You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘deaths’ tag.
…And – Another Helpful Drug!
By Shlomo Maital
Why do many COVID-19 sufferers die? A group of researchers at Hadassah Medical Center, Jerusalem, may have found a major cause.
Many COVID-19 patients die when blood clots form and damage key organs. According to the Jerusalem Post: “Hadassah researchers discovered that patients who form fatal blood clots have an increased level of alpha defensin protein in their blood.”
At least 30% of patients with coronavirus develop blood clots that block the flow of blood to their kidneys, heart and brain, as well as the lungs, according to international research.
The research team has discovered what they believe causes coronavirus patients to become seriously ill and even die. They also say they have a way to treat the cause before it’s too late.
According to Jerusalem Post’s Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, “The Hadassah team studied more than 700 blood samples from 80 patients who were admitted to the medical center during the first peak of the coronavirus outbreak in Israel. The results show that alpha defensin speeds up blood clot formation, which can cause pulmonary embolism, heart attacks and stroke. In addition, when blood clots form in the alveoli, whose function it is to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules to and from the bloodstream, this can lead to respiratory distress and eventually intubation. [Alveoli are the tiny air sacs at the end of the bronchioles (tiny branches of air tubes in the lungs)]”..
Multiple studies have shown that around 80% of coronavirus patients who are intubated have died, The Hadassah team is en route to a solution: administering the drug colchicine to coronavirus patients. Colchicine is an approved drug used in the prevention and treatment of gout attacks, caused by too much uric acid in the blood.
They have completed testing colchicine on mice and found that it successfully inhibited the release of alpha defensin. Now, they are waiting for the necessary approvals to test it on human coronavirus patients.
The researchers said that clinical trials would look at use of the drug both for severe cases and administering it to patients with mild or moderate symptoms to see if it will help decrease the chances of their developing a severe case of the disease.
COVID-19: Plasma DOES Help!
By Shlomo Maital
Plasma is a component of our blood. Some 44% of our blood comprises red cells (that carry oxygen to and from the heart and the lungs and other organs), 1% are white blood cells that fight ‘invaders’, and 55% is plasma. It is the liquid part of the blood that carries cells and proteins throughout the body.
There is a theory that plasma from patients who have had COVID-19 and recovered contain antibodies, that can be helpful for other patients in overcoming the illness – especially those who are very seriously ill.
Research in Israel has provided serious confirmation. For those who are very seriously ill with COVID-19, many of them elderly with other serious preconditions, some 50% or so do not recover. When they are administered plasma, that contains antibodies generated by the body to fight the virus, drawn from recovered patients, he rate of recovery improves from about half to one-third, 33%.
Many Israelis have volunteered to donate plasma, after recovering – especially among the ultra-Orthodox community, which has been heavily afflicted by COVID-19.
Israel now has a special plasma bank, with many doses of such plasma, in the event that there is a second wave of the virus. Meanwhile, on May 18, there were only 16 new cases, and two deaths. In total Israel has suffered 278 deaths from COVID-19, a relatively low number, out of some 17,000 cases; of those, 13,435 have fully recovered. Only 50 persons remain in critical condition, on ventilators.
In the Eye of the Corona Storm: A Drug That Works
By Shlomo Maital
Yaky Yanay
My good friend Dr. G. N. Rao, founder of the L V Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad, India, drew my attention to this: A coronavirus drug that works.
According to Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, writing in the Jerusalem Post:
“Israeli-based Pluristem has treated its first American patient suffering from COVID-19 complications under the country’s compassionate use program.
The news comes days after a report by the company showed that six critically ill coronavirus patients in Israel who are considered high-risk for mortality were treated with Pluristem’s placenta-based cell-therapy product and survived, according to preliminary data provided by the Haifa-based company.
Let me provide some background.
Researchers report: “When it comes to COVID-19, recent research has suggested about 20% of people get the severe form of the disease. Many in this group become critically ill because of their advanced age or underlying health conditions. But those who were previously healthy and are in their 30s, 40s, 50s are very likely experiencing a cytokine storm.”
A small but significant fraction of COVID-19 patients, mainly younger ones, die not from the ravages of the virus on their lungs, but because their body over-reacts, as their immune system kicks in violently and creates this “cytokine storm”. It turns out that an overly strong immune reaction is just as bad, or worse, than a weak reaction.
How does Pluristem’s drug work? Here is how CEO Yaky Yanay explains it:
“Patients who are in severe condition and dying are actually dying from a severe respiratory condition. What is actually happening is there is a very high level of inflammation and at a certain point the immune system of the patient will attack [the patient], mostly in the lungs. Until now, Pluristem’s technology has been largely used to treat people suffering from poor blood flow to the legs, but the company’s scientists were able to quickly repurpose the cells to treat coronavirus patients. “We take cells from the placenta after full-term delivery and we have developed technology to expand the cells to very large numbers, in an environment that mimics the human body,” Yanay said. “The technology allows us to treat more than 20,000 people from a single placenta.”
His team “programs” the cells, which then have a wide range of proteins they can secrete. The cells don’t just deliver the proteins but also “adjust the level of secretion based on signals they receive from the body.”
The US FDA allows using the drug on compassionate grounds for very seriously ill patients. But for widespread use, full-scale three-phase clinical trials are necessary, and are already well underway.
