authorities predicted that 40% of the Stockholm population would have had the disease and acquired antibodies by May 2020. However, the actual prevalence figure was around 15%. While clinical and research findings suggest that severely infected Covid-19 patients do acquire antibodies in the immediate and early recovery phase of their illness, antibodies are much less commonly found in only mildly ill or asymptomatic patients. This means they are very likely not to be immune, and so cannot act as a bulwark against further spread of infection amongst the community.
Lead author Professor David Goldsmith said: “It is clear that not only are the rates of viral infection, hospitalisation and mortality (per million population) much higher than those seen in neighbouring Scandinavian countries, but also that the time-course of the epidemic in Sweden is different, with continued persistence of higher infection and mortality well beyond the few critical weeks period seen in Denmark, Finland and Norway.” He added that in these countries, rapid lock-down measures brought in from early March seem to have been initially more successful in curtailing the infection surge and thus the malign consequences of Covid-19 on the country as a whole.
Prof Goldsmith said: “We in the UK would do well to remember we nearly trod the same path as Sweden, as herd immunity was often discussed here in early March. Right now, despite strict (but tardy) lock-down in the UK, and the more measured Swedish response, both countries have seen high seven-day averaged Covid-19 death rates compared to other Scandinavian and European countries.”
The authors do say, however, that only once the pandemic and impact of measures taken are fully understood, after one or two years at least, can we begin fairly then to judge what was done correctly.
This is an interesting message. It is my view that we appear to be all afloat currently with no real information, facts, figures or solid studies on patterns of infection during pandemics such as Covid. For a time in our lives when empirical evidence has never been easier to determine, this state of affairs is disappointing.
I don’t think that’s true Baobabs. We know an awful lot more about the corona virus and about Covid 19 and it’s spread than we did at the start of the pandemic. We know it doesn’t spread so easily outside, we know some activities are more risky such as singing in a choir or working in a meat factory, we know face coverings help in preventing the spread, we know small children don’t play as great a role as adults in passing the virus on, we know older children are the same as adults, pretty much, as far as the risks of increasing spread goes, although they are far less likely to have a severe disease, we know the older you are the greater your risk and the poorer you are the greater your risk, the more people you live with the greater your risk, we know some existing drugs are effective in treating Covid 19 and others aren’t, Dr’s are getting much better at spotting who is likely to need oxygen or to be admitted to intensive care and receive ventilation, we know it’s not just antibodies but also T cells that play an important role in our immune response, we know staying 2m away from people is effective in stopping the spread of the virus, we know social distancing works and we know that we have to get used to a new normal until an effective vaccine comes along — which may not stop us getting Covid 19, just stop us dying from it. There are hundreds of scientists all round the world working tirelessly to try and find answers. Those are just some of the answers they’ve found so far and are available in published scientific papers in a whole host of journals. It’s true there’s still an awful lot we don’t know - are some people genetically pre- disposed to having a more severe infection, the role of fat cells and obesity in increasing the risk of dying, whether BAME people are really more susceptible or whether it is more a question of the jobs they do and in some cases social deprivation and overcrowding with many generations living in one house, we don’t know exactly why the immune response seems to overreact in some people and make their condition worse and we don’t know if people have immunity after they have had Covid 19 or how long any immunity lasts. We won’t know the answer to that for a while because this is a new virus and we have to wait and see. But new things are being learnt all the time and progress is being made even if it doesn’t always feel like that!
Mmmmmm
I had the test done. Blood. Not the swabs. From Regenerus labs. Was negative. Disclaimer on report I received said I should be aware that a positive result can only mean I have had a coronavirus (common cold is a coronavirus!) as there is no definitive test for Covid-19. And it’s strange the flu figs are at a five year low. Maybe people have had the flu (which can be a killer if you’re old or have underlying health conditions) and it’s been falsely reported as Covid-19. Look up the Whooping Cough pandemic that never was.
