If the government found out tomorrow of a cheap & readily available cure for Covid...

[Mummabeary]

...do you think they would tell us?

I'm just pondering this question. Like supposing it was suddenly found that a glass of cranberry juice a day completely prevented Covid. No issues and we could all get back to normality (supplies of Ocean spray allowing!) Given where we are with the pandemic at this point, do you think they would immediately call a briefing and tell us this solution and open everything up from Monday, or would they hide this information from us given the investment to date in policies to prevent Covid, the investment/profit in a vaccine etc?

Interested what people think. I like to think governments have our best interests at heart but I'm starting to worry that we've got in so deep now that even if there was a simple solution, they wouldn't take it.

@SquishySquirmy

If it was proved that a glass of cranberry juice (hypothetically) cured covid, then I don't believe it would he kept secret, the government would do whatever they could to end the pandemic! They would probably have to control the distribution of cranberry juice somehow though, as otherwise there would be a crazy rush for it... some unscrupulous types would buy every carton in the shop and flog it for £100 a glass. You'd probably get sugary water and food colouring sold as fake cranberry juice.

You'd also get a load of conspiracy theories about "Big Juice"; how cranberries are actually poisonous; microchips in the cartons; and how the pandemic was deliberately started by a shadowy organisation know as "Ocean Spray". (They are called that because the "Ocean" refers to their ambitions to take over the world and the world is mainly ocean and also flat, and they want to "Spray" us with Chemtrails, blah blah blah wake up sheeple etc etc etc.)

Yes I think the government would absolutely let us know, once the appropriate trials had been done.

Regarding obesity, as someone said above, it's a lot more complex.
Plus, do you recall the campaign a few years ago that highlighted the link between obesity and cancer? Even though there most definitely is a causal link, people were horrified and insulted...

[quote EmbarrassingAdmissions]Principle trial is reported to be expanding low-cost treatments (including Ivermectin) in trials that are to be delivered in the community, not just hospitals like RECOVERY.

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-23/trial-for-wonder-drug-that-may-reduce-covid-deaths-times-says

www.principletrial.org/[/quote]
I’m in the PRINCIPLE trial - I was selected to use an inhaled steroid called Budesonide for 14 days.

If the trial shows its helpful, they will tell us and it will start being rolled out to older/CV patients at home.

If it doesn’t work, they’ll tell us.

Just like the RECOVERY trial has found that dexamethasone and those two other drugs work (reduce mortality) for those in hospital, and hydroxychloroquine, remdesevir and convalescent plasma dont.

@Mummabeary

Thanks for your responses. It seems pretty conclusive that they would tell us which is reassuring. I'm really not a conspiracy theorist, just a couple of threads on here last night got me pondering the question. Specifically the one on obesity & the one on the constant adverts in the media to stay awake from others. It got me thinking, why wouldn't you intersperse some of these adverts with some advice to eat more healthily, exercise more, take vit D etc. I know the answer is that politically it would be harder so they haven't but then it got me thinking about how there are always more factors at play in politics & governments than just caring for public health (see the fact that smoking has never been banned).

The other part I was thinking was just how huge this vaccination operation has been and how much has been invested in it- I couldn't imagine all these sites just being stopped tomorrow, even if they were no longer needed.

You should perhaps ponder why various threads on here and on social media have directed your thinking in such an illogical way.

Try getting information from a wide range of news media and topics. Maybe read some actual history and informed opinion. Unless you are worried that academics and experts are not to be believed.

Puzzled, plasma doesn't work? I thought they were encouraging men to donate until quite recently-or have I misunderstood?

@mumlurker

Why would the Tories, who's main interests are economic profit, the free market and civil liberties, suddenly be into imposing a bunch of measures which run contrary to those interests? Just for the hell of it?

When did the Tories get interested in civil liberties? Contrary to all evidence...

@StealthPolarBear

Puzzled, plasma doesn't work? I thought they were encouraging men to donate until quite recently-or have I misunderstood?

The jury is still in deliberations. A couple of studies have suggested that blood plasma is not as effective as hoped in reducing mortality or the development of serious cases, although it does seem to reduce symptoms in cases. But other studies have been more positive. The problem is that such research takes a long time - having the numbers to treat (and not treat); experimenting with timings, dosing and the like; and many other variables. There's a lot more work to be done before anything will be conclusive, and yes, you are correct - people are still being asked to donate because there is some evidence that it may help some people, and research is continuing.

