A NEW/OLD APPROACH TO A CORONA VIRUS CURE

"Stat! Stat!"

I see a total, absolute catastrophe brewing.

The worst part of it is, it may be totally, absolutely avoidable. However, to do so requires a change of -- not in -- perspective.

I was an inhalation therapist at Maricopa County Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. You cannot be more of a front line health worker than that.

"Stat" was the code word over the pa system. It meant a patient was dying. I had to move fast. The rest of the time I treated patients with emphysema, asthma attacks, pneumonia and other lung ailments.

I am not a medical doctor. However, I saw and experienced things daily that very few doctors -- and even fewer researchers -- know about. I′ll bet a lot of nurses out there reading these words right now are smiling inwardly. You know exactly what I am talking about.

What follows is of course a layman′s viewpoint, Usually, laymen are wrong. Equally true, sometimes they are right.

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Does your family pet hold the solution to the corona virus pandemic?

Speculation on CNN and elsewhere has begun that maybe, just maybe, a vaccine against the virus will never be found.

That wild conjecture turns out to be not so wild. In fact, it makes sense. The cure for another virus creation, the common cold, continues to elude scientists all over the world.

Could the problem lie in the sample fact that virus research is looking in the wrong direction?

If that is true, then -- and contrary to everything the politicians are telling you -- throwing money at the problem will never solve it.

When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is, stop digging.

Ask new questions. Change perspective

Let′s ask a question nobody is asking:

Scientists have found corona virus in dog feces. Yet dogs do not get sick, much less die, from corona virus.

Why?

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Again, I am not a medical doctor. However, I grew up around them. I saw how they can all too quickly and easily become fixated on the latest "in" scientific approach, and refuse to look elsewhere. With over 270,000 deaths from corona virus worldwide, inflexibility in the search for a cure is neither excusable nor pardonable.

I also grew up around university professors. Their research is governed by where the money is. The name of the game is grantsmanship. I didn′t invent that word; it is what the academic establishment calls it behind closed doors.

Right now, there is colossal money in researching antibody vaccines against the corona virus. Under those circumstances, do not expect alternative viewpoints like ours -- see below -- to get a fair hearing. Such is the downside of grantsmanship.

The mass media are doing what they always do: take out the flute and play along. The giveaway is they treat corona virus as if it were a microorganism like tuberculous or malaria. Convinced a virus is alive, they talk about a vaccine with antibodies to kill it.

Not so fast, CNN, Washington Post...

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A change of -- not in -- perspectives requires going to the roots.

What is a virus?

There is a long-standing controversy among scientists about whether or not a virus is alive. An article in Scientific American went to the heart of the matter:

"For about 100 years, the scientific community has repeatedly changed its collective mind over what viruses are. First seen as poisons, then as life-forms, then biological chemicals, viruses today are thought of as being in a gray area between living and nonliving: they cannot replicate on their own but can do so in truly living cells...

[R]esearch by [Wendell M. ]Stanley and others established that a virus consists of nucleic acids (DNA or RNA) enclosed in a protein coat that may also shelter viral proteins involved in infection. By that description, a virus seems more like a chemistry set than an organism. But when a virus enters a cell (called a host after infection), it is far from inactive. It sheds its coat, bares its genes and induces the cell’s own replication machinery to reproduce the intruder’s DNA or RNA and manufacture more viral protein based on the instructions in the viral nucleic acid. The newly created viral bits assemble and, voilà, more virus arises, which also may infect other cells."

What if there was a way to block the corona virus from attaching itself to healthy cells?

I will return to that point.

* * *

Everybody everywhere is talking about developing a vaccine made from antibodies from people who overcame corona virus.

What is an antibody and how does it destroy intruders?

We disagree with the prevailing media viewpoint. Our change of perspective begins with the assumption that a virus is not a living microorganism but rather an antigen. As we shall show how that shift leads us down a different path.

An antigen is a chemical that provokes the immune system to respond. Ragweed pollen, cat fur and peanuts are examples of antigens.

