Unpopular

I know this won't go over very well as I got hit pretty hard the last time I posted this, but more thought and information has come available.

I'll start with the unpopular part, healthy people shouldn't wear masks.

The reason I say this is based on many factors so I'll expound on them here. The article below discusses an interesting aspect of COVID transmission, our carbon dioxide level (CO2). Studies on Tuberculosis(TB) have shown that the CO2 level in the air is predictive to level of transmissibility of TB. In places were the indoor CO2 level was over 1000 ppm, TB was easily transmissible. When under 1000 ppm, it was not. The reason for this is that the CO2 level from an indoor room is basically a direct measure of rebreathed air. Normal air has around 400 ppm of CO2 where an expelled breath is about 38,000 ppm. Without proper ventilation, air quality can decline rapidly when multiple people are in a small room.

COVID is transmitted very easily just like TB and they are both highly contagious. If we kept our indoor air quality below 1000 ppm of CO2, our chances of acquiring COVID will be diminished greatly. Here is where mask wearing comes in. A quick background on the scientific literature surrounding mask wearing. Masks have shown they can decrease viral transmission from someone who is sick to another person. They do not stop transmission but they do slow it down. Mask wearing by a healthy individual has not shown to decrease catching viral infections. These facts are not disputed.

What can be disputed are my next statements because they involve a lot of research, hypothesis, and speculation. I hypothesized early on that SARS-Cov-2 binds intracellularly to carbonic anhydrase II. There are many examples of intracellular binding of pathogens and carbonic anhydrase is often a target. I have not seen any instances where heme oxygenase II is bound by anything except SARS and this decreases our ability to transport oxygen on hemoglobin. If we combine the decreased action of carbonic anhydrase (it breaks down CO2 to water and bicarbonate) with a decreased oxygen carrying capacity, we have a perfect storm for SARS-Cov-2 to wreak havoc on keeping our blood oxygenated.

Hence the problem with healthy people wearing masks. Wearing a mask increases CO2 levels for the individual and it quickly goes over 1000 ppm. The rebreathed air is their own so the chance of getting COVID doesn't go up, but it does make carbonic anhydrase work much harder to keep our blood pH and oxygen levels stable. When the healthy person wearing the mask goes into a room that has high CO2 levels and breathes rebreathed air and acquires the virus, the virus has more binding targets inside the cell. More carbonic anhydrase is being utilized and I believe this situation can cause three negative situations for the person.

1. I believe this increases viral load. More carbonic anhydrase means more viral replication. Big molecules like Ivermectin that have a lot of stereochemistry may block the viral binding to carbonic anhydrase and stop replication. There are now multiple peer reviewed double blind placebo controlled studies showing the benefits of Ivermectin. Its antiviral activity hasn't been explained but my explanation makes perfect sense.
2. I believe it increases the potential severity of the infection. Less carbonic anhydrase and heme oxygenase would be available due to increased demand.
3. I believe it would increase the spread of the virus because of a higher viral load. Zinc and Vitamin D bind carbonic anhydrase and we know optimal levels of each is required to reduce the severity of the infection.

My recommendation based on the above facts are for anyone with symptoms or active infection to wear a mask and isolate and anyone who is healthy to not wear one but monitor air quality wherever they go. We can't breathe too much rebreathed air.
https://smartbuildingsmagazine.com/features/carbon-dioxide-monitoring-to-lower-the-coronavirus-threat?fbclid=iwar1rtnzz2cjcvqhfb4fifft5tq8cd4bdllbryg9ws7dcob0ivqxnkem4v68

Have you seen this thread?

"keto and the microbiome"

https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=4228402#gsc.tab=0

Not to derail.. interested in your thoughts there

potsnpans said...
Have you seen this thread?

"keto and the microbiome"

https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=4228402#gsc.tab=0

Not to derail.. interested in your thoughts there

I haven't seen it but will look at it.

GH said...
Mask wearing by a healthy individual has not shown to decrease catching viral infections.

Studies cited in this November CDC article suggest that masks do provide some level of protection the wearer:

"Multiple layers of cloth with higher thread counts have demonstrated superior performance compared to single layers of cloth with lower thread counts, in some cases filtering nearly 50% of fine particles less than 1 micron ."

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/more/masking-science-sars-cov2.html

What zinc do you recommend and how high a dose per day for prevention? For COVID infection?

Should any copper be supplemented with it? If so, how much?

WBF, I can still get Ivermectin. It comes in 3 mg tabs so a single dose is a lot of tabs. Egypt has been successful dosing it at 400 micrograms per kg. For zinc prophylaxis, 100mg of elemental zinc per day. There are zinc issues later in late stage COVID patients that may warrant different dosages.

pots, you are missing what I am trying to say. Put aside the article, I am referring to intracellular CO2. The hypothesis I have put together involves aspects that aren't talked about directly in the literature. I certainly got it from the literature and it has many circumstantial aspects to it The CO2 in the indoor air is what led me to believe the CO2 level for the patient is one of the determining factors in severity of the disease. I've even said that the terminal protein on COVID is 32 kDa.

