News you can use for Christmas: Carrageenan, Irish Moss in nasal sprays reduced Covid infections by 80%

Irish Moss, red seaweed, Carageenan.

Irish Moss, by Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler’s Medizinal-Pflanzen. |  1896

More than one hundred years ago the Irish believed an extract from a red seaweed could cure sick cows, and humans with colds and flu’s. In terms of early treatment modern medical science is slowly catching up with 19th Century farmers.  In a small trial this year medical workers were 80% less likely to catch Covid if they were using a nasal spray with the “Irish Moss” carrageenan extract. It’s only a case of 2 out of 200 catching Covid in the test group, compared to 10 out of 200 in the placebo group, so the “80%” is a rubbery number, but it was a randomized control trial, and there are other lab test results which suggest the effect is real.

And because we recently figured out it was useful against common colds and influenza’s, nasal sprays with this common safe food additive are already on sale at the Chemist. So you can pop in and get one before Christmas Parties.

Carrageenan or “Irish Moss” is a polysaccaride gel from a red seaweed. It works by gumming things up for quite a few viruses — basically getting in the way and trapping them in the gel. The idea is to squirt it up your nose three or four times a day to make it hard for a virus to get in. Not as much fun as a glass of champers, but more fun than a head cold.

Carrageenan is  a food additive, and it’s so safe a 70kg person could eat half a kilo of it a day “with no adverse effects”.  So it’s safer than table salt. We’ve known since the 1980s carrageenan’s been useful in the lab against influenza viruses, coronavirus OC43, rhinoviruses, and coxsackievirus. Which is why it’s been put into commercial nasal sprays. One here in Australia is called Flo Travel, aimed at travellers sitting on planes, but there will be others. Look for iota-Carrageenan in the ingredients.

In Ireland it’s use goes back to about 400AD, but in places like China, about 14,000 years. Currently carrageenan is added as a thickener to things like icecreams.

Seriously — a nasal spray?

Two years ago I would have said “bollocks.” I assumed that a squirt up the nose wouldn’t stop all the virions and it seemed an exercise in futility. It only takes one virion to get through the gates and it will make 1000 babies. By the time one baby virus gets into your lungs, the nasal squirty spray will be irrelevant. But the vast area at the back of your nose and mouth is often the first spot an airborne virus latches onto.  There is something like one square meter of surface area behind our noses for viruses to romp in:

The nasal cavity has a volume of between 15 and 19 ml, and a macroscopic surface area of 150–180 cm2, however the presence of microstructures such as microvilli on the columnar cells drastically increase this surface area to around 96,000 cm2

—  Robinson et al

And if the gel spray misses the first virus, it can still be there to catch a lot of the baby-viruses as they leak out of the hijacked cell. That means a big reduction in viral load, which means less chance of the virus getting into your lungs, or your digestive tract, and less chance of breathing it out and infecting a friend. It also means you can slow the rampant exponential phase and buy your immune system time to find the right key and make the right weapons. In the arms race of exponential expansion, extra time at the start is a big advantage.

The back of your nose is the new frontier

 Head anatomy with olfactory nerve, including labels for the nasal cavity, olfactory nerves,

Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator

It’s not just nasal sprays, there are also throat gargles, nasal washes, and all kinds of ways to killing or flush virions out at the start. The Docs in Spain with the remarkable 100% survival rate used nasal washes with bicarb. I’ll write more on these other strategies soon.

So, spray away before events, you’re less likely to catch Covid and quite a few other viruses, and if you do catch something, then it’ll still likely reduce the length of time you are ill.

Apparently sucking carragelose lozenges might work too.

It’s just another early treatment that our Minister for Health forgot to mention

The big question is, like always, we’ve clearly known this was a reasonable possibility since the very beginning of the Covid epidemic, yet here we are, billions of dollars worth of lockdowns and five million dead people later, and the giant industrial medical complex didn’t think it was worth mentioning. No “awareness” campaigns, no free samples from every GP. No government advertising, no news spots.

