Phenylephrine Sucks
When methamphetamine production started taking off in America, laws mandated that pseudoephedrine, which can be used to produce meth and is also the main decongestant in products like Sudafed, had to be sold from behind the counter at pharmacies. Photo ID was required, and this all put a real crimp on sales numbers (not to mention making customers feel like criminals for buying it.)
So the pseudoephedrine producers did what any greedy corporation would do – they reformulated their products with phenylephrine, a useless “decongestant” that was legal to sell from the retail floor.
But we cannot stress this enough – phenylephrine DOES NOT WORK. It does nothing. You're being hoodwinked. It's worth the time to get the real stuff behind the counter.
Derek Lowe nerds out on the chemistry of pseudoephedrine and phenylephrine here.
You’re All Gonna Die
This one was a self-reported, food-diary study which are known to be notoriously unreliable. But don’t fret, these researchers were able to control for “age, sex, education, physical activity, smoking, body mass index, height, weight gain during follow-up, diabetes, family history of cancer, number of 24-hour dietary records, and baseline intakes of energy, alcohol, sodium, saturated fatty acids, fibre, sugar, fruit and vegetables, whole-grain foods, and dairy products”
Suuuuure, they just controlled for 19 variables and got legitimate results from self reported data. Call us skeptical. After all those controls, they claim there is a 13% higher incidence of cancer in people who drink a single diet coke per day vs. those who drink almost no artificial sweeteners.
It’s worth noting that for whatever reason, these high consumers of artificial sweeteners also happened to be the most obese, the likeliest to smoke, the likeliest to have previously smoked, the least physically active, the biggest consumers of sugary drinks, the lowest consumers of fruit/vegetable, the highest consumers of ultra-processed foods...control all you want – when the sample is skewed that badly, it’s hard to believe whatever comes out the other end. Garbage in, garbage out.
Our opinion is these studies are useless other than for PR. Nowadays, with excruciatingly complex statistical software, researchers ruthlessly massage their data until they sing. Controlling for 19 variables in a self-reported food diary study and acting like the results are real and actionable is almost scientific charlatainism.
(Competing interests: The author of this rant consumes plentiful amounts of fake sugars and plugs his ears and sings anytime a study says they're bad.)
Diff'rent Pokes
In a piece published this week, a group identified some differences in the antibodies created within patients who received either the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna mRNA vaccine. People with knowledge on immunology fully expected this to be the case, but this new research has shone a light on some specifics.
One limitation of this study is it all seems to be pre-Omicron, so possibly not as informative as it could be. Presuming there are no other negative indicators, it may prove to be optimal to flipflop back and forth each time a person receives an mRNA vaccine dose, though this study is not proof.
Covid Mortality Continues to Wane
Covid mortality rates keep dropping and are approaching influenza levels – for now. Could always jump again, but flu mortality rates also jump and drop from year to year. When will broader society accept the inevitable endemicity of Covid? Still no way to know, but it seems like a large swathe of society will simply not go back to pre-pandemic life. You do you.
CDC said Covid hospitalization rates are improving in children, but they did make sure to note that hospitalizations per 100,000 kids remained higher in early March 2022 than in July 2021. Gee, whatever could cause more sickness to be passed from child-to-child in early March vs July. Maybe the fact that it’s the school year and it’s basically still winter for a lot of people?
Still a Neigh
A study out of Brazil showed a three-day course of ivermectin did not reduce Covid hospitalizations in human beings. This will have precisely zero effect on the Cult of Ivermectin’s views as facts don’t change beliefs that were arrived at factlessly.
CAR-T Summary
An investor on Twitter explained in pretty simply language the decade-long path CAR T/Cell Therapy has taken in the biotech industry. It’s informative and concise, but as with anything a Twitter investor says, know this person has a financial interest in at least some of the companies they mention.
