Coronavirus Conversations - Day 24: Status of Diagnosis, Therapeutics and Vaccines for COVID-19

Hello everyone. Yes, it's coronavirus update already, number 24. Pretty soon we'll be a month into these programs. I am very grateful for all the participation and all the sharing of ideas. We're getting some really interesting information, and when we close the program today, I'm going to read you something that talks about how it's really actually pretty helpful at times to not Always be right about everything that we do. I'm going to just post something for you here. We're going to talk about this in just a moment, but I did have an interesting experience today that I wanted to relate to you. And you're probably watching, the person who this is about, and you know that I love you, but I'm just going to share this experience because I think it's very helpful. I had a visit from a friend who met me out in front of the house. I was actually in the process of sterilizing the mail as it were. Who knew? And he was chatting with me at respectable distance drinking an iced coffee that he had gotten from you name your favorite drive-through. I won't. But he had gone through the drive-through and he had his iced coffee. Looked really good. Matter of fact, I made myself one after that with a metal straw. Actually, I have it right here. A metal straw, right? Save the oceans. Anyway, and I said, well, how are you just holding on to that cup? He said, I don't know what you mean. I said, didn't you get that from the drive-through? Did the man hand it to you, or the woman? He said, yeah, they handed it to me and I didn't really think about it. And I just would like you all to think about this. The idea of going through a drive-through and getting something from somebody who's handling tens, if not hundreds, of orders a day. As well as credit cards and/or money, and what that risk may represent. Now, if that person is wearing gloves and handing you your order, those gloves are going to protect him or her and not you if they are contaminated. They're really going to protect that individual. That is something to think about. Similarly, if you're going to a drive-up and they're putting the food in The trunk of your car, remember that that food, at least the plastic bag that it came in, it could well be contaminated and might potentially serve as a vector for transmission of coronavirus. That said, when you get home and you dump everything out of the plastic bag or whatever the container is, obviously dispose of that and then right away wash your hands with warm water and lots of soap. Probably best to offload that prepared food in the garage. Don't bring it directly into the kitchen and in fact open the container that then contains the food and dump that onto your plate hoping that it's a hot food. That might want to go into the oven or into the microwave or whatever it is, whatever is your choice. Don't kill me in the comments because I said microwave. Probably I'll get that, but nonetheless helpful tips. Don't go through the drive-through and accept things from people. Because we don't know if they're infected. I also had an interaction with somebody who said, can I come in to our house? And I said, probably not a good idea. And he said, I don't have any symptoms. Well, look, we all know that that doesn't mean a darn thing anymore, right? People can be asymptomatic and spread coronavirus to you, and they— or they could be presymptomatic, meaning tomorrow the, you know, it could hit the fan. And they could suddenly develop a fever and all the symptoms that go along with it, but we just don't know. Let's err on the side of keeping people out of your home. It's really the time to do that. There's been a lot of discussion, and we're gonna look at some information in just a moment, some up-to-date information about masks. And again, I am in favor. I want to respond to somebody who posted as a comment on the graphic that I posted today saying that, that she would not use a mask at all because it's going to take a mask away from a healthcare provider. I am in agreement with that mentality. On the other hand, I think if you have a mask and you— or have access to a mask, I'm using a mask going out in public. I think we have to get over the stigma, as if there were one, and let's be trendsetting here in America, as we've seen being adopted by the entire rest of the planet. So go for it. Wear your mask. Don't touch your face, wash your hands. So let's go to the news. Lots to look at, and we're going to jump right in. And the first thing I want to do is update our ever-changing story. It's what the link was that I sent you earlier. Update our story on the use of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of COVID-19. Now we've heard some encouraging results both from an independent, dare I say, researcher in New York as well as a better study that came out of France that I presented to you a couple of days ago. This study that I just sent you the link to, the title is A Pilot Study of Hydroxychloroquine in Treatment of Patients with Common Coronavirus Disease 19, or COVID-19. Let me read to you the objective. The objective is to evaluate the efficacy, does it work, And safety of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of patients with COVID-19. Small study just published today. They enrolled 30 people who had no— received no other treatment, so they were called treatment naive, and they were randomized to either receive hydroxychloroquine, I think it was 400 milligrams a day, or placebo. Did they get a placebo? Yes. And they had 5 days of treatment and what did they learn? They looked at a bunch of endpoints. The first endpoint that they looked at was how long did it take for them to revert to having a negative screen, a negative throat