I keep getting drawn to watch this again and again because it appears to finally begin to answer a question i've been chasing for five and a half years...
i.e. What the hell happened to me and what was the mechanism that in August 2020 turned my Feb 2020 Covid-19 infection into Long Covid, something that turned my life upside down which to this day i'm still struggling to fully recover from?
Fwiw, i dipped in and out of the YouTube live stream when it was first aired on YouTube but i could tell i'd need to turn to a search engine to understand some of what was being spoken about so i was hoping Dr McMillan would release it on his YouTube Live playlist like he often does with his live streams, sadly that didn't happen so when he said he'd be releasing it elsewhere i've been on tenterhooks to find out what he spoke about.
I'm hoping i won't have to wait too long for parts 2 & 3 to be released because for me it's not about who was responsible for what happened, it's about understanding what actually happened to me, something that to this day when i speak to public facing practicing Doctors/Clinicians, either at my local medical practice or in a hospital environment, they have no answers for, or worse, won't even acknowledge it happened to me.
Until i get that answer, as much as i wish i could, i can't put what happened to me into a pigeonhole and move on from it.
That likely sounds crazy to some who will simply say "put it behind you and get on with your life" but it's not that simple when you've been to hell and back and to dark places you never knew existed.
I too used to have that mindset but now i've been there my eyes are wide open to all sorts of things i never thought would happen to me, that's why i need to understand what happened to me before i can let it go.
Apologies for the rant, this is important to me and my fingers wouldn't stop typing.
I would like to know about the oral medicines you took ( like anti allergens etc) during your first hives attack in mid 2020, also the ones you took during the subsequent years when you faced other complications especially mobility etc. This will help me firm up my chemical structure based hypothesis about the medicine molecules. At my state now, I am 80, fully retired, it is only about some intellectual interest. I am not going to write any papers nor will any journal accept my writing. If you did not take any, even that would help clear my thoughts. Thanks. Pl take care.
I don't recall what i was prescribed for hives as i had no reason to think I'd need to revisit it so didn't keep a record of it. From memory it was just a cream but it may or may not have included tablets as well, i simply don't remember.
As for after my health went off the cliff on Aug 23rd 2020 that's a different matter, i did make a conscious effort not to throw anything away because at that time the only way to communicate with a doctor was via a 'link worker' at the medical practice who had the ability to fast track me to see, or more accurately given lockdowns etc get a callback from a GP, or be referred to others such as mental health clinicians etc (yes, i had plenty of that too).
Having the name of the drugs i felt was as important as learning the clinical names for conditions given the nature of the virus being so novel. By that i mean, saying i had a sore knee or had a bad headache just wasn't going to cut it, i needed to learn medical speak so they could understand exactly what i was experiencing and believe me i spent countless hours leaning medical speak just so they'd take me seriously!
Something that i might add was incredibly hard for me to do, not because i'm an idiot but when you're riddled with brain damage (fog) and a myriad of other cyclical symptoms it takes an awful lot of energy and stamina to do, neither of which i had at the time.
It'll take me time to pull together the packaging for all the prescription drugs i was administered because they're not all within hands reach.
Two that are though I'll share with you :-
28/08/2020 Metoclopramide 21x 10mg tablets, presumably prescribed for the nausea and vomiting, given the packet is empty and nausea was one of my more severe symptoms that didn't lift until my first vaccine shot I'm not sure how successful they were... plus if memory serves me correct i may have given up on them because even when they were changed to another brand they still didn't work?
14/10/2021 Promethazine Hydrochloride 28 x 25mg tablets, the pharmacy label says "to break insomnia cycle". I have no recollection of ever taking them but clearly i did as there are still 7 tablets in the box. Why i stopped i have no idea but there must have been a good reason. If i had to guess it was likely because they made things worse?
Fwiw, i don't care if if you're 80 and retired, or 18 trying to write a thesis for a degree at university, i have nothing to hide and the more people who can learn from my experience the better, if there's one thing i do know about this evil virus then it's that people need to wake up and see what it's done to a huge number of people and if this helps open just one persons eyes then sharing my experience has been worthwhile.
Thanks George for your kind response. Whatever you have said out of your remembrance is useful information. According to my chemical structure based considerations, both Metaclopramide and Promethazine would work as repurposed anti virals. If I remember correctly, Promethazine was in the list of repurposed drugs successfully used by Dr. Chetty with his patients. By 10/2021, many doctors around the world ( not in the West) had certainly realised clinically how the likes of Promethazine could tackle Covid easily and even close the scope for Long Covid presentations. Of course, not as single drugs, but in some combinations.
I am a bit surprised that Dr. McMillan has not commented more extensively on your long unique case history, including the possibility that your hives episode in 2020 would be a case of the second phase of your infection appearing not in continuation, but a bit later as a stand alone conditions. All your subsequent travails fit well into his model of long Covid origins.
I am very happy about your present turn around and hope and pray that you will maintain it in a long time. But with this kind of chequered past medical history, you would do well to keep a diary of your health upkeep, including the medicines you would take as short or medium courses. Please take care.
From India, not a doctor, a PhD in organic chemistry, long retired from industry R & D, not worked in pharma, but taken to reading some medicinal chemistry in retirement. Have followed Covid stories extensively and interacted quite a bit with Dr McMillan on his podcasts. With my limited understanding still, I may be able to open up more about your long experience with covid, you are certainly a very very early case, with more details from your side.
