This week, Dr. Klotman gives us his Week 189 COVID update. The highlights are:
- COVID hospitalizations and overall wastewater COVID levels are flat
- The top four COVID strains account for about 98% of all US cases
- Studies of the SARS-CoV-2 virus show that the initial mutations primarily affected the ability of the virus to infect its hosts and replicate. More recent mutations have affected the ability of the virus to evade the host’s immune responses. This is how evolution works.
- Most of the viral respiratory illness cases these days are COVID rather than RSV or Flu. People over 70 account for most of the deaths.
- There is a growing number of clinics here and abroad advertising various kinds of stem cell and immune-enhancing treatments for COVID and COVID prevention. These outfits are selling snake oil.
You will likely recall the touting of Plaquenil, Ivermectin, and other accepted drugs as treatments for COVID. None of these panned out. In medicine, we call such treatments impure placebos. That is, they are drugs that have actual effects, but for this use, they have no benefit; they might as well be sugar pills. Impure placebos have toxicity; they have cost without benefit, and they keep their users from accessing therapy that would actually work – antivirals, vaccinations, and steroids in certain situations.
Don’t fall for the claims of snake-oil salesmen. Therapies without solid clinical trial evidence of safety and efficacy are foolhardy at best and potentially lethal at worst.