That article gives the impression that Sweden has taken no Coronavirus measures at all, but I was reading an article yesterday by a Brit who lives in Sweden, explaining the collective effort required by the Swedish to protect each other. They said herd immunity was never the intention.
It's interesting to see their efforts being played down by a doctor this way. They said herd immunity was always the intention. It's very conflicting.
Unfortunately the whole thing comes back to "wait and see" really. We can never truly know how serious this thing might have been in the UK without a lockdown, but we can see what happens next.
Imo, Dr. Rushworth's comments were informative because of his common sense focus:
- "Considering that 70% of those who have died of covid are over 80 years old, quite a few of those 6,000 would have died this year anyway. " AND
- "If only 6000 are dead out of five million infected, that works out to a case fatality rate of 0.12 percent, roughly the same as regular old influenza, which no-one is the least bit frightened of, and which we don’t shut down our societies for."
I understand that some people might take offense to his remarks about the senior citizen covid deaths, but sentimentality aside, his point is well taken. The hysteria generated by mainstream media has caused many people to not think rationally as Dr. Rushworth does. It's deaths that should be the main focus of our attention. The number of Sars-cov-2 virus cases detected should be viewed together with recovery case numbers along with the total population of the affected nation. People have been manipulated to focus on detected case numbers alone but it's just one of several data points.
Take India's multiple covid data points as an example. According to worldometers.info India has approximately:
- 1.4 Billion people
- 2.5 Million covid cases
- 1.8 Million covid case recoveries
- 700,000 covid active cases
- 49,000 covid deaths
The covid deaths versus recoveries is actually positive news considering that India is a developing nation with a huge population, many of whom are impoverished and living in crowded housing facilities - an ideal environment for a potentially lethal, highly transmissible virus to cause an enormous death toll. But Sars-cov-2 has not caused the death toll one might expect in India, which is one of the dozen nations that made HCQ broadly available to all its health care workers, first responders, and their family members right from the start for use prophylactically with no restrictions on physicians for writing HCQ prescriptions for patients. On 07/29 it was reported that India doubled down on increasing HCQ availability sending 42.4 Million HCQ tablets to all its states.
Pls. note: I'm not promoting HCQ as a "cure" or "preventative" medication for covid. But the governments of developing nations like India and Malaysia et al seem to have done quite well by their people by thinking outside the box and quickly re-purposing old medications like HCQ [or Ivermectin or Avigan, etc.] rather than shutting down their economies and waiting with bated breath for a vaccine, which make take years for developing a truly effective one as opposed to a vaccine that has 50% or less efficacy against covid. Sweden used the herd theory rather than repurposed cheap medications to deal with Sars-cov-2 and has had success with that approach. Japan used its anti-flu medication, Avian, together with sensible policies like mask wearing and controlling its borders.
Unfortunately First World nations like the USA and the UK that primarily used New Age Health Expert theories like "shelter in place" have not done as well as India or Japan who have been more creative with repurposing familiar tried and true medications or Sweden that used nothing much at all in terms of draconian policies aiming to attain herd immunity.
Brilliant reply!!! And I’ve read four or five studies that show HCQ works.
It’s called do no harm. You can’t just give people medications willy nilly without a safety profile. India and Malaysia do not have safeguards in place to regulate how meds are given. Although a double edged sword, it’s imperative that we not give meds that we think “might” work. That’s just bad medicine.
It’s like opioids constipate people but you won’t find a physician giving opioids for diarrhea because it has other effects.
Most recover from COVID without incident. And for those that don’t, HCQ probably won’t help. There is absolutely no solid evidence that HCQ should be given at all. The idea should’ve been shut down at day 1 because of the lack of evidence. Only reason US even gave it any consideration is because French scientist, Raoult, did a study that has been debunked. Now he’s being investigated for fraud.