1. In your first infection in early 2020, what is the treatment ( if at all) you underwent, early medicines, what were they, your recovery profile from that infection, including any hospitalisation.
2. Did you take m-RNA vaccines in early 2021, how many revaccinations you took in subsequent years, did you get reinfections also, if so the treatments including if any early treatments ?
3.What were your post Covid symptoms first time and from time to time ? Treatments undertaken. If you took revaccinations or if you had reinfections, could you relate your post conditions to those ?
4 How is it now and what are the medications you are taking.
From whatever I have gleaned from lot of readings, it seems you did not undergo any early treatments in your infections, especially using classical old school URT drugs. Very few doctors had an understanding then what these meant clinically. Atleast from mid 2021, if not early on, in the midst of rampaging delta wave everywhere, many doctors ( not in the West) around the world clinically understood what the situation entailed and how they should approach treatments. As a result, not only many flattened the delta curve quickly towards end 2021, met an Omicron burst in early 2022 comfortably without much damage and had the virus well under wraps by mid 2022. Those countries have not looked back ever since. The picture was simple. Early classical drug treatments meant much curtailed viral build up in the infected individual. Not enough to infect others around him in the household, but also to trigger long Covid manifestations in him. In India, where early treatment became the norm by mid 2021, issues like long Covid never took centre stage in any appreciable measure. It is also very likely you took several repeat vaccinations from time to time. If so, yours is a story cast by them.
You can respond, if you so desire, here in the comments, so that the conversation benefits other readers also.
I'll try to answer your questions as best i can but before i get into those i think it important you know the history behind my Covid-19 infection as it contradicts the official Scottish Government timeline of the outbreak of Covid-19 in Scotland, plus it'll also explain how and why i was almost certainly infected so early on in the pandemic. To date every clinician I've spoken to who is willing to listen to my timeline of events and who I've had contact with agree with me that there can be no argument.
At the time, i was working as a night shift security guard at a major Scottish tourist attraction and as such had close contact with both staff and contractors coming and going from the site during the mornings and evenings.
There was a winter light/lantern show being erected around the site that began to be erected in late November as part of their annual Christmas evening events, the structures were fabricated in China and shipped to Scotland and then assembled on site by a large team of Chinese workers, fabricators, electricians, seamstresses etc... those contractors were scheduled to remain on site for not only the construction but also the disassembly (Nov through to March).
This is where it gets interesting and irrefutable, every one of those contractors came from Wuhan in China. Need i say any more?
Your questions 1-3 are easier for me to answer as 1 question because they pretty much all overlap.
In mid Feb 2020 i had what i thought was a mild common cold, albeit one that didn't "feel" like the common cold. Sore throat, general tiredness, mild headache... everything pointed to a mild common cold but it never progressed onto a runny nose or a cough (with or without phlegm production) which for me was very unusual.
I even had a conversation with the catering manager one day about it and she said a lot of her staff were saying the same thing, the symptoms faded away after 3-4 days and i never thought about it again.
In late March i developed hives/rashes all over my body except my hands and face which was good(sic) because it meant i could hide it and carry on working.
I was prescribed (i think it was a steroid cream?) a large bottle of cream to apply all over my body. The hives was blamed on my change of diet as i'd not long started trying to lose some weight. Seems a ridiculous diagnosis now and for a long time i wasn't happy with it but it was what it was and nobody knew what was going to happen to me a few months later.
By May the hives had cleared up and i was starting to get very sore knees and back pain. Bloods were taken and they showed what i already knew from a long time ago, a marker for potential arthritis... again that didn't sit well with me because if it was arthritis it would've had to be the fastest onset of arthritis in human history, to go from pain free to excruciating pain in just a few weeks made no sense... not that i'm a doctor so i had to trust his diagnosis even though i didn't believe it.
I wasn't prescribed anything for the pain other than being advised to take over the counter pain killers and to monitor it and come back if it got any worse.
Then in June the breathlessness and extreme fatigue started to begin, not a slight wheeze type of breathlessness but one that would stop me in my tracks after walking 2-300 yards so i could catch my breath, pause for a minute and i'd be able to carry on for another 2-300 yards and repeat.
I was sent for a chest x-ray and had more bloods taken but they all came back clear.
The fatigue at this point wasn't too bad, sleeping 10-12 hours a day but as you can imagine i was acutely aware this was not normal for me.
July, the breathlessness was continuing to deteriorate to the point i now had to stop walking after 1-200 yards. The fatigue was also getting worse, it was beginning to hit me like a bus in that 1 minute i'd feel fine but the next minute i'd feel wiped out and have no choice but to sleep, anything from 12-14 hours now.
I didn't have a clue what was happening to me and neither did any of the GP's i saw at that time.
By August i was now finishing work and as soon as i walked in the door i didn't even have the strength to get my boots off, i'd just collapse on the couch and pass out for anything up to 16 hours (later rising to 18 hours).
Then on 23rd August at 05:00 everything changed (a date and time i'll never forget!), i was doing my final patrol of the night at work and at first i felt fine until i suddenly couldn't walk any more than 50 yards without having to stop and catch my breath, i suddenly felt worse than at any time in my life... i managed to slowly make my way back to my workstation and collapse on the chair which at that point i genuinely thought i was going to die. I was vomiting, sweating, tremors all over my body, felt deathly cold, could barely focus my eyes, every joint in my body felt like it was on fire... i've never felt anything like it before or since.
