Dear Robin, it was good to see someone posting on fluvoxamine. My husband got Covid just before New Year's Day 2022. He spent some miserable hours in the ER New Years Eve due to an overzealous adult son being concerned about the oxymeter reading. The ER doctor sent him back home because there was "nothing in his lungs". This appeared in his electronic medical records which were seen by his practitioner who called me up to ask if we wanted an Rx for fluvoxamine for my husband. I said yes. The first pharmacy refused to fill it, so we used another pharmacy. It was a 10-day course. My husband spent a second week in bed sleeping through the day and night but then recovered somewhat quickly. It wasn't magic, but he did recover (73 yrs. old, TIA, replaced heart valve, sleep apnea). The interesting thing about this is that the physician and I had had a conversation about fluvoxamine 3 months before. He had seen its positive effects from the Together Study, and when I voiced concern about it being an SSRI, he had told me a 10-day treatment for Covid was not long enough for the side effects to show up.
On a later wellness exam in his office, he admitted to us that he was censured by his hospital review board for prescribing fluvoxamine. He was not ready to accept that, so went over their heads to the next higher up authorities (pharmacy board???) who told him the CDC committee that made the decision on whether fluvoxamine could be recommended for Covid treatment was split in a tie vote. When this board representative said we have to have a yes or no, the person on the other end said, well then, no! So, when our doctor went back to his own hospital system review board with this information, they removed the censure. Such politics! And most of us have no idea what is going on behind the scenes!
Hi Deborah, Thanks for telling us about these events, with a happy ending - which so easily could have gone another way.
The CDC committee would have faced enormous pressure not to approve any early treatment for COVID-19, because the mRNA and adenovirus vector quasi-vaccines could only be licensed, on the basis of such limited research, via an Emergency Use Authorization. The EUA is only possible if there is no other treatment for the disease.
For various reasons including corruption, excessive faith in anything which is purportedly a vaccine, and fear (both stoked by the government and corporations working together, with the mainstream media and many doctors playing a crucial role), there was a very strong belief that only these so-called vaccines could save humanity - and they did not want any alternative treatment to get in the way of the EUA or to foment the dreaded "vaccine hesitancy" which would stop everyone from getting these so-called vaccines.
I have not been following the debate about fluvoxamine for COVID-19. I am glad to know that at least half the committee wanted to approve its use.
Another of many studies and reports of clinical results that show many approaches to the outpatient treatment of covid work sufficiently well to prevent hospitalization and death. Yet at the start of 2024 2500 people per week died from covid which slowly fell to 2100 per week dead per week dead from covid a month ago - " Yet health authorities, and many doctors, in the West are not interested."
None of the approaches trialed here would make it to my list of the best demonstrated effective covid treatment protocol "ladders" which Real Doctors providing Real Treatment for covid have made known.
All of which, IMO, are yet in need of improvement - " Yet health authorities, and many doctors, in the West are not interested."
ps. I bought 8 mg bromhexine tablets for my covid kit at amazon.de and had them shipped to the US.
Order Total: EUR 13,69 (including shipping in 2021)
2x BERLIN-CHEMIE BROMHEXIN 8 Tabletten bei Husten, 50 St. Tabletten
Hi James, I am not a doctor (I work in electronics and computer programming) but, for what its worth, here are my thoughts on early treatment of COVID-19.
Firstly, for the great majority of people who have not been properly supplementing vitamin D3 for months, Prof. Wimalawansa's 0.014 mg / kg body weight, single oral dose of calcifediol. This is 1mg for average weight adults. Calcifediol _is_ 25-hydroxyvitamin D, and it raises circulating levels safely over 50 ng/mL in a few hours. See Prof. Wimalawansa's article: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/14/2997 and https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#4.7. If this is not available, bolus vitamin D3 such as 10 mg (400,000 IU) single dose, for 70 kg body weight, will raise 25-hydroxyvitamin D above 50 ng/mL in a few days - due to the delay in hydroxylating the vitamin D3, primarily in the liver.
