MechMedic Sends: Covid-19 had us all fooled, but now we might have finally found its secret

Interesting point of view sent in by my friend and Brushbeater Tactical Medicine Instructor MechMedic, originally appearing on Medium.com and sourced from FreeRepublic.

In the last 3–5 days, a mountain of anecdotal evidence has come out of NYC, Italy, Spain, etc. about COVID-19 and characteristics of patients who get seriously ill. It’s not only piling up but now leading to a general field-level consensus backed up by a few previously little-known studies that we’ve had it all wrong the whole time. Well, a few had some things eerily correct (cough Trump cough), especially with Hydroxychloroquine with Azithromicin, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

There is no ‘pneumonia’ nor ARDS. At least not the ARDS with established treatment protocols and procedures we’re familiar with. Ventilators are not only the wrong solution, but high pressure intubation can actually wind up causing more damage than without, not to mention complications from tracheal scarring and ulcers given the duration of intubation often required… They may still have a use in the immediate future for patients too far to bring back with this newfound knowledge, but moving forward a new treatment protocol needs to be established so we stop treating patients for the wrong disease.

The past 48 hours or so have seen a huge revelation: COVID-19 causes prolonged and progressive hypoxia (starving your body of oxygen) by binding to the heme groups in hemoglobin in your red blood cells. People are simply desaturating (losing o2 in their blood), and that’s what eventually leads to organ failures that kill them, not any form of ARDS or pneumonia. All the damage to the lungs you see in CT scans are from the release of oxidative iron from the hemes, this overwhelms the natural defenses against pulmonary oxidative stress and causes that nice, always-bilateral ground glass opacity in the lungs. Patients returning for re-hospitalization days or weeks after recovery suffering from apparent delayed post-hypoxic leukoencephalopathy strengthen the notion COVID-19 patients are suffering from hypoxia despite no signs of respiratory ‘tire out’ or fatigue.

Here’s the breakdown of the whole process, including some ELI5-level cliff notes. Much has been simplified just to keep it digestible and layman-friendly.

Your red blood cells carry oxygen from your lungs to all your organs and the rest of your body. Red blood cells can do this thanks to hemoglobin, which is a protein consisting of four “hemes”. Hemes have a special kind of iron ion, which is normally quite toxic in its free form, locked away in its center with a porphyrin acting as it’s ‘container’. In this way, the iron ion can be ‘caged’ and carried around safely by the hemoglobin, but used to bind to oxygen when it gets to your lungs.

When the red blood cell gets to the alveoli, or the little sacs in your lungs where all the gas exchange happens, that special little iron ion can flip between FE2+ and FE3+ states with electron exchange and bond to some oxygen, then it goes off on its little merry way to deliver o2 elsewhere.

Here’s where COVID-19 comes in. Its glycoproteins bond to the heme, and in doing so that special and toxic oxidative iron ion is “disassociated” (released). It’s basically let out of the cage and now freely roaming around on its own. This is bad for two reasons:

1) Without the iron ion, hemoglobin can no longer bind to oxygen. Once all the hemoglobin is impaired, the red blood cell is essentially turned into a Freightliner truck cab with no trailer and no ability to store its cargo.. it is useless and just running around with COVID-19 virus attached to its porphyrin. All these useless trucks running around not delivering oxygen is what starts to lead to desaturation, or watching the patient’s spo2 levels drop. It is INCORRECT to assume traditional ARDS and in doing so, you’re treating the WRONG DISEASE. Think of it a lot like carbon monoxide poisoning, in which CO is bound to the hemoglobin, making it unable to carry oxygen. In those cases, ventilators aren’t treating the root cause; the patient’s lungs aren’t ‘tiring out’, they’re pumping just fine. The red blood cells just can’t carry o2, end of story. Only in this case, unlike CO poisoning in which eventually the CO can break off, the affected hemoglobin is permanently stripped of its ability to carry o2 because it has lost its iron ion. The body compensates for this lack of o2 carrying capacity and deliveries by having your kidneys release hormones like erythropoietin, which tell your bone marrow factories to ramp up production on new red blood cells with freshly made and fully functioning hemoglobin. This is the reason you find elevated hemoglobin and decreased blood oxygen saturation as one of the 3 primary indicators of whether the shit is about to hit the fan for a particular patient or not.

