More than One Path to Treat & Prevent Covid-19
It appears that there is a concerted strategy for the Pharmaceutical Industry to maintain it’s dominance in the market to deal to Covid-19.
Their first outing has been through the rapid development of the mRNA vaccines. Now the efficacy of these appears to have a half life of only about 6 months or less, they are needing to come up with alternatives.
Concurrent with the promotion of the novel mRNA vaccines, has been a total demolition job on anything that could counter the message that mRNA was the only technology to save the world from inihilation. That is driven by commerce and consequent marketing reasons.
The different types of COVID-19 vaccines
So what is on the horizon?
Treatments
The first are of course the existing treatments we cover in more details elsewhere on this site:
- Ivermectin
- Hydroxychloroquine
- Remdesivir
- Sotrovimab
- Antibody Therapies
- Other Herbals such as Thymoquinone
Traditional Vaccines
The product off the block are traditional style vaccines, created using the technology used to create vaccines for Seasonal Flu, Measles etc. These include Vector Vaccines, Inactivated, and Live-Attenuated.
Vector vaccines are made from a modified version of a live virus, in this case, an adenovirus, which is a version of the common cold—are sent into your body containing an instruction manual that tells your cells to make a spike protein; a harmless piece of the SARS-CoV-2 virus (that’s the one that causes Covid-19). (1)
Spike proteins harmless?
That’s not what the latest research is showing. The research has provide evidence of the spike protein hijacking the DNA damage repair machinery and adaptive immune machinery in vitro. (2)
Spike proteins are created by both the virus and the mRNA vaccines.
Examples are:
- Johnson & Johnson
- AstraZeneca
- Covishield
- CoronaVac (China)
- Sinopharm (China)
China’s CoronaVac and Sinopharm vaccines account for almost half of the 7.3 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses delivered globally. 94)
Protein Subunit Vaccines
This is what’s currently used in the Hepatitis V and one of the shingles vaccines (Shingrix). Protein subunit vaccines are a little bit like vector vaccines, but instead of using a different virus to send in the genetic message, these contain harmless pieces of the virus that causes Covid-19 but not the entire virus. (1)
Examples are:
- Novavax
Novel Antiviral Treatments
Finally we get to the latest efforts of the Pharmaceutical Industry to command the territory. These are products that would work like Ivermectin and other Treatments we have described, but they the vital difference is that they are “novel”, and so under Patent, and can be sold at very high prices.
There are a number of antivirals in development. Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Merck Sharp & Dohme have just received approval for their oral antiviral molnupiravir to be used in COVID-19 patients in the U.K. (3)
Some jurisdictions are pinning a great deal of hope on the development of antivirals to tackle hospitalization rates. In fact, the U.K. government recently announced that it had ordered 730,000 doses of COVID-19 antivirals. (3)
Examples of these are:
- Pfizer PF-07321332
- Pfizer Ritonavir (PAXLOVID)
- Merck Molnupiravir
So the opportunities are immense. But while the Pharmaceutical industry PR and marketing juggernaut continues to roll on, I’m sure we are going to see massive buying of their products, while far less alternatives are relegated to horses for their worms.
(1) https://www.menshealth.com/health/a35589366/mrna-vs-traditional-vaccine/
(2) https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/13/10/2056/htm
(3) https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/pfizer-oral-antiviral-safe-and-effective-against-sars-cov-2
(4) https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02796-w