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Protective effects of old polio or tuberculosis vaccines - Printable Version

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Protective effects of old polio or tuberculosis vaccines - dabigv13 - 05-01-2020

It seems counterintuitive that a vaccine against a completely unrelated pathogen could offer some protection against covid, but there are some reasons to think it might. If you know someone from Asia with a weird scar on their upper arm, good chance they got the live BCG vaccine to protect against TB (even though its not very protective against TB it does seem to help with leprosy, and perhaps many other illnesses to some degree).

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/opinion/coronavirus-vaccine-innate-immunity.html

Also if Dr. Gallo is on board, I am too. Dude is a legend. Ultimately, these are not likely to be super effective, but worth investigating, as even partial benefit better than nothing. Also, this stuff has been around a while, and we know how to make lots of it.

RE: Protective effects of old polio or tuberculosis vaccines - Hurlburt88 - 05-02-2020

Very interesting.   Appreciate this post!

RE: Protective effects of old polio or tuberculosis vaccines - OutsiderFan - 05-02-2020

It seems there are multiple treatments that can work if given early in the disease's progression. We saw the Remdesivir study results and even HCQ has shown effectiveness as a prophylactic treatment. The key is getting it to people before they develop complications, because once they do, no treatment is very effective.

RE: Protective effects of old polio or tuberculosis vaccines - M T - 05-02-2020

I've seen roughly as many pre-print articles saying "Not so fast" about BCG as those suggesting it may be relevant. 

While we're talking about things that may be protective,
this preprint report talks about the frequency of Vitamin D Insufficiency (VDI) in a small set of COVID patients.
Vitamin D Insufficiency is Prevalent in Severe COVID-19
Quote:Twenty COVID-19 patients with serum 25OHD levels were identified; 65.0% required ICU admission.The VDI prevalence in ICU patients was 84.6%, vs. 57.1% in floor patients. Strikingly, 100% of ICU patients less than 75 years old had VDI.

Off-topic here, but not worth its own thread,
Reconstructed diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of the RT-PCR test for COVID-19
calculates the China RT-PCR test (only; not applicable to any other RT-PCR test) sensitivity and specificity:
"The sensitivity of the RT-PCR diagnostic test was estimated to be 0.777 (95% CI: 0.715, 0.849), while the specificity was 0.988 (95% CI: 0.933, 1.000)."

RE: Protective effects of old polio or tuberculosis vaccines - Goose - 05-02-2020

(05-02-2020, 12:34 PM)M T Wrote:  Off-topic here, but not worth its own thread,
Reconstructed diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of the RT-PCR test for COVID-19

calculates the China RT-PCR test (only; not applicable to any other RT-PCR test) sensitivity and specificity:

"The sensitivity of the RT-PCR diagnostic test was estimated to be 0.777 (95% CI: 0.715, 0.849), while the specificity was 0.988 (95% CI: 0.933, 1.000)."

There have been several reports of false-negative issues in the initial outbreak. This paper seems to confirm that there was an issue. One naturally wonders to what extent similar issues exist in the various tests being used worldwide. They are all "emergency" products, not fully vetted by the FDA or equivalent. If we ever had the illusion we were going to test our way out of this mess, similar problems with the tests we are using would put paid to that idea.