Wear a mask, wash your hands, social distance, be smart. That’s the best alternative to HCQ pipe dreams. And the lockdown was done to prevent overcrowding and depletion of hospital resources all at once. It wasn’t to stop the virus completely. It was to mitigate its quick spread.
A. I would suggest that letting people die needlessly or letting them suffer "long hauler" side effects is doing major harm as opposed to doing no harm.
HCQ has definitely been shown to be an effective anti-viral, anti-inflammatory medication especially when covid symptoms initially present themselves. HCQ is often used as part of a drug cocktail that includes zinc and Zpac - the latter for patients who have a high risk of developing secondary pulmonary bacterial infections. Zpac can be replaced with doxycycline in patients who have contra indictions for Zpac.
America's Frontline Summit doctors website states: "...negative HCQ studies have used either: too much, used it alone (it needs Zinc), or used it late (it should be early.) The treatment dose is 200 mg HCQ twice a day for five days + Zinc 50 (elemental) daily. The prophylactic dose is 400 mg HCQ weekly + Zinc 50 (elemental) daily. (There are studies right now to see if HCQ 200 mg. weekly is sufficient.) This is very low dose. (The usual dose of HCQ in Lupus, Rheumatoid Arthritis is 400 mg. daily for years...."
B. India is the world's major manufacturer of generic medications used by First World nations. If you have concerns about India's medical pharmaceutical standards, I'd advise you to empty your medicine chest right away because 80% of those meds are likely manufactured in India. The other 20% are probably manufactured in China. Or at the very least the API [ active pharmaceutical ingredients] are sourced from India and China. The UK, USA, and Euro nations have few generic manufacturing facilities in their nations so dissing India, which produce most of our medications seems inappropriate. Back in February, India recommended that their health care providers use HCQ as a prophylaxis which demonstrates a substantial degree of confidence in HCQ anti-viral/anti-inflammatory effects. The last thing India would want is to give their physicians and nurses a placebo drug during a global pandemic. Btw Malaysia also has a thriving pharmaceutical industry.
C. HCQ has a 60 year long safety record. It's not just an anti-malaria medication but also an effective lupus and RA medication. It's currently being considered for research studies for treatment of some cancers. WHO has a list for approx. 100 safe, essential medications all nations should stock and HCQ was one of the top 25, as I recall.
D. The side effects:
- retinal damage - very rare and only infrequently comes up after 5-10 years of continued daily use. After 5 years of use for lupus or RA, physicians often require their HCQ patients be examined annually by an ophthalmologist as a proactive precaution.
- Q interval concern - has been grossly exaggerated - to such a degree that New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet recently were forced to retract a bogus study they had published to great fanfare, which was done by medical scoundrels who were ultimately exposed. Fyi, retraction is an unheard of action by those 2 highly touted journals. Publishing a bogus research study showed the prejudice that the editors and peer group reviewers in the 2 medical journals had against HCQ.
E. Dr. Harvey Risch an infectious diseases specialist professor at Yale Medical School [ top 10 medical school] is a major proponent of HCQ for early covid treatment. He published a May 27 opinion article in the prestigious American Journal of Epidemiology with the title, “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis.” See:
academic.oup.com/aje/advanc...
After looking at the data from five clinical trials using HCQ+Zpac, Dr. Risch discovered no cardiac problems and “significant major out-patient efficacy.” His conclusion was that “these medications need to be widely available and promoted immediately for physicians.”
F. Chinese covid whistle blower physician researcher, Dr. Li Meng Yan, says she takes HCQ prophylactically as do high ranking Chinese government officials and some medical doctors in large military hospitals.
covexit.com/whistleblower-d...
G. Dr Rob Elens in the Netherlands and other physicians there and in Belgium recommend following the Dr. Zelensky [ US physician] protocol and have set up a self-care initiative. There are currently 133 initiative supporters: 67 medical doctors, both general practitioners and specialists, and 66 paramedics.
covexit.com/dutch-belgian-m...
