April 6, 2020
How real values change overnight. Suddenly, some object performing a role in the our world that never gets a second thought, is elevated in status beyond all previous measure.
And so it should be. Guaranteed to reduce particulate intake by 95%, it is a good start to reducing the transmissibility of the disease.
On that front, have you noticed that all the eco-babble has suddenly stopped? All those beardy-weirdy sandal-wearers droning on about “natural healing” and the problems with evil “chemicals” have retreated to the nearest flat rocks to hide under?
An illuminating article from the science20.com website, mainly bloggers from the American Council on Science and Health,[here] [promoting science and debunking junk since 1978] points out that no matter how many people talk about the “virtues” of all these organic or “natural” materials:
…Environmental Working Group recently rolled out its annual Dirty Dozen list of foods that … wait, did they?
This year, no one seems to know or care if a group of lawyers paid an intern to go through USDA pesticide data and did simple arithmetic to declare how ‘toxic’ fruit was unless the pesticides on it were made by their clients.
Instead of being paralyzed by irrational fear, the way organic industry groups make money, people are paralyzed by something real; SARS-CoV-2, the 2019 coronavirus that set off a microbiological bomb in Wuhan, China and causes the COVID-19 disease that has spread across the world. Go to a store right now and lots of Seventh Generation brand “alternatives” can be found on shelves but good luck finding Purell, Clorox, and Lysol. It turns out when people are actually at risk the public wants things that work, not that have a “natural” halo.
No kidding! All the purity talk evaporates like the morning mist when a real situation demands real action. What your grandmother told you is true and still works, and all the Whole Foods organic eco-drivel is no more. Again, the hold-up is always the inability of bureaucracy to adjust to real-time thinking.
On another science front, a paper from Australia on a possible drug treatment for the coronavirus says:
Although several clinical trials are now underway to test possible therapies, the worldwide response to the COVID-19 outbreak has been largely limited to monitoring/containment. We report here that Ivermectin, an FDA-approved anti-parasitic previously shown to have broad spectrum anti-viral activity in vitro, is an inhibitor of the causative virus (SARS-CoV-2), with
a single addition to Vero-hSLAM cells 2 hours post infection with SARS-CoV-2 able to effect ~5000-fold reduction in viral RNA at 48 h. Ivermectin therefore warrants further investigation for possible benefits in humans.
This is interesting in light of the reported encouraging treatments using hydroxychloroquine from around the world.
All of this is pretty much a shotgun approach to trying out various drugs as therapeutics and/or prophylactics, but there is no time to lose in emergency response operations, particularly global situations:
March 28, 2020 Updates: Dr. Vladimir Zelenko has now treated 699 coronavirus patients with 100% success and ZERO deaths using Hydroxychloroquine Sulfate, Zinc and Z-Pak.
The deadly Coronavirus pandemic continues to claim thousands of lives around the world. That’s the bad news. The good news is, many doctors from around the world, including the United States are successfully treating coronavirus patients with great success. Studies in France, China, and Australia, found that a combination of two anti-malaria drugs Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin (Z-Pak) have shown to cure coronavirus patients within six days with a 100% success rate.
The jury is still out on that but the amount of research that is taking place in days, not weeks or months, is truly astounding. One of the results of this pandemic is going to be a thorough revision and purging of the peer-review process for scientific publications.
In the current frenzy of the pandemic, many mistakes will be made, but, as they say, perfection is the enemy of the good. In our situation, it has never been more apt.
Rebel Yell