As I mentioned in my last posting, now is not the time for woo. But as my recent literature review has demonstrated to me, woo abounds. While I am fairly certain this has been covered a thousand times already, I thought a wee look-see was in order. Just so we all can get a look at what nut balls are encouraging people to do.
We all know about Jillian and her claim to having CV-19 multiple times, so we'll ignore her for the moment. But for reference, in a video released on May 5, 2020 at 4:34 PM she claims again to have had CV-19 “5,6, or 8 times.” About the 11:30 mark she talks about her alleged experiences (copy of video is available) and how Jilly Juice alleviated the impact. In most cases within 24 hours of “symptom” onset.
But, as Skeptical Raptor mentions, “There’s one thing you’ll notice – almost all of this nonsense is the exact same thing that the anti-vaccine crowd pushes as “alternatives” to vaccines. And as much as they don’t work for measles, flu, whooping cough, and other diseases, they don’t work for coronavirus.”
A few points SR notes that are of importance:
First, the claim you can boost your immune system, for anything, let alone COVID-19, is an utter myth. The immune system isn’t a single point, for which you can provide some miracle supplement to improve its function.But it's not just individual like SR, SciBabe, ZDoggMD, or SBM taking notice. Recently the FDA gave many quacks an old-fashioned smackdown.
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Second, there are no supplements, plants, crystals, chiropractics, or anything that will “cure” coronavirus. Right now, we don’t have a specific treatment for the disease, but some antiviral medications are being used in lieu of anything else.
“The FDA considers the sale and promotion of fraudulent COVID-19 products to be a threat to the public health. We have an aggressive surveillance program that routinely monitors online sources for health fraud products, especially during a significant public health issue such as this one,” said FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn, M.D. “We understand consumers are concerned about the spread of COVID-19 and urge them to talk to their health care providers, as well as follow advice from other federal agencies about how to prevent the spread of this illness. We will continue to aggressively pursue those that place the public health at risk and hold bad actors accountable.”If someone is pushing that they have the absolute preventative, treatment, or cure for coronavirus, they almost certainly do not.
“There already is a high level of anxiety over the potential spread of coronavirus,” said FTC Chairman Joe Simons. “What we don’t need in this situation are companies preying on consumers by promoting products with fraudulent prevention and treatment claims. These warning letters are just the first step. We’re prepared to take enforcement actions against companies that continue to market this type of scam.”
The FDA and FTC jointly issued warning letters to Vital Silver, Quinessence Aromatherapy Ltd., Xephyr, LLC doing business as N-Ergetics, GuruNanda, LLC, Vivify Holistic Clinic, Herbal Amy LLC, and The Jim Bakker Show. The products cited in these warning letters are teas, essential oils, tinctures and colloidal silver. The FDA has previously warned that colloidal silver is not safe or effective for treating any disease or condition. The FDA and FTC requested companies respond in 48 hours describing the specific steps they have taken to correct the violations. Companies that sell products that fraudulently claim to prevent, treat or cure COVID-19 may be subject to legal action, including but not limited to seizure or injunction.
With that said, to borrow a phrase from a fellow blogger, what we are experiencing is “weaponized bullshit.”
So it’s not a surprise that there are a lot of quacks and scammers trying to convince people that there are “natural cures” for or “natural” ways of preventing COVID-19 illness.
A common theme – boost your immune system – runs through all. As well as, the notion that science and/or medicine has missed something important that the woo peddler has discovered. What concerns me, as one with a compromised immune system due to diabetes - boosting your immune system.
The problem with these immune system myths is that they overlook or ignore a basic physiological fact – the immune system is a complex interconnected network of organs, cells, and molecules that prevent the invasion of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pathogens and other antigens every single day.Note:: For those interested in Jillian's brand of quackery, I highly recommend you read this.
And no matter how much individuals try to trivialize the complexity of the immune system, it does not make it so. If it were easy as downing a handful of supplements or the magical blueberry-kale smoothie for boosting immunity to coronavirus or any disease, every physician in the world would prescribe.
