[ExI] The Japanese mystery: why so few COVID cases?

Tue Jun 30 16:11:07 UTC 2020

From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Dave Sill via extropy-chat
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2020 8:46 AM
To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Cc: Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] The Japanese mystery: why so few COVID cases?

On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 10:57 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

Hipsters, where are we on UV therapy for covid patients?  I am surprised we don't hear more on that.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/04/30/fact-check-uv-light-not-accepted-medical-treatment-infection/3047010001/

>…"While ultraviolet blood irradiation exists, it is unproven as an effective treatment in killing infections and is not widely used. 

>…There have been studies on ultraviolet blood irradiation in the past, but experts say such treatments need proven clinical trials to gain acceptance among the wider medical community. There is also not research proving UBI as a treatment for the coronavirus."

>…It's unproven. It may be possible but a lot of research needs to be done. Are we funding this research?

-Dave

Hi Dave, the Gates Foundation is pouring tons of money into vaccines.  This UV business looks promising to me, a great way for philanthropists to invest in a possible solution to a known problem.  

Vaccines are made by isolating a bunch of some pathogen, weakening it somehow so it can’t reproduce, inject the weakened and slain pathogen, the immune system reacts by producing antibodies, even if the pathogen is too weak to spawn.

OK, suppose this UV wrecks covid but the treatment doesn’t actually remove the destroyed viruses, it only damages them beyond their ability to spawn.  Then the damaged viruses are still in the bloodstream, alerting the immune system but not replicating.  

My best guess on why this isn’t being done more is that we don’t have enough machines yet.  This one doesn’t look like it would be all that hard to build.  Another guess would be the frequency that wrecks covid also destroys something else, such as the leucocytes or the RBCs.  We could add those back from donors, while leaving the destroyed C-19 in the existing blood to stim the immune system.

I am not a doctor, but this looks like a reasonable engineering approach.  The research would be just using it on a bunch of patients then comparing their recovery rates and immune system reactions.

spike

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