Health and Vitality Naturals

The talk of the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treatment of COVID-19 is often advocated for by those physicians who use it in combination with Zinc (a common nutritional supplement). Many studies, including a recent report by Horbym and Landray (2020), however have indicated that hydroxychloroquine has not been shown to be effective in treatment of COVID-19. The question then is, on what grounds are those claiming hydroxychloroquine being effective in treatment of coronavirus infection emanating from? Advocates of effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine claim that evidence is obtained from their practical clinical practices. They use hydroxychloroquine in combination with zinc and have witnessed a hands on life-saving experience, attributing treatment success to hydroxychloroquine. However, are these assertions true? Apparently yes - a combination of hydroxychloroquine and zinc is believed to be effective in treating COVID-19, but of the two entities, the main player in the tr...

Effects of the coronavirus infection are variably uneven around the globe. Messaging on intervention measures is also featuring in two distinct dimensions, one (inclined towards the biomedical model)represented by countries such as the USA, the UK, Brazil, etc. is centred on long term plans for the search for therapeutic drugs and vaccines against COVID-19. The second dimension is aligned to alternative or integrative health intervention approaches, represented largely by counties in the Asian region including China, advocate for inclusion of natural health healing modalities (use of foods, nutritional supplements, herbs, etc.). The challenge is: are the so called health experts and/or policy makers still guided by science-based evidence on their advisory messaging and if so, where is the science and where is the evidence to help the world contain the scourge of COVID-19 pandemic? Here are a few highlights of emerging findings of some recent studies, in support or dismissing c...

I have consistently questioned the scientific basis of adopting several of the current intervention measures against the coronavirus pandemic, of which wearing face masks is one of them. It is strikingly surprising to note that the call for wearing face masks by policy maker advisers, especially from regions where cases are on the surge, is getting louder and making it mandatory in some public places. All this is done in the name of "following the science".  However, some other health science professionals are convinced that ordinary face masks are unlikely to be effective in preventing transmission of the virus from person to person, arguing the virus particle can pass through these ordinary face masks. They argue that only N95 masks used as personal protective equipment (PPEs) in specialized, specific health care facilities are known to prevent transmission of respiratory system infectious microbes including viruses by about 95%. Otherwise use of ordinary face masks me...

The widely used current intervention approaches against COVID-19 which include lock-downs, social distancing, face masks, etc. are a serious source of inconveniences on routine day to day life activities, other disruptions, and are a significant source of stress and therefore should not be accepted as the “new normal.” In any case, the establishment of these current intervention measures raises a lot of doubt on their scientific basis, and therefore their usefulness, as more emerging knowledge on this pandemic, such as that from Ioannidis (2020) and Kupherschmidt (2020),  point out to the fact that, there are some inadequacies on the currently available data as well as deep-seated obscurities in the philosophical worldviews and assumptions from which the these current intervention measures might have been conceived. The framers of these current intervention measures did not seem to have considered the host (humans) as active living entities in the pathogen-host interactions, w...