It’s yet another cheap and safe way to slow the virus, but still have more normal lives.

People using carrageenan got better faster.

Carageenan gel, Covid.

Click to enlarge.

In another bonus, not only does it reduce the length of long colds, it also reduces the recurrence of them.

I didn’t realize recurring colds were “a thing” but apparently, they are. With the common cold coronavirus nearly half the placebo group got recurring symptoms later, but with the carageenan treatment only a fifth did.

Carrageenan, Covid, Colds, coronavirus, nasal spray

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC8204093/pdf/PRP2-9-e00810.pdf

Hemilä et al

There is an interesting discussion on the preprint Figeroa paper. The two positive cases in the test group were on day 2 and day 5, which means the first one was probably already infected before the trial started.

h/t Old Ozzie, Krishna Gans

 

 

REFERENCES

Figueroa JM, Lombardo ME, Dogliotti A, et al. Efficacy of a nasal spray containing Iota-Carrageenan in the postexposure prophylaxis of COVID-19 in hospital personnel dedicated to patients care with COVID-19 disease. Int J Gen Med. 2021;14:6277-6286. doi:10.2147/IJGM.S328486

Morokutti-Kurz M, Graf P, Grassauer A, Prieschl-Grassauer E. (2020) SARS-CoV-2 in-vitro neutralization assay reveals inhibition of virus entry by iota-carrageenan. PLOS One. doi:10.1101/2020.07. 28.22473321.

Harri HemiläElizabeth Chalker  (2021) Carrageenan nasal spray may double the rate of recovery from coronavirus and influenza virus infections: Re-analysis of randomized trial data,. Pharmacol Res Perspect, 2021 Aug;9(4):e00810. doi: 10.1002/prp2.810.

Bar On et al (2020) SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) by the numbers, 2020; 9: e57309.  Published online 2020 Apr 2. doi: 10.7554/eLife.57309

9.4 out of 10 based on 62 ratings

84 comments to News you can use for Christmas: Carrageenan, Irish Moss in nasal sprays reduced Covid infections by 80%

  • #
    Ian1946

    Omicron is not normal. No immediate progenitors are known; its closest relatives are viruses last seen in early- to mid-2020. The orthodox explanation for this awkward fact, is that it has spent the last 18 months lurking “in a geography with poor genomic surveillance … or … in a chronically infected individual.” The simpler explanation is that it leaked from a laboratory.

    https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/omicron-is-not-normal

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    • #
      Analitik

      If it was made in a lab, let’s thank those who released it as it’s mildness is destroying the lockdown/vaccination narrative.

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      • #
        Analitik

        And here is an article by Dr Robert Malone of mRNA gene therapy fame discussing the Hong Kong paper that I linked to previously. As well as going further into the mechanism of how Omicron infects nasal passages far better but is far less capable at infecting lung tissue compared to Delta (hence it’s greater infectiousness and mildness), he looks into the evolutionary pathways for Omicron.

        One thing that has always fascinated me about viral evolution (or any evolution, for that matter) is the existence of evolutionary islands. Regions of genetic optimization that may not be the best solution, but which might require genetic changes which are less adaptive for a given environment before they are able to reach a new genetic “island” that is more optimal. Once a population (swarm) of viruses are able to bridge the evolutionary barriers to reach a new “island”, then they have a sort of evolutionary burst that can result in many changes within a short period of time as they evolve to adapt to the new optimum of that “island”. Perhaps what we are seeing with Omicron is the genetic consequence of one of these evolutionary bursts.

        https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/has-omicron-shifted-receptor-binding

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        • #

          Viruses evolve to survive and whatever random combinations of mutations survives best keeps the strain alive. The particular combination of mutations in Omicron seems to be optimized to get past the protection of the mRNA vaccine which target just the one spike protein, which is where most of the mutations seem to be and why even boosted people are still getting sick. It’s definitely not the un-vaccinated that caused this one to develop and spread.