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The problem with these boosting immunity quacks is that, because they actually have no knowledge of immunology, they want us to think that the immune system is one simple entity like a lung or heart (and those are quite complex). But it’s not simple, it is massively interconnected.
Homeopathy
I'm not going to waste too much time on homeopathy. Plain and simple, it does not work! A point I spoke to in 2016 (here and here among others).
What it still boils down to,,,
Every rigorous scientific study demonstrates homeopathy does not work. It is not ethical to prescribe a remedy that does not work. It is simply a scam by unethical people pushing their coronavirus homeopathic potions for money.
In addition, homeopathy rejects the germ theory of disease, which states that microorganisms known as pathogens or “germs” can lead to disease. Without this fundamental tenet of medicine, the belief that a coronavirus homeopathic potion will do anything is both laughable and frightening.
Instead of the germ theory of disease, homeopathy invented miasms which the quacks think treat the physical, mental, and emotional or spiritual levels of the whole person. Like most pseudoscience, this sounds very “scientific,” but it’s not. This is not how one treats diseases caused by germs.
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Anything diluted after 12C is diluted beyond Avogadro constant (6.0221409e+23). That means that at this level of dilution, there are zero molecules of the substance remaining in the solution.
And to be clear, this is not just a “western” problem. Homeopathy pervades other cultures as we'll see in a bit.
Colloidal silver
As Orac notes, we have all used a silver salts at some point in our life. Hell, I would have been lost if not for Silvadene cream. As a food service worker, burns were an everyday occurrence. But I never contemplated drinking the stuff.
Colloidal silver is a common alternative medicine treatment for severe infection based on a germ of reality. Unfortunately, that germ of reality is, as is so often the case, inflated by magic into incredibly expansive claims that colloidal silver can treat any infection. Here’s what I mean. Silver salts are indeed used as an antibacterial compound, Also remember that various silver salts are already used to treat superficial infections. For example, silver sulfadiazine (Silvadene) is a routine treatment for burns to prevent infection. The problem is dose. Taking silver internally will never generate a high enough concentration in the blood to have antibacterial effects, much less antiviral effects, but over a prolonged period of time it can turn you into a Smurf.A point also highlighted by AFP Fact Check.
But Dr Helene Langevin, director of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, a US National Institutes of Health (NIH) division, said these claims are inaccurate.Remember Paul Karason?
“There are no complementary products, such as colloidal silver or herbal remedies, that have been proven effective in preventing or treating this disease (COVID-19), and colloidal silver can have serious side effects,” Langevin said in an emailed statement.
He wasn't always this way. For most of his life, Karason was a fair-skinned redhead. But then he saw an ad in a magazine showing a desiccated old daisy brought back to life by the power of the solution it had been placed in: silver ions in water. The flower looked freshly cut. Karason bought a device to make his own colloidal silver at home—a colloid is one substance dispersed through a second—and soon he was drinking a 10-ounce tumbler of the stuff daily, hoping to improve his general health, and dabbing it on his face for his dermatitis. After a few years of this regimen, he had developed a case of what doctors call argyria, a blue-gray discoloration of the skin and mucus membranes.As Langevin states, “[t]here are no complementary products, such as colloidal silver or herbal remedies, that have been proven effective in preventing or treating this disease (COVID-19),,,.” Show me one peer-reviewed study demonstrating otherwise. Anecdotes don't count and neither does the notion that science is hiding the cure.
Supplements
I always find the desire to use supplements or botanicals (as some call them) intriguing. The reasoning – all natural - of doing such is rather bizarre when “one considers that many pharmaceuticals are derived from natural products; i.e., “botanicals.” They’re either natural products isolated from “botanicals” and then synthesized in the lab, or they are natural products chemically modified to add desirable properties to them, such as better absorption by the GI tract or better binding to the target protein.”
While I don't want to get too overly specific, elderberry always comes up. In his critique of Modern Alternative Mama, Kate Tietje's article, Natural Remedies for Coronavirus. Orac had this to say concerning elderberry.