H. Dr. Zelenko and Dr. Risch, both M.D.'s, have compiled a compendium of HCQ studies :
drive.google.com/file/d/1l6...
I. Here's a White Paper compiled by Dr. Simone Gold, M.D. J.D. on HCQ:
drive.google.com/file/d/1-g...
J. C19 website has an annotated list of 72 treatment and retrospective studies published re: HCQ covid treatment.
Heads up: I would recommend waiting 1 week or so before using the C19 website because as of 08/07 the website moderators noted that the website had been subject to "malicious personal, doxxing, hacking, and DDoS attacks. We may be unavailable for some time while we work on forensic analysis."
The c19 website is still up but nothing is being updated.
Here are some remarks and statistics from C19 regarding the 72 Global HCQ studies:
PrEP, PEP, and early treatment studies show high effectiveness, while late treatment shows mixed results.
PrEP 100%; PEP100% ; Early 100%; Late 62%; All 74%
72 studies (42 peer reviewed)
PrEP= Pre-exposure prophylaxis [ people at risk for exposure like health care workers]
PEP = Post-exposure prophylaxis [ after being potentially exposed]
I hope this information helps to give the "other side" of the HCQ narrative.
" I am a MD PhD who practices internal medicine and researches in biochem and molecular genetics. I’ve analyzed every study put out there."
- That's nice, but I did not ask for your background or your seal of approval for information I posted. It's my understanding that this is laymen medical information exchange website.
- Double bind research trials are not useful when time is of essence during a global health pandemic. 20% of prescriptions for medications are for off label use ... at the best of times, when there is no pandemic.
- The FDA’s drug evaluation database lists 62 cardiac deaths out of 50 million prescriptions. A large Oxford-based study that involved more than 300,000 patients with rheumatoid arthritis resulted in an estimate of just 47 cardiac arrhythmias per 100,000 patients. And most of those were not fatal. OTC medications like Tylenol, Aleve, and Advil have health risks that are greater than HCQ, but physicians and consumers don't think twice about using these meds. Tylenol is the #1 cause of acute liver failure in the U.S. Together Aleve + Advil account for 21% of all adverse drug events in the U.S. The push against HCQ is fueled by Big Pharma. [Sourced from Dr. Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D. past Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons].
- As you well know Big Pharma funds a high percentage of medical research at medical schools worldwide. This is 10 year old data - the $$$ is higher today - though it's specific to the USA, the funding percentage by Big Pharma may even be higher in socialized medical system nations:
"In a Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) study published in January 2010, the largest study to date to attempt to quantify U.S. funding of biomedical research by the pharmaceutical industry, government, and private sources, researchers estimate that U.S. biomedical research currently stands at about over $100 billion annually.
The pharmaceutical industry is the largest contributor to funding research, funding over 60 percent. The government contributes to about a third of the costs, with foundations, advocacy organizations and individual donors responsible for the remaining investments."
thebalance.com/who-funds-bi...
- Fyi, the medical researchers who published the retracted bogus April/May research study about HCQ that was published in NEJM and Lancet had excellent credentials, likely as good or possibly better than yours, but their prejudice against old and tried and true blinded them to the efficacy of HCQ.
The lead author, Professor Mandeep R Mehra, MD is the medical director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) Heart and Vascular Center. He specializes in cardiovascular medicine and cardiac transplant at BWH and is a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Sapan Desai, is a vascular surgeon who also founded Surgispere, a healthcare data analytics company. Professor Frank Ruschitzka is Chairman of the University Heart Center and the Department of Cardiology at the University Hospital in Zürich, Switzerland. Professor Ruschitzka has specialized in internal medicine and cardiology at the Universities of Göttingen and Zürich. Professor Amit Nilkanth Patel MD, BS, MS is a cardiac surgeon and was director of clinical regenerative medicine and tissue engineering at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. He was a tenured professor of surgery - cardiothoracic at the University of Utah until he left for the University of Miami.