Secondly, ivermectin and zinc according to the recommendations of the FLCCC protocols for those who are hospitalised: https://covid19criticalcare.com/protocol/math-covid-hospital-treatment/, though I think the zinc quantities are excessive for some people. One person I know, who took greater than 25 mg zinc a day in general (based in my recommending to her previous FLCCC recommendations for long-term nutrition, in which they later reduced the amount of zinc per day) developed a serious problem of some kind, due to her thyroid having been removed. (This is the best, limited, understanding of what happened.)
Thirdly, oral vitamin C in some tolerable amount. The FLCCC MATH+ protocol for mildly symptomatic adults is 500 to 1000 mg every 6 hours. This is a lot, and I guess it might cause some GI distress, but it is only short term and will probably assist in tackling a potentially deadly disease.
Fourthly, the FLCCC recommends melatonin at night.
This is three nutrients, a widely used hormone (melatonin) which is available without prescription in the USA, and the widely used, and generally safe, drug ivermectin. One of ivermectin's modes of operation is increasing the zinc level inside cells, which I recall combats SARS-CoV-2 RNA replication.
The FLCCC recommends fluvoxamine, with the more widely used fluoxetine (Prozac) as an alternative. These are both prescription psychiatric drugs and the MATH+ protocol carries a strong warning:
"Some individuals who are prescribed fluvoxamine experience acute anxiety which may progress to mania, this serious side effect may occur after the first dose. Patients prescribed this medication should be carefully monitored to prevent escalation to suicidal or violent behavior."
I think that this use of fluvoxamine or fluoxetine should only be done under medical supervision if the illness is worsening significantly, despite good 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and the use of zinc, vitamin C and ivermectin. I think that this would only rarely be the case.
My interest in writing about the Wannigama et al. research is not to advocate the widespread use of any of these drugs, except perhaps under medical supervision if prior interventions are not wholly successful. I was struck by how successful these three or four drugs were in early treatment of COVID-19, even though none of them are specifically intended as anti-virals and when all of them are inexpensive and widely available.
Assuming the research is valid, this indicates that COVID-19 is even easier to treat than I had thought - and I am confident that the steps I suggest above, alone, would have prevented the the great majority of deaths and serious symptoms COVID-19 has caused.
Part of my interest in writing about it is that these drugs have always been available, with at least fluvoxamine having been researched in the past and found to be effective - and the authorities ignored and denied the value of these and _all_ other inexpensive, widely available, interventions for early treatment of COVID-19.
These are the same authorities who suppress proper knowledge and use of vitamin D3, in general. Please see the next article, about Dr Pierre Kory's interview with Tucker Carlson, especially regarding the disinformation playbook used against vitamin D3, ivermectin and other early treatments.
Thanks Tim, The article you cite, by Anthony Colpo, contains critiques of the research into fluvoxamine and COVID-19 and warnings about its potentially serious side-effects, which include, mental disturbance, suicide and violence. Please read my reply to James Kringlee above - the FLCCC warns about these psychiatric ill-effects More on this below.
Anthony Colpo's article starts with a critique of Dr Peter McCullough's article which argues that statins reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. Without having studied statins in detail, I have multiple reasons (and bookmarked and saved research) which makes me think they are overrated and likely harmful. So far, so good.
Then he seems to claim that the virus which causes COVID-19 has "not been isolated". This is 100% BS. Anyone who wants to argue for this, or for the more general "viruses do not exist", should not do so here at Nutrition Matters. Please use sites such as Dr Sam Bailey's https://drsambailey.substack.com/p/viruses-dont-exist-and-why-it-matters. I posted a critical comment there, because she was lamenting that no-one responded to her "viruses do not exist" hypothesis. My comment received one Like and then was deleted. Dr Bailey unsubscribed me and banned me from resubscribing. She did not bother to write to me about this - I discovered it a few days later.
