Hacker News Reader

Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

It's easy to see how basic science like this leads to people flocking to not-fully-proven solutions.

I need to not catch COVID-19 for around five weeks. My wife is due to give birth, and if I'm COVID positive I can't be with her in the hospital. If she catches COVID, that's also a really bad situation. So naturally, I'm pretty desperate for any shred of hope or control. Reading this, my instinct is to walk over to the nearest dispensary and buy a lot of CBD.

But this study is very preliminary. It's early. This could have been a fluke of the data. There could be effects not being correctly measured.

And so I have to have this great internal debate: "There's nothing unsafe about this; I have no issues with using CBD; this might help; I've got nothing else I can really do other than lock myself up at home, which I'm doing". Vs "The science isn't there; I'm already triple vaccinated; and the very act of leaving home to go buy CBD is an exposure risk".

View on HN

(I strongly agree with what you've said re: "But this study... fluke... not correctly measured")

At the risk of offering un-asked for advice, I have no problem settling that debate! I think we share similar enough opinions regarding the underlying things that our conclusions would align.

I'd attack it by using numbers. :D Measure the possible gain and possible loss for each choice, and choose the one with the EV or probability distribution you prefer, given your risk transfer function.

You can get (approximate, but better than ex-recto!) hard numbers for the approximate risk of contracting COVID under a variety of changing variables. Shoutout to microcovid.org. For instance, I used their calculator to estimate the risk of a 3x vaccinated, KN95 mask wearing person such as myself, in my area, to have a 5 minute long (does it really take that long?) indoor shopping trip where I would be ~3 feet apart from anyone, with ~2 people in the room. Provided the other person's masked, and assuming there's no talking (which is a fib, but more close to reality than assuming it's 5 minutes of active conversation), I get ~13 microcovids. If I change that to assuming talking for 5 minutes, ~64 microcovids.

To provide scale for the units, if you "spend" 200 microcovids per week, it works out to 1% covid/year.

Given that, it feels easy to pop the balloon that the risk from going to the store outweighs the tiny statistical benefit of doing so. And if you really wanna pop that balloon, simply have a someone do it for you, and meet outside. 1 minute, being 3 feet away from a average unmasked person in my area, while outdoors, is then ~1.3 microcovids. :)

yay numbers.

According to this site I "spent" no less than 200,000 "microcovids" last week. It was a normal week, like pretty much any other week in the past year, and I am not a particularly social person.

I see no contradiction here. :) My weeks are possibly in a similar range as yours, now that I'm no longer avoiding it, I haven't used the site in months.

This lines up with my understanding that it's endemic, and at a high level of prevalence in the population (in my area of the US). This also lines up with my understanding that the majority carrying it are asymptomatic, and that among the symptomatic, only the unvaxed or immunocompromised get sick enough for it to be the primary cause of hospitalization. Hence, significant danger only exists for the unvaxed or immunocompromised.

The website is helping you think about the risk through approximating the probability of getting SARS-CoV-2. For me, I've accepted that P ~= 1.

What it's not telling you is the probability that when you contract SARS-CoV-2, you'll regret it, or even know that it happened.

The OP is in a completely different situation though. Vaccines aren't approved for a newborn (tho, there's promising indications that pregnant mothers who are vaccinated pass some benefits to the child!), and putting that aside, for OP, contracting even asymptomatic COVID could mean missing the birth, which I'm guessing has a cost approaching -infinity.

Nice site, but I'd argue 'went to a bar in the last 10 days' is not equal in risk as the risk of an acute covid patient, yet it counts as the same 1M microcovid.

~4-8% of the bar is/was certainly actively infected, so..?

Just commenting to wish you all the best, I'm in the same 5 weeks to birth "boat" :)

I wish you and your soon to be increased family all the best.

Yep same here, 5 weeks until my wife gives birth to our first child.

Guess we all were getting hot and frisky last May / June after getting vaccinated.

Wish you guys all the best, I'm playing the same nervous waiting game.

Thanks, and best to you too.

People keep saying "Isn't it exciting?". I say "Yeah, like when you're being slowly pulled up to the top of the roller coaster hill. Exciting. Very exciting."