2) That little iron ion, along with millions of its friends released from other hemes, are now floating through your blood freely. As I mentioned before, this type of iron ion is highly reactive and causes oxidative damage. It turns out that this happens to a limited extent naturally in our bodies and we have cleanup & defense mechanisms to keep the balance. The lungs, in particular, have 3 primary defenses to maintain “iron homeostasis”, 2 of which are in the alveoli, those little sacs in your lungs we talked about earlier. The first of the two are little macrophages that roam around and scavenge up any free radicals like this oxidative iron. The second is a lining on the walls (called the epithelial surface) which has a thin layer of fluid packed with high levels of antioxidant molecules.. things like abscorbic acid (AKA Vitamin C) among others. Well, this is usually good enough for naturally occurring rogue iron ions but with COVID-19 running rampant your body is now basically like a progressive state letting out all the prisoners out of the prisons… it’s just too much iron and it begins to overwhelm your lungs’ countermeasures, and thus begins the process of pulmonary oxidative stress. This leads to damage and inflammation, which leads to all that nasty stuff and damage you see in CT scans of COVID-19 patient lungs. Ever noticed how it’s always bilateral? (both lungs at the same time) Pneumonia rarely ever does that, but COVID-19 does… EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

— — — — — — — — — — — — –

Once your body is now running out of control, with all your oxygen trucks running around without any freight, and tons of this toxic form of iron floating around in your bloodstream, other defenses kick in. While your lungs are busy with all this oxidative stress they can’t handle, and your organs are being starved of o2 without their constant stream of deliveries from red blood cell’s hemoglobin, and your liver is attempting to do its best to remove the iron and store it in its ‘iron vault’. Only its getting overwhelmed too. It’s starved for oxygen and fighting a losing battle from all your hemoglobin letting its iron free, and starts crying out “help, I’m taking damage!” by releasing an enzyme called alanine aminotransferase (ALT). BOOM, there is your second of 3 primary indicators of whether the shit is about to hit the fan for a particular patient or not.

Eventually, if the patient’s immune system doesn’t fight off the virus in time before their blood oxygen saturation drops too low, ventilator or no ventilator, organs start shutting down. No fuel, no work. The only way to even try to keep them going is max oxygen, even a hyperbaric chamber if one is available on 100% oxygen at multiple atmospheres of pressure, just to give what’s left of their functioning hemoglobin a chance to carry enough o2 to the organs and keep them alive. Yeah we don’t have nearly enough of those chambers, so some fresh red blood cells with normal hemoglobin in the form of a transfusion will have to do.

The core point being, treating patients with the iron ions stripped from their hemoglobin (rendering it abnormally nonfunctional) with ventilator intubation is futile, unless you’re just hoping the patient’s immune system will work its magic in time. The root of the illness needs to be addressed.

Best case scenario? Treatment regimen early, before symptoms progress too far. Hydroxychloroquine (more on that in a minute, I promise) with Azithromicin has shown fantastic, albeit critics keep mentioning ‘anecdotal’ to describe the mountain, promise and I’ll explain why it does so well next. But forget straight-up plasma with antibodies, that might work early but if the patient is too far gone they’ll need more. They’ll need all the blood: antibodies and red blood cells. No help in sending over a detachment of ammunition to a soldier already unconscious and bleeding out on the battlefield, you need to send that ammo along with some hemoglobin-stimulant-magic so that he can wake up and fire those shots at the enemy.

The story with Hydroxychloroquine

All that hilariously misguided and counterproductive criticism the media piled on chloroquine (purely for political reasons) as a viable treatment will now go down as the biggest Fake News blunder to rule them all. The media actively engaged their activism to fight ‘bad orange man’ at the cost of thousands of lives. Shame on them.

