Coronavirus: Discussion and Information

[Mechelle]

Your post was accompanied by a barrage of fireworks as it came through exactly on midnight my time!
Some places such as the nearest pub to where I live are obviously still having events, although the place where I would have attended did cancel tonight, and wouldn't have set off fireworks anyway, as too many of the staff had to self-isolate.
The larger public events have mostly, or maybe all, been cancelled, but there is a difference in the United Kingdom between England and the three devolved nations (Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). The devolved nations have more restrictions, and so people have travelled from Scotland and Wales to the English cities near the border, where nightclubs can still open.

[Lilias]

In Athens, where the weather is usually good (i.e. dry) this time of year, there are usually musical events organised in public squares all over the city, with the biggest one on or near Syntagma, which is shown live on TV for the countdown. This year, of course, it wasn't going to happen. There was a sufficiently distanced live show at the Lycabettus theatre, without audience, and the requisite fireworks. We were on the phone with my mum for a good chunk of it all; for those like us, who only ever watched the events on TV, it wasn't much worse than pre-pandemic times.

[Oreo]

Over here in the north woods of California there might ...might be a fool or two out shooting a rifle in the air at midnight, cursin' the old year with a swig of jack daniels. That's about it. Otherwise everything as normal.

[Psi]

As an Aussie...

Spent NYE in the city with friends in an apartment - looking down on the traffic and lack of pedestrians it was a WTF moment.    Have gone to NYE over a dozen times in the city and it was quieter than a normal (pre-covid) day.    Fireworks were useless too, lucky the company was good - friends and their family.

Masks indoors, Vax required to attend anything and to comment on Oreo's - horrified glances at photos of bullets landing or via windows.

[Oniya]

Just learned that Ronald McDonald House is requiring anyone who stays at their facilities to be vaccinated, and of course someone is trying to spin this into 'how dare they'.

First of all, for anyone who doesn't know, RMH provides a place for caregivers (parents/family members) of critically ill kids to stay, near the treatment centers where their kids are staying in ICUs, cancer wards, transplant wards - you know, that level of sick.  Kids who have to make sure they don't get the common cold, much less COVID.

Secondly, despite the attempted spin, RMH isn't just kicking these antivaxxers out in the cold, but is finding them other places to stay - so that the people that actually give a fuck about their kids' health don't get exposed to COVID either.

[Azy]

I mentioned a joke I heard I think it was on Jimmy Kimmel to a friend because I thought he'd find it interesting.  He actually looked more into it and found this.... 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7987002/

It's a whole bunch of technical babble that all scientific reports are written in, but from the looks of things, CBD from hemp inhibits Covid infections.  It's dated from March of last year.  The first thing out of his mouth after reading this is why are we not using this?  Other than the fact that CBD is currently considered a supplement and not a drug, and therefore wouldn't rake in the dough for big pharma, I wonder that myself.  It also says not peer reviewed, but if there is something to it, I mean, peer review it. 

[TheGlyphstone]

Peer reviews are done at the request of the experimenters, not the reviewers. If something is published without peer review, that means they either couldn't find or didn't want other scientists to review their work for whatever reason. And yes, there are plenty of scientists not working for Big Pharma who'd do it if asked, especially last year when everyone and their grandma was trying to find a cure. Charitably, it could simply be they wanted to publish immediately instead of waiting for a peer review, but that makes their study automatically look more suspect.

[Azy]

I would think it would be worth another study by different scientists.  Admittedly, I'm not the greatest a deciphering scientist speak, but it looks like it does something that prevents the virus from invading cells much like elderberry and zinc does with the common cold.  Say what you like about home remedies like that, but if I feel a cold coming on I take a dose of elderberry syrup before bed and the cold doesn't happen.  If this study is actually valid it could really be something.  I'm sure that a lot of people who are refusing the vaccine would happily use cannabis.  The friend I mentioned this to uses it to help him sleep, and he was vaccine hesitant, but zero reservations about technically legal weed.   

[Pumpkin Seeds]

First I would say that this isn’t about smoking weed or even ingesting edibles. Going down to the discussion portion of the study the researchers actually bring up how the quality, quantity and state of the CBD can alter the effects of the supplement on prevention of the virus. There are pathways of metabolism that would need to be researched and studied to determine the ideal amount and quality of CBD before administering this as a preventive. Also they point out that THC counters the effects of CBD in terms of blocking these pathways. From what I can decipher here “weed” is not the answer being proposed.

