The new anti covid treatment recipe?

[notevenat20]

Trump has so far received 8g of an antibody cocktail called REGN-COV2 within hours of diagnosis. He is now on remdevisir and zinc, vitamin D, an antacid, melatonin and aspirin. These were all started with 24 hours of diagnosis as far as I can tell.

Should everyone in their 70s be treated this way?

The treatments that Johnson and Trump got/will get, show the vast healthcare inequalities we are all suffering under administrations that have very poor healthcare systems, both countries per capita have some of the worst death rates in the world.

Do we know exactly what treatment Johnson got?

The regeneron treatment is available in the uk as part of ‘The recovery study’ run by oxford university. It’s a randomised trial so your not guaranteed to receive it. That is the nature of how new treatments are tested for new conditions. If it is found to be effective it would be widely available.
Remdesivir in the U.K is used as first line treatment alongside Dexamethasone.

Remdesivir as yet in America as far as I know is not yet licensed for use to treat covid-19 hence it being called experimental.
It’s really frustrating how the media reports treatments when a basic search will bring up the trials and treatments used in the U.K. and abroad.
Im a research nurse so probably get more frustrated than most about the reporting!

@Tildero

Does the NHS give you zinc, vitamin D, an antacid, melatonin and aspirin?

@Tildero

If you were treating your father/grandfather and let’s assume you have total control over the treatment, would you give him the same cocktail of drugs Trump got?

Unpopular opinion: some lives are more important than others when it comes to the practicalities of running a country and the international stability - or lack thereof - that depends on that.

I'm not talking specifically about Trump, but about any leader. They do need to receive priority treatement.

*treatment

@BertiesLanding

That's only really relevant if the reason we are not treating everyone the same way is price.

As an aside, zinc, vitamin D, an antacid, melatonin and aspirin are all cheap. Should all covid patients be given them?

What if that combination actually harms covid patients, OP. Or have you already decided that they can't possibly hurt anyone.

Remember how early in the pandemic putting ppl on ventilators seemed good until cytokine storm related to ventilation was recognised as causing huge harm for many.

That's the point of a randomised trial, to account for all the other variables and to collect information on benefits & harms in a systematic way that doesn't presume everything is known in advance.

These are all experimental treatments with no current robust evidence that they help. Remdesivir for example is given on a 'compassionate basis' in the U.K. when a person is seriously ill. Looks like they are trying anything that might help and that probably won't do any harm. I notice that hydroxychloroquine isn't on the list.

Gwendolyn why is Remdesivir given on a 'compassionate' basis? What is compassionate about it? Does it mean 'last ditch effort on the off chance it works'?

Can it really be that the US president is being given drugs that not only might not work but in fact could harm him?

@picklemewalnuts pretty much

www.ema.europa.eu/en/human-regulatory/research-development/compassionate-use

I'm not saying for a second that this is why it is being given to Trump. They are clearly just throwing anything at him that might help and prob won't harm. The irony is that the vast majority of the 200,000+ dead people in America will not have had these options.

@notevenat20

Can it really be that the US president is being given drugs that not only might not work but in fact could harm him?

Presumably the final decision about which of the treatments available to him he chooses is Trump's. So all bets are off.

I think he should go back to his original plan, disinfectant injection and the application of extreme heat 'inside the body'.

hydroxychloroquinine may be harmful but Dt got it (he took it prophylactically at least a few times) because he asked for it

Drug access is less regulated in USA than it is in UK; it's easier there for anyone to get experimental drugs or treatment as long as they have ££££.

If it's being trialled you can't give it to every patient because you need a control group. Seems pretty harsh if you're sick and you are in the control group, but what else can you do to see if it works?

Anyone can take zinc and vitamin D to improve their general immune system.

And, I think we would most people would benefit from it to both reduce chances of getting covid or, at worst, reduce its severity.

People's view of high/excessive doses of Vitamin D vary, but no one has had any problems with taking 10,000 iu vitamin D3 over long periods. Any side effects have been through incredibly high dosage. (I think around 46 capsule a day of the max available strength)
A small but significant study in Spain demonstrated exceptional results in a small cohort of people

I suspect, as an overweight man in his 70s he was already taking the antacid and quite possibly the aspirin too.

Aspiring works as a blood thinner right, is that to prevent the blood clotting which can happen with covid? Zinc and vitamin D good for immune system possibly, but would they not be better having taken long term rather than in response to infection, as would take time to work?

I think there was a small study that John Campbell was talking about where they found even treating with vitamin d once people had contracted covid made a difference to outcomes.

Aspiring works as a blood thinner right, is that to prevent the blood clotting which can happen with covid?

I was wondering that too.

Zinc, Vitamin D, and aspirin are available cheaply over the counter. Melatonin too in America.

Aspirin can have serious risks as well as benefits depending on the health conditions of the individual patient, so definitely shouldn’t be handed out willy nilly but obviously they’ll have DT’s full medical history so they can know it’s appropriate for him.

@picklemewalnuts

Gwendolyn why is Remdesivir given on a 'compassionate' basis? What is compassionate about it? Does it mean 'last ditch effort on the off chance it works'?

I read ages the compassionate use criteria would be something like the patient is pregnant or a child. It was people considered particularly important to try to save. At the time the rationing was due to a shortage of doses, because of manufacturing capacity limits. That was months ago. I don't know how well remdesivir has performed in trials since then.

It's not surprising he hasn't been given hydroxychloroquine. Whether or not it actually works is another issue, but it's potential success was always more as a prophylactic, or to prevent cases progressing to hospital stage.

I do wonder whether we'll ever really know since most (all?) of the trials didn't take into account that hydroxychloroquine takes about three months to build up in your body before having much of an effect. This relates to rheumatoid arthritis and lupus treatment. I don't know if it might work the same way for preventing Covid.

I don't suppose we'll ever know. We might get a general indication if we knew the statistics on medicated RA and lupus patients hospitalised for Covid. If low, that's some indication - but of course could just be pure coincidence.

Why the melatonin?

I don't want to claim too much expertise , but isn't giving remdesivir only really late on exactly against what is known about it. That is that you have to give it as early as possible.

On a related, this is timely www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32021-3/fulltext