What followed was a cycle of new and recurring symptoms that got worse and worse, at least 50 i can remember but i know there were more i didn't document due to the brain fog and fatigue, or perhaps more haven't attributed them to Covid/Long Covid, yet. e.g. I've only recently learned that hypertension may be a symptom of Covid/Long Covid after my GP recommended i now take medication for it. Could be coincidence but given what's happened to me over the last 6 years i doubt it?
A wee aside about the fatigue i suffered from because it's only recently dawned on me that when i was telling people i was sleeping up to 18 hours a day i wasn't being clear.
For clarity, when i said i was sleeping up to 18 hours a day it wasn't 18 hours in a 24 hour period. It was 18 hours at a time and if i was having a good day i'd be able to stay awake for 1 hour, 2 on a very good day, after which i'd be asleep for another up to 18 hours. A better way of putting it would be to measure it in the time awake in any 24 hour period, 1-2 hours.
Moving onto the elephant in the room, i can categorically say none of the above was initially vaccine induced, it couldn't have been because i didn't get my first vaccine shot until 25th March 2021 (AstraZeneca so NOT mRNA).
In fact, it had the opposite effect in that 24 hours after that shot i unusually had excruciating pain in every part of my body where i'd previously had a Long Covid symptom. Then 48 hours after the vaccine shot i felt a lot better, to the point i was able for the first time in 7 months to actually feel relatively pain free and sit up and do something as simple as watch the TV for a few hours.
There was still a long road ahead of trial and error trying to work out how to retrain my body to be 'normal'... it took a long time, circa another 2 years before the brain fog lifted and my memory recall started to come back, watching TV quiz shows, i feel helped me hugely. As did Lego which was strange to me as i'd never bought a Lego set in my life, but the hand tremors refused to get better and (don't ask me why) i got this idea in my head that i needed to retrain my hands so they'd stop shaking and amazingly it worked in that the shaking would stop for an hour or two but it would eventually return... i spent a fortune buying the 10,000 piece Lego Titanic model and by the end of building it my hand tremors had cleared up, anecdotal i know, but i believe it helped and that's all that matters plus it looks great on the shelf! :)
Had to spilt this to fit the board requirements, Part 2:
Second shot was 03/06/2021, AstraZeneca
Third and final shot was 18/12/2021, Moderna (mRNA)
I didn't have any more vaccine shots after the Moderna because i smelled a rat in that if they are so effective why do i need to keep going back for more?
The only 'event' i had with any of the three vaccine shots was a positive one, strange i know but that's the truth.
As for any medication i was prescribed, the short answer for Covid-19 and Long Covid is none.
At the time of my infection in Feb 2020 there was no known treatment for Covid-19, at least not in the wider medical community, yes there were some great clinicians out there who tried some things that worked that sadly most of the western world ignored and medicine will have to live with ignoring those clinicians.
As for Long Covid, there is still no known treatment for it that i'm aware of and if there is i was certainly not offered it, nor am i being offered it.
You mention re-infection, that's a difficult one to give an answer too, i'm sure i must have been re-infected at some point given how prevalent the virus is now but on the plus side if i have been there's been no noticeable flare up of Long Covid again. Fyi every time i feel like i may be coming down with a cold/Covid etc i take a lateral flow test and they come back negative, given how unreliable they likely are now i'l probably not bother taking another lateral flow test... add that i understand PCR tests in the UK now have to be paid for i'll likely just give up on testing.
Moving onto your 4th and final question, how is it now and what medication am i taking:
Pretty much all of my symptoms have cleared now thankfully BUT there is one stubborn one that i can't seem to overcome, after my first vaccine shot i was left with sleep reversal and insomnia.
While the insomnia has improved very slowly with time the sleep reversal still persists albeit that too seems to be improving, but that remains cyclical meaning just when i think i've overcome it, it returns when i least expect it.
Aside from the usual routine tests, bloods, chest x-ray, CT Scan etc there has been no prescribed medication outside of drugs to manage things like pain, nausea etc. Currently the only prescribed drug i'm taking is melatonin to try and help reset my body clock when it drifts. [The hypertension drugs i haven't taken yet as i want to talk to a doctor about why they issued the prescription without first asking me if i wanted to take them - afaict informed consent is supposed to still be a thing in medicine in the UK!?]
Vitamins i currently take, cleared first with my GP of course: D3, K2, Mg, C, Zinc.
I tried to keep that as short as i could, compressing six years into one post isn't easy and i omitted a lot but hopefully that's enough to answer your questions.
Firstly, I feel very relieved you are doing much better now, nearly normal, except the sleep symptoms. Even as I thank you for such an exhaustive case details, even though I am not a doctor. I do hope that Dr. McMillan had also seen this thread between us and would respond some time. Second, how you got your first infection in Feb 2020, you are absolutely right with your reasoning.
In 2020, the doctors simply froze from thinking clinically, world over. New disease, new virus, new manifestations. Unlike many respiratory viral conditions, this had an unusual second phase - auto immune phase as Dr. McMillan would put it or a severe allergy ( hypersensitive pneumoniatis) as his close associate Dr. Shankara Chetty of South Africa would put it. Most people got into this second deadlier phase requiring hospitalisation because the first viral build up phase ( upto 10 days) was never treated. Things began to change in many places in 2021, partly because Dr. Chetty’s early classical treatment was also getting known. Once early treatments doused viral build up, there was no scope for subsequent events.