swab. If you want to learn about how the throat swab works, I posted a graphic earlier today on— just probably right down below me here on Facebook, you'll see that. how that works. And they wanted to determine if people became negative in terms of their testing more rapidly by taking hydroxychloroquine in comparison to those who did not. They found no difference. They found no difference in what is called the median duration of hospitalization, meaning how long were they in the hospital. They found no difference in the median time for the temperature, the body temperature to become normal. In other words, the fever goes away. And I'm going to read this to you. Radiological progression was shown on CT images, and the degree, the rate at which the chest x-rays or CT scans, actually in this case, improved was also the same in the patients treated with hydroxychloroquine versus those who were not. Their conclusions. of COVID-19 in patients is good. I think we can agree it generally is good for most people. Larger sample size study is needed to investigate the effects of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment. Subsequent research should be done, et cetera, et cetera. So this is an argument then in indicating that perhaps hydroxychloroquine is not as exciting as we had seen the other research telling us it could be. But keep in mind that the research I quoted over the past several days was a combination of hydroxychloroquine along with azithromycin or Zithromax that did show some really interesting and positive results. Who knows where this will go, but I'm going to do my best to keep everybody updated as to how this evolves. The next study I want to give you, and again these are all banked, On DrPearlmutter.com, I'm going to post this one right now. Now this one looks at something called mono, and I'm going to describe what that is because I have a lot of hope for this as a treatment. It it could perhaps serve as both a treatment and to some degree a form of immunization. And it takes the virus, it looks at the virus, and recognizes that there are all sorts of antigens on the covering of the virus. One of the common antigens or protein-like components that is being looked at is called the spike protein because as you've seen the pictures of this coronavirus, it has these spikes sticking out. And it's looking at the development of antibodies against the various types of antigens that are found on the virus. They develop these antibodies and then they replicate them, they reproduce them. And this is a monoclonal, one type of antibody that's produced aggressively, and then that could be used as a therapy. Take a look at the reference. I'm just going to read from the abstract because it's a call to us to really look at this therapy kind of as a treatment and also as a form of immunization. I'm going to read. Monoclonal antibodies— I'll paraphrase— these are the antibodies that are directed against parts of this virus, represent a major class of biotherapeutics for passive immunotherapy, meaning that our immune systems didn't develop these antibodies. It's passive. We sit back and we get the injection and we develop immunity based on receiving the antibodies as opposed to producing them. Passive immunotherapy to fight against viral infection. The therapeutic potential has been well recognized in the treatment of many diseases, and in the article that I've sent you, they summarize the potential for this type of therapy, monoclonal antibody, as an intervention for COVID-19 by looking at existing platforms that are present right now that have already been demonstrated effective, have They've been used for SARS, they've been used for MERS, and this is emerging technology that I feel very confident about because we're not having to develop this one from scratch. This one is playing upon having not to reinvent the wheel here. The next reference I'm going to give you is an incredible— you're going to love this— summary And there you go. And again, these are all housed on drpromoter.com, drpromoter.com. This is an incredible summary of the current status of where we are today in terms of the epidemiology, in terms of how we diagnose, in terms of the treatments available as well as vaccines. So take a look at that. And you'll recall a few days ago I posted information showing that there are no less than 40 companies that have unique development projects underway for testing in one form or another. As you all know, this has been kind of the weak link in the chain, if you will, in terms of where we are in being able to identify who is and who isn't infectious, being able to identify who may or may not be no longer infectious, although the caveat there So we talked about a week ago is the research that I quoted to you indicating that even though individuals may test negative finally after they're feeling better with respect to the nasopharyngeal swab, they may still be shedding infectious virus in the stool, meaning that the bathrooms, the toilet and the sink may be contaminated and possibly a vector for infection. I want to— I got a shout out from Slovenia, and I wanted earlier, and I want to say thank you for that, the kind shout out. And I happen to have— this is an interesting book to look at. This is in Slovenian. I will not even attempt to pronounce the title, but it is A Brain Maker. It deals with the role of gut bacteria in keeping us healthy. And it does take us back to the idea of how important a role our gut bacteria play in our immune systems. The other concept that we've been developing, and I'm going to give you a link to this right now, standby, that I think is very, very important— Oh, great. Thank you for that. Is very important as it relates to our immune systems is the notion of calorie restriction. Now, many of you participated in a fast that we did. I did with you. I'd like to know when everyone's ready for another 24-hour fast. I'm ready. And the link that I just passed to you is called it's a study of the influence of calorie restriction on aging immune system. Just how overall the restriction of calories is a potent way of amping up. Our immunity, and it's a simple thing. There's nothing to take. In fact, it's a time when you don't eat and, or simply restrict your calories. How effective is a 24-hour fast? It wasn't specifically addressed in this study, but it is certainly not going to hurt you, and if anything, might well be something that is good for amping up your immune system. We're going to have an interesting reading as we close today talking about why it might be a good thing to not always be right. But for now, let's look at some of these interesting questions that you all have posted. And in addition to these questions, because I do read these posts after we finish the broadcast, other ideas we'll talk about that you might have. Okay, so talking about hydroxychloroquine, I thought it should be used with a Z-Pak. That is the azithromycin that we just talked about, so that is the combination that seemed to work. Is it fair to compare that study with the one I announced today? Not exactly because the study from today is just hydroxychloroquine, but that is the— that is a good point that that person pointed out. Okay, from what I've heard, the regular flu shot doesn't do anything. for coronavirus. I believe that's true. If you look at yesterday's broadcast, I indicated— I reviewed a study showing that the trivalent flu vaccine in children over a 9-month period of time was actually associated with a fourfold increased risk for the development of other types of viruses like Coxsackievirus, rhinovirus, and as they call them, other viruses. Does it mean that the flu shot is going to increase risk for coronavirus? That was not addressed, but look through yesterday's broadcast or just go to drpromoter.com and pull that article up. I've recovered, should submit for passive antibody experiments? Susan Durham, thank you for even thinking about that. God bless. I don't know the answer to that in terms of what's available for you in your community. But for you to even be thinking about that is really quite wonderful. So I'm hopeful that as we move forward, we're going to find more and more clinics and hospitals embracing the notion of passive transfer of antibodies via plasma. In other words, taking blood from people who have fully recovered and have antibodies against COVID-19 using that plasma for the treatment of other people. So you made my day by asking that simple, that simple question. Okay, let's see, lots of questions. We need testing ASAP. I totally agree with that. There is my post. Is there a cure for all diseases? Don't know the answer to that. I actually read a book called that one a long time ago. Obviously a heck of a claim. Do I know if the Cuban antivirals are effective? They're being applied in Italy, other countries. Don't know the answer to that. I think we're still looking at those protocols to see if they're effective. But if we move just east of Cuba, southeast of Cuba, because I've done the flight, what do we find? We find Haiti. Haiti has Port-au-Prince. Haiti, I've been there, is a very densely populated area with very poor hygiene, and yet Their rates of coronavirus are amongst the lowest on the planet. Why might that be? I have speculated it has to do with the microbiome. Somebody may wish to post a link to my YouTube video, Microbiome, Perlmutter, Coronavirus. That's how you can find it, where I speculate on the role of the microbiome and how having a more robust microbiome may be extremely protective. I only speculate. Okay, where are the links? So Colette, the links are appearing. Good. Angela is ready for a fast. Good. Danielle is ready. Okay, good. Ready for a fast. Okay, good. Let's do this. We'll incorporate as many people as we can, and we'll start this probably tomorrow night after our broadcast. So talk to as many people as you can. I'll walk everybody through it and then we'll start tomorrow evening. Cocktail of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin. He treated 450 to 500 patients. Yeah, we know about that data. With all due respect, it was not a very— to be nice— not a very well-controlled trial. The data collection was really not done in a way that we would that we would normally think is valid. I think it's interesting. I wouldn't throw it out, but I'm quite familiar with that data. It was done obviously— well, not obviously, it was done in New York and it was not done in such a way that there was a control population. Did SARS and MERS mutate like they're saying COVID-19 may do? I think that COVID-19 specifically, by definition, isn't going— the virus may mutate, at which point it won't be COVID-19 anymore. It'll be renamed. The real question, I think, is will it mutate? And I think there's a good chance that it may. And as such, I think we might be in a situation where further immunizations, vaccines are needing to be developed. But I would hope that by then, We have stepped up our game to the extent that we have mechanisms in place to rapidly produce vaccines on demand. We don't have that yet. It's been in the pipeline. It's been a dream for certainly people who have thought about epidemics and pandemics. So it might be that that is something that we see moving forward, that we develop the infrastructure for the rapid development of immunizations that are specific for a newly emerged coronavirus or other type of virus. Here we go. Risk of ventilators for older people, what is your take? The risk of— it's not that there's a risk of the ventilator. You know, there's a