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      • #
        Ted1

        Same lab or different lab?

        10

      • #
        Geoff+Croker

        The latest flim flam is that you ARE NOT vaccinated unless your vaccine status is up to date, eg 3 jabs. This was decided at our masters’ meeting yesterday.

        Never ending jab$ coming to us by edict.
        Driven by fear marketed by the same Masters.
        In order to get re-elected.

        You can’t have a democracy if there are three levels of committees.
        They ALL fight each other to get the money and power.
        They ALL lie to keep same.

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        • #
          Mark Allinson

          Can’t wait to see the triple vaxxed sneering at the double vaxxed for being “anti-vaxxers.”

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          • #
            paul courtney

            Mr. Allinson: Perfect! Joe Brandon should be blaming the next imagined surge on the un-vaxxed (to include those who got the booster in the last fortnight).

            40

    • #
      farmerbraun

      Either way , it is still Sars-CoV-2 , isn’t it? And that has been around since at least mid 2019.
      So why would it not have been lurking about the whole time? Especially if it is barely discernible as much more than a sniffle?

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      • #
        Klem

        Exactly, Omicron has likely been around all along, but they’ve only been testing for it in the last month or so. The more they test the more infections they find. The more they find the more they use the data to terrify people.

        Why do people not understand this yet?

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      • #
        KP

        “And that has been around since at least…. late 2017 !! Shortly before they saw the satellite photos of the hospital carparks fill up in China and their coal usage drop as industry slowed down in 2018. Something happened there that they didn’t understand at the time, or didn’t say anything about.

        Then the proto-Covid19 worked its way down through SE Asia as most viruses do, so those people were already building an immunity that we missed out on. Onto Africa through the Chinese aid workers and it sat over there before popping up again as Omicron.

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    • #
      TedM

      Surprising that Phizer isn’t trying to sell it.

      20

  • #
    Analitik

    But who really needs it now with the Omicron variant being so mild? Just like the EU approving Novavax, it’s too late to really matter unless we dig in and somehow hold back the Omicron tide and keep having to live with the Delta variant.

    Just to further illustrate the fear porn that occurs at government levels, the UK Sage modellers admit that they only model bad outcomes for infection waves because that’s what they’re asked to do

    Here is part of the Twitter conversation that Graham Medley, the chair of the Sage modelling committee, had with a journalist.

    We generally model what we are asked to model. There is a dialogue in which policy teams discuss with the modellers what they need to inform their policy.

    Decision-makers are generally on only interested in situations where decisions have to be made.

    https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/my-twitter-conversation-with-the-chairman-of-the-sage-covid-modelling-committee

    Omicron? Bring it on!

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  • #
    MrGrimNasty

    The seaweed also contains iodine/sulphur, both have sterilizing effects, iodine is very effective against (esp. enveloped) viruses even at low concentrations. So there may be more than one reason behind the Irish folklore.

    330

    • #
      Ted1

      I think I have told this one before, but here again.

      About 20 years ago an old? lady rang in to 2CR Orange on the ABC regional radio network. I heard her.

      In the 1880s in England her grandfather contracted blood poisoning from a leg injury. There was great consternation in the household, because the breadwinner was about to die.

      Her grandmother answered a knock on the door, to find a hawker. He, seeing her distress, inquired the problem. He went to his cart, came back with some cobwebs and mouldy bread, and instructions on how to make a poultice from this to apply to the wound. Her grandfather recovered. The wound healed.

      When Penicillin came into use years later, there was great excitement in the family because this explained the grandfather’s recovery.

      So, the scientists knew in 1940. The hawker knew in 1880. Hawkers tended to be Gypsies or Indians. For how many generations had that knowledge been handed down?

      Just as today, the information was probably hidden to avoid competition.

      210

      • #

        Even the old Egyptiens 2 or 3k years BC new about s.th. like Penicillin. One of the medical papyrus was written about the treatment of an infection of the eyes with Nil water, but only water with mould on the surface.