As for the masks, I've read too much literature on the subject, seen too many examples of healthy people catching the virus wearing masks properly, and talked to too many physicians to believe that healthy people benefit from wearing one. It led me believe that wearing one increased our chances of getting an infection. That sounds far fetched to many, but I call it as I see it. I'm not just someone saying not to wear a mask. I posted early in March on my FB page that everyone should wear a mask. They just aren't helping and I value low intracellular CO2 levels as should you. Is the good of the mask better than the bad of the mask? The good is overstated just like most vaccines. The bad is underreported just like most vaccines.

k07, I respect your opinion. My opinion is that kids have a much lower viral load and that means they don't spread as much. They still spread it, but not as much. Our kids here at our schools have had sporadic issues with COVID.

Masks don't offer protection both ways, that is in the literature. I have read dozens of articles on the subject and we can disagree. I get my opinion from multiple articles, not just one CDC article.

GH: In the op it really sounds like you’re making the article out to support your hypothesis. I don’t understand why indoor CO2 levels were brought up at all.. we can’t derive any useful information there when it correlates so strongly to airborne virus.

Regarding masks, blood CO2, and your hypothesis of sars-cov-2 bonding to carbonic anhydrase.. It is interesting but I’m no biophysicist. Even if the hypothesis is correct, as I said before it's hard to know how much of a factor high blood CO2 would be in the real world (if it would even be a factor at all) what levels would need to be reached, etc. After your last thread this seems like quite the hail mary attempt to prove your point that healthy people should not wear masks.

Lucky for me I can continue to wear my mask without certainty on the above as it doesn’t seem to have an effect on my CO2 levels. I had blood work done a couple of weeks ago and after time in the waiting room and preparing a urine sample, it was probably 30 minutes of cloth mask wearing before I got the blood draw. I was at the top of the reference range for CO2 but as you can see here that’s right in line with the last 3 draws that were done with no mask..

https://ibb.co/xw141rw

https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/if-youve-been-exposed-to-the-coronavirus

about half way down the page of this article a question is asked: "How soon after I'm infected with the new coronavirus will I start to be contagious?"

The answer: "The time from exposure to symptom onset (known as the incubation period) is thought to be three to 14 days, though symptoms typically appear within four or five days after exposure.

We know that a person with COVID-19 may be contagious 48 to 72 hours before starting to experience symptoms. Emerging research suggests that people may actually be most likely to spread the virus to others during the 48 hours before they start to experience symptoms.

If true, this strengthens the case for face masks, physical distancing, and contact tracing, all of which can help reduce the risk that someone who is infected but not yet experiencing symptoms may unknowingly infect others. "

Please correct me if I am wrong, but isn't this part of the reason why everyone should be wearing a mask? You might think you are "healthy " during the incubation period.

What I meant was even if sars-cov-2 does bond to carbonic anhydrase (and I haven't seen anything that lets me believe that it does), it would still be premature to advise against following mainstream scientific recommendations on mask wearing. Let me alter your quote of mine to see if you still agree:

"...it's hard to know how much of a factor increasing levels of breathed CO2 would be in the real world (if it would be a factor at all), what levels of CO2 would need to be reached, etc."

Georgia Hunter said...
The room CO2 has to do with transmissibility and that would be similar to TB

.. because it strongly correlates with airborne pathogens, right? ..which masks help to reduce?? I still can't tell if you've accepted this or not as the primary explanation.

Georgia Hunter said...
More carbonic anhydrase activity, IMO, would increase binding sites for the virus and increase viral load. It would just make it easier for them to reproduce.

A few things...

1 - I don't see how viruses can use RBCs to reproduce:

"Without ribosomes or a genome, mammalian erythrocytes are incapable of signal transduction, gene transcription, or new protein synthesis..."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc6108441/

2 - Wouldn't replication in (or somehow involving) these cells be delayed until days after initial exposure? ...thinking nose-->throat-->lungs before major progression into RBCs.

3 - I'm not sure why you've zeroed in on carbonic anhydrase for attachment. I have seen others suggesting CD147 leads to RBC damage (without involving viral replication).. CD147 has actually been proven as a route for sars-cov-2 infection, and it is expressed in RBCs (also endothelial, brain, lung, et al). It is also the route of RBC infection by the malaria parasite.

