Friday, August 29, 2014

Coral Snakes & Ebola Virus

I read this article from the NY Times saying that government is cracking down on companies selling cures or preventative medicine for ebola.  Sounds reasonable enough, since you don't want people getting ripped off or poisoned, but some radically paranoid bloggers are suggesting that the government is trying to crack down on possible cures.  Those kind of leaps toward hysteria seem to drive more traffic than my blog, so here's my take on the situation.

Personally I'm more concerned about the U.S. government's failure to do something about the absence of coral snake venom from hospitals, which could result in an apocalypse of highly neurotoxic envenomation in an America.  It's hard to call these docile and candy-colored little elapids "terrorists," but they are native American and quite deadly if allowed to chew on exposed skin.  Fortunately, the NFL's New England Patriots' quarterback superstar and supermodel-husband, Tom Brady, took the time to film a bare-chested, public service announcement on YouTube to warn people about the danger of coral snakes amongst us.


Come Halloween Night 2014, all coral snake antivenom will be past its already-extended expiration date from the FDA.  This colorful relative of the taipan, krait, and cobra will have free reign among the living, who will no longer have recourse to antivenom, only a potentially awful death!!

Now back to the pestilence of Ebola on the world stage.  I'm not selling a product or pretending to be a doctor, nor have I ever played one on TV.  However, if we did end up in this nightmarish, 28 Days Later scenario, here's what I would do.  Basically, it's the same thing I do for the common cold...

Take lots of zinc.  Zinc was used as a treatment to smallpox and scarlet fever.  I have several bottles in my cupboard which I tap whenever I feel flu symptoms coming on.  I also eat lots of garlic, because the allicin in raw garlic is considered to be good for fighting viruses.  My ex-girlfriend also claimed these measures were effective at stopping herpes outbreaks.  On top of that, I take the herb echinacea, which another ex-girlfriend turned me on to and she was so hot, she had to know what she was talking about.  Oh, and lots of Vitamins C and D.  That's the WARR Blog remedy for the common cold.  I have no idea if it will work for ebola, but figure it's better than nothing.




All that said, my best wishes go out to the people of Africa who are going through this.  Maybe the CDC needs to get back to basics and just think about addressing zinc deficiency (as with smallpox) as a cheap way of ameliorating the progression of ebola.  All options should be on the table to stop this plague.





No comments: