Reasons to be Cheerful-parts five and six

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The dual news of vaccines coming over the horizon from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech give reasons to be cheerful, as Ian Dury would have it. But it will take months to work up the manufacturing and dosage capacity. In the meantime there’s a lot of sick people out there who need treatment. So we are pleased to offer two small rays of hope to get on with.

Mouthwash- a surprise kill

Aisha Zaid of Sky News has an intriguing story about how cetylpyridinium chloride (that’s CVC to the ordinary Joe) can wreak terrible mortality on the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Where to find CPC ? In your humble bottle of mouthwash. The sort of news to cheer Donald Trump at one of his press conferences-there’s plenty of mouth to wash.

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-mouthwash-can-kill-coronavirus-within-30-seconds-study-finds-12134289

_{We thank Mr Peter Seymour of Hertfordshire for this lead}

Don’t inflame the situation

As very schoolchild will tell you, one of the terrible problems for Covid-19 sufferers is the “inflammation storm” as the body tries to react to the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in its midst. We understand this to be in part due to the complement system of the blood, part of the body’s natural defences. Bryan Paul Morgan of the Conversation discusses a drug which blocks the C5 protein of this system, bringing new hope to sufferers everywhere. It’s called ravulizumab. The downside is that it costs $6400 a dose. So make sure your country has a good health service, or you’ll soon be putting your house up to mortgage again!

https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-treatments-keep-your-eye-on-anti-complement-drugs-they-look-promising-149775?

_{We thank Mr Gary Herbert of Buckinghamshire for technical advice with this blog}

#ravulizumab #cvc #Sars-coV 2 #covid-19 #coronavirus #donaldjtrump #nhs #cytokinines