huge risk of being put on a ventilator for the person who's putting you on that ventilator. Think about it. When you're intubating somebody, When you're opening up their airway and inserting the tube, you have a— you're in a directly looking down the tube directly into that person's lungs. There's a lot of potential there for contamination. Yes, it's risky to be on a ventilator, but the benefits are, of course, profound. But the unfortunate statistics are that at least 70% of people who go on a ventilator Do not make it. So that is pretty much, you know, the last big thing that is available to do for somebody when their respiratory system completely collapses. There is another technique called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation that can be used, but that availability is really fairly scant, at least in the world. Okay, good. Now I see that you all are getting the the links. Okay, yes, Katie Etchison. Just because you don't have a fever doesn't mean you don't have coronavirus. That's for sure. A lot of questions here about vitamin C, and let me talk about that for just a moment. I've been approached by an individual creating a protocol for a hospital test of intravenous vitamin C. We know that there is a I've heard of a study that has been carried out in China, a 12-day course of intravenous vitamin C, 12.5 grams intravenously twice a day. I've not seen the results of that study yet. When you understand how vitamin C works as an antioxidant, as an anti-inflammatory, I think it makes sense to at least consider it, and I would say to explore it. Okay, that answers the 100% ascorbic acid question that was just asked. Has posted. Okay, so good. Kim Van, looks like you're in for the fast. Good. Let's see from the rest of you who all is in for the fast. We'll start tomorrow at the time of— or in the evening time. And maybe I'll check in if you guys want to. Let me know. Give me a text right now or post, and maybe I'll check in partway through the day tomorrow, the day of our fast and just talk about fasting in and of itself, caloric restriction, the ability that we have to upregulate our immune systems, and take it from there. Okay, yeah, a good question. Sally Brainard brings up a good point that maybe the low rates in poor nations are due to having much less access to testing kits and Certainly, that's a possibility. But please understand, this is an important point, that the World Health Organization created test kits and made these test kits available to 60 nations worldwide. And some of those nations are on the list that I have described. You know, there are nations that are doing— that have done a lot of testing. And the United States decided we would do our own, create our own test. It didn't work out that well for us, but we're now, I think, in a situation where there are a lot of companies that are stepping up and creating new ideas in terms of testing. All right, I'll take a couple of— there's the Innovation Compounding from talking about vitamin C, and we're going to move on. All right, let me know, folks, if you want me to connect with you. Midday tomorrow in terms of fasting, and then we'll— that'll be a quick connect, and then we'll do our, hopefully, our recheck or reconnection at 5 o'clock. One other thing I'm thinking of doing, I've actually written part of a new book. It is fiction, but it is— it came from experiences in my medical office that I think were really profound for me. And it's called The Knowledge of Noah. And I'm thinking of just going ahead and reading it to you chapter by chapter during our time together, or maybe posting it. Let me know what you guys think. Time to fast. Jan Crystal is in. Great. All right, let me do a couple more of these comments. I'm in for the fast. Kara Shakya. Hadley Shakya. Okay, let me Move on to something I think is important, very important. All right. Oh, that's— no, we're not going to do King Midas today. We did King Midas yesterday, and I got a lot of positive comments on King Midas. The reason I do this is to leave us with— leave you guys and leave myself with a little distancing from all the rest. You know, this can— it can really get under your skin, and it's good to distance yourself. Read some fiction, watch some comedy, and do your best to not dwell with what's going on all day long. It creates stress that will compromise immune function, so that's certainly something to think about. I'm going to read a brief A brief short story, I guess it is. Not even, it's just basically a quote from Shannon L. Alder, A-L-D-E-R. She wrote a book that you should take a look at if you want called 300 Questions to Ask Your Parents, available on Amazon. Here it goes. You have 2 choices in life when it comes to truthful observations by others that anger you. I'm going to read that line again. You have 2 choices in life when it comes to truthful observations by others that anger you. You can be ashamed and cover it up by letting your pride take you in the extreme opposite direction in order to make the point that they are wrong. Or you could break down the walls of pride by accepting vulnerability as a strength, not a weakness. As you walk through your vulnerability, you will meet humility on the way to courage. From here, courage allows us to let go of shame and rise higher into the person we are meant to be, not the person that needs to be right. This is the road to confidence and self-worth. So I thought that was really meaningful because you know it helps us be a little bit more open-minded, cognitive empathy. Thanks for listening. We'll get together tomorrow night, and tomorrow night we'll start our fasting, and then the next day midday. We'll connect and then hope to see you all back here tomorrow evening. Thanks for listening. Love you all. Bye for now.