The first study is 19 years old [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11399518] and purports to show that the black elderberry extract (Sambucol) increases inflammatory cytokines in cases of influenza. Of course, even if true (and this study is old and not replicated as far as I can tell) this might be disastrous in COVID-19 infection, which causes an interstitial pneumonia that might well be due to an excessive immune response. (We don’t know yet.) In any event, a systematic review from ten years ago characterized elderberry extract as promising but unproven. The literature really is pretty thin on this.Four points from Orac's critique
The second study was nothing more than a study of chemical encapsulation methods, in which liposomes containing elderberry components were tested in cell culture. This hardly validates the claim that elderberry will prevent coronavirus infection. The last study wasn’t just an in vitro cell culture study, but it’s an in vitro cell culture study looking at mouse macrophages and dendritic cells. Again, these are studies of concentrated extracts and/or purified compounds from elderberry, not eating elderberries, and, except for the first one, involve no human studies.
1] Elderberry is unprovenIOWs the three studies cited had nothing to do with CV-19
2] A cytokine storm in cases of CV-19 may not be a good thing
3] Cell culture is not the human body
4] Looking at mouse macrophages and dendritic cells
To be fair, there is some science behind elderberry supplements, but there's also a lot of, extrapolations from that science, particularly as it pertains to the prevention and treatment of the coronavirus COVID-19.
There's little research on elderberry supplements and the science that does exist deals largely with shortening the duration of illness after infection with cold and flu. Overall, the research is inconclusive, the studies are small.
Note:: Supplements are not strictly regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
One review that I have noticed being mis-used, A Review of the Antiviral Properties of Black Elder (Sambucus nigra L.) Products.
From the abstract,
Black elder (Sambucus nigra L.) has a long ethnobotanical history across many disparate cultures as a treatment for viral infection and is currently one of the most-used medicinal plants worldwide. Until recently, however, substantial scientific research concerning its antiviral properties has been lacking. Here, we evaluate the state of current scientific research concerning the use of elderberry extract and related products as antivirals, particularly in the treatment of influenza, as well as their safety and health impacts as dietary supplements.It is important to take into consideration the point highlighted below.
While the extent of black elder's antiviral effects are not well known, antiviral and antimicrobial properties have been demonstrated in these extracts, and the safety of black elder is reflected by the United States Food and Drug Administration approval as generally recognized as safe. A deficit of studies comparing these S. nigra products and standard antiviral medications makes informed and detailed recommendations for use of S. nigra extracts in medical applications currently impractical.President Trump IV light, disinfectant, and MMS
I would be remiss in at least not mentioning this. For context, it is important to bear in mind Trump made this comment following a presentation by William N. Bryan, the acting undersecretary for science and technology at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, about how heat and humidity could impact the spread of COVID-19 during the summer months.
And when that — while that comes up, you’ll see a number of some practical applications. For example, increasing the temperature and humidity of potentially contaminated indoor spaces appears to reduce the stability of the virus. And extra care may be warranted for dry environments that do not have exposure to solar light.
We’re also testing disinfectants readily available. We’ve tested bleach, we’ve tested isopropyl alcohol on the virus, specifically in saliva or in respiratory fluids. And I can tell you that bleach will kill the virus in five minutes; isopropyl alcohol will kill the virus in 30 seconds, and that’s with no manipulation, no rubbing — just spraying it on and letting it go. You rub it and it goes away even faster. We’re also looking at other disinfectants, specifically looking at the COVID-19 virus in saliva.
Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it. Supposing you brought the light inside of the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. And is there a way we can do something, by an injection inside or almost a cleaning? It would be interesting to check that. That you’re gonna have to use medical doctors with. Sounds interesting to me. [Paraphraed – actual transcript.]Regardless of whether Trump was being sarcastic, has no bearing on the situation at hand. We are in crisis mode, people are dying; they look to the President for leadership and strength. Now is not the time for pettiness.