It is possible at that time ( no early classical treatments) quite a few population cohorts existed. First, those for whom body itself worked to contain viral build up. No scope for LC then. Second, those who had full viral build up, but body protected them from the second phase. These could have had heavy or mild symptoms during that phase. These were the people prone ( not all ) to long Covid symptoms and if their residual viral load was heavy, they were likely to get into severe LC conditions later, almost similar to the second phase in a running infection. You most probably belonged to this group. Third who couldn’t avoid getting into hospitals who banked more on your stars for recovery. Many were lucky and many more weren’t.
It was bit unusual though not a surprise ( in hind sight) that you had severe hives weeks later your infection in Feb 2020. It fits into that severe allergy postulate of Dr. Chetty, though he was essentially referring to the severe pulmonary conditions. Were you given any oral medicines ( anti histamines) for allergy or only the steroid cream treatment ? That was a normal course of treatment. This is important. A well judged course of anti histamines would have reduced that residual viral load and even prevented all the other complications that followed. As an organic chemist I will explain how below. I had shared this line of thinking with Dr McMillan atleast in late 2021.
Most anti histamines belong to a class of drugs called Cationic Amphiphilic Drugs ( CADs). They include drugs from many different indications also. There could be hundreds of them, most of them available in a good high street pharmacy. By virtue of their certain shared chemical structure features, they could act as anti virals against these Covid like viruses. This was known much earlier to Covid itself. That is how quite a few researchers began evaluating some of them in later 2020 in small group patient settings. Azithromycin, Montelukast, Levocetrizine to name just a few. Ivermectin was a powerful repurposed anti viral even though it did not have the chemical structure feature. These were the ones that began dousing the virus in many parts of the world, once the doctors got hold of the clue. Out of interest, I wrote out from the Internet the chemical structures of about 700 drugs from various indications - anti viral, anti bacterial, URT medicines, anti inflammatory drugs, immuno modulators a whole spread of them. Almost all of them possessed this possible anti viral feature. The West didn’t recognise or understand this clinical recourse just in front of them, in every high street pharmacy. They paid a high price and continue to carry the burden of LC even now in their population.
I had mentioned this long ago that the vaccine ( m-RNA) was a red herring in the story of Long Covid. You could have had asymptomatic repeat infections later that would have prevented/delayed the natural flushing out of the system the residual viral/ vaccine spike proteins. This natural flushing with time could happen with some freeing them of any continuing burdens. Or linger on in some, by the mechanisms explained here by Dr. McMillan. I have often suggested that in addition to condition specific drugs, a platter of anti histamines, anti inflammatories and immune modulators could be used to flush out the residues, much in the same way they worked in active infections. Long covid is nothing but residual infection often compounded by the presence of vaccine after effects. Dr. McMillan or Dr. Chetty if he happens to see this conversation can comment on such medicinal possibilities but I feel the West is yet to get the full hang of the picture. To ensure that you continue on the normalisation path, you could contact them. They are pioneers in Covid research. Best wishes in the mean time. If there are any more good developments from your side, please do post them here.
I forgot to mention i was never hospitalised, though i maintain to this day i absolutely should have been post August 2020 i couldn't function at all. Even something simple like going to the toilet meant walking along the walls with my hands just to get there and it wiped me out for at least two days every time.
Personal hygiene, eating, fluid intake were pretty much impossible for me to do by myself, it still amazes me at times when i look back that i survived.
If I can have your e-mail address, I can send you quite a few notes I was preparing at that time from many readings, especially repurposed medicine treatments. You could even share them with doctors whom you know well. My mail address is as follows:
Dr Didier Raoult is replicating Dr Carlo Brogna's work. Dr Carlo Brogna and his team have done lots of studies and he wrote a book years ago you can buy on Amazon lots of pictures in it. Last time I looked (which was many months ago) it was still in the gut of some people over 2 years later still.
There are a few pictures from the book in here.
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Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée-Infection, Faculté de médecine, Aix-Marseille Université, URMITE, Marseille, France
This work is very interesting, but it overturns a well-established theory about the host specificity of viruses. The idea that a mammalian eukaryotic cell virus could multiply in bacteria in a way comparable to bacteriophages is a staggering one. The techniques employed by the authors are comprehensive, ranging from electron microscopy to nucleotide sequence, proteomic evaluation and in situ hybridization. Technically, this work is indisputable. The only thing that could call into question the quality and significance of this work would be the existence of a fraud that I am unable to detect. In practical terms, I think it's very important to accept this work and subject it to controversy and verification by other scientific teams. With this in mind, our team will be moving quickly to verify whether we can reproduce results of this nature.
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🟥💩MEGA ITS IN THE GUT THAT HAS BEEN KNOWN SINCE 2020
this is got to be your best talk. there are so many different points that you make that need to be enumerated and expanded upon. particularly as pertains to diagnostic criteria
I keep getting drawn to watch this again and again because it appears to finally begin to answer a question i've been chasing for five and a half years...
i.e. What the hell happened to me and what was the mechanism that in August 2020 turned my Feb 2020 Covid-19 infection into Long Covid, something that turned my life upside down which to this day i'm still struggling to fully recover from?
