"The investigational drug was developed by researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. As described in a report published on December 7 in the journal Science Advances, the drug is not an antibody, but a related molecule known as an ACE2 receptor decoy. Unlike antibodies, the ACE2 decoy is far more difficult for the SARS-CoV-2 virus to evade because mutations in the virus that would enable it to avoid the drug would also reduce the virus’s ability to infect cells. The Dana-Farber scientists found a way to make this type of drug neutralize coronaviruses more potently in animals infected with COVID-19 and to make it safe to give to patients.

This report comes at a time when antibody drugs used to treat COVID-19 have lost their effectiveness because the viral spike protein has mutated to escape being targeted by the antibodies.

The researchers, led by first author James Torchia, MD, PhD, and senior author Gordon Freeman, PhD, identified features that make ACE2 decoys especially potent and long-lasting. For example, they found that when they included a piece of the ACE2 protein called the collectrin-like domain, it made the drug stick more tightly to the virus and have a longer life in the body. Their experiments showed that ACE2 decoys have potent activity against the COVID-19 virus because they trigger an irreversible change in the structure of the virus — they “pop” the top off the viral spike protein so it can’t bind to the cell-surface ACE2 receptor and infect cells. ..."

https://scitechdaily.com/breakthrough-receptor-decoy-drug-neutralizes-covid-19-virus-including-omicron-and-other-variants/

Good article, Big Dave (2bz4thot)! If successful, such a drug would help us all.

Meanwhile, in 20 days the unvaccinated Chinese population has suffered 250 million infections and a million deaths--undoubtedly many more after the latency periods end.

https://apnews.com/article/health-china-beijing-covid-d0718b53ded7fb1a70c2db8e564ed072

Whether it's misguided national policy or fraudulent claims that FDA-approved medical treatments are dangerous or conspiratorial, the cost of self-deception is immense. The question is whether the anti-vaccine hysterics will balk at the new drugs.

What are the odds that those skeptics will abandon their ACE-inhibitor blood pressure medications when they realize the new drug also works on the same mechanism?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/26/2022 07:49PM by Lot's Wife.

It's exciting and could be a game changer.

But it has zero human testing so far. Most meds at its stage don't succeed with human trials. We can hope it will be the exception, and I sure do. But "breakthrough" is premature.

That's their press release. Let's see what it really does in the wild, and how bad its side effects are.

This though:
>Meanwhile, in 20 days the unvaccinated Chinese population has suffered 250 million infections and a million deaths--undoubtedly many more after the latency periods end.

I don't know where this comes from. China is a dictatorship so there is no debate when it comes to vaccination. You're forced to have them whether you choose it or not. They will smash down your door and worse. Government workers even kill people's pets if their owners have tested positive for Covid. See here:

https://youtu.be/SWsb4D5MTuw

I find this very odd. Not so long ago China's state bureaucracy was pretending to have had a smaller Covid death total than the UK which has a much smaller population.

Poster with No Name Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That's their press release. Let's see what it
> really does in the wild, and how bad its side
> effects are.
>
> This though:
> >Meanwhile, in 20 days the unvaccinated Chinese
> population has suffered 250 million infections and
> a million deaths--undoubtedly many more after the
> latency periods end.
>
> I don't know where this comes from.

If you bothered to do a google search, you would know exactly where it comes from.


-------------------
> China is a
> dictatorship so there is no debate when it comes
> to vaccination. You're forced to have them whether
> you choose it or not.

Dictatorships can't force everyone to do what they want. If they could, no dictatorship would ever be overthrown.

In this specific case, there was mandatory vaccination for a while but it was with the Chinese vaccine, which was largely ineffective and hence was ultimately exported to African countries. Because China really respects African countries. But a very large proportion of Chinese, particularly the elderly, never received even the "mandatory" vaccinations and hence are unvaccinated.


------------------
They will smash down your
> door and worse. Government workers even kill
> people's pets if their owners have tested positive
> for Covid.

Yep. Zero COVID was an enormous failure and is now being compounded by an opening without adequate vaccinations or sufficient healthcare facilities.


---------------------
> I find this very odd. Not so long ago China's
> state bureaucracy was pretending to have had a
> smaller Covid death total than the UK which has a
> much smaller population.

It's only odd if you haven't dealt with Chinese government data before. The official number of dead two days ago was 13. The official number of new daily infections was approaching 10,000. The figures I reproduced were leaked by scientists after government briefings.