Anthony Colpo then discusses disputes between Robert Malone and other prominent people in the health freedom movement, which lead me to a ranking of the top 50 Substacks by subscriber (paid and free) number. Steve Kirsch's site is number 50 with 236k subscribers. Robert Malone's is number 27 with 317k. This lead me to rankings of "Health politics" Substacks: https://reletter.com/charts/substack/health-politics/free and https://reletter.com/charts/substack/health-politics/paid, with the numbers only available for those who subscribe to the reletter.com service.
Anthony Colpo has multiple critiques of fluvoxamine's effectiveness and safety. He cites another article of his: https://anthonycolpo.substack.com/p/fluvoxamine-a-toxic-and-potentially . He also raises some conflict of interest concerns regarding the Wannigama et al. lead researchers.
If I was advocating fluvoxamine be widely used, except under medical supervision as a second line of treatment (see my reply to James Kringlee) I would investigate Anthony Colpo's critiques further. I an uninclined to invest serious time following the arguments of someone who thinks that there is no viral cause of what most people regard as a real illness: COVID-19. However, I imagine that some or perhaps all of his critiques are valid to a significant degree.
I will add a note at the start of my article referring readers to your comment and to the article you cite. Thanks again for pointing to Anthony Colpo's critiques.
I agree re the "viruses don't exist" cult -- I just don't engage with these people any more. Re the "virus not isolated", pretty much the same, although they can be more rational...
But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater -- Colpo is good overall, and generally makes good points. I'm convinced that all the fluoride-based drugs are extremely dangerous, and would never take one myself -- there are always better solutions.
This study was the 42nd virus RCT on VitaminDWiki
https://vitamindwiki.com/tiki-index.php?page_id=15142
It includes charts comparing the effectiveness and costs of 20+ other treatments
- - - - One chart shows that the FDA only approved expensive treatments
I post a few of the 15,000 pages on VitaminDWiki.com on https://hlahore.substack.com
Dear Robin, it was good to see someone posting on fluvoxamine. My husband got Covid just before New Year's Day 2022. He spent some miserable hours in the ER New Years Eve due to an overzealous adult son being concerned about the oxymeter reading. The ER doctor sent him back home because there was "nothing in his lungs". This appeared in his electronic medical records which were seen by his practitioner who called me up to ask if we wanted an Rx for fluvoxamine for my husband. I said yes. The first pharmacy refused to fill it, so we used another pharmacy. It was a 10-day course. My husband spent a second week in bed sleeping through the day and night but then recovered somewhat quickly. It wasn't magic, but he did recover (73 yrs. old, TIA, replaced heart valve, sleep apnea). The interesting thing about this is that the physician and I had had a conversation about fluvoxamine 3 months before. He had seen its positive effects from the Together Study, and when I voiced concern about it being an SSRI, he had told me a 10-day treatment for Covid was not long enough for the side effects to show up.
On a later wellness exam in his office, he admitted to us that he was censured by his hospital review board for prescribing fluvoxamine. He was not ready to accept that, so went over their heads to the next higher up authorities (pharmacy board???) who told him the CDC committee that made the decision on whether fluvoxamine could be recommended for Covid treatment was split in a tie vote. When this board representative said we have to have a yes or no, the person on the other end said, well then, no! So, when our doctor went back to his own hospital system review board with this information, they removed the censure. Such politics! And most of us have no idea what is going on behind the scenes!
Hi Deborah, Thanks for telling us about these events, with a happy ending - which so easily could have gone another way.
The CDC committee would have faced enormous pressure not to approve any early treatment for COVID-19, because the mRNA and adenovirus vector quasi-vaccines could only be licensed, on the basis of such limited research, via an Emergency Use Authorization. The EUA is only possible if there is no other treatment for the disease.
For various reasons including corruption, excessive faith in anything which is purportedly a vaccine, and fear (both stoked by the government and corporations working together, with the mainstream media and many doctors playing a crucial role), there was a very strong belief that only these so-called vaccines could save humanity - and they did not want any alternative treatment to get in the way of the EUA or to foment the dreaded "vaccine hesitancy" which would stop everyone from getting these so-called vaccines.