Fwiw, i dipped in and out of the YouTube live stream when it was first aired on YouTube but i could tell i'd need to turn to a search engine to understand some of what was being spoken about so i was hoping Dr McMillan would release it on his YouTube Live playlist like he often does with his live streams, sadly that didn't happen so when he said he'd be releasing it elsewhere i've been on tenterhooks to find out what he spoke about.
I'm hoping i won't have to wait too long for parts 2 & 3 to be released because for me it's not about who was responsible for what happened, it's about understanding what actually happened to me, something that to this day when i speak to public facing practicing Doctors/Clinicians, either at my local medical practice or in a hospital environment, they have no answers for, or worse, won't even acknowledge it happened to me.
Until i get that answer, as much as i wish i could, i can't put what happened to me into a pigeonhole and move on from it.
That likely sounds crazy to some who will simply say "put it behind you and get on with your life" but it's not that simple when you've been to hell and back and to dark places you never knew existed.
I too used to have that mindset but now i've been there my eyes are wide open to all sorts of things i never thought would happen to me, that's why i need to understand what happened to me before i can let it go.
Apologies for the rant, this is important to me and my fingers wouldn't stop typing.
Thank you George.
I do believe this is a close to the complete picture as I have seen.
Time will tell.
I would like to know about the oral medicines you took ( like anti allergens etc) during your first hives attack in mid 2020, also the ones you took during the subsequent years when you faced other complications especially mobility etc. This will help me firm up my chemical structure based hypothesis about the medicine molecules. At my state now, I am 80, fully retired, it is only about some intellectual interest. I am not going to write any papers nor will any journal accept my writing. If you did not take any, even that would help clear my thoughts. Thanks. Pl take care.
I don't recall what i was prescribed for hives as i had no reason to think I'd need to revisit it so didn't keep a record of it. From memory it was just a cream but it may or may not have included tablets as well, i simply don't remember.
As for after my health went off the cliff on Aug 23rd 2020 that's a different matter, i did make a conscious effort not to throw anything away because at that time the only way to communicate with a doctor was via a 'link worker' at the medical practice who had the ability to fast track me to see, or more accurately given lockdowns etc get a callback from a GP, or be referred to others such as mental health clinicians etc (yes, i had plenty of that too).
Having the name of the drugs i felt was as important as learning the clinical names for conditions given the nature of the virus being so novel. By that i mean, saying i had a sore knee or had a bad headache just wasn't going to cut it, i needed to learn medical speak so they could understand exactly what i was experiencing and believe me i spent countless hours leaning medical speak just so they'd take me seriously!
Something that i might add was incredibly hard for me to do, not because i'm an idiot but when you're riddled with brain damage (fog) and a myriad of other cyclical symptoms it takes an awful lot of energy and stamina to do, neither of which i had at the time.
It'll take me time to pull together the packaging for all the prescription drugs i was administered because they're not all within hands reach.
Two that are though I'll share with you :-
28/08/2020 Metoclopramide 21x 10mg tablets, presumably prescribed for the nausea and vomiting, given the packet is empty and nausea was one of my more severe symptoms that didn't lift until my first vaccine shot I'm not sure how successful they were... plus if memory serves me correct i may have given up on them because even when they were changed to another brand they still didn't work?
14/10/2021 Promethazine Hydrochloride 28 x 25mg tablets, the pharmacy label says "to break insomnia cycle". I have no recollection of ever taking them but clearly i did as there are still 7 tablets in the box. Why i stopped i have no idea but there must have been a good reason. If i had to guess it was likely because they made things worse?
Fwiw, i don't care if if you're 80 and retired, or 18 trying to write a thesis for a degree at university, i have nothing to hide and the more people who can learn from my experience the better, if there's one thing i do know about this evil virus then it's that people need to wake up and see what it's done to a huge number of people and if this helps open just one persons eyes then sharing my experience has been worthwhile.
Thanks George for your kind response. Whatever you have said out of your remembrance is useful information. According to my chemical structure based considerations, both Metaclopramide and Promethazine would work as repurposed anti virals. If I remember correctly, Promethazine was in the list of repurposed drugs successfully used by Dr. Chetty with his patients. By 10/2021, many doctors around the world ( not in the West) had certainly realised clinically how the likes of Promethazine could tackle Covid easily and even close the scope for Long Covid presentations. Of course, not as single drugs, but in some combinations.
I am a bit surprised that Dr. McMillan has not commented more extensively on your long unique case history, including the possibility that your hives episode in 2020 would be a case of the second phase of your infection appearing not in continuation, but a bit later as a stand alone conditions. All your subsequent travails fit well into his model of long Covid origins.
I am very happy about your present turn around and hope and pray that you will maintain it in a long time. But with this kind of chequered past medical history, you would do well to keep a diary of your health upkeep, including the medicines you would take as short or medium courses. Please take care.
From India, not a doctor, a PhD in organic chemistry, long retired from industry R & D, not worked in pharma, but taken to reading some medicinal chemistry in retirement. Have followed Covid stories extensively and interacted quite a bit with Dr McMillan on his podcasts. With my limited understanding still, I may be able to open up more about your long experience with covid, you are certainly a very very early case, with more details from your side.
1. In your first infection in early 2020, what is the treatment ( if at all) you underwent, early medicines, what were they, your recovery profile from that infection, including any hospitalisation.