This was recently published (Dec. 4):

"CD147-spike protein is a novel route for SARS-CoV-2 infection to host cells"

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33277466/

I guess this is one reason why melatonin has been recommended by some for treatment:

"Role of melatonin in the treatment of COVID-19; as an adjuvant through cluster differentiation 147 (CD147)."

https://europepmc.org/article/med/32920757

Stephen Buhner talked about CD147 in May on page 27 of his sars-cov-2 write up.. says scutellaria baicalensis downregulates CD147 expression. Also very interesting is how cyclophilin A's "affinity" for CD147 receptors leads to substantial increase in viral load..

https://www.stephenharrodbuhner.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/coronavirus-1.pdf

Georgia Hunter said...
Big molecules like Ivermectin that have a lot of stereochemistry may block the viral binding to carbonic anhydrase and stop replication. There are now multiple peer reviewed double blind placebo controlled studies showing the benefits of Ivermectin. Its antiviral activity hasn't been explained but my explanation makes perfect sense.

Ivermectin may prevent the spike protein from attaching to CD147, as well as ACE-2, the other known route of infection. Here is a computational model showing... "Ivermectin docked in the region of leucine 91 of the spike and histidine 378 of the ACE2 receptor. The binding energy of ivermectin to the spike-ACE2 complex was -18 kcal/mol and binding constant was 5.8 e-08. Conclusion: The ivermectin docking we identified may interfere with the attachment of the spike to the human cell membrane."

https://iiar-anticancer.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/5093lehrer.pdf

...I haven't really dived into the studies that show benefit of ivermectin in covid-19, so I can't confirm any real world implications of the above.

Post Edited (potsnpans) : 12/22/2020 2:53:57 AM (GMT-7)

It's fairly obvious that science does not have a grasp on what is happening in COVID-19 infections. I offer a plausible hypothesis to what is happening and recommendations on how to help lessen its adverse effects. I read a lot of literature and there are no direct references to what I am saying about this disease, but there are hundreds of tangential references that when put together form a very plausible scenario. Whether you look at the PIR/neprilysin/carbonic anhydrase component, the regulatory cascades, or both, it just fits together. Other pathogens bind CA so it isn't like I'm making a huge stretch on this. Antibiotics bind it, zinc binds it, Vitamin D binds it, CD147 binds CAIV extracellularly, and there are a lot of other things that bind CA as the cascade occurs to maintain intracellular pH levels. The problems that COVID-19 causes are similar to what Lyme patients have, the difference being the timing of it.

I may change my opinion on my mask statement in the future but I am sticking with it now. Healthy people shouldn't wear masks because it increases their carbonic anhydrase activity, which IMO, increases one's chances of having a severe outcome from COVID-19. I will also stand by my statement if we can keep indoor CO2 levels below 1000 ppm, we can drastically impair transmission of the virus. I've had several weeks to study our indoor CO2 levels and our COVID cases in the community have risen dramatically, I see this as a way to have concrete data on whether a business should be open or closed. Most should be closed IMO because maintaining CO2 levels under 1000 ppm would be very challenging without proper ventilation. We have to leave a window open with a fan blowing outward on some days. Cold temps make this not plausible for some.

IMO, you over estimate the benefits of wearing a mask. I may under estimate it, but when I have 13 patients attend a funeral and 12 of them got COVID and all of them wore their masks, I see little benefit. Did it help that one person? Three of those twelve died so something made their situation worse. They all were not elderly or obese. If you want to slow down influenza, wear a mask. If you want to slow down COVID-19, stay away from rebreathed indoor air. Masks won't do it. It's about limiting or reducing viral load and more CA activity increases viral load IMO.

"It's about limiting or reducing viral load and more CA activity increases viral load IMO."

For your hypothesis to seem plausible to me, could you at least attempt to respond to the 3 points in my post above? Tackling the first point I think is crucial to explaining how "CA activity increases viral load".
.

Post Edited (potsnpans) : 12/22/2020 6:16:53 PM (GMT-7)

SMH. People without symptoms have no idea if they are "healthy" or not -- thus the whole point of wearing a mask.

astroman said...
His whole point in all this is breathing your recycled air lowers your immune system...

That was his point in the other thread entitled "COVID".

In this thread he has gotten more adventurous, hypothesizing that by breathing in air with more CO2 (but not enough to change CO2 in blood), we are creating more bonding targets in the form of carbonic hydrase (CA) for the virus to damage and reproduce inside of our red blood cells (RBCs, which transport oxygen). As far as I can tell he is mostly trying to explain what's been referred to as "happy hypoxia".. when patients seem very functional at very low blood oxygen levels.. so low that they would normally be unconscious. Correct me if I'm wrong, GH. I'm sure there's more but I haven't been able to put together the other tidbits that have been mentioned more casually. At any rate, I think brought up some issues in my last post that ought to be addressed.

I'm trying to avoid any misunderstandings as that is what kinda derailed the other thread.