That's a great description. I'm "stealing" it.

CBD may have the added benefit of helping to ease the stress of your situation.

Personally, I don't enjoy the feelings of THC, but CBD seems to work more like medicine in my case. It calms me down and I don't feel impaired. It's sort of like the feeling of l-theanine in green tea.

What do you have to lose by trying some? Anecdotally, I've found that "full spectrum" CBD works better.

>Anecdotally, I've found that "full spectrum" CBD works better.

There's a term bantered about of "gang effect" where each of the cannabinoids working together as a whole is much more effective than isolated cannabinoids like CBD,CBG,CBN,etc. We're just so far behind on research on what this plant can do for us because of the past century's stigmatization. So many many more studies will need to be done on each of the individual cannabinoids to see if the full spectrum effect is real. It wasn't until the 1990s before we recognized that there is an endocnnabinoid system[0] in our bodies.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocannabinoid_system

I'm planning on making some tinctures of "full spectrum" CBD, except I'll be using a mixture of unactivated THC and CBD flower as well as activated, so that I can capture the precursor cannaboidals as well.

Dispensaries deliver. You can also order CBD online, I highly recommend Lazarus Naturals.

Your internal dilemma seems self imposed. Even if it provides you a placebo effect, so what? And, look, triple vaccinated doesn’t mean much as it relates to catching or transmission of omnicron. Clearly it will protect you from dying but I know dozens of triple vaccinated people that had covid over the past couple weeks. You seem to understand this, which is why you are even considering the CBD. So order it online. Literally no reason not to if it will give you peace of mind.

The systemic risk being, if people trust CBD is protecting them, then they may decrease other mitigations.

Ie a false sense of security

The parent comment wasn't talking about systemic risk, but personal: anybody who's able to grok the parent comment's point about this potentially not providing any incremental safety is capable of understanding that it doesn't warrant relaxing other constraints.

Ie,there's an easy path here to reduce your likely risk by applying this potential mitigation without changing anything else. The fact that there are people too dumb to take this option (which I agree with you about) has no bearing on an individual's decision to do so.

CBD doesn't get you high; I believe there are several other studies suggesting it treats stress and anxiety (which you might benefit from), and inflammation.

I'd suggest doing some research on it at least. If it sounds like something you might benefit from, it's not terribly expensive to buy enough to last you 5 weeks.

The going rate over here is about 30 Euros for 10ml of 5% solution, which the last time I checked out the current studies, was about the daily amount needed for it to have any effect. That's pretty expensive.

Not everywhere, of course, but in the US I buy bulk CBD isolate from Oregon for $0.85/g. Full spectrum distillate prices are around double that.

I recommend creating your own tinctures with MCT oil.

Creating your own tincture is the way. I was able to buy 2 lbs of CBD flower for 60usd, because I bought in bulk. I don't even know what to do with all that.

Its cheaper and easier to work with/measure precisely/accurately if you get the full spectrum CBD extracts or distillates rather than raw flower

Usually suppliers give at least percentages for the CBD content and I bet you can get numbers for the rest if you ask. It makes dosing far more consistent

The full spectrum is more? Its always been less than isolate in my experience, isolate takes more processing

Got a link? That beats the prices I've gotten.

> nothing else I can really do other than lock myself up at home

OTC nasal sprays have been used for years by dentists and others, but like everything else these days, are contested, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29620297

If one is concerned about possibly-false positives in a test, there may be value in OTC nasal treatments.

> The Response we filed also includes a new in vitro study done at Utah State University’s Institute for Antiviral Research. This new in vitro study found that the components in Xlear were significantly more effective antivirals against the Delta strain of COVID-19 than Remdesivir, the Government-approved antiviral medicine. Ironically, the Government alleges it is Xlear that has misled the public.

I have used a Netti pot style device with a very small amount of diluted hydrogen peroxide to treat sinus infections for years. At the recommendation of my doctor.

//sarcasm// But for treating covid that idea is preposterous.

You probably already know this, but please don't use tap water directly, even filtered, into your nasal cavities as it carries risk of death [0].