Also research is a complicated process. While there is an experiment being conducted in this paper, this is far from a clinical trial. They are proposing that there is something here, basically saying there is enough information and evidence that further study could be warranted. Peer reviewing this type of paper would be pretty fruitless to be honest. They are not proposing even a formula for the ideal CBD content just simply saying there is evidence for additional study.

[Azuresun]

I mentioned a joke I heard I think it was on Jimmy Kimmel to a friend because I thought he'd find it interesting.  He actually looked more into it and found this.... 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7987002/

It's a whole bunch of technical babble that all scientific reports are written in, but from the looks of things, CBD from hemp inhibits Covid infections.  It's dated from March of last year.  The first thing out of his mouth after reading this is why are we not using this?  Other than the fact that CBD is currently considered a supplement and not a drug, and therefore wouldn't rake in the dough for big pharma, I wonder that myself.  It also says not peer reviewed, but if there is something to it, I mean, peer review it.

The important word there is "if".

I'm instantly deeply sceptical, because there have been so many "wonder cures that the Big Farmers don't want you to know about", which are promoted by scammers who play upon our unconscious prejudice against pharmaceutical companies to funnel money into their own pockets. The big one is Ivermectin, a drug used to treat parasitic infections in livestock. Even the manufacturer of that one is telling people not to take it for Covid, but it's rare to see any sort of social media thread where someone isn't demanding to know why they're not using horse paste. If the people behind this chose not to put it through peer review, that virtually jumps up and down and screams "SCAM!".

I can't say for certain that there's nothing in it but typically, if something seems too good to be true, that means it is.

[Oniya]

I can't say for certain that there's nothing in it but typically, if something seems too good to be true, that means it is.

From what Pumpkin said, it's definitely not a 'smoke weed, beat COVID' situation.  They don't even have a 'recommended dose/purity' in the paper.

As for the ivermectin - Beau's commentary on that gave me a good answer for those folks:  If you're off by as much as a microgram per pound, you could end up poisoning yourself.  Stuff is formulated for a one-ton (or so) animal, not something 1/10th that size (or smaller.  *checks wrist size* Definitely smaller.)

[Azy]

As I said, I'm not that great a deciphering scientific babble.  My comment about my friend having zero reservations about weed was just an anecdote I guess that this would be something more people would be willing to get behind.  There's already a huge market for it CBD products.  And yes, CBD and THC, they do sort of counteract each other, unless you're me and have a some things are opposite gene.   

[Annaamarth]

As I said, I'm not that great a deciphering scientific babble.  My comment about my friend having zero reservations about weed was just an anecdote I guess that this would be something more people would be willing to get behind.  There's already a huge market for it CBD products.  And yes, CBD and THC, they do sort of counteract each other, unless you're me and have a some things are opposite gene.

It sounds like even with that gene, it is likely that THC would inhibit the mitigating action that CBD is taking.

Not a doctor (much less a geneticist) but my understanding is that CBD and THC work on different receptors differently in the brain - that'd be a lot of what you feel - but the benefit from CBD in that study would come from chemical interaction, not brain-voodoo.

...As for the ivermectin - Beau's commentary on that gave me a good answer for those folks:  If you're off by as much as a microgram per pound, you could end up poisoning yourself.  Stuff is formulated for a one-ton (or so) animal, not something 1/10th that size (or smaller.  *checks wrist size* Definitely smaller.)

It pleases me immeasurably to see others refer to Beau after having linked him in this thread.

But yes, if your doctor is prescribing you Plaquenil for ... whatever reason?  Take it.  My understanding of the "Ivermectin helps prophylactically/in early stages of infection" study is that the data came mostly from underdeveloped nations - notably places with a significant parasite problem.  So ... my read on that dats is that if you kill the parasites in your body with an antiparasitic medication, you are more likely to fight off viral infections with your now less-burdened immune system.  I think this premise may well fall squarely into "no shit" territory.

This is not helpful in nations that don't have endemic parasites.^[1]  If you can drink your tap water safely, this is not for you.

[1] (Politicians don't count in this context)

[Azuresun]

This is not helpful in nations that don't have endemic parasites.^[1]  If you can drink your tap water safely, this is not for you.

[1] (Politicians don't count in this context)

This is off-topic, but can we not have casual """"funny""""" hateful jokes against all politicians? That encourages cynicism that works in favour of extremists, and legitimises harrasment and violence against politicians.

[stormwyrm]

All the clinical trials so far that have found some positive effect with ivermectin for COVID-19 are some combination of underpowered (i.e. not enough subjects to produce robust conclusions), suffer from poor study design, or outright fraudulent. There have been several trials with reasonable numbers of subjects and they all came up negative. The most charitable adjective that can be used for the evidence for it is "weak": if ivermectin does work, it doesn't work very well.