2. Did you take m-RNA vaccines in early 2021, how many revaccinations you took in subsequent years, did you get reinfections also, if so the treatments including if any early treatments ?
3.What were your post Covid symptoms first time and from time to time ? Treatments undertaken. If you took revaccinations or if you had reinfections, could you relate your post conditions to those ?
4 How is it now and what are the medications you are taking.
From whatever I have gleaned from lot of readings, it seems you did not undergo any early treatments in your infections, especially using classical old school URT drugs. Very few doctors had an understanding then what these meant clinically. Atleast from mid 2021, if not early on, in the midst of rampaging delta wave everywhere, many doctors ( not in the West) around the world clinically understood what the situation entailed and how they should approach treatments. As a result, not only many flattened the delta curve quickly towards end 2021, met an Omicron burst in early 2022 comfortably without much damage and had the virus well under wraps by mid 2022. Those countries have not looked back ever since. The picture was simple. Early classical drug treatments meant much curtailed viral build up in the infected individual. Not enough to infect others around him in the household, but also to trigger long Covid manifestations in him. In India, where early treatment became the norm by mid 2021, issues like long Covid never took centre stage in any appreciable measure. It is also very likely you took several repeat vaccinations from time to time. If so, yours is a story cast by them.
You can respond, if you so desire, here in the comments, so that the conversation benefits other readers also.
Hi Moro,
Firstly, thanks for taking an interest.
I'll try to answer your questions as best i can but before i get into those i think it important you know the history behind my Covid-19 infection as it contradicts the official Scottish Government timeline of the outbreak of Covid-19 in Scotland, plus it'll also explain how and why i was almost certainly infected so early on in the pandemic. To date every clinician I've spoken to who is willing to listen to my timeline of events and who I've had contact with agree with me that there can be no argument.
At the time, i was working as a night shift security guard at a major Scottish tourist attraction and as such had close contact with both staff and contractors coming and going from the site during the mornings and evenings.
There was a winter light/lantern show being erected around the site that began to be erected in late November as part of their annual Christmas evening events, the structures were fabricated in China and shipped to Scotland and then assembled on site by a large team of Chinese workers, fabricators, electricians, seamstresses etc... those contractors were scheduled to remain on site for not only the construction but also the disassembly (Nov through to March).
This is where it gets interesting and irrefutable, every one of those contractors came from Wuhan in China. Need i say any more?
Your questions 1-3 are easier for me to answer as 1 question because they pretty much all overlap.
In mid Feb 2020 i had what i thought was a mild common cold, albeit one that didn't "feel" like the common cold. Sore throat, general tiredness, mild headache... everything pointed to a mild common cold but it never progressed onto a runny nose or a cough (with or without phlegm production) which for me was very unusual.
I even had a conversation with the catering manager one day about it and she said a lot of her staff were saying the same thing, the symptoms faded away after 3-4 days and i never thought about it again.
In late March i developed hives/rashes all over my body except my hands and face which was good(sic) because it meant i could hide it and carry on working.
I was prescribed (i think it was a steroid cream?) a large bottle of cream to apply all over my body. The hives was blamed on my change of diet as i'd not long started trying to lose some weight. Seems a ridiculous diagnosis now and for a long time i wasn't happy with it but it was what it was and nobody knew what was going to happen to me a few months later.
By May the hives had cleared up and i was starting to get very sore knees and back pain. Bloods were taken and they showed what i already knew from a long time ago, a marker for potential arthritis... again that didn't sit well with me because if it was arthritis it would've had to be the fastest onset of arthritis in human history, to go from pain free to excruciating pain in just a few weeks made no sense... not that i'm a doctor so i had to trust his diagnosis even though i didn't believe it.
I wasn't prescribed anything for the pain other than being advised to take over the counter pain killers and to monitor it and come back if it got any worse.
Then in June the breathlessness and extreme fatigue started to begin, not a slight wheeze type of breathlessness but one that would stop me in my tracks after walking 2-300 yards so i could catch my breath, pause for a minute and i'd be able to carry on for another 2-300 yards and repeat.
I was sent for a chest x-ray and had more bloods taken but they all came back clear.
The fatigue at this point wasn't too bad, sleeping 10-12 hours a day but as you can imagine i was acutely aware this was not normal for me.
July, the breathlessness was continuing to deteriorate to the point i now had to stop walking after 1-200 yards. The fatigue was also getting worse, it was beginning to hit me like a bus in that 1 minute i'd feel fine but the next minute i'd feel wiped out and have no choice but to sleep, anything from 12-14 hours now.
I didn't have a clue what was happening to me and neither did any of the GP's i saw at that time.
By August i was now finishing work and as soon as i walked in the door i didn't even have the strength to get my boots off, i'd just collapse on the couch and pass out for anything up to 16 hours (later rising to 18 hours).
Then on 23rd August at 05:00 everything changed (a date and time i'll never forget!), i was doing my final patrol of the night at work and at first i felt fine until i suddenly couldn't walk any more than 50 yards without having to stop and catch my breath, i suddenly felt worse than at any time in my life... i managed to slowly make my way back to my workstation and collapse on the chair which at that point i genuinely thought i was going to die. I was vomiting, sweating, tremors all over my body, felt deathly cold, could barely focus my eyes, every joint in my body felt like it was on fire... i've never felt anything like it before or since.
