Cytokine Storm

Cytokine storm.

Wot zat?

Glad you asked.

Imagine having a very minor kitchen fire – as in ’some grease/oil in a small 6-inch skillet flamed up’ while cooking breakfast one morning.

It’s easily put out by placing a lid on the pan.

Stop the air from getting to it, and VOILA!

Out goes the light.

More’n likely, anyone who’s ever cooked has experienced one.

Not a big deal, right?

So, what if, in response to that minor emergency – and yes, it is an emergency, and yes, it is minor – a fleet of 747 jumbo jets all filled with water (for forest fire-fighting purposes, they’re called “Super Tankers”) flew over your place and dumped it all atop your house?

That’d be pretty extreme, wouldn’t it?

Of course it would!

But would the fire be put out?

Prolly.

But your house would be demolished. Remember: Water weighs 8 pounds per gallon.

The capacity of the Super Tanker is 19,000 gallons, which is 152,000 pounds, or if you prefer, 76 tons.

And, if a fleet of ‘em dumped that amount of water… well, your neighbors’ houses would likely suffer, too.

That’s what cytokine storm is – the body’s triple hyperdrive overreaction to a foreign invader.

So… what’s a cytokine?

Remember when you’d cut your finger with paper? Hurts like hell, doesn’t it? Worse than if you’d used a knife, I’ll bet – unless you cut your finger off, then, that’d REALLY suck.

But still… I’ve never heard nor read of anyone cutting their finger off with a piece of paper. One of those card-throwing experts, maybe could, but not with a regular piece of paper.

So, back to the paper cut.

That paper cut prolly didn’t bleed much, did it? But, it sure got all red and inflamed, didn’t it? Prolly even had some yellowish looking fluid to crust up, or leak out from it as it healed, too. That’s called “serous,” or “serosanguinous” fluid, and is a “relative” to blood, because it contains all the stuff that helps fight infection, like WBCs (White Blood Cells), and other things like cytokines, which are proteins that do all kinds of really kewl things, among which are help fight pain. Cytokines are part of what’s called the Inflammatory Response System – which is what it sounds like: A type of Emergency Response System in the body, much like EMS, Firefighters, and Cops are to public disasters – Emergency Responders.

Cytokines help regulate how many of our body’s “emergency responders” respond to an emergency, which is any kind of injury, whether from an invader, like a virus or bacteria, or whether from a physical injury.

So again, it makes no sense to send 10,000 Firefighters, 10,000 EMTs, and 10,000 cops to your place when somebody threw a rock at your car, or baseball through your house window – right? It’d be way overkill.

And increasingly, we’re seeing that fatal cases of COVID-19 novel coronavirus are accompanied by cytokine storm.

We also know that cytokine storm is often fatal, and are increasingly finding out that cytokine storm is what’s responsible in large part for deaths associated with COVID-19.

So… when the Liar in Chief – who, among other nonsensical phony baloney statements – made some nonsensical rambling free thought on the Sean Hannity Show on March 26, 2020, like this, it defies the imagination that such an ignorant thing could be said – much less believed – but again, there are people who are convinced that the Earth is flat, and they all probably voted for Trump:

“You know, when you talk about buying ventilators, it’s like buying a car. It’s a highly – it’s very expensive, it’s a very intricate piece of equipment – you know what it is, a heavily-computerized, and you know the good ones are very, very expensive, and you know, they’d say, like Governor Cuomo, and others, they’d say ‘we want 30 thousand of ’em.’ Thirty thousand! Think of this: You know, you go to hospitals and you have one, in a hospital. And now, all of a sudden, everybody’s asking for these vast numbers. So… but, ah… we now have companies stepping up, and they’re building them, and they’re doing the masks… we’ve already delivered millions and millions of masks. But remember, we’re really a second line of attack. The first line of attack is supposed to be the hospitals, and the local government, and the states.”

