Trump, Hydroxychloroquine, and Hope (UPDATE)

For the past two days, people have been absolutely losing their minds since President Trump revealed that, as prescribed by his personal physician, he began taking a combination of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and zinc ten days prior to the announcement, in order to protect him against the Wuhan virus.

Many believe that he’s lying about it. Others speculate that he has some financial stake in a drug that has been officially sanctioned by the FDA for several conditions – including other coronaviruses -- since the 1950s and costs about 5 cents per pill.

Still others ignore the many trials, studies, and the divergent results and conclusions which have been conducted using HCQ alone, HCQ plus zinc, and HCQ + zinc + the antibiotic azithromycin.

And, emblematic of the insanity, we have Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi opining that the president should not be taking HCQ because he is “morbidly obese.” That and the silly paper tearing stunt at the end of this year’s State of the Union address makes me think that there’s some non-political history between Mr. Trump and Mrs. Pelosi – one which left Pelosi with a severely bruised ego.

But, leaving my catty musings aside, I must explicitly point this out: from the time that the president first mentioned HCQ until this very moment, there seem to be a widespread concerted effort to discredit the drug. Fox News commentator Neil Cavuto even said that anyone taking the drug would die! That’s news to millions, possibly billions, of people who have taken the drug to ease the symptoms of lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and for malaria, both as treatment and for prophylactic purposes.

As I have observed continuously during this pestilence, certain corners of our republic – usually governmental and media-related -- don't want the people to have hope and will say and do anything squash and quash even the whispers of it.

And if that hope comes from Orange Man Bad, those corners will lie repeatedly, even when the truth is right in front of all our faces.

Considering all this, I was given permission to post the following from my good friend Dave P. Disclaimer: I am not a doctor either.

Since it appears that almost every journalist got his MD over the weekend, I might as well chime in. I am not a doctor and I don’t even play one on the Internet, but I can read and remember things and I know this —

The primary antiviral agent in the concoction that Trump is taking is actually zinc. A virus is not a complete, living cell like a bacterium, but rather it is a capsule with a short string of [RNA] in it. It cannot replicate itself, as a cell does when it divides. So, what it does is, it attaches to human cells and paste its RNA into theirs... so that when [the cells] replicate, they replicate the virus instead of themselves. That’s how a virus replicates, by hijacking the replication mechanism of a human cell.

Zinc is an interrupter of the virus attempting to attach itself to the replication engine of a cell. That is why we have cold medicines that are zinc-based, like Zicam, because the cold is a virus, and the zinc helps slow the replication of the virus so that your symptoms are lesser and shorter.

With all that, it is still true that zinc has a very hard time penetrating the cell walls in order to interrupt viral replication. Hydroxychloroquine opens up channels in the cell walls that allow the zinc to enter the cell and do its thing.

The third part of Trump’s cocktail is an antibacterial, azithromycin, to knock out opportunistic bacterial lung infections that may take hold while the lung is inflamed and vulnerable.

HCQ makes it easier for zinc to get into cells and block viral replication. Another way to make it easier is to add zinc [to your diet]. You need a prescription for HCQ, but zinc is over-the-counter, as a cold medicine and a supplement. Up to a certain amount, the more zinc that is in your system, the more successful it will be at penetrating the cell walls and blocking viruses. Again, that is why zinc is used as cold medicine, because it stops viruses from hijacking the cellular reproduction mechanism to reproduce themselves.

There is no reason for us not to take HCQ. Anyone who says it’s risky or unproven or should be tested is someone with an anti-Trump agenda, or a pro Bill Gates agenda, which are, more or less, the same thing. But boosting your zinc level is a way to help the HCQ work better and boosting your zinc level is a good idea even if you’re not taking the prescription.

The fact that we have zinc-based cold medicines is all I need to hear to know that increasing your zinc level is good for anti-viral action. The medicine says it reduces the length and severity of a cold. It also says that the sooner you start taking zinc, the better off you will be in those terms.

(…)

Lots of people are on television talking about this and demonstrating they know nothing about it with every word they say. The key is the zinc.

But don’t take Doctor Dave's or Doctor Baldilocks' word for it. Go out and read things. Here. I’ll help you get started.

Zn Inhibits Coronavirus and Arterivirus RNA Polymerase Activity ...
French researcher Dr. Didier Raoult has now treated 1000 coronavirus patient with 99.3% success rate

I'll even offer a naysayer -- the VA, no less.

VA spent $200,000 on controversial anti-malaria drug touted as coronavirus 'game-changer'

Read, analyze, reflect and come to informed conclusions.

God provides and, as I have mentioned before, sometimes he provides the solution to problems before we even know about those problems. That seems to be the case here.

God also provided us with sentience and the will to survive. Most of you have a working brain, should you choose to use it.

Look up and have hope.

UPDATE: The VA did not use zinc in its HCQ trial.

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The True Root of the Square-Root Debacle (UPDATED)

Prehistoric woman draws inscrutable glyphs on ancient monitor.

The events outlined in this story indicate more than mere blithering idiocy.

A discussion among students at Oberlin High School in Oberlin, La., about a mathematical symbol led to a police investigation and a search of one of the student’s homes, according to the Allen Parish Sheriff’s Office.

On the afternoon of Feb. 20, detectives investigated a report of terroristic threats at the school, where they learned that a student had been completing a math problem that required drawing the square-root sign.

Students in the group began commenting that the symbol, which represents a number that when multiplied by itself equals another number, looked like a gun.

The county sheriff's office didn't search the home of the student who knew the purpose of the symbol, but that of another student.

After several students made comments along those lines, another student said something the sheriff’s office said could have sounded like a threat out of context. Police searched the student’s home, where they found no guns or any evidence that he had any access to guns. Authorities also wrote there was no evidence the student had any intent to commit harm.

The most frightening part about this story isn't that the kids failed to recognize the symbol. It's that the authorities acted based upon that ignorance.

“The student used extremely poor judgment in making the comment, but in light of the actual circumstances, there was clearly no evidence to support criminal charges,” the department wrote, adding that the school board had been contacted to determine any disciplinary action for the student.

All emphasis mine.

Why couldn't the circumstances have been determined before a search warrant was issued?

And who issues search warrants? Judges and magistrates. Adults. Arbiters of law who cannot even recognize a symbol from seventh-grade level math and make reasonable decisions therefrom. Simply put, too many of them are ready, willing and able to sign a warrant allowing Law Enforcement to invade your home regardless of context.

I can't get mad at the group of students who didn't recognize the square-root symbol, because it isn't their responsibility to teach themselves. I can't even get mad at the sheriffs.

Ignorance breeds fear and it is the credentialed -- the ones who sit in classrooms and courtrooms and shape/misshape the lives and the thinking of the rest of us while being paid by us -- who seeded this crop. And they've been at it a long time.

It can be stopped. But we have to want it bad enough.

(Thanks to Joe Hale)

UPDATE: What really happened ... so far.

"The whole notion that there was a SWAT raid over a math symbol is absurd," Hebert told PJM. "I got a call from a KPLC that they had a serious threat of a shooting at the school, so we went to the house to verify. There was no search warrant, we just sent two [deputies] to knock on the door," chuckled Hebert. "This is a small parish and everybody knows everybody and we found out very quickly there was no crime and no threat."

In spite of that declaration, the student is facing expulsion. In the wake of the shooting in Florida the school board set a new policy. According to KATC, "Any student accused of talking about guns or school shootings will be investigated by three entities: the school board, the sheriff's department, and the district attorney's office."

If I had kids, I'd homeschool them. And I'd teach them about guns, not to mention math.

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