> Sterile water, which is free of bacteria and viruses, is recommended for use in neti pots. Tap water can be used only if it has been passed through a special filter or boiled for three to five minutes, then left to cool until lukewarm. Most bottled “spring” water is not considered sterile, so it should not be used unless it is boiled first.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/careful-use-neti-...

That would be competition for the upcoming patented nasal anti-viral delivery products - including one where patent was awarded to use repurposed drugs of Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, and some other one.

Take 10,000 UI vitamin D3 liquid form until your blood lab test results show adequate levels; obvious need to do this with your doctor.

Google searching for info puts all kinds of low quality results at the top, so I'll share video link of Bret Weinstein having 2 hour long conversation with 2 researchers who dove into the vitamin D studies, so you can hear their conclusions, actually here's a 17 minute clip - https://youtu.be/_xfzsEc0CTo - where first 5+ minutes gives good overview to begin, with YouTube and Spotify links to full version in clip description.

If I remember correctly, in that conversation, the 2 researchers say that taking 10,000 IU is a bad idea. Your body immediately bounces back down as soon as you stop taking it, they say. Instead they recommend taking more moderate doses to gradually raise your level.

I don't remember them saying that - perhaps I'll rewatch. The amount they say causes a reduction was when giving 80,000 UI in a single dose because your body then initiates a process to break it down. Years ago a naturopath told me to load up via 20,000 UI for a few days and then do 10,000 UI. Obviously each person is different and why you need blood work to check.

This is great logic. This is sane logic. This is how science is supposed to be approached.

We have a small amount of papers that shows this has potential, let's wait and see... one (or a few papers) does not mean it's totally accurate.

Let's let other studies come out and see what they come up with.

One study may not capture the entire picture and there could be more issues which these initital studies don't capture.

Also initial studies could have testing errors which get uncovered in future studys with different P.I.'s and experiemental setups.

I don't understand why people apply this logic to CBD but not experimental mRNA vaccines, and subsenquently why the FDA is fighting a FOIA request to release it's data claiming it will take 75 years to release.

So now other researchers can't verify it.

This is the opposite of science.

> I don't understand why people apply this logic to CBD but not experimental mRNA vaccines, and subsenquently why the FDA is fighting a FOIA request to release it's data claiming it will take 75 years to release.

mRNA technology is not new, it's been worked on for years and years. We were slated to get it around 2030 or 2040, we're just getting the advancement a bit earlier than the normal timeline. Sometimes discoveries happen earlier than they "ought" to, my fav example before mRNA was the video camera and TV. Invented before stereo radio, IIRC, in the late 20s.

DARPA started injecting money into the field in 2013, and that's after it had been studied as "the next big thing in medicine" for some time. I worked as a programmer in a lab 10 years ago and "mRNA tech" was talked about the way us computer people talk about photonics, for example. The only reason the vaccine was ready so darn fast was because of the years of prior work on mRNA technology generally, combined with the fact that The Science Community (tm) had already spent years, money, and hundreds of graduate students (I imagine) specifically on stabilizing the spike protein following the SARS outbreak in 2003.

When the new one came along, I think we'd be in a different situation (dead. I think we'd be much more dead.) if there hadn't been prior research into how to stabilize that protein in just the right shape, or if there wasn't a decade of for-profit startup research behind it and even more public university research, for decades (plural).

Oh, and also, I think your criticism of the FDA is spot on, I think and hope they lose the case in court. I just think it has nothing to do with anything else, it's just government bureaucracy being stupid, sometimes they need a FOIA request and a lawsuit to stop that crap.

this Cannabidiol study did not test on human participants, the mRNA vaccines did. They needed to do that before even emergency authorization.

What about hemp seeds, do they have the protein? Buy some online or with a grocery order.

It sounds like you are doing yourself more damage than good. The vaccines were approved temporarily to prevent transmission, if they aren't doing their job and you isolate you are also risking your mental health because of companies that lied when they submitted their authorizations.

Why not have a friend pick some up for you?

Look into delivery, maybe?

I wish you luck

Can you order it from Jeff Bezos?

Yes, you can get 10,000mg/30ml CBD tinctures from AMZN. I can't imagine how there's any possibility that it is not fake.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com