How does chloroquine work? Same way as it does for malaria. You see, malaria is this little parasite that enters the red blood cells and starts eating hemoglobin as its food source. The reason chloroquine works for malaria is the same reason it works for COVID-19 — while not fully understood, it is suspected to bind to DNA and interfere with the ability to work magic on hemoglobin. The same mechanism that stops malaria from getting its hands on hemoglobin and gobbling it up seems to do the same to COVID-19 (essentially little snippets of DNA in an envelope) from binding to it. On top of that, Hydroxychloroquine (an advanced descendant of regular old chloroquine) lowers the pH which can interfere with the replication of the virus. Again, while the full details are not known, the entire premise of this potentially ‘game changing’ treatment is to prevent hemoglobin from being interfered with, whether due to malaria or COVID-19.

No longer can the media and armchair pseudo-physicians sit in their little ivory towers, proclaiming “DUR so stoopid, malaria is bacteria, COVID-19 is virus, anti-bacteria drug no work on virus!”. They never got the memo that a drug doesn’t need to directly act on the pathogen to be effective. Sometimes it’s enough just to stop it from doing what it does to hemoglobin, regardless of the means it uses to do so.

Anyway, enough of the rant. What’s the end result here? First, the ventilator emergency needs to be re-examined. If you’re putting a patient on a ventilator because they’re going into a coma and need mechanical breathing to stay alive, okay we get it. Give ’em time for their immune systems to pull through. But if they’re conscious, alert, compliant — keep them on O2. Max it if you have to. If you HAVE to inevitably ventilate, do it at low pressure but max O2. Don’t tear up their lungs with max PEEP, you’re doing more harm to the patient because you’re treating the wrong disease.

Ideally, some form of treatment needs to happen to:

  1. Inhibit viral growth and replication. Here plays CHQ+ZPAK+ZINC or other retroviral therapies being studies. Less virus, less hemoglobin losing its iron, less severity and damage.
  2. Therapies used for anyone with abnormal hemoglobin or malfunctioning red blood cells. Blood transfusions. Whatever, I don’t know the full breadth and scope because I’m not a physician. But think along those lines, and treat the real disease. If you’re thinking about giving them plasma with antibodies, maybe if they’re already in bad shape think again and give them BLOOD with antibodies, or at least blood followed by plasma with antibodies.
  3. Now that we know more about how this virus works and affects our bodies, a whole range of options should open up.
  4. Don’t trust China. China is ASSHOE. (disclaimer: not talking about the people, just talking about the regime). They covered this up and have caused all kinds of death and carnage, both literal and economic. The ripples of this pandemic will be felt for decades.

Fini.

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About the Author: NC Scout

NC Scout is the nom de guerre of a former Infantry Scout and Sergeant in one of the Army’s best Reconnaissance Units. He has combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He teaches a series of courses focusing on small unit skills rarely if ever taught anywhere else in the prepping and survival field, including his RTO Course which focuses on small unit communications. In his free time he is an avid hunter, bushcrafter, writer, long range shooter, prepper, amateur radio operator and Libertarian activist. He can be contacted at [email protected] or via his blog at brushbeater.wordpress.com .

20 Comments

  1. Badger April 8, 2020 at 12:27

    A rarity on the internet, one of the best treatments I’ve seen of this particular subject, in mortal-speak.

  2. MBear April 8, 2020 at 13:59

    Can anyone please give me the scientific and medical journals used to determine this? It was a great read and I would like to use this in my paper, but my sources have to be from scientific or medical journals. Thanks!!

  3. Coyyote April 8, 2020 at 18:44

    I also interested in citations from reputable journals. However I did find this
    https://www.medicowesome.com/2020/04/covid-19-coronavirus-and-hemoglobin.html

  4. Anonymous April 8, 2020 at 22:22

    5

  5. Romeo April 9, 2020 at 11:15

    Great read, thank you…I’m just a regular Joe and grasp this concept.

    You mention V-C and Zinc, and i was sent these links by a good buddy of mine who is the medical field for review..

