Scott McPherson's Web Presence

I just had an old friend (he is youthful, we've just known each other for 21 years) reach out to me about the status of drug companies' efforts to beat back COVID-19.

I had not peeked in recently on that front, so I thought it would be appropriate.

So here we go:

There are vaccine candidates but the time from trials to an actual vaccine will seem to take forever. A year to eighteen months is the Best Guess.  While people scoff at that timeframe, the reason is quite simple:  They do not want to inject anyone with something that might be worse than the disease.  Did they not read I Am Legend? Anyone ever hear of thalidomide?  Google it if you are unfamiliar with the drug and its side effects.  Have tissues ready.

The experiments that treated coronavirus patients with existing HIV treatments have all apparently failed.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/health/coronavirus-antiviral-drugs-fail.html

Breathless headlines suddenly are touting a malaria treatment as a possible remedy for coronavirus.  Ditto a known blood pressure drug. A 1500-person study is going on now.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/public-global-health/488410-us-testing-two-generic-drugs-as-possible-coronavirus

Persons with hypertension appear to be at a much greater risk of serious complications from COVID, so it will be interesting to see any correlation.

The Japanese have an antiviral called favipiravir, and this article in The Guardian says it is promising.  But it is The Guardian, so you take it with a grain of salt. It also appears that like Tamiflu, the window is very short before the drug loses all effectiveness.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/japanese-flu-drug-clearly-effective-in-treating-coronavirus-says-china

So science and medicine are throwing every antiviral they have in the medicine cabinet against this virus.  I could pull out the COVID diagram and show you the S-protein and show you how and where it enters a cell (the "cleavage site"), but then your eyes would glaze over and I would lose you. I would lose me, too.

And then there's remdesivir. The feds are in trials now, a whopping 453 people (satirically said).  The trials are due for an initial conclusion next month.  Final conclusion in May.  Gilead, the inventor/patentholder,  is doing a 1,000 person trial in Asia.  Should've been Italy, IMHO. If remdesivir appears to work, expect to see Gilead stock leading a huge buying surge on Wall Street.  My uninformed stock prognostication.  Interesting the front-end load is 200mg, then daily 100mg.  Exactly what I do with Tamiflu:  Two capsules to start, then a capsule twice a day.

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04257656

https://www.biospace.com/article/gilead-launches-2-phase-iii-trials-of-remdesivir-for-covid-19/

BREAKING NEWS!  CIDRAP (the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, aka Mike Osterholm's organization) has just released a very detailed look at the topic I just blogged about. CIDRAP's article has great detail about a brand-new initiative the WHO is doing, called the SOLIDARITY trial.  Please take the time to read it.  They just retweeted this very blog entry as well, so a hat-tip to Mike and the team at CIDRAP! 

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/03/global-covid-19-total-tops-200000-who-unveils-massive-treatment-study

And if anyone sends you that Internet crap about gargling curing the virus:  flog them.