What followed was a cycle of new and recurring symptoms that got worse and worse, at least 50 i can remember but i know there were more i didn't document due to the brain fog and fatigue, or perhaps more haven't attributed them to Covid/Long Covid, yet. e.g. I've only recently learned that hypertension may be a symptom of Covid/Long Covid after my GP recommended i now take medication for it. Could be coincidence but given what's happened to me over the last 6 years i doubt it?
A wee aside about the fatigue i suffered from because it's only recently dawned on me that when i was telling people i was sleeping up to 18 hours a day i wasn't being clear.
For clarity, when i said i was sleeping up to 18 hours a day it wasn't 18 hours in a 24 hour period. It was 18 hours at a time and if i was having a good day i'd be able to stay awake for 1 hour, 2 on a very good day, after which i'd be asleep for another up to 18 hours. A better way of putting it would be to measure it in the time awake in any 24 hour period, 1-2 hours.
Moving onto the elephant in the room, i can categorically say none of the above was initially vaccine induced, it couldn't have been because i didn't get my first vaccine shot until 25th March 2021 (AstraZeneca so NOT mRNA).
In fact, it had the opposite effect in that 24 hours after that shot i unusually had excruciating pain in every part of my body where i'd previously had a Long Covid symptom. Then 48 hours after the vaccine shot i felt a lot better, to the point i was able for the first time in 7 months to actually feel relatively pain free and sit up and do something as simple as watch the TV for a few hours.
There was still a long road ahead of trial and error trying to work out how to retrain my body to be 'normal'... it took a long time, circa another 2 years before the brain fog lifted and my memory recall started to come back, watching TV quiz shows, i feel helped me hugely. As did Lego which was strange to me as i'd never bought a Lego set in my life, but the hand tremors refused to get better and (don't ask me why) i got this idea in my head that i needed to retrain my hands so they'd stop shaking and amazingly it worked in that the shaking would stop for an hour or two but it would eventually return... i spent a fortune buying the 10,000 piece Lego Titanic model and by the end of building it my hand tremors had cleared up, anecdotal i know, but i believe it helped and that's all that matters plus it looks great on the shelf! :)
Had to spilt this to fit the board requirements, Part 2:
Second shot was 03/06/2021, AstraZeneca
Third and final shot was 18/12/2021, Moderna (mRNA)
I didn't have any more vaccine shots after the Moderna because i smelled a rat in that if they are so effective why do i need to keep going back for more?
The only 'event' i had with any of the three vaccine shots was a positive one, strange i know but that's the truth.
As for any medication i was prescribed, the short answer for Covid-19 and Long Covid is none.
At the time of my infection in Feb 2020 there was no known treatment for Covid-19, at least not in the wider medical community, yes there were some great clinicians out there who tried some things that worked that sadly most of the western world ignored and medicine will have to live with ignoring those clinicians.
As for Long Covid, there is still no known treatment for it that i'm aware of and if there is i was certainly not offered it, nor am i being offered it.
You mention re-infection, that's a difficult one to give an answer too, i'm sure i must have been re-infected at some point given how prevalent the virus is now but on the plus side if i have been there's been no noticeable flare up of Long Covid again. Fyi every time i feel like i may be coming down with a cold/Covid etc i take a lateral flow test and they come back negative, given how unreliable they likely are now i'l probably not bother taking another lateral flow test... add that i understand PCR tests in the UK now have to be paid for i'll likely just give up on testing.
Moving onto your 4th and final question, how is it now and what medication am i taking:
Pretty much all of my symptoms have cleared now thankfully BUT there is one stubborn one that i can't seem to overcome, after my first vaccine shot i was left with sleep reversal and insomnia.
While the insomnia has improved very slowly with time the sleep reversal still persists albeit that too seems to be improving, but that remains cyclical meaning just when i think i've overcome it, it returns when i least expect it.
Aside from the usual routine tests, bloods, chest x-ray, CT Scan etc there has been no prescribed medication outside of drugs to manage things like pain, nausea etc. Currently the only prescribed drug i'm taking is melatonin to try and help reset my body clock when it drifts. [The hypertension drugs i haven't taken yet as i want to talk to a doctor about why they issued the prescription without first asking me if i wanted to take them - afaict informed consent is supposed to still be a thing in medicine in the UK!?]
Vitamins i currently take, cleared first with my GP of course: D3, K2, Mg, C, Zinc.
I tried to keep that as short as i could, compressing six years into one post isn't easy and i omitted a lot but hopefully that's enough to answer your questions.
Firstly, I feel very relieved you are doing much better now, nearly normal, except the sleep symptoms. Even as I thank you for such an exhaustive case details, even though I am not a doctor. I do hope that Dr. McMillan had also seen this thread between us and would respond some time. Second, how you got your first infection in Feb 2020, you are absolutely right with your reasoning.
In 2020, the doctors simply froze from thinking clinically, world over. New disease, new virus, new manifestations. Unlike many respiratory viral conditions, this had an unusual second phase - auto immune phase as Dr. McMillan would put it or a severe allergy ( hypersensitive pneumoniatis) as his close associate Dr. Shankara Chetty of South Africa would put it. Most people got into this second deadlier phase requiring hospitalisation because the first viral build up phase ( upto 10 days) was never treated. Things began to change in many places in 2021, partly because Dr. Chetty’s early classical treatment was also getting known. Once early treatments doused viral build up, there was no scope for subsequent events.