    Seems to jive with your hypothesis:

    Vitamin C and COVID-19 Coronavirus
    http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v16n14.shtml

    Nutritional Treatment of Coronavirus
    http://orthomolecular.org/resources/omns/v16n06.shtml

    Lots of associated links to back up theories too..

    Personally, i am taking 3 high doses of Vitamin C daily, liquid zinc and selenium once a day, plus a centrium silver multivitamin 3x a day too.

    I also drink a glass or two water w EmergenC powder…

    I’m doing all i can to take proactive, viable, preventative steps, and appreciate having authors like yourself to keep us informed and level…

    Thank you for all that you do..

  6. Doug Sterling April 9, 2020 at 11:24

    Thanks for the great article. I thought it was already established that hydroxychloroquine works its magic as a zinc ionophore, and it is the zinc that somehow stops the virus. Not so?

  7. Marcus Agrippa April 9, 2020 at 12:37

    One of the lab values that we have been told is a marker of the COVID syndrome is a Ferritin level >300 ng/ml. I would be curious if the TIBC is elevated as well.

  8. JTB April 9, 2020 at 13:18

    Doug Sterling, there’s a very good possibility it works both directly the way the article describes and also as a zinc ionophore.

  9. Boom! April 10, 2020 at 12:09

    This issue was raised on a youtube video back in late March.
    A medical professional was saying that the virus attacks the red blood cells, which is why it “looks” like a lung problem.

    This new information is vital and important.

    Now, as for you, the writer of this piece, you need to stop with turning this into politics, much like the President that your support.
    First, Trump is NOT the person who discovered that Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin may be good treatment for COVID-19 infection. That information came from doctors in the field who were trying treatments based on what they were seeing and what they thought might work.
    The only thing the Trump has potentially done is from sheer dumb luck.
    Again, Trump is NOT the person who discovered what the virus actually does, nor what treatments may work.

    You want to blame “the media” as if our national media is some nefarious “get Trump” brigade.
    You claim that actual science is the enemy to Trump’s dumb luck potential.
    And yet, your own writing shows that it is you who is playing politics by bringing in and up the continual same claims that Trump keeps bringing up.

    You wrote this, “All that hilariously misguided and counterproductive criticism the media piled on chloroquine (purely for political reasons) as a viable treatment will now go down as the biggest Fake News blunder to rule them all. The media actively engaged their activism to fight ‘bad orange man’ at the cost of thousands of lives. Shame on them.”

    The media has not been at all criticizing that potential treatment. What the media has been reporting is what doctors and the broader science based medical community has been saying, and that is that that treatment needs to be studied. That’s all they have said. Now, one could argue that in a time of crisis the traditional study times are not warranted when tens of thousands are drying. I would be one that agrees with that.
    If I were infected and were so sick that I may likely die, I would ask my doctor to at least give me that treatment and see what happens.

    This information about the virus attacking the red blood cells has been out since March, and more and more people have been looking into it and the potential that this may be correct. That in no way should be used to attack the medical and scientific communities, and even much less so “the media” or any political party. The facts are the facts. And the only way to get to facts is by someone looking into something and others then bringing more light to an area to broaden and potentially strengthen validity of that something. If anything Trump has been a massive hindrance to science in general. So, keep the politics out where real science and scientists are concerned.

    • NC Scout April 10, 2020 at 12:18

      This was written by a third party and originally posted at Medium.com, referenced in the top of the post. To attack the person who sent it in or this site exhibits a high degree of stupidity on your part. To suggest the media has not attacked the suggestion of anti-malarial drugs to combat this outbreak is also just as ignorant. They have, they did, and they continue to do so.

  10. George True April 10, 2020 at 13:09

    @Boom:

    First of all, Trump never said or implied in any way that he discovered that HCL+Zinc+Zpac was a promising treatment for Covid-19. I do not know how anyone could have gotten that impression. He cited the fact that other countries were using it with very good results and suggested that we should also start making its use here a priority.