Again, google.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Poster with No Name Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > That's their press release. Let's see what it
> > really does in the wild, and how bad its side
> > effects are.
> >
> > This though:
> > >Meanwhile, in 20 days the unvaccinated Chinese
> > population has suffered 250 million infections
> and
> > a million deaths--undoubtedly many more after
> the
> > latency periods end.
> >
> > I don't know where this comes from.
>
> If you bothered to do a google search, you would
> know exactly where it comes from.
>
>
> -------------------
> > China is a
> > dictatorship so there is no debate when it
> comes
> > to vaccination. You're forced to have them
> whether
> > you choose it or not.
>
> Dictatorships can't force everyone to do what they
> want. If they could, no dictatorship would ever
> be overthrown.
>
> In this specific case, there was mandatory
> vaccination for a while but it was with the
> Chinese vaccine, which was largely ineffective and
> hence was ultimately exported to African
> countries. Because China really respects African
> countries. But a very large proportion of
> Chinese, particularly the elderly, never received
> even the "mandatory" vaccinations and hence are
> unvaccinated.
>
>
> ------------------
> They will smash down your
> > door and worse. Government workers even kill
> > people's pets if their owners have tested
> positive
> > for Covid.
>
> Yep. Zero COVID was an enormous failure and is
> now being compounded by an opening without
> adequate vaccinations or sufficient healthcare
> facilities.
>
>
> ---------------------
> > I find this very odd. Not so long ago China's
> > state bureaucracy was pretending to have had a
> > smaller Covid death total than the UK which has
> a
> > much smaller population.
>
> It's only odd if you haven't dealt with Chinese
> government data before. The official number of
> dead two days ago was 13. The official number of
> new daily infections was approaching 10,000. The
> figures I reproduced were leaked by scientists
> after government briefings.
>
> Again, google.

I hope you are being paid by your beloved Google for all this. Maybe out of some of those taxes they don't pay. It is little more than a forwarding house for Wikipedia.

You are doing little more than regurgitating what you have read in some news article somewhere. Probably syndicated across several outlets. Yes, China can and does force people to do things. It's quite easy to force someone to have an injection: get some big people to grab them and then sit on them and put a needle in them.

I met a woman from Hong Kong a few weeks ago. She moved out of there after some of her students started going missing. No one knows where they are. It reminds me of what happened in Argentina and Chile back in the seventies and eighties. She says they were involved in the protests against Chinese rule there. China is undergoing massive social upheaval just now — huge protests after the collapse of a property bubble. The biggest since Tianamen Square over thirty years ago. But barely a sniffle out of our major news outlets in the west about this. The current lockdowns and restrictions are *very* useful to a struggling CCP regardless of the reality of the health situation.

> It's only odd if you haven't dealt with Chinese
> government data before.

Welcome to sarcasm.

You questioned a source and I told you it would be easy to find if you could get off your ass and look it up. How do you reply? You assert:

1) It is wrong to use google, which implies that you prefer ignorance, confirming a point you have demonstrated many times under myriad nicknames as you scurry about hoping the moderators don't ban you yet again.

2) That I must have found the information from a range of easily available sources, which is what I said in the first place. Do you think repeating my words makes you look intelligent?

You're not the brightest employee in the convenience store, Burned Gate. You complain about your ignorance and then criticize the information when it is shoved under your runny nose. So have it your way: you can continue to exult in your own stupidity as you ride the bus home from your job at the Kwik-E-Mart.

Actually, China did a 180 on their Zero Covid Policy precisely because that policy was finally arousing some serious protests. They figured, probably correctly, that the people had had it with the lockdowns.

Even dictatorships have their limits.


Or are the protests actually because of that collapsed housing bubble, and the government is infecting everyone with covid to quell the unrest? Now there's a creative way to put down a rebellion.

The Chinese-made Covid vaccine, the Sinovac, takes three doses to be (somewhat) effective. That's asking a lot of many people, to show up reliably three times for a vaccine series. And the Sinovac is not nearly as effective as the mRNA vaccines that most people in the U.S. have received.

Hope they change their minds...

https://www.businessinsider.com/china-wont-use-western-covid-19-vaccines-protests-2022-11

According to NBC, many older people living in China have not gotten vaccinated out of fear of side effects. They also saw no reason to get the vaccine in a country that reports virtually no cases.

Only 86.4% of people in China over the age of 60 have gotten their shot, NBC News reported, compared with the US's 93% of people 65 and older. China's biggest problem is people aged 80 and older, however. Only 59% of that age group has received one dose of the vaccine, according to data from the Chinese National Health Commission reported by BBC. Roughly half of that age group received two vaccine doses and 20% have gotten two shots plus a booster.

Despite that, China is still refusing to approve and distribute Western vaccines to innoculate its citizens. In lieu of the Western vaccines, which are based on mRNA, China has been relying on its own brand of jabs, which rely on inactivated, or killed, virus.

But according to Politico, the Chinese vaccines have done little to curb the latest coronavirus variants, including the highly transmissible omicron variant.

Yesterday, my husband tested positive for Covid. His symptoms began on Tuesday. He had a low grade fever and body aches and headache, but the symptoms are fairly mild.

He's feeling better already, and we credit it to getting our vaccines and boosters which were Pfizer. So far, I don't seem to have Covid, or else I'm asymptomatic.

He said that the Chinese tried to offer their vaccines free to Peru because they wanted to see how their vaccine would work on others before trying it on their population. Peru accepted some of the vaccine and tried it on a small part of the population.
They were also testing Pfizer. They quickly saw that Pfizer was more effective than the Chinese vaccine, so they told China to forget it; they were going with Pfizer instead.