- An August 2005 study funded by the NIH of the CDC titled 'Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread' "identified chloroquine as an effective antiviral agent for SARS-CoV in cell culture conditions, as evidenced by its inhibitory effect when the drug was added prior to infection or after the initiation and establishment of infection. The fact that chloroquine exerts an antiviral effect during pre- and post-infection conditions suggest that it is likely to have both prophylactic and therapeutic advantages."
Chloroquine is the unrefined version of HCQ and is less often prescribed than HCQ. Yet even the rough version of HCQ showed anti-viral, anti-inflammatory efficacy against Sars-cov-1 cell cultures. Sars-cov-1 discovered in 2002 shares similar genetic attributes of Sars-cov-2.
virologyj.biomedcentral.com...
- people on this board may have some of the underlying co-morbidities - like age 50+, autoimmune diseases like Hashimotos, heart diseases like Afib, obesity, diabetes, pulmonary diseases - which make them vulnerable to coming down with a serious case of Sars-cov-2 infection, if symptoms are not treated early.
- Being hospitalized is not a desirable situation; being put on a vent is even worse [a 20% survival rate]. I think it's incumbent on individuals to do as much personal research re: potential prophylactic or early treatment medications that are available as possible, if they are not young, perfectly healthy human specimens.
- Medicine is an imperfect science. "Evidence-based medicine" is a trendy newish phrase, suggesting scientific excellence, which was introduced in 1990 by Gordon Guyatt of McMaster University, an "I'm okay you're okay teach yourself medicine in student teams" Canadian medical. Prior to that New Age terminology, medicine involved treating patients as individuals often symptomatically. Which type of medical training was better for patients? I suggest the pre-1990 version was more common sense patient centered and for this reason, I strongly believe that patients need to educate themselves to ask the "right questions" or their concerns will be ignored by specialists.
- we're on this board - even you, perhaps - because we have not received satisfactory medical treatment for our thyroid issues and we're looking for answers, suggestions, recommendations from others who are in the same boat.
My first response to you had numerous studies listed in bibliographies. See #H, I, J.
You didn't bother to open the url links I provided.
Hopefully other board members may find them useful.
I deleted my response. Your google drive is not a peer reviewed source. I’m just trying to stop the spread of misinformation. I’ll leave it there.
Have a good night.
I stand by the bibliographies of HCQ studies provided by 3 M.D.'s who actually treat patients as opposed to being politicized government "experts/administrators" like Dr. Fauci and facsimile names, who happen to have M.D.'s but haven't practiced medicine for years, even decades.
I actually share your goal of stopping the spread of misinformation. That's why I do research outside of reading peer reviewed pubmed studies. This is a global pandemic. There is no time for "peer reviewed double bind" studies, even if they could be done objectively. As soon as Orange Man Bad said that HCQ showed promise against covid and that he was using HCQ as a prophylaxis, it was over for HCQ to be studied without prejudice or corruptive influences. It's just that simple.
Are medical purists going to demand "peer reviewed double bind" studies of covid vaccines currently being pushed through at break neck speed, with regulators already forced to admit they are lowering efficacy standards to 50% or less for approval? Regulators' excuses for low bar standards for covid vaccines are: "It's a global pandemic! There's no time to waste seeking perfection! We just need something to reduce the effects of covid infection" But what about side effects? No problem. "Every medication has side effects, doncha know."
The same "Eek! it's a pandemic!" mindset should apply to HCQ as to fast tracked vaccines, which have no "half-life"per se, no way for being excreted, but instead are designed to have systemic cellular impacts for a year or longer. HCQ is not a cure. But physician practitioners [ as opposed to gov't administrators] have found HCQ an effective medication to decrease the serious, potentially lethal effects of covid infections, so their patients can stay at home to get over the virus and not be hospitalized - the latter represents a whole different ballgame in terms of chances for recovery as well as likelihood for suffering "long hauler" persistent covid after effects.