The President of the United States had no business publicly suggesting such. The notion of injecting or ingesting any type of cleansing product into the body is irresponsible, and it’s dangerous.
Regretfully I don't put much trust in the narrative put forth by the WH or media. Not when it has come to light the Genesis II Church had contact with Trump or his Administration prior to this briefing.
Mark Grenon, the self-described archbishop of a Florida church that sells Miracle Mineral Solution as “a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body,” took credit for Mr. Trump’s comments in a Facebook post on Friday. In an online radio show earlier this month, he said that he and his supporters had sent letters to the president about the product he peddles.
This is the same group of folks that have no issue forcing children to drink MMS or endure enemas to cure autism. Remember Kerri Rivera?
President Trump’s public statements about using disinfectants to potentially treat the coronavirus have put him in the company of pseudoscientists and purveyors of phony elixirs who promote and sell industrial bleach as a “miracle cure” for autism, malaria and a long list of medical conditions.As the NYTimes notes,
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But some scientists fear Mr. Trump’s remarks could breathe life into a fringe movement that embraces the medicinal powers of a powerful industrial bleach known as chlorine dioxide. Among its adherents are Alan Keyes, the conservative activist and former presidential candidate who has promoted a chlorine dioxide-based product called Miracle Mineral Solution on his online television show.
According to The Guardian regarding Keyes,
Keyes has featured Genesis II bleach products as a miracle cure on his online conservative TV show, Let’s Talk America.
It is not known whether Keyes has discussed MMS with Trump. But the two men have overlapping interests.
The White House did not respond to an email seeking comment after Mr. Grenon’s letter was reported by The Guardian last week. A person with knowledge of senior administration officials said they were not familiar with him or his letter.While I would just love to delve into G2Church, again, I will leave you the excellent hands of Myles Power. Myles has done a phenomenal job of reporting on crank individuals and groups taking advantage of the current CV-19 pandemic.
I should note that Myles is a chemist and works in the field; he has done so for 7-8 years.
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Oh shit,,,Last week the US Food and Drug Administration obtained a federal court order barring Genesis II from selling what was described as “an unproven and potentially harmful treatment for Covid-19”. The FDA also ordered a disciple of Genesis II, Kerri Rivera, to remove claims that MMS cured coronavirus from her website.A point Myles mentions as well and he shows her prattling on about MMS curing autism.
Damn,,,
So another treatment our fearless leader notes, IV or UV light. Since I am hitting my word count I will leave with this.
UPDATE 5/10/2020:: Scientists consider indoor ultraviolet light to zap coronavirus in the air
,,,[S]ome scientists hope a decades-old technology could zap pathogens out of the air in stores, restaurants and classrooms, potentially playing a key role in containing further spread of the infection.
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This is not what US President Donald Trump incomprehensibly described in April when he suggested irradiating the insides of Covid-19 patients with ultraviolet light. Portable ultraviolet units are already being used to sterilise surfaces in hospital rooms and subway cars, but these can be used only when those spaces are unoccupied.
In the approach scientists like Dr Nardell describe, fixtures mounted on walls or ceilings, similar to fluorescent lights used today, shine ultraviolet light across the top of an interior space, well above people’s heads. Ceiling fans are sometimes installed to draw air upward so that floating bacteria, viruses and fungi are zapped more quickly. A different frequency of ultraviolet might be even safer, even when it shines directly on people, which would also allow disinfection of surfaces.The number of crank treatments and cures being touted are innumerable. I know of at least 7 more that I haven't mentioned do to length – nebulized hydrogen peroxide and, cow urine are two that come to mind. Alas, I had to draw the line somewhere, or this essay would be quite verbose.
Ultraviolet light mangles the genetic material in pathogens — DNA in bacteria and fungi, RNA in viruses — preventing them from reproducing. “You’ve killed it essentially,” said Dr William Bahnfleth, a professor of architectural engineering at Pennsylvania State University.
Initially I had planned on adding various articles that demonstrate the snake-oil being bandied about. The list is quite long, so I have decided to add it as and addendum
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