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        • #

          After a longer reflection I remember, that in the papyrus, they spoke about worms causing blindness, so the Egyptians may even have discoverd the first Ivermectin use.

          20

    • #

      Is that why garlic is good for you? It has sulphur compounds and I have seen trials where it grew better with a gypsum fertiliser. The Koreans love garlic and swear by its health benefits .

      30

    • #
      patrick healy

      Its no folklore. As a youth in rural Ireland, we were given an elixer of Carageen Moss to drink (note the old spelling) to alleviate winter colds.
      Mind you with a freezing west wind pushing the turf fire smoke down through the kitchen chimney, we needed as much ancient “folklore” medication as was available.

      20

  • #
    farmerbraun

    Surely all Australasians of a certain age can recall the bottle of Bonnington’s Irish Moss in the medicine cupboard , along with the Gripe (dill) water for baby’s hiccups ; Adexolin (Vit A ,D and E) for adding to the baby’s milk mixture (cow’s milk , water, and lactose); and the Rawleighs Ready Relief (for gastro-enteritis) and Anti-pain Oil (for burns)?

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    • #
      David Milburn

      Farmer B I remember Irish Moss. Geo Bonnington a Kiwi came up with it as a cough medicine in the 19th c. Who would have thought – history might be repeating itself.

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    • #
      Chris

      And Hypol , a teaspoon a day. ( fish oil – Vit D for winter ills.) We also ate white bread and jam and you never saw a fat kid.

      220

  • #
    Zigmaster

    Sounds like something that needs FDA and TGA disapproval.

    190

  • #
    RobB

    Drug Companies Don’t Fund The Media! Stop Asking!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5Y3wrzS_Eo

    90

  • #
    tonyb

    What an interesting article. Actual Moss, as opposed to seaweed, has also been used for medical purposes, primarily as a dressing for war wounds

    Nearby upland Dartmoor has a very large moss area which has apparently been used for medical purposes since prehistoric times (Dartmoor has one of the largest collection of prehistoric remains in the World.)

    https://www.legendarydartmoor.co.uk/moss_gatherers.htm#:~:text=There%20can%20be%20no%20question%20as%20to%20the,it%20was%20processed%2C%20how%20much%20was%20used%20etc.

    The Romans and Vikings also used the moss for hygiene and medical purposes, then during the first world war there was a huge industry collecting and processing it. There is nothing new under the sun and it may well be that out there somewhere are natural cures for a whole variety of ailments including covid

    220

  • #
    Vicki

    All these simple and old fashioned remedies are all worth trying.

    The theories re Omicron origin are also interesting. The heavily mutated version is causing surprise, & all sort of speculation arising. But how many corona viruses (aka the ‘common cold’) have had their genomic sequences explored as intensively as viruses have been now? Are scientists & the public just over reacting to the existence of many many corona viruses?

    In our own household we have been surprised that husband caught “a cold” from a casual visit from a friend who had a mild cold. We have an quite extensive protocol of all the vitamins etc suggested by FLCCC & others. He was subsequently quite ill when it progressed to chest pains. As I have posted, he improved quickly with use of high dose aspirin & anti- histamines, which were fundamentally precautionary ( for Covid) rather than a treatment as such. And Rapid Antigen tests (3) did not indicate Covid.

    As we are all subject to this fear that the government and media constant promote, I am cautious about reading too much into what is likely a “summer cold”, which, incidentally, I did not acquire. But even so, I was surprised at its spread from my friends circle to others so easily.

    180

  • #
    red edwards

    Don’t forget the “defense in depth” concept. Carrageenan spray as the first line, Polaramine as the second line, (or Benadryl and lactoferrin) and Ivermectin and Zinc (if you can get it, or Quercetin or EGCG) as the third line, and don’t forget Vitamin D at a level to raise your blood level to 50 nm/ml, as the fourth line.

    It works for HIV. . . .