    The known facts are that other countries such as China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia have been using HCQ with excellent results. They already knew from the SARS epidemic in 2005 that HCQ was effective in treating that disease. So it was a no-brainer to try it with Covid-19 or SARS-2. Since then, in the limited cases where it has been tried in the US, the results have been nothing short of remarkable. As long as they are not already intubated or about to be, almost all patients treated with HCQ recover, often with dramatic improvement seen within just a few hours.

    The mainstream media was actually beginning to take notice of this treatment and talk about it with hope and optimism in the days immediately prior to Trump’s announcement about it. But as soon as he did so, literally OVERNIGHT the media began lambasting HCQ treatment as quack medicine, and virulently condemning Trump as a dangerous buffoon for recommending it. I saw this overnight shift in the media narrative about HCQ With My Own Eyes, and it was nothing short of astonishing to behold.

    The media jumped on the case of the galactically stupid couple in Arizona who ingested an industrial fish tank cleaning chemical supposedly because Trump told them to do it. (Last I checked, the police are now investigating the wife on suspicion of murder, because she only ingested a very small dose, while giving her husband a huge dose.) Then the media searched the world over, and found another couple in Nigeria who self-administered with HCQ out of fear that they might get Covid-19, and died because they gave themselves a massive overdose. Again, according to the media, it was Trump’s fault.

    Since then, the media has done an almost total blackout regarding coverage of any recent studies with HCQ, even though the results are overwhelmingly successful. It apparently does not work very well in a lot of cases where the patient has been allowed to get so bad off that they have an imminent date with a ventilator, because by then the damage done is too great. But the media has been all over those cases, touting them as proof that treatment with HCQ is unproven and is hit-and-miss at best. The media is quite adept at casting doubt on HCQ as a treatment while not appearing to, by citing the canned narrative that “there are no double blind studies yet”. This is in spite of the incontrovertible FACT that by now literally thousands and thousands of people in other countries have been saved and have recovered from Covid-19 due to early treatment with HCQ. Just not so much here in the US, because you know, Orange Man Bad. The media, in its quest to make Trump look bad, has caused the deaths of the majority of the US victims so far.

  11. Gray Man April 10, 2020 at 18:12

    This is why you should be reading AP. And if you’re not, why not?

  12. YogicCowboy April 11, 2020 at 03:29

    I found a link to this page on a Canada Free Press comment. This is excellent information in intelligible language.

    Michael Savage has a background in epidemiology, but, unfortunately, he is too influenced by ego and vanity. The fact that other pundits whom he disdains are touting Hydroxychloroquine has induced him to oppose it.

    There were too many real doctors in the field citing its efficacy it for it to be wholly ineffective. Thank you.

    • NC Scout April 11, 2020 at 07:47

      Thanks for stopping by!

      Savage is great at talking about himself. He was kicked off MSNBC for calling a guy a sodomite, then recently talks about how he worked in an AIDS clinic in the 80s. Kinda a contradiction. Many of his callers are staged as well. He’s an entertainer, like all of them.

  13. Thomas Hanna April 11, 2020 at 21:36

    If they want more data on HCQ why don’t they access the records of all those guys that got it prophilactic for malaria in Viet Nam.

  14. SOL April 11, 2020 at 21:48

    Thanks for the summary.

  15. Coyyote April 12, 2020 at 15:38

    Found this on Tactical Hermit and is a good introduction to the genesis of the Corvid19 virus. Worth the hour – and it did not come from bat soup!
    Tracking Down the Origins of the Wuhan VIrus
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=288&v=3bXWGxhd7ic&feature=emb_title

  16. Rikutiku April 17, 2020 at 21:38

    Nice article. I think millimeter wave radiation can exacerbate the scenario that you describe, especially 60GHz (WiGig), which resonates with oxygen, and, BTW, is used for vital sign monitoring in ICU!

    Vital sign detection using 60-GHz Doppler radar system
    https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6616776

    WiGig directly affects Oxygen (60 GHz) and can impact binding with hemoglobin!

    UWB vital sign monitoring:
    https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Intensive-Care-Unit-monitoring-using-UWB_fig2_252880552

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