Mennonite Measles in Texas

[randomguy]

A bit more taboo information for this conversation that some may find interesting.

Enders isolated the measles virus in the 1950s. By isolated, I mean he took samples from kids diagnosed with measles and put them into a culture. Then, he prepped the samples to be viewed with an electron microscope. He assumed the cytopathic effects he was seeing must be the virus but did acknowledge that the same type of damage could be seen in cultures without antigen provided. It's not clear if it was exactly the same or there were visual differences. I tried reading it myself, but the language wasn't clear to me. Enders himself I believe, assumed more work was needed, but it seems others were ready to be fully convinced as there was so much excitement to develop vaccines per the Polio vaccine. (Which is a separate story or 2)

In Germany, there was a trial around a bet by a scientist, Stefan Lanka, that showed no one could provide a study that proved the Measles virus caused the condition. He went ahead and created the controls he thought were lacking in the 1950s study and was able to see the same type of effect under a microscope without the measles isolate. Someone took him up on it, but it took him 5 studies to get to it, and pretty sure the lynch pin is this Enders study. Then there is controversy over whether Lanka won the court case on a technicality, or if in the trial he had made the case that considering different controls, Measles wasn't as definitively proved as we are lead to believe.

Virology is hard. They are particles that come out of our own cells. Isolating viruses away from naturally occurring bioparticles like exosomes isn't easy to do, and I don't think it's done. Autoimmune conditions arise because the body can't tell self from antigen. What makes us think we got it all square ourselves? Or maybe our confusion about antigen/self is what's leading to the uptick in autoimmune conditions.

As far as treatment goes. There was a darkhorse podcast that noted a suppressed study in 1999 that indicated that a solid protocol for all severe cases of acute respiratory disease would be a round of corticosteroids. That study noted that with such a treatment, it is important to taper off the steroids when done. This proved to be a way to deal with the severe covid cases as well. I suspect it would help with a severe case of pneumonia and perhaps measles.

Hope some find this informative. Medical history is a fascinating subject. I think the amount of certainty thrown around in such a complex field is ridiculous. It's important to remember nobody wants to suffer needlessly.

[Ken]

A bit more taboo information for this conversation that some may find interesting.

Enders isolated the measles virus in the 1950s. By isolated, I mean he took samples from kids diagnosed with measles and put them into a culture. Then, he prepped the samples to be viewed with an electron microscope. He assumed the cytopathic effects he was seeing must be the virus but did acknowledge that the same type of damage could be seen in cultures without antigen provided. It's not clear if it was exactly the same or there were visual differences. I tried reading it myself, but the language wasn't clear to me. Enders himself I believe, assumed more work was needed, but it seems others were ready to be fully convinced as there was so much excitement to develop vaccines per the Polio vaccine. (Which is a separate story or 2)

In Germany, there was a trial around a bet by a scientist, Stefan Lanka, that showed no one could provide a study that proved the Measles virus caused the condition. He went ahead and created the controls he thought were lacking in the 1950s study and was able to see the same type of effect under a microscope without the measles isolate. Someone took him up on it, but it took him 5 studies to get to it, and pretty sure the lynch pin is this Enders study. Then there is controversy over whether Lanka won the court case on a technicality, or if in the trial he had made the case that considering different controls, Measles wasn't as definitively proved as we are lead to believe.

Virology is hard. They are particles that come out of our own cells. Isolating viruses away from naturally occurring bioparticles like exosomes isn't easy to do, and I don't think it's done. Autoimmune conditions arise because the body can't tell self from antigen. What makes us think we got it all square ourselves? Or maybe our confusion about antigen/self is what's leading to the uptick in autoimmune conditions.

As far as treatment goes. There was a darkhorse podcast that noted a suppressed study in 1999 that indicated that a solid protocol for all severe cases of acute respiratory disease would be a round of corticosteroids. That study noted that with such a treatment, it is important to taper off the steroids when done. This proved to be a way to deal with the severe covid cases as well. I suspect it would help with a severe case of pneumonia and perhaps measles.

Hope some find this informative. Medical history is a fascinating subject. I think the amount of certainty thrown around in such a complex field is ridiculous. It's important to remember nobody wants to suffer needlessly.