    190

    • #
      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      G’day r e,
      Overall I agree with you, except for your putting vitamin D as #4. As it’s critical for the successful functioning of the whole immune system, I rank it as #1. (But it does take 2 weeks to be changed from the pill to serum form, which may be why you put it at #4?)
      I’ve been on 10,000 IU per day since September 2020 and my serum level had reached 71 ng/ml at my last test, September this year.
      Cheers
      Dave B

      100

      • #
        red edwards

        G’day back, Dave. I listed it as 4th because while I have been using it for years before COVID (Vit D and K2 combo is worth looking up for osteoporosis and Arteriosclerosis), its more general in its effect. I listed the more targeted preventatives higher. But that’s a matter of viewpoint, I’m not the final expert. Sort and choose as you want. Just wanted to get the idea mentioned.

        They don’t have Carrageenan spray here in the US; I had to order it from Canada. (It’s legal here, but nobody sells it currently.)

        70

        • #
          Lance

          Red, it is available on Amazon for USD 28 for 20 ml spray , Canadian packaging.
          https://www.amazon.com/BETADINE-Defence-NASPAL-Canadian-Packaging/dp/B082331GXK
          Medicinal Ingredients: Iota-Carrageenan 1.2mg, Sodium Chloride 0.5%

          Its about USD 1400.00 / Liter.

          If you reverse engineer the ingredients, and scale up from 20 ml to 1 liter:
          1 Liter of spray contains 60 mg Iota-Carrageenan, 5 g salt

          Iota Carrageenan: USD 8.99 56 grams / 2 Oz https://www.amazon.com/Iota-Carrageenan-2-Ounce/dp/B01LW6TSBI
          Makes 933 Liters, or 247 Gallons, of nasal spray

          Distilled water is about 0.89 USD/ Gallon or USD 0.235 / Liter.

          933 L distilled water x 0.235 = USD 219
          56 g iota carrageenan = USD 9
          Salt 46.65 kg = USD 20.00
          Total: USD 248 for 933 Liters or USD 0.25 / Liter or 1/5000 of commercial cost.

          70

          • #
            Lance

            oops on salt. 4.665 kg. got a decimal out of place. About USD 7.70 .

            Still, a lot cheaper than the commercial spray.

            Sorry for the error.

            60

  • #
    Peter C

    This is not the first use of a nasal spray against Covid.

    Israeli company Sanotise, came out with a nasal spray earlier in the year. It was supposed to be very effective, both before and after infection.
    https://www.jpost.com/health-science/anti-viral-nasal-spray-effective-against-covid-19-673481

    I have not seen it here in Australia yet.

    Where can we obtain these sprays?

    150

  • #
    Binny Pegler

    More effective than masks. But no were near the same political/visual impact.

    110

  • #
    TattyMane

    I’ve been using a nasal spray with Carragelose ™ which is Carrageenan for over a year now. In a recent survey of myself, I can report it is 100% effective.

    190

  • #

    In another life I remember the words [Carrageenan “Irish Moss”] from NZ radio commercials of the 1950’s.

    80

  • #
    KP

    I find it so annoying that the West deride South Africa’s medical system and refuse to believe what they are told by researchers over there. I expect South Africa will no longer share any new instances of Covid they find, it has just bought them pain.

    ..and none of these prix awaiting data from England about Omicron were needing a heart transplant in the 1970s, because if you weren’t in South Africa you certainly wouldn’t get one!

    “Melbourne University professor James McCaw …. estimated it would take between one and three weeks to get a clear indication of whether Omicron caused more severe disease than its predecessors, with data being collated in Britain now, considered to be the best indicator.”

    Meanwhile Moderna is aiming at bigger doses for each vaccine, more poison in each shot..

    “The company said a two-dose course of its vaccine generated low neutralising antibodies against the Omicron variant, but a 50-microgram booster dose increased neutralising antibodies against the variant 37-fold. A higher, 100 microgram booster dose of the same vaccine drove antibody levels even higher – more than 80 times pre-boost levels.”