How the US Screwed Up:
A Litany of Fumbles
By Shlomo Maital
Ooops…fumbled the ball!
The United States, led by the Trump administration, has fumbled the ball in dealing efficaciously with the COVID-19 pandemic. Here is the terrible litany of fumbles, mistakes and bad decisions, which in the end cause the deaths of many people. Needlessly.
April 2018. Some nine or ten months before the crisis arose, Trump and his National Security Council advisor John Bolton (later fired himself…justice?) fire the NSC team charged with pandemic preparation; on April 8 Tim Bossert is fired, as Home Secretary Advisor, in charge of “comoprehensive defensive strategy against pandemics”. Bye bye strategy and plans. In May Rear Amiral Tim Ziemer, who headed a ‘health security team’ was fired and not replaced.
Fast forward: China experiences early COVID-19, and, rather late, in late December, informs the world of it, and warns. On Jan. 20 the Center for Disease Control, in the US, announces the first case, a traveler from Wuhan, China. “We shut it down”, Trump says on Feb. 2. In February the CDC sends out its COVID-19 test, to public health testing labs in the US states; it doesn’t work. The US, (pride? Ego?) fails to purchase tests that are proven to work, from South Korea and other countries. The test is fixed, finally – but valuable weeks are lost. The public health labs work at developing their own test, something that has never before happened.
“When the CDC rolled out its tests, a component in them turned out to be faulty. That was unfortunate, but it put a big spotlight on the CDC’s decision to use its own test kit instead of test kits other countries have used, reportedly in an effort to create a more accurate test.”
As of March 9, well into the US pandemic, only 4,300 COVID-19 tests had been carried out. Trump says, “the tests are perfect” (like his phone call to the Ukrainian President).
Press reports: “Testing is crucial to slowing epidemics. First, it lets public health officials identify sick people and subsequently isolate them. Second, they can trace that sick person’s recent contacts to make sure those people aren’t sick and to get them into quarantine as well. It’s one of the best tools we have for an outbreak like this. It’s also something that the federal government has done well before — recently, with H1N1 and Zika. “It’s been surprising to me that the administration’s had a hard time executing on some of these things,” Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said. “
America dropped the ball on testing. Press reports: “In the months before the coronavirus outbreak, the administration cut a public health position that was meant to help detect disease outbreaks in China, where the pandemic began, Even without such cuts, experts and advocates argue the US generally underfunds disease outbreak preparedness and public health programs more broadly. Further cuts just deepen the risks of pandemics. The common refrain among experts is that other countries’ actions, such as China’s draconian measures, gave the US a bit of time to do something, but the federal government has failed to get even the basics right in that time.”
What was President Trump’s role in this? “Trump “did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that’s partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear — the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential re-election this fall.”
Hospitals, especially in New York City, complain they lack equipment. Why? There is a large US strategic stockpile of lots of useful things. However, “While the administration has said it’s using federal authorities and tapping into its stockpiles to get more of this gear to the places that need it, health care workers on the ground complain that they still don’t have enough — forcing them to reuse possibly contaminated equipment and choose between working in unsafe conditions or not show up to work at all. All of this at a time when the country needs to, according to experts, boost health care capacity.” There are rumors, Trump dislikes Washington state and New York State and that this is impacting federal shipments.
In a pandemic, preparedness is crucial. The US Defense Department has contingency plans for a huge variety of threats. What about the health area? “….. this reflects on the lack of preparedness: A shortage of medical equipment is one of the many problems government simulations and exercises warned about before the current outbreak. But Trump simply didn’t prioritize pandemic preparedness beforehand. The US … was not prepared … A good preparedness plan would have helped address this and had things in place to allow for that increased need to be met.”
US health care system is inadequate, even with Obamacare (imagine if Trump had succeeded in annulling it!?). “With the outbreak growing, the US’s lack of universal health care has become an even more obvious problem: If people can’t get testing, they’re less likely to find out they have Covid-19 and take precautions to avoid spreading the virus. If they can’t get treatment in case of complications, they’re more likely to suffer, potentially spread the disease, and die.”
Fighting the poor, rather than the virus: “The administration has pushed forward on measures that will kick people off food stamps. This will not only lead people to suffer if they lose their jobs as a result of a coronavirus-caused recession, but it could lead to sick people going to work and spreading the disease, because they won’t have a safety net if they don’t bring in a paycheck.”
Chasing immigrants, instead of virus: “Experts also pointed to the “public charge” rule, which effectively discourages immigrants from seeking public services, including health care, by threatening their immigration status if they are “likely to be a public charge” by relying on those services.”
Yes, the United States has dropped the ball – fumbled it. And this litany is very very partial – it’s only 1,000 words, it could fill a book.
And the sad part, again, is that when a halfback fumbles in football, worst case, his team loses the game. In the US, when the administration fumbles, people die. Many people. And then ? Excuses. Boy, are we going to hear excuses, all the way to November and beyond.
Dr. Anthony Fauci predicts, as many as 200,000 Americans could die in this pandemic. Many of these deaths could have been prevented, if the Administration had simply held onto the ball.
There has to be accountability. At the very least, at the ballot box in November.
TIMnovate 