I have not been following the debate about fluvoxamine for COVID-19. I am glad to know that at least half the committee wanted to approve its use.
In my household, we use elderberry concentrate to treat respiratory infections. It usually clears them in <24 hours.
2 Tbl, 2x/day, with lecithin for each dose to improve uptake. We also take zinc if we suspect our zinc is low.
Another of many studies and reports of clinical results that show many approaches to the outpatient treatment of covid work sufficiently well to prevent hospitalization and death. Yet at the start of 2024 2500 people per week died from covid which slowly fell to 2100 per week dead per week dead from covid a month ago - " Yet health authorities, and many doctors, in the West are not interested."
None of the approaches trialed here would make it to my list of the best demonstrated effective covid treatment protocol "ladders" which Real Doctors providing Real Treatment for covid have made known.
All of which, IMO, are yet in need of improvement - " Yet health authorities, and many doctors, in the West are not interested."
ps. I bought 8 mg bromhexine tablets for my covid kit at amazon.de and had them shipped to the US.
Order Total: EUR 13,69 (including shipping in 2021)
2x BERLIN-CHEMIE BROMHEXIN 8 Tabletten bei Husten, 50 St. Tabletten
Sold by: apohealth - Gesundheit aus der Apotheke
Condition: New EUR 9,96
Hi James, I am not a doctor (I work in electronics and computer programming) but, for what its worth, here are my thoughts on early treatment of COVID-19.
Firstly, for the great majority of people who have not been properly supplementing vitamin D3 for months, Prof. Wimalawansa's 0.014 mg / kg body weight, single oral dose of calcifediol. This is 1mg for average weight adults. Calcifediol _is_ 25-hydroxyvitamin D, and it raises circulating levels safely over 50 ng/mL in a few hours. See Prof. Wimalawansa's article: https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/14/14/2997 and https://vitamindstopscovid.info/00-evi/#4.7. If this is not available, bolus vitamin D3 such as 10 mg (400,000 IU) single dose, for 70 kg body weight, will raise 25-hydroxyvitamin D above 50 ng/mL in a few days - due to the delay in hydroxylating the vitamin D3, primarily in the liver.
Secondly, ivermectin and zinc according to the recommendations of the FLCCC protocols for those who are hospitalised: https://covid19criticalcare.com/protocol/math-covid-hospital-treatment/, though I think the zinc quantities are excessive for some people. One person I know, who took greater than 25 mg zinc a day in general (based in my recommending to her previous FLCCC recommendations for long-term nutrition, in which they later reduced the amount of zinc per day) developed a serious problem of some kind, due to her thyroid having been removed. (This is the best, limited, understanding of what happened.)
Thirdly, oral vitamin C in some tolerable amount. The FLCCC MATH+ protocol for mildly symptomatic adults is 500 to 1000 mg every 6 hours. This is a lot, and I guess it might cause some GI distress, but it is only short term and will probably assist in tackling a potentially deadly disease.
Fourthly, the FLCCC recommends melatonin at night.
This is three nutrients, a widely used hormone (melatonin) which is available without prescription in the USA, and the widely used, and generally safe, drug ivermectin. One of ivermectin's modes of operation is increasing the zinc level inside cells, which I recall combats SARS-CoV-2 RNA replication.
The FLCCC recommends fluvoxamine, with the more widely used fluoxetine (Prozac) as an alternative. These are both prescription psychiatric drugs and the MATH+ protocol carries a strong warning:
"Some individuals who are prescribed fluvoxamine experience acute anxiety which may progress to mania, this serious side effect may occur after the first dose. Patients prescribed this medication should be carefully monitored to prevent escalation to suicidal or violent behavior."
I think that this use of fluvoxamine or fluoxetine should only be done under medical supervision if the illness is worsening significantly, despite good 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and the use of zinc, vitamin C and ivermectin. I think that this would only rarely be the case.