Suppressed 1999 study?

A quick review of the literature suggests there has been a lot of work on corticosteroids over the past 20 years as a therapy for different respiratory diseases with mixed results at best. All of them focused on adults. Studies focused on measles have been inconclusive and point out that young children respond to steroids differently than adults. Most measles patients are children: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37820949/

Basically there is no cure for measles other than preventing it in the first place which is easily done. Otherwise all you can do is let the disease run its course and treat symptoms.

[Judas Maccabeus]

How does one go about "suppressing" a study? And if it is "suppressed" how do you know about it?

[JohnH]

As far as treatment goes. There was a darkhorse podcast that noted a suppressed study in 1999 that indicated that a solid protocol for all severe cases of acute respiratory disease would be a round of corticosteroids. That study noted that with such a treatment, it is important to taper off the steroids when done. This proved to be a way to deal with the severe covid cases as well. I suspect it would help with a severe case of pneumonia and perhaps measles.

This is, indeed, a quite standard treatment (at least for adults); I am going to presume that the Cleveland Clinic is engaging in generally-accepted mainstream medical practices, and for my recent bout of whatever this sickness was going around, my doctor decided to prescribe antibiotics and a corticosteroid to keep bronchitis (or pneumonia) from developing. And yes, the corticosteroid was a standard 6-5-4-3-2-1 dosing schedule.

A downside of this is the immunosuppressive effect of the corticosteroid, but with measles, there's quite a bit of immune suppression anyway. I looked into what the standard treatments for measles are, and yep, you guessed it, antibiotics, along with standard treatment of bronchitis or pneumonia (if that develops), vitamin A (if indicated by a patient who may have been vitamin-A deficient in his or her diet), and ensuring a rescue inhaler of something like albuterol is available. Somewhat less standard was using a nebulizer with albuterol or other inhaled corticosteroid prophylactically (this is also a somewhat nonstandard treatment for COVID, but one that worked very well for a relative of mine).

If measles does start to spread, then it would behoove the medical profession to find ways to treat it effectively. Once someone has had measles, they are immune for life and won't pass it on to anyone else.

[Judas Maccabeus]

As far as treatment goes. There was a darkhorse podcast that noted a suppressed study in 1999 that indicated that a solid protocol for all severe cases of acute respiratory disease would be a round of corticosteroids. That study noted that with such a treatment, it is important to taper off the steroids when done. This proved to be a way to deal with the severe covid cases as well. I suspect it would help with a severe case of pneumonia and perhaps measles.

This is, indeed, a quite standard treatment (at least for adults); I am going to presume that the Cleveland Clinic is engaging in generally-accepted mainstream medical practices, and for my recent bout of whatever this sickness was going around, my doctor decided to prescribe antibiotics and a corticosteroid to keep bronchitis (or pneumonia) from developing. And yes, the corticosteroid was a standard 6-5-4-3-2-1 dosing schedule.

A downside of this is the immunosuppressive effect of the corticosteroid, but with measles, there's quite a bit of immune suppression anyway. I looked into what the standard treatments for measles are, and yep, you guessed it, antibiotics, along with standard treatment of bronchitis or pneumonia (if that develops), vitamin A (if indicated by a patient who may have been vitamin-A deficient in his or her diet), and ensuring a rescue inhaler of something like albuterol is available. Somewhat less standard was using a nebulizer with albuterol or other inhaled corticosteroid prophylactically (this is also a somewhat nonstandard treatment for COVID, but one that worked very well for a relative of mine).

If measles does start to spread, then it would behoove the medical profession to find ways to treat it effectively. Once someone has had measles, they are immune for life and won't pass it on to anyone else.

Effective antivirals are still in their infancy.

[JohnH]

Antivirals are a big disappointment. Tamiflu for example - major side effects, one of which is throwing your heart out of rhythm.

My dad has an afib and caught a bad flu like disease. Took Tamiflu,’l and lo and behold, went out of rhythm. It really shouldn’t have been prescribed for him and probably shouldn’t be for any geriatric patients.

[randomguy]

How does one go about "suppressing" a study? And if it is "suppressed" how do you know about it?

