 Effectiveness of convalescent plasma therapy in severeCOVID-19 patients.pdf | [Effectiveness of convalescent plasma therapy in severeCOVID-19 patients] | 905 kB |
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Will the Covid 19 emergency ever end? Millions of Italians ask in the face of terrorist statements by "experts" idolized on TV and in mainstream newspapers.
There are two aspects of this question. The purely medical one allows reassuring answers. Quite the opposite, however, for the political-health one where an already bankruptcy management of the health emergency today risks being procrastinated by a truly disheartening "official information".
For example, the one that presents Covid19 as a scourge that can only be defeated by vaccination. And that, after trying to silence, for example, the use of chloroquine and hydrochloroquine and defamed its advocate Didier Raoult, he would now appear to be disinterested in a truly promising serotherapy.
The most comprehensive documentation on plasma therapy in Covid patients can be found in this article, (Kai Duan et al. PNAS.org/2004168117) here just a few words. The plasma transfusion (i.e. the most 'liquid' part of our blood, where antibodies are present formed after the battle won against the virus) has been successfully used in the other two coronavirus epidemics, SARS of 2002 and MERS of 2012 , entering the plasma at a precise stage of the disease; that is, when there is already poor oxygenation and the patient is subjected to assisted ventilation with a C-pap helmet, but is not yet intubated.
It is a therapy that, like many, presents risks but, frankly, it is not clear exactly why the World Health Organization - which had confined its use "only in the case of serious diseases for which there is no effective drug treatment" - did not suggest, at least, the experimentation during this Covid19 emergency.
Despite this, after the positive results attested in the above article, timidly, challenging bureaucratic dispositions, not a few doctors, even in Italy, have started experimenting; in some cases - such as the team of the San Matteo hospital in Pavia - developing health protocols in a week that would have taken months. But do you know what is the most incredible aspect of using this therapy, which is achieving excellent results?
What if it was not for an audio message conveyed on Whatsapp and quickly became (forgive the pun) "viral", almost no Italian doctor would know something of this therapy. Moreover, if colleague Didier Raoult - after having ascertained the boycott and the media lynching to which the anti-Covid19 therapy based on chloroquine was subjected (a drug that no longer having patents is seen as smoke in the eyes by Big Pharma) - were "dirty hands" by putting a video on Youtube that denounced this scandal, for the drug treatment of Covid19 we will still be groping in the dark.
As everywhere, for example, in Germany, you are loosening the bland despite prophylactic measures there turned to face the Covid19, in Italy, to prepare for Phase 2, the litany goes crazy "to live with the virus." While waiting for the messianic arrival of the vaccine, it proposes "solutions" such as beaches dotted with umbrellas shielded by plexiglass panels or sanitary cords to isolate Lombardia.
Let's clear up a question right away. In Italy, the ones infected by Covid19 are not the 175,000 counted today by the Civil Defence, based only on the few diagnostic swabs made by the Regions. Absolutely not. The most reliable estimates show, like the periodic flu epidemics, from six to ten million infected by Covid19 in Italy. I speak of estimates (based on the transmission rate of the infection recorded in other countries or of what is recorded on the Diamond Princess ship) as satisfactory epidemiological investigations (based on serological analyzes and on statistically valid population samples) in Italy, incredibly, have not been still done. And in this regard, I do not know exactly which investigations prof. Blusaferro, president of the institute of health, has obtained the number of people infected in Italy to even advise against sunbathing on the beaches.
With the percentage of infected people highlighted by the estimates, it can be deduced that, in Italy, everything Covid19 could have done - in terms of recovered, immune, deceased… - has already done so. So, in my opinion, the current goal should not be to stem an indiscriminate contagion but, for example, to protect the elderly, restore the intensive care network (compromised by cuts to our health system) and, above all, structure an investigation national serum-epidemiology (currently only that of the Tuscany Region is in the pipeline) that allows us to keep the situation under control.
My teacher, who even considered me his "godson", was Albert Sabin, the inventor of the polio vaccine. Imagine, therefore, if I underestimate the importance of vaccines. But for some viruses - as I believe it is for Covid19 - the vaccine may prove to be a chimera. As was the case for the AIDS vaccine, which has been presented as "imminent" for almost forty years. And statements such as those of the deputy health minister say that "we either keep still and closed in the house or we get vaccinated and take back our lives". Or the disconcerting initiative of Governor Zingaretti, given that the vaccine for Covid19 is not there, to oblige all the elderly of Lazio (under penalty of their exclusion from public events) and all health personnel (under penalty of their dismissal) to be vaccinated against … the flu.
Among other things, it must be said that this Covid19 is not a biblical condemnation but one of the many epidemics that have served to fortify our immune system; which, incidentally, falls apart if, like larvae, we are holed up at home and, moreover, trembling with fear at the apocalyptic nonsense they tell us on TV.
But practically all viruses change; and not inevitably worse for us. The Coronavirus responsible for the infamous SARS epidemic of 2002-2003, for example, seems to have disappeared from the scene. I don't see why the same thing could not happen for Covid19. It would therefore be appropriate to hurry to restore the rhythms of our life with those prior to the Covid emergency19; above all to avoid that the economic situation following this emergency does not condemn us to starvation. This certainly does not mean forgetting the follies that have punctuated this emergency in Italy. First of all a terrorist information campaign - which ended up institutionalizing a staggering lethality index for Covid19 (to understand 28 times that of Germany) - which forced, yes, the population to barricade themselves at home but which, provoking panic, prevented general practitioners from visiting patients' homes; patients who, therefore, often indiscriminately, were transported to increasingly crowded wards to die from hospital infections. That already, in Italy, 50,000 people are taken away every year.
Primary emeritus of the Hospital "D. Cotugno ", Naples
Chairman of the Commission on Biotechnology of the Virosphere, WABT - UNESCO, Paris
Rector of the University Thomas More U.P.T.M., Rome
President of the Beaumont Bonelli Foundation for cancer research - ONLUS, Naples
