Hope?
There was an interesting story out last week on medium.com, not the best source as it is crowd based “journalism” but it had some intriguing ideas. The story covered anecdotal evidence coming out of the world's hot spots for CCP virus that suggests the treatment protocols for treating the virus are completely wrong.
The data suggests that there is no pneumonia or ARDS cases although the course of the disease mimics them so the normally used intubation and ventilator protocols are doing more harm than good. Doctors have long known that once a person goes on a ventilator many do not come back plus the scarring and ulcers caused by having a tube down your throat.
What is pushing this re examination is the huge low level blood oxygen found in some patients. Normal levels of oxygen are 93 to 95%, organ failure is coming at 80%, and some patients are having as low as 70% blood oxygen level. Some doctors are seeing this and recommending intubating sooner, others are trying lower impact treatements like oxygen masks or tubes down the patient's nose. However there is another theory, that the hemoglobin in your red blood cells are losing the ability to bind with oxygen. Your lungs are working fine in the beginning but your blood is not carrying the oxygen in sufficient quantity to your organs. Some scientists are not sure what is happening but they see the lungs working fine and plenty of oxygen in the aveolia air sacs but are blaming the PEEP, Positive End Expiratory Pressure, ventilators causing the lung to retain fluid and they are trying the CPAP masks. Another doctor reported people with oxygen levels as low as 40% appearing calm and speaking in long sentences with no labored breathing.
However new research is attributing the low blood oxygen levels being caused by the virus binding the heme groups in your hemoglobin in your red blood cells. The deaths aren't caused by pneumonia or ARDS, their organs are shutting down due to the lack of oxygen. The lung damage is caused by the release of oxidative iron from the hemes, overwhelming the body's natural defenses and giving that ground glass CT scan pictures that we have been seeing for a month.
A red blood cell carries oxygen all over the body due to hemoglobin, a protein composed of four hemes. What the hell is a heme? It is an iron ion surrounded by some organic compounds called ligands, basic molecules consisting of a metal ion and other atoms or molecules. An iron ion running around on its own is going to attract other atoms or molecules and cause damage to your body but one already paired with organic compounds is stable. Toxic heavy metals work the same way, in their natural state they are bound and not bio available until something like soap or sometimes just water breaks the bonds and sets the toxic heavy metal free to rampage. Locked away in the hemoglobin the iron ion can safely carry oxygen around the body and re charge with oxygen in your lungs.
Hemoglobin can carry oxygen thanks to two forms of iron, FE2 and FE3. The only difference is in the number of oxygen atoms in the molecule. In FE2 it is missing an oxygen atom so going through the lungs it picks up an oxygen atom and turns in to FE3. Once it gets to where it is needed the oxygen atom is stripped and the molecule is once again FE2.
What some experts are saying is that the virus bonds to the heme and in the process the iron atom is released from the molecule. Now the hemoglobin can no longer move oxygen but it keeps circulating without picking up oxygen so there is none to release where it is needed. Now the patient starts dropping oxygen levles in their blood yet their body isn't aware that the hemoglobin isn't moving the oxygen. The patient remains calm, isn't short of breath or breathing hard, but trying to walk ten to twenty feet exhausts them and they have to grab hold of something to remain standing.
It is a lot like carbon dioxide poisoning, the CO bonds to the hemoglobin in the lungs and the hemoglobin doesn't know any different. At some point the CO will be exchanged for oxygen and you will recover. I once walked into a room with a forge running and found myself falling to the floor as if someone had hit me in the head with an ax handle. No warning, no breathing difficulties, you just fall. What saved me was that there was a crack under the door and fresh air was coming in, I got a few breaths, got up and staggered out of the room.
The body does notice the lack of oxygen so it ramps up hemoglobin production in your bone marrow which is why two of the bizzare findings in CCP virus patients are low oxygen levels in the blood and increased hemoglobin in the blood. In effect it is a race between the multiplying virus and the production of new hemoglobin in your bone marrow.
And this causes a problem. Oxidation. Have you ever read a fantastic science fiction novel where a species might have a planet with an acid atmosphere? Sounds crazy, right? Well that would be the earth. Oxygen is highly corrosive. Don't make the mistake of storing fertilizer or pool chemicals around metal hinges, the hinges will oxidize at a rapid rate growing iron oxide whiskers. There has been many a truck bed rusted out because someone tossed as sack of fertilizer up under the bed tool box and forgot about it.
But the millions or billions of iron ions released are not just floating along. Many metals are highly reactive with oxygen which is why you rarely find pure metals in nature, you have to mine an oxidized metal ore and smelt the ore, break the chemical bonds to consolidate the metal atoms. Once you do that the oxygen in the air is immediately turning the iron or steel into iron oxide. Rusting is oxidation, same thing as when wood burns, just a lot slower.
Your body does have defenses against the free iron ions. There are little cells that scavenge free radicals like the loose iron ions, then the lining of the alveoli sacs has a layer of fluid with high amounts of abscorbic acid or Vitamin C that bind with the rogue iron ions. But if there are too many free iron ions the body goes into pulmonary oxidative stress which the body tries to combat using inflammation and now you have that ground glass looking CT scans. Another clue is that normal pneumonia occurs in one lung, my left lung is prone to getting it, never both lungs. The patients going on ventilators show that ground glass damage in both lungs though, 100% of the cases.
So you are dealing with an oxygen decrease and an iron ion problem so your body tries to fix things. Your liver stores iron but it isn't getting the oxygen it needs to function well and it pumps out an enzyme which becomes the third primary indicator that a patient is about to assume room temperature due to Covid19. Other organs begin shutting down too unless the patient is put on a ventilator and plenty of oxygen is pumped into their system to super charge the few remaining or new hemoglobin cells.
So the virus isn't killing the patients, the lack of oxygen is killing the patients.
So along comes hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, both forms of synthetic quinine which was used to treat malaria for the last 200 years. Malaria is a bacterial parasite infection but quinine and its synthetic forms is also an antiviral. It works by preventing the virus from penetrating a cell wall or at least it did that in in vitro studies, done in test tubes and petri dishes.
The results from a half dozen studies have been mixed, a few with no result, a few with results, a few studies with results but no control group to make sure it was the medicine and not another factor. But in malaria the chloroquine is known to be effective and they believe that the chloroquine binds to the parasite and prevents the invasion of cells by blocking the virus's receptors from latching onto red blood cells and turning them into little virus factories. There are also other reasons like altering the pH levels, how acidic of alkaline the blood is and other medicines like zinc and antibiotics are cock-tailed with the chloroquine. But the drug appears to stop the high jacking of the hemoglobin in CCP virus cases.
Now if this is true it is a game changer. We could have an effective treatment for the CCP virus and cycle people out of the hospital sooner or even prevent hospitalizations entirely. Chloroquine does have some risks but generally with very long term use as it is an approved treatment for arthritis, rheumatism, and lupus. There are some Chinese studies showing that it works, not that anyone trusts the Chinese anymore. The studies like this one are not peer reviewed or repeated in other studies but it is a ray of hope.
Another sign is that the feds have bought up millions and millions of doses of the anti malarial hydroxychloroquine. Like the masks before last week that we were told were useless for individuals, this week we were told that hydroxychloroquine wasn't an effective treatment.