My interest in writing about the Wannigama et al. research is not to advocate the widespread use of any of these drugs, except perhaps under medical supervision if prior interventions are not wholly successful. I was struck by how successful these three or four drugs were in early treatment of COVID-19, even though none of them are specifically intended as anti-virals and when all of them are inexpensive and widely available.
Assuming the research is valid, this indicates that COVID-19 is even easier to treat than I had thought - and I am confident that the steps I suggest above, alone, would have prevented the the great majority of deaths and serious symptoms COVID-19 has caused.
Part of my interest in writing about it is that these drugs have always been available, with at least fluvoxamine having been researched in the past and found to be effective - and the authorities ignored and denied the value of these and _all_ other inexpensive, widely available, interventions for early treatment of COVID-19.
These are the same authorities who suppress proper knowledge and use of vitamin D3, in general. Please see the next article, about Dr Pierre Kory's interview with Tucker Carlson, especially regarding the disinformation playbook used against vitamin D3, ivermectin and other early treatments.
See Colpo's article, "Dear Steve Kirsch: Fluvoxamine is a Toxic SSRI and Does NOT Treat 'COVID'": https://anthonycolpo.substack.com/p/dear-steve-kirsch-fluvoxamine-is
Thanks Tim, The article you cite, by Anthony Colpo, contains critiques of the research into fluvoxamine and COVID-19 and warnings about its potentially serious side-effects, which include, mental disturbance, suicide and violence. Please read my reply to James Kringlee above - the FLCCC warns about these psychiatric ill-effects More on this below.
Anthony Colpo's article starts with a critique of Dr Peter McCullough's article which argues that statins reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. Without having studied statins in detail, I have multiple reasons (and bookmarked and saved research) which makes me think they are overrated and likely harmful. So far, so good.
Then he seems to claim that the virus which causes COVID-19 has "not been isolated". This is 100% BS. Anyone who wants to argue for this, or for the more general "viruses do not exist", should not do so here at Nutrition Matters. Please use sites such as Dr Sam Bailey's https://drsambailey.substack.com/p/viruses-dont-exist-and-why-it-matters. I posted a critical comment there, because she was lamenting that no-one responded to her "viruses do not exist" hypothesis. My comment received one Like and then was deleted. Dr Bailey unsubscribed me and banned me from resubscribing. She did not bother to write to me about this - I discovered it a few days later.
Anthony Colpo then discusses disputes between Robert Malone and other prominent people in the health freedom movement, which lead me to a ranking of the top 50 Substacks by subscriber (paid and free) number. Steve Kirsch's site is number 50 with 236k subscribers. Robert Malone's is number 27 with 317k. This lead me to rankings of "Health politics" Substacks: https://reletter.com/charts/substack/health-politics/free and https://reletter.com/charts/substack/health-politics/paid, with the numbers only available for those who subscribe to the reletter.com service.
Anthony Colpo has multiple critiques of fluvoxamine's effectiveness and safety. He cites another article of his: https://anthonycolpo.substack.com/p/fluvoxamine-a-toxic-and-potentially . He also raises some conflict of interest concerns regarding the Wannigama et al. lead researchers.
If I was advocating fluvoxamine be widely used, except under medical supervision as a second line of treatment (see my reply to James Kringlee) I would investigate Anthony Colpo's critiques further. I an uninclined to invest serious time following the arguments of someone who thinks that there is no viral cause of what most people regard as a real illness: COVID-19. However, I imagine that some or perhaps all of his critiques are valid to a significant degree.
I will add a note at the start of my article referring readers to your comment and to the article you cite. Thanks again for pointing to Anthony Colpo's critiques.
I agree re the "viruses don't exist" cult -- I just don't engage with these people any more. Re the "virus not isolated", pretty much the same, although they can be more rational...
But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater -- Colpo is good overall, and generally makes good points. I'm convinced that all the fluoride-based drugs are extremely dangerous, and would never take one myself -- there are always better solutions.