In this week’s Covid-19 update (in 3 parts), Al Brooks discusses the recent CDC report, immunity and the reemergence of HCQ, the limitations of scientific studies and pseudoscience.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) report 215,000 more deaths this year than last.

Many Covid-19 patients never get diagnosed because they do not seek medical attention. Medical experts believe that the infection rate is five to 10 times what has been proven. That means there have been 25 to 50 million Americans already infected.

While a lot of testing can discover a lot of infected people, you do not need a test to discover a dead person. Testing has nothing to do with America’s disastrous death results in this pandemic. Experts have widely reported that our death rate is far greater than that of other developed nations. Our decisions have led to more than 100,000 needless deaths.

The official current total is 175,000 dead Americans. However, the CDC report says that there were 215,000 more deaths through July this year compared to past years.

Many of these deaths are from people with heart attacks who were afraid of catching Covid-19 if they went to the hospital. They decided that it was safer to take a chance that their chest pain would soon go away. These people are still Covid-19 deaths, even if though did not have the infection. If they had their heart attack in any other year, they would have survived. They died because of the pandemic.

Those 40,000 unaccounted for deaths are more than the number of soldiers that we lost in the Korean War. I have been saying since February that I think our approach will lead to a half million dead Americans before this is over. There is currently no reason to think otherwise.

Immunity might be better than expected

I recently wrote that one study found that the half-life of Covid-19 antibodies was 76 days. That means that every 76 days, the number of antibodies is half what it was 76 days before. After a series of halvings, at some point, the level could become so low that it will not protect you from getting infected again.

But do the antibodies ever fall to that level? We don’t know. They may instead fall to some low level that is still enough to prevent or reduce the severity of a new infection.

Furthermore, it is the B cells that make the antibodies have memory. They now know how to make them. If you are again exposed to the virus, your B cells will be quicker to respond. That means that a protective level of antibodies will come sooner. That will shorten the duration of the illness and it will likely make it less severe.

I have also talked about T cells, which do not produce antibodies, but do protect against the disease. There are four types of T cells and each has a different means of fighting the virus. They, too, have memory and will be quicker to respond if you get re-exposed to the virus.

Antivaxers will be unhappy in Massachusetts

Massachusetts is going to require all kids to get a flu shot before returning to K–12 school. How does a flu shot protect you against Covid-19? It does not, but it prevents you from messing up the school’s plans to protect its students.

Dr. Larry Madoff from the Massachusetts Department of Health explained the need this way:

“Every year, thousands of people of all ages are affected by influenza, leading to many hospitalizations and deaths… It is more important now than ever to get a flu vaccine because flu symptoms are very similar to those of Covid-19 and preventing the flu will save lives and preserve healthcare resources.”

They are giving medical and religious exemptions, but I do not see any exceptions for people who just dislike vaccines in general.

I assume the state is concerned about distinguishing between a flu and a Covid-19 patient. If a person has the flu, there is no need to quarantine his contacts. If he has Covid-19, then there is a need.

If you have a bunch of flu kids running around, you have to worry that they might instead be Covid cases. You therefore will feel obligated to quarantine them and their contacts for at least long enough to get a flu and a Covid-19 test to know the diagnosis. The result would be that you would quickly be quarantining the entire school, shutting it down.

Credible Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) study showed a benefit

There was an interesting study from the Henry Ford Hospital systems in Detroit that was published by the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. It is a reputable medical center and the journal is peer reviewed, which is good. Both factors will attract attention in the science community.

They looked back at 2,541 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) with or without azithromycin and compared the death rates to those of patients who received neither drug. The death rate was 13.5% in the HCQ group compared to 26% in the untreated group. It is interesting that the combined treatment with azithromycin resulted in 20.1% death rate, worse than with HCQ alone.

I wrote that HCQ fell out of favor in the medical community after six peer-reviewed articles found no benefit. The article in the New England Journal of Medicine was particularly persuasive. I said that most researchers at that point would conclude that if there is a benefit, it was going to be minimal. They therefore would move on in search of other treatments that might prove to be clearly helpful.

I wrote that the HCQ proponents would need at least a couple credible studies before medical scientists would spend any more time researching it. Their time is precious, and they are desperate to find an effective treatment. After six credible studies found none, researchers would need at least a couple credible studies showing a benefit before going back to studying it again.

In tomorrow’s report, we will discuss the value of the recent successful HCQ trail, Munchausen syndrome and “Turkey” patients.

Al Brooks’ earlier special reports on the Covid-19 pandemic:

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