    70

    • #
      Ross

      During the whole COVID saga we get the” news” from a handful of countries. There is a heavy emphasis on Australia/NZ, USA, UK and then occasionally other countries. There’s another 190 countries we very rarely hear about. With probably a great majority of them which have exercised minimal COVID responses and are probably doing just fine. South Africa looks to be one of those underreported countries.

      70

  • #
    Dipole

    Showing my age, back in the mists of time there was a cough syrup containing ” Pectoral Oxymel of Carrageen ”

    The power of radio advertising !

    That’s it Wazz; Bonningtons Irish Moss

    120

    • #
      Dipole

      By good authority, you have three days of nasal/ throat infections symptoms to go after this virus before it goes deeper and internal. i.e nose/throat is the portal of entry and it is, at that early stage EXTERNAL. It is causing a surface irritant that you become aware of and you have three days to nip this in the bud. This applies to any viral infection that uses nose/throat as an entry portal.

      Be aware !

      90

      • #
        Greg in NZ

        This is why Jo’s site has become my daily no.1 check-in spot – so much to learn and discuss in healthy debate – with links to even more edifying and educational material.

        Am grateful my parents raised us with their parents’ old-fashioned remedies and concoctions – as well as making my brother, sister, and I tend the garden where we grew all sorts of edible goodness – though at the time we all loathed it. It’ll build character, son!

        Happy summer solstice tomorrow (could ‘summer’ finally be here?) and best wishes to one and all for Christmas and the New Year.

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        • #

          Dipole is right. Early treatment really needs to start before you have symptoms, which is quite difficult. Early unimpeded viral growth is explosive. Using preventative things like this before risky events is an easy thing to do. If one person in the household gets sick, everyone can take preventatives.

          Ideally, we’d all be on low dose 2 x weekly ivermectin or equivalent.

          The big problem with early treatment is that it’s hard to know when to start.

          In the Spanish antihistamine study about 25 of 84 in the nursing home were symptomatic. So 2/3rds of them were given preventative treatment before symptoms. Though that was the early WuFlu which was slower moving than all the variants that came after.

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      • #
        Mark Allinson

        I have had three or four such warning symptoms of a snuffle bug on the brew, and every time I have managed to de-rail what in earlier days would have ended up as a sneezy, snuffly head cold.

        Lots of zinc with a suitable inophore (Quercetin for e.g.) to help carry it into the cells.

        50

  • #
  • #

    I wrote about “AlgoVir”, the nasal spay here some weeks ago and use it since then as often as I’m in a shop or elsewhere outside where other people comes along.
    There wqhere tests with AlgoVir at the University of Erlangen in Germany they did analyses.

    60

  • #

    Virologists in Erlangen report promising initial study results for an active ingredient from red algae.

    Initial findings from a study involving hospital staff has indicated that nasal spray Carragelose® containing iota carrageenan– a natural ingredient from red algae – could protect against SARS CoV-2 infections. Several laboratory tests have already demonstrated the effect of Carragelose® against the coronavirus in cell experiments. With that in mind, this special nasal spray could support the general protective measures against SARS-CoV-2 and prevent infections.

    60

    • #

      Thanks, yes, hence the h/t. Though the Erlanger report is the same Argentinian study of 400 healthcare workers in the RCT with 2 infections in the carrageenan group and 10 in the placebo arm.

      It really says something that there have not been scores of studies. It shows how useless our publicly funded universities and institutes are. They are not looking for cheap safe solutions.

      130

  • #
    STJOHNOFGRAFTON

    “Carrageenan or “Irish Moss” is a polysaccaride gel. It works by gumming things up for quite a few viruses — basically getting in the way and trapping them in the gel.”

    This sounds like the plant kingdom version of snot.

    70

  • #
    Ross

    Doesn’t matter if its IVM, HCQ, Vitamin D, azithromycin, Carrageenan spray, antihistamines or all the other apparently efficacious simple remedies- we could have been using all these for decades to just treat flu and colds. At least most GP’s probably prescribed antibiotics for viral flu in the past knowing of their quite beneficial side effects. But no – the public health mantra was go and get your flu shot. Its why today I am a complete cynic regarding public health outcomes in western countries.