The reason I recommend individuals doing broad medical research, reading all available literature, including different points of view on covid as well as on thyroid disease and other medical issues is because we only have one life to live and so-called experts who purport to look out for our best interests have shown themselves to be fallible. Experts got us stuck with Synthroid, while a 100 year old highly effective natural desiccated thyroid medication got labeled "primitive medication" even "dangerous medication" in some academic endocrinology circles. Experts got us TSH as the "gold standard" and hypothyroid symptoms got pushed to the back burner of treatment practice. How many patients' lives have been damaged by experts and peer review research in the medical field of thyroid disease alone?
Medicine over the years - particularly academic medical research - has become compromised by Big Pharma funding and publish or perish tenure track pressures. Peer reviewed studies are a dime a dozen. In fact medical schools require so-called capstone "research studies" for graduation. Getting published in a peer reviewed medical journal is a sure way to being accepted in a highly coveted residency like dermatology. Multiple publications in peer reviewed medical journals ensures tenure. Peer reviewed medical research studies are not solely for the highly touted goal of medical progress, but rather too often for individual career advancement.
As I noted earlier, the bogus study about HCQ that was published in April/May issues of NEJM and Lancet was peer reviewed. NEJM and Lancet were actually shamed into retracting the study. It was not retracted without initial resistance. The person that first questioned the study and got the ball rolling for exposing the study to be a sham was not a physician, but rather a computer scientist from Australia. These days physicians working on the frontline, in the trenches, as it were, providing medical services to patients are too busy and/or too bullied by academic physicians to question "peer reviewed" research studies.
These same frontline physicians have had great success treating their covid infected patients with repurposed medications like HCQ and Ivermectin.
Should their treatment experiences be dismissed due to not being a double bind peer reviewed study?
Should India's HCQ covid treatment and HCQ prophylaxis policy be ignored even though India's low covid death rate puts the UK and the USA with all their medical experts and their peer reviewed studies to shame?
Should a broad scale "therapeutic observational" study done by physicians at 6 hospitals covering over 2500 covid patients treated in the Ford Health System in Michigan be snubbed because there was no proper double bind whatever's and/or whathaveyou's?
henryford.com/news/2020/07/...
...Treatment with hydroxychloroquine cut the death rate significantly in sick patients hospitalized with COVID-19 – and without heart-related side-effects, according to a new study published by Henry Ford Health System. In a large-scale retrospective analysis of 2,541 patients hospitalized between March 10 and May 2, 2020 across the system’s six hospitals, the study found 13% of those treated with hydroxychloroquine alone died compared to 26.4% not treated with hydroxychloroquine. None of the patients had documented serious heart abnormalities; however, patients were monitored for a heart condition routinely pointed to as a reason to avoid the drug as a treatment for COVID-19.
The study was published today [ July 02] in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, the peer-reviewed, open-access online publication of the International Society of Infectious Diseases (ISID.org).“The findings have been highly analyzed and peer-reviewed,” said Dr. Marcus Zervos, division head of Infectious Disease for Henry Ford Health System, who co-authored the study with Henry Ford epidemiologist Samia Arshad...
I remember - years ago - my father wouldn't let me have an injection for some childhood illness which had just been issued until it had been proven not to harm children. Some months later I did get the injection.
Your father was a wise man. But caution regarding new vaccines does not just apply to children's health. Adults can be harmed as well. Say 1976 swine flu vaccine fiasco, anyone? The wait and see approach is why I'm not going to jump to the head of the queue to get covid vaccinated, not until there's a couple of years of track record for covid vaccines. And who knows? IF we're lucky, Sars-cov-2 virus may burn itself out and covid vaccinations will be unnecessary...if we're lucky.
To all - I apologize for a persistent typo in my posts. For some odd reason - likely due to mischievous invisible keyboard elves on my laptop - I've typed "double blind" but instead "double bind" keeps showing up. argh!
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