[Azy]

It sounds like even with that gene, it is likely that THC would inhibit the mitigating action that CBD is taking.

Not a doctor (much less a geneticist) but my understanding is that CBD and THC work on different receptors differently in the brain - that'd be a lot of what you feel - but the benefit from CBD in that study would come from chemical interaction, not brain-voodoo.

Maybe, maybe not.  I'm not a geneticist either.  All I know is that my dad had high blood pressure, and he had to take a medication for low blood pressure, because that class of medications had an opposite effect on his system.  I don't know if there was anything else he took that did that.  For me it seems to mostly be side effects.  It doesn't happen a lot either.  But I was spending the night at my friend's, and we got into his Delta-8.  I overdid it just a little bit.  He knew I had CBD on me because that's what I usually use to help me sleep, so he told me to take some of that, it would counteract the high and bring me down.  It did not.  It made things way worse.  It takes several puffs from my vape device with the CBD additive, but I can get a decent mild buzz from it, and that should not be possible.   

[Pumpkin Seeds]

What medication was your father taking to treat low blood pressure?

[Pumpkin Seeds]

To get back on track, weed is sort of everyone’s favorite go to for miracle medicine. There is a whole mythos around marijuana that is just unreal and people believe weed fixes so many things with no side effects.

[Azy]

To get back on track, weed is sort of everyone’s favorite go to for miracle medicine. There is a whole mythos around marijuana that is just unreal and people believe weed fixes so many things with no side effects.

You're right, it is being touted as some miracle cure for a lot of things.  But there is a reason that many states where it isn't legal for recreational use, it is legal for medical use for conditions that studies have proven that it helps.  Anxiety is definitely one of them.  I saw on a doctor show that CBD is being advertised to help people sleep, but it really only helps if you can't sleep because of anxiety and/or pain.  Although one would think that if it relaxes an anxious person, it would have some relaxing effect on most people at least. 

Not being a person in the medical field, I can't say what claims are and are not true.  It just feels to me like there is still enough stigma because of the 'war on drugs' to keep research from being done.  Part of it is marijuana itself is still classified in the US as a schedule one drug, and therefore research cannot take place here.  That being said, there is potential.  I believe it was the first season of the new Bill Nye show that came out where he did an episode on the topic.  Other countries around the world are doing the research, and Israel is where a lot of it is being done.

Researches are looking into every possible solution for this pandemic.  The vaccine is only doing so much good because a lot of people have been programed not to trust it.  If there is potential for something many people already do trust to cure just about everything else, isn't it worth a bit more research?  It's gotta be a better solution than horse de-wormer.     

[Oniya]

But yes, if your doctor is prescribing you Plaquenil for ... whatever reason?  Take it.  My understanding of the "Ivermectin helps prophylactically/in early stages of infection" study is that the data came mostly from underdeveloped nations - notably places with a significant parasite problem.  So ... my read on that dats is that if you kill the parasites in your body with an antiparasitic medication, you are more likely to fight off viral infections with your now less-burdened immune system.  I think this premise may well fall squarely into "no shit" territory.

Antiparasitics for humans are regularly available over the counter.  When Little Oni was still - well - little, we had to take an OTC for pinworm a couple of times (which is fairly easy to self-diagnose - ugh.)  That stuff was pyrantel-something, though, and not ivermectin.

[Annaamarth]

This is off-topic, but can we not have casual """"funny""""" hateful jokes against all politicians? That encourages cynicism that works in favour of extremists, and legitimises harrasment and violence against politicians.

This is an excellent point well-made.

I will try to be more mindful.

[elone]

Antiparasitics for humans are regularly available over the counter.  When Little Oni was still - well - little, we had to take an OTC for pinworm a couple of times (which is fairly easy to self-diagnose - ugh.)  That stuff was pyrantel-something, though, and not ivermectin.

I have used Ivermectin  to combat parasites in foxes.  Mange is a horrible disease and two doses of Ivermectin, carefully measured and injected into a raw chicken leg always did the trick.

[Beorning]

I have an unrelated question:

I had my 3rd vaccine shot yesterday afternoon. This time, it was Pfizer. I was feeling perfectly okay for the first 24 hours, but then I started feeling cold and ache-y... Is it possible that the vaccine's side effects are hitting me with some delay? I felt quite bad after my 1st shot (Astra Zeneca), but it started pretty soon after the injection.

[Sara Nilsson]

Took me a day before I started to get sickly from my booster. I thought I had dodged it at first then.. nope.. a day in bed.

[Beorning]

Huh.

I guess it wasn't my final form, then...