I see, makes sense, thanks

@LakeGeneva

Of course they'd tell us. They don't want this situation any more than we do.

However they'd probably fuck it up eg commission a private firm to buy all the cranberry juice, spend billions on it and end up with lorries full of mushrooms or something. That couldn't get out of Kent.

Brilliant!

@StealthPolarBear

Puzzled, plasma doesn't work? I thought they were encouraging men to donate until quite recently-or have I misunderstood?

They have been, but it was announced a week or so ago that it did not reduce mortality. It was reported on the BBC.

Logically that should mean they stop collecting it...

Looks like they have.

www.nihr.ac.uk/news/studies-find-no-evidence-of-convalescent-plasma-benefit-for-hospitalised-covid-19-patients/26614

Why on earth would the government want to flush the economy down the toilet for no reason?!?

I ask myself this then I look at Brexit.

HSHorror
Well they know vit d would make a lot of difference but dont fortify food with it. All they have done is give some to the ecv. So who knows

Food is already fortified with vitamins, some of it by law
Bread, cereals and milk are and have been for some time

www.elvisstudy.com/nasal-irrigation-and-gargling.html
Cheap , easy maybe effective ? 🙂

I wondered the same in the Autumn OP. The results of the incredible Cordoba vitamin D trial were published in September, yet the government, PHE and NHS appeared to take no notice. That was alongside around 40 other studies around the world showing that a high proportion of people hospitalised with severe Covid were vitamin D deficient (around 80%) along with the fact that Belgium and the UK have the lowest levels of vitamin D in Europe, and were the hardest hit on deaths per million of the population.
They had invested in vaccines and I'm suspicious that they didn't just make a very clear public announcement that vitamin D deficiency needed to be rectified immediately across the population with testing and loading doses.
Instead, they started a 6-month trial of the effects of low doses. A half-hearted attempt to get free vitamins out to the vulnerable in January (notice it wasn't in September when levels would naturally fall again for those who got exposure to sunshine).
More importantly, they didn't make a clear public message to everyone to buy and take them. Crucially, they haven't justified the science (there isn't any) behind the reason why the NHS recommendation is half the dose of Europe and the US. So not only are we low as a population, but we're being advised to take a lower daily dose than the rest of the world. Matt Hancock said the dose is under review back in November. No urgency Matt! As long as you get it right by the next pandemic...

@Flaxmeadow - PHE have turned down calls from researchers to fortify food and drink with vitamin D for the past 10 years. If you Google, you'll see a few articles on it.
A few breakfast cereals and orange juice brands have voluntarily added vitamin D. That's it. No state recommendation or enforcement.
Although more foods are fortified in the US, and they still have a massive death toll and widespread deficiency, which shows that a lot of thought needs to go into which food and drink to target.

The results of the incredible Cordoba vitamin D trial were published in September, yet the government, PHE and NHS appeared to take no notice.

NICE/SACN reviewed Cordoba and other trials in their evidence review and for the guidelines.

www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng187/chapter/Recommendations

All of the hospitalised patients in that trial (who are not necessarily the same as UK patients nor have the same criteria for ICU admission) were also taking other (now deprecated) treatments:

All hospitalized patients received as best available therapy the same standard care, (per hospital protocol), of a combination of hydroxychloroquine (400 mg every 12 h on the first day, and 200 mg every 12 h for the following 5 days), azithromycin (500 mg orally for 5 days. Eligible patients were allocated at a 2 calcifediol:1 no calcifediol ratio through electronic randomization on the day of admission to take oral calcifediol (0.532 mg), or not. Patients in the calcifediol treatment group continued with oral calcifediol (0.266 mg) on day 3 and 7, and then weekly until discharge or ICU admission. Outcomes of effectiveness included rate of ICU admission and deaths.

Can you even get cranberry juice? I think that Ocean Spray stuff is technically a juice drink, mostly water with a bit of concentrate added plus sugar.

Yes you can. It's rather more expensive and tastes quite bitter.