It's a fascinating podcast on the darkhorse I'll have to track down the full one. But the fact it took so long for it to be a Covid treatment is the general effect of what looks like when a solid treatment protocol falling by the wayside. I wanted to track it down as its been awhile. I think this is the podcast though I don't remember listening to two hours of it. Around minute 54 there is some talk about the steroid studies and the results being ignored.

What a paper like the New York Times or the Washington Post decides to say about a study, how much credence to its claims, is one way.

Look how the press fast tracked and supported Pfizer and Merck's antivirals for Covid such as Paxlovid, or Molnupiravir but ignored or chose not to emphasize positive information on things like Vitamin D, and Quercetin, and yes, Ivermectin or HCQ.

Otherwise, if a study has an interpretation or conclusion that goes well beyond the evidence but is on behalf of a product, it gets given a free pass. And promoted. And accepted by medical professionals.

Even if Ivermectin didn't work for Covid, calling it horse medicine is not science. That's propaganda.

[JohnH]

Even if Ivermectin didn't work for Covid, calling it horse medicine is not science. That's propaganda.

Horse medicine is just veterinary science, which is actually a very important part of science and medicine... along with the treatment of bovines, poultry, and many other animals. And yes, the same medicines that work on livestock often work on people and vice versa. I used to pick up meds for my (at the time) girlfriend's cat, and they'd just be a prescription I'd take to a people-pharmacy. It would even have the cat's name on it.

[Ken]

How does one go about "suppressing" a study? And if it is "suppressed" how do you know about it?

It's a fascinating podcast on the darkhorse I'll have to track down the full one. But the fact it took so long for it to be a Covid treatment is the general effect of what looks like when a solid treatment protocol falling by the wayside. I wanted to track it down as its been awhile. I think this is the podcast though I don't remember listening to two hours of it. Around minute 54 there is some talk about the steroid studies and the results being ignored.

What a paper like the New York Times or the Washington Post decides to say about a study, how much credence to its claims, is one way.

Look how the press fast tracked and supported Pfizer and Merck's antivirals for Covid such as Paxlovid, or Molnupiravir but ignored or chose not to emphasize positive information on things like Vitamin D, and Quercetin, and yes, Ivermectin or HCQ.

Otherwise, if a study has an interpretation or conclusion that goes well beyond the evidence but is on behalf of a product, it gets given a free pass. And promoted. And accepted by medical professionals.

Even if Ivermectin didn't work for Covid, calling it horse medicine is not science. That's propaganda.

I don't think what you wrote was reflective of what actually happened during the pandemic.

During the first initial months of the pandemic there was an enormous amount of experimentation and sharing of information all across the planet. Desperate doctors and medical professionals all across the globe were trying everything they could think of and posting up discussions and information on YouTube. Even tutorials on things like how to put 2 or 3 people onto one ventilator. And basically every single thing they could think of to keep people alive including the use of steroids. For example, here is a 2020 review of 41 different studies on the use of corticosteroids as a COVID therapy: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7735177/

As we gained knowledge and experience, ineffective treatments started to drop away and after the vaccines came out the focus shifted further towards vaccination campaigns. Because yes, vaccination was by far the best method of preventing COVID hospitalizations and deaths. The press had virtually nothing to do with it. The press isn't involved in "fast-tracking" approval of vaccines or any other medications. It was the Trump Administration that fast-tracked the development of vaccines through the so-called "Operation Warp Speed"

And the scientific studies conducted on the vaccines were orders of magnitude beyond anything done for other folk remedies like Ivermectin. Vaccine efficacy studies involved true double-blind trials with tens of thousands of participants. The Pfizer Phase 3 trial, for example, involved 46,331 participants. By contrast, Ivermectin proponents were citing things like anecdotal reports from doctors treating small handfuls of patients and not in any scientifically valid (double-blind and randomized) way. So basically garbage from a scientific point of view. And as time went on, we got more and more robust scientific information on alternative therapies like Ivermectin and found they were, in fact ineffective. Even the maker of Ivermectin said as much.

[JohnH]

Ken,

If the COVID vaccine was so effective, why did it have to be issued under an EUA? Oh, that's right, so it could skip the normal vaccine effectiveness and safety standards.