It is possible at that time ( no early classical treatments) quite a few population cohorts existed. First, those for whom body itself worked to contain viral build up. No scope for LC then. Second, those who had full viral build up, but body protected them from the second phase. These could have had heavy or mild symptoms during that phase. These were the people prone ( not all ) to long Covid symptoms and if their residual viral load was heavy, they were likely to get into severe LC conditions later, almost similar to the second phase in a running infection. You most probably belonged to this group. Third who couldn’t avoid getting into hospitals who banked more on your stars for recovery. Many were lucky and many more weren’t.
It was bit unusual though not a surprise ( in hind sight) that you had severe hives weeks later your infection in Feb 2020. It fits into that severe allergy postulate of Dr. Chetty, though he was essentially referring to the severe pulmonary conditions. Were you given any oral medicines ( anti histamines) for allergy or only the steroid cream treatment ? That was a normal course of treatment. This is important. A well judged course of anti histamines would have reduced that residual viral load and even prevented all the other complications that followed. As an organic chemist I will explain how below. I had shared this line of thinking with Dr McMillan atleast in late 2021.
Most anti histamines belong to a class of drugs called Cationic Amphiphilic Drugs ( CADs). They include drugs from many different indications also. There could be hundreds of them, most of them available in a good high street pharmacy. By virtue of their certain shared chemical structure features, they could act as anti virals against these Covid like viruses. This was known much earlier to Covid itself. That is how quite a few researchers began evaluating some of them in later 2020 in small group patient settings. Azithromycin, Montelukast, Levocetrizine to name just a few. Ivermectin was a powerful repurposed anti viral even though it did not have the chemical structure feature. These were the ones that began dousing the virus in many parts of the world, once the doctors got hold of the clue. Out of interest, I wrote out from the Internet the chemical structures of about 700 drugs from various indications - anti viral, anti bacterial, URT medicines, anti inflammatory drugs, immuno modulators a whole spread of them. Almost all of them possessed this possible anti viral feature. The West didn’t recognise or understand this clinical recourse just in front of them, in every high street pharmacy. They paid a high price and continue to carry the burden of LC even now in their population.
I had mentioned this long ago that the vaccine ( m-RNA) was a red herring in the story of Long Covid. You could have had asymptomatic repeat infections later that would have prevented/delayed the natural flushing out of the system the residual viral/ vaccine spike proteins. This natural flushing with time could happen with some freeing them of any continuing burdens. Or linger on in some, by the mechanisms explained here by Dr. McMillan. I have often suggested that in addition to condition specific drugs, a platter of anti histamines, anti inflammatories and immune modulators could be used to flush out the residues, much in the same way they worked in active infections. Long covid is nothing but residual infection often compounded by the presence of vaccine after effects. Dr. McMillan or Dr. Chetty if he happens to see this conversation can comment on such medicinal possibilities but I feel the West is yet to get the full hang of the picture. To ensure that you continue on the normalisation path, you could contact them. They are pioneers in Covid research. Best wishes in the mean time. If there are any more good developments from your side, please do post them here.
I forgot to mention i was never hospitalised, though i maintain to this day i absolutely should have been post August 2020 i couldn't function at all. Even something simple like going to the toilet meant walking along the walls with my hands just to get there and it wiped me out for at least two days every time.
Personal hygiene, eating, fluid intake were pretty much impossible for me to do by myself, it still amazes me at times when i look back that i survived.
If I can have your e-mail address, I can send you quite a few notes I was preparing at that time from many readings, especially repurposed medicine treatments. You could even share them with doctors whom you know well. My mail address is as follows:
balakrishnan.moro@gmail.com.
Prescribing to address symptoms is the best I’ve seen offered
I don't see any of the link but you're referring to
ROOT Community Pass
https://stan.store/McMillanROOT/p/root-community-monthly-pass
Dr Didier Raoult is replicating Dr Carlo Brogna's work. Dr Carlo Brogna and his team have done lots of studies and he wrote a book years ago you can buy on Amazon lots of pictures in it. Last time I looked (which was many months ago) it was still in the gut of some people over 2 years later still.
There are a few pictures from the book in here.
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Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée-Infection, Faculté de médecine, Aix-Marseille Université, URMITE, Marseille, France
This work is very interesting, but it overturns a well-established theory about the host specificity of viruses. The idea that a mammalian eukaryotic cell virus could multiply in bacteria in a way comparable to bacteriophages is a staggering one. The techniques employed by the authors are comprehensive, ranging from electron microscopy to nucleotide sequence, proteomic evaluation and in situ hybridization. Technically, this work is indisputable. The only thing that could call into question the quality and significance of this work would be the existence of a fraud that I am unable to detect. In practical terms, I think it's very important to accept this work and subject it to controversy and verification by other scientific teams. With this in mind, our team will be moving quickly to verify whether we can reproduce results of this nature.
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🟥💩MEGA ITS IN THE GUT THAT HAS BEEN KNOWN SINCE 2020
https://mega.nz/folder/Vv1kUKJD#uIR-6dETVZKVE025qidCqw
CDC Introduces Long Covid, Retiring Previous Brand
'Chronic Fatigue Syndrome'
Very interesting. Thank you! I am curious what you make of “silent organ damage” in people who haven’t had severe infections?
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/beyond-long-covid-1.7485888
this is got to be your best talk. there are so many different points that you make that need to be enumerated and expanded upon. particularly as pertains to diagnostic criteria