I located a website that presents this concise explanation:

"Antigens are molecules capable of stimulating an immune response. Each antigen has distinct surface features, or epitopes, resulting in specific responses.

Antibodies (immunoglobins) are Y-shaped proteins produced by B cells of the immune system in response to exposure to antigens. Each antibody contains a paratope which recognizes a specific epitope on an antigen, acting like a lock and key binding mechanism. This binding helps to eliminate antigens from the body, either by direct neutralization or by ‘tagging’ for other arms of the immune system.

Vaccines contain antigens which stimulate the B lymphocytes of the immune system to respond by producing plasma cells which secrete disease specific antibodies (Primary response). Some of the B cells become memory B cells, which will recognise future exposure to the disease. This results in a faster and more intense production of antibodies, which effectively work to eliminate the disease by binding to the antigens (Secondary response)."

In brief, antibodies search out and destroy invading antigens. Needless to say, if the antigen keeps changing its surface, antibodies cannot do their job. That is exactly what happens with the HIV virus. Is the corona virus presenting an equivalent challenge?

Our new/old approach involves an alternative to treatment with antibodies.. It consists of coating healthy cells so that the virus cannot attach itself.

In summary, the corona virus would not be hunted down by antibodies. Blocked, the virus simply could not do anything. Yes, the virus would be there, inside the body, but the virus would simply pass through it.

As in dogs.

* * *

Giving a protective molecular coat to healthy cells is not new.

Allergies and histamines are a case in point:

When somebody comes in contact with an allergy trigger like peanuts or ragweed, immune system cells -- "mast cells" -- produce histamines. They are absolutely necessary for the immune system to function properly; however, histamines can cause common allergy symptoms.

What activates the immune system in the first place, causing it to spring into action? When an allergy trigger is encountered, the body produces antibodies. They interact with the histamine-producing mast cells. As a result, histamines are released and bind to special sites called receptors on cells in the nose, throat, skin, etc.

This binding makes blood vessels widen, which allows more blood to flow to the area where the interaction is taking place. Increased blood flow can also cause swelling, congestion from mucus and other fluids, itching -- all the well-known allergy reactions.

Antihistamines block the interaction of histamines with the receptors in the nose, throat, etc., thus suppressing the widening of blood vessels and increased blood flow, and hence the resulting allergic reactions.

Antihistamines block by coating the receptors, preventing them from recognizing the histamines.

Coating it is, then.

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Antihistamine molecules are not antibodies. They do not identify, search out and destroy anything. They do not bind with the intruding antigen and eliminate it. Rather, they give a coat of armor to healthy cells.

My work as an inhalation therapist reinforced what I learned elsewhere...

I took allergy shots for years. Three vials had different concentrations of ragweed, grass and tree pollen. You work up from the minimum dose of the weakest concentration to the biggest dose of the strongest concentration, I initially thought the allergy shots worked like any other vaccine -- that the body produced antibodies to attack and get rid of the invader. My doctor explained that was not the case.

In response to allergy injections, the body produces blocking molecules that coat cells to prevent them from recognizing histamines. The result is the antigen -- ragweed, peanuts,, etc. -- is not destroyed but simply ignored. To be sure, histamines -- a necessary defense tool -- are still produced by the body; however, unable to bind to the receptor cells, the histamines cannot provoke an allergic reaction.

Forget antibodies, at least for the moment. Such is our new/old perspective in a nutshell.

I wonder if molecules blocking the corona virus from attaching itself to healthy cells are not already present in some people more than others. That might explain the incredibly wide range of symptoms people have -- all the way from no symptoms at all, to a mild flu, and, further up the line, death.

If molecules that block corona virus already exist, the question becomes: what is the chemical substance of those molecules? Can it be reproduced in laboratories?

Unlike corona virus antibody research, nobody I know of is presently giving the study and creation of blocking molecules one red cent.

All the money in the world can′t buy you a single day. We have all seen, time and again, how money also can′t buy truth -- and to find a cure for corona virus, researchers need to know the truth.

For that reason, we hope to hear from infectious disease experts.