In my entire career, I have NEVER EVER seen, nor heard of a hospital having ONLY ONE ventilator. EVER. And I’ve worked with plenty of ventilated patients, and seen many different kinds of ventilators – from ancient “dinosaur” type, to ultra modern type, and worked in numerous hospitals throughout the nation, from large urban centers, to remote rural ones – coast-to-coast.

So, it’s kinda’ difficult to imagine that he’s doing anything but “talking out his ass” (or empty head – take your pick).

And that goes for the hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin combination which “Dr. Dumbass Trump” has touted.

Look… vitamin C will kill the HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) in vitro (in test tubes). But it won’t cure HIV infection.

Time magazine reported on the matter of hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin combination after the Idiot in Chief after his latest rabble-rousing stirred up the passions of even more empty-headed people, and in part, wrote this word of explanation:

“The excitement over the combination’s potential began with a small French study of people with the novel coronavirus. In those patients, the load of SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, in their blood dropped after they received the medications, ALTHOUGH THEIR CLINICAL SYMPTOMS DIDN’T CHANGE MUCH. [EMPHASIS added] In another study of about 100 patients in China, doctors also reported some success in using the drug duo to reduce the viral load in patients.

“Beyond that, however, there isn’t much evidence about how either hydroxychloroquine or azithromycin works against a coronavirus like SARS-CoV-2. The studies from China and France were not randomized clinical trials—the gold standard in medical research, in which people with similar characteristics are randomly assigned to receive the drug or a placebo. Instead, the data came from case reports, which means the researchers weren’t able to completely account for factors like previous health history that could confound and skew their response.”

But again… viral load isn’t what kills people, per se. It’s important, yes, but in a somewhat similar manner like HIV – which devastates the body’s innate natural ability to fight off even common infections – the COVID-19 novel coronavirus actually causes the body to “self-destruct,” in a sense, via a cytokine storm response.

In the case of COVID-19 novel coronavirus, the symptoms are what kills.

Yes, it’s good that scientists are searching for a medication that will attack the virus itself, just like scientists continue searching for a cure for HIV, and other diseases.

But there’s something to be said about STOPPING the body’s triple hyperdrive overreaction to a foreign invader which itself causes death. And THAT is what will save people – at least for the time being – instead of attempting to reduce viral load. But recall also, that for many viruses, such as chicken pox, HIV, HPV, HSV-1 & 2, Hepatitis A, B & C, etc., once you get it, you have it forever.

So… in that light, here’s some info on COVID-19 and cytokine storm.
(Links open in a new tab.)

COVID-19: consider cytokine storm syndromes and immunosuppression (medical journal, since 1823, The Lancet)
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30628-0/fulltext

The cytokine storm of severe influenza and development of immunomodulatory therapy
(peer-reviewed journal, Cellular & Molecular Immunology)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4711683/
(National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health)

Into the Eye of the Cytokine Storm
(peer-reviewed journal, Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3294426/

Cytokine Reduction in the Setting of an ARDS-Associated Inflammatory Response with Multiple Organ Failure
(peer-reviewed journal, Case Reports in Critical Care)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4739007/

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/why-some-covid-19-cases-are-worse-than-others-67160

https://www.biospace.com/article/cytosorb-the-wuhan-coronavirus-and-cytokine-storm/

https://www.uab.edu/reporter/know-more/publications/item/8909-here-s-a-playbook-for-stopping-deadly-cytokine-storm-syndrome

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/02/here-is-what-coronavirus-does-to-the-body/

2019 Novel Coronavirus and Cytokine Storm

Coronavirus: The 8 big questions that scientists are asking

https://news.yahoo.com/cytosorb-wuhan-coronavirus-cytokine-storm-120100937.html

https://www.vox.com/2020/3/12/21176783/coronavirus-covid-19-deaths-china-treatment-cytokine-storm-syndrome

https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2020/03/the-coronavirus-turns-deadly-when-it-leads-to-cytokine-storm-identifying-this-immune-response-is-key-to-patients-survival-report.html

Yours for better health… and understanding.