@EmbarrassingAdmissions - the SACN link isn't a review of Cordoba. They have only carried out rapid reviews on other vitamin D trials.
The fact that the Cordoba patients were being treated with a drug (as per their treatment protocol at that time) is irrelevant because it was the group who were treated with calcifidiocol which had excellent outcomes. The other group, not treated with vitamin D (but still given the same drug) had significantly poorer outcomes.
The UK, to my knowledge, has never replicated the calcifidiocol treatment protocol on serious hospital admissions in a trial. Yet, if the results of the Cordoba trial were to be scaled up successfully, it would mean a few hundred deaths in the UK, as opposed to thousands.
When this is all over, during the review of the handling of Covid, questions will be asked about why the benefits of vitamin D, according to so many non-UK studies weren't acted upon. There isn't time to wait for peer reviews. For the sake of a few public announcements and a few pennies per person, we could have pulled the nation out of its deficient state easily by October. Several MPs have been raising it in the House since the summer, so the Department of Health won't be able to claim lack of knowledge, or interest.

[quote DianaT1969]@EmbarrassingAdmissions - the SACN link isn't a review of Cordoba. They have only carried out rapid reviews on other vitamin D trials.
The fact that the Cordoba patients were being treated with a drug (as per their treatment protocol at that time) is irrelevant because it was the group who were treated with calcifidiocol which had excellent outcomes. The other group, not treated with vitamin D (but still given the same drug) had significantly poorer outcomes.
The UK, to my knowledge, has never replicated the calcifidiocol treatment protocol on serious hospital admissions in a trial. Yet, if the results of the Cordoba trial were to be scaled up successfully, it would mean a few hundred deaths in the UK, as opposed to thousands.
When this is all over, during the review of the handling of Covid, questions will be asked about why the benefits of vitamin D, according to so many non-UK studies weren't acted upon. There isn't time to wait for peer reviews. For the sake of a few public announcements and a few pennies per person, we could have pulled the nation out of its deficient state easily by October. Several MPs have been raising it in the House since the summer, so the Department of Health won't be able to claim lack of knowledge, or interest.[/quote]
Cordoba is the Castillo paper that is discussed in the next section which is the rationale:

The panel were presented with evidence from the NICE evidence review of vitamin D for COVID-19 on using vitamin D supplements for treating COVID‑19. This comprised 1 small, very low-quality, randomised controlled trial in secondary care from Spain (Castillo et al. 2020) that used oral calcifediol (25[OH]D), which is the circulating metabolite of vitamin D, and not commonly used in the UK. The panel noted the very high dose used. This was estimated to be equivalent to around 5,000 micrograms (200,000 units) of vitamin D in the first week (about 700 micrograms [28,000 units] daily) and 1,300 micrograms in following weeks for the duration of the study (about 200 micrograms [8,000 units] daily). They also noted the lack of generalisability to UK practice. The panel had concerns about:

differences in comorbidities between the 2 comparator groups

use of 'standard care' including anti-inflammatory medicines that are not considered standard care for COVID‑19 in UK practice

the lack of blinding, which could result in biased estimates.

Based on direct evidence from the NICE evidence review, the panel agreed that there was not enough evidence to recommend using vitamin D for treating COVID‑19. They also agreed that the recommendation on vitamin D supplements and treatment should be considered for an update as additional evidence becomes available. Because of the lack of evidence identified, the panel made a research recommendation around the clinical effectiveness of vitamin D supplements for treating COVID‑19. They stressed that future studies should be high-quality randomised controlled trials.

www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng187/chapter/Rationale

Are you nuts? Of course they’d take it - the economic impact of this is horrendous.

Well, maybe we should copy what Trump was taking??

Otherwise, the cure won't come from the government, it will come from a pharma company coz someone has to make megabucks.

I would be more in favour of preventative measures like improving health of the nation (see thread on weight loss & covid) but Boris forgot to follow through on his promised health drive.

The government and big business makes far too much money out of our excessive eating and drinking to ever do anything serious about reducing obesity and improving health.

Uhm, yeah, they would put it out there. Would you want to be in their position, not knowing when huge swathes of business will be able to be active again (and hence pay them taxes) whilst the billions of ££££ of costs rack up?

It's not much good a government 'Controlling the people' through lockdowns if you're in masses of debt, having to pay more than ever to keep people from penury and earning a fraction of your normal taxes. Of course they will want to end it as soon as possible - sadly that's why we're in this mess in the first place, the government assumed we'd never have the discipline for lockdowns so just crossed their fingers and hoped COVID would go away.