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Comment by timonoko | Hacker News Reader

Sounds batshit crazy. But so it says:

Patients who initiated isotonic saline nasal irrigation after a positive COVID-19 PCR test were 19 times less likely to be hospitalized than the national rate.

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Crazy how? With the caveat that I know essentially nothing about biology past school lessons and therefore I have a real risk of being dangerously naive, to me this seems more like a Columbus Egg to me: Washing hands reduces the risk for other diseases, this is washing inside one of areas the disease targets.

That could be, but I also think people given a task by authority are likely to have a placebo response and down play symptoms that could cause the authority to question their compliance.

FYI the pre-print has been updated [1]. It now says 8 times less likely.

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.16.21262044v...

Dammit. It would have been funny if flushing was more effective than vaccination. Was it 13 times less deaths with Delta-variant?

Nobody in this study used just an isotonic saline solution, they added either Povidone-iodine (an antiseptic) or Sodium bicarbonate aka baking soda (making the solution slightly alkaline). Saltwater and basic irrigation appear to be fairly commonplace, I'm not sure about the iodine. The paper warns that prolonged use of an iodine irrigant should be accompanied by monitoring of thyroid function. But using the alkaline solution was almost as effective, if the paper is to be believed, anyway (they reference another paper where saline solution provided no benefit).

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