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    • #

      Exactly. We’ve been living in the Age of Antivirals for years but few knew…

      That’s one benefit which may eventually come from Covid, if we can crack that facade.

      110

      • #
        Ross

        Yes, and to think following SARS 1 (early 2000 ‘s), the WHO/CDC screened a lot of essential WHO pharmaceuticals for their activity in-vitro vs that virus. They did this because of the lack of a viable “vaccine” solutions at the time. It’s where the activity of the likes of HCQ and IVM were first highlighted. You would have thought the WHO/CDC would have pivoted towards those products early 2020. But clearly there was always the push for vaccines – in particular the mRNA types because of their supply advantages.

        30

      • #
        Mark Allinson

        ” … one benefit …”

        Yes, so true, Jo, it is indeed an ill wind that brings no good.

        And there could be many more positive events and lessons from Covid still to come.

        20

  • #
    Ruairi

    Those who don’t like a flu vaccine,
    May wish to try Carrageen,
    When boiled to a gel,
    Can relieve the unwell,
    A real gem, like Aquamarine.

    120

  • #
    Graeme No.3

    Just a thought: The face masks beloved by our politicians are useless for stopping virii. Would a mist of Irish Moss improve them?
    Or would they restrict the flow of oxygen to the brain and reduce us all to the intellectual level of our Chief Medical Officers?

    140

  • #
    KP

    “today I am a complete cynic regarding public health outcomes in western countries.”

    If only we had another 10million other people in Aussie say that! However, I reckon the last 50years have seen people captured at birth, and they envisage no other options to a visit to “their” doctor to fix anything they believe is wrong with them.

    70

  • #
    Destroyer D69

    The first mention I found on this product.Lots of information. https://www.carragelose.com/en

    30

  • #
    John Hultquist

    How much ice cream do have to eat?
    I’m not fond of ice cream up my nose, but things happen.
    I’ll give it a try — “Take one for the team.”
    Will let you know in June.

    60

  • #
    Yonason

    OK, but, whatever you do, don’t swallow it.
    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11675262/

    60

    • #
      Leo G

      Use of Carrageenan as a food additive was banned in Australia as a food additive until the 1990s. There was an abundance of evidence that shorter chain molecules of the polymer caused disease. The food industry insisted that it could produce a safe form of the gelling agent.
      I found out about its reintroduction the hard way. I have an igG-mediated allergy to Carrageenan. It is not related to the “alpha-gal” syndrome induced by tick-bite which also causes sensitivity to carrageenan.

      40

      • #
        Yonason

        Food sensitivity, then? If so, I’m all too familiar with them. No fun at all. I hope you are living with it successfully!

        It’s really a shame what it’s doing to the consumer, if only to cheat them out of a higher quality product. For a long time I couldn’t understand why the cold cuts that used to be so good now tasted like sawdust. Then I read the label more carefully. It said “a water and carrageenan product.” Meat-flavored seaweed. More recently I noticed that heavy cream contained it. Why? No idea. But I was pleasantly surprised with the last carton I bought. Carrageenan was no longer among the ingredients. The improvement in quality was palpable. I hope it’s a trend.

        I keep trying to upvote you, but can’t. Maybe it’s just slow to respond.

        00

  • #
    RoHa

    Time for a revival of The Bonningtons Bunkhouse Show?

    40

  • #
    Great+Aunt+Janet

    “The idea is to squirt it up your nose three or four times a day to make it hard for a virus to get in. Not as much fun as a glass of champers, but more fun than a head cold.”

    Much merriment at the thought of office nose-squirtings or after dinner ‘snifters’! Thank you for the mental pictures.

    I hope that aloe vera does something similar; I have a ton of it in my garden. It is sort of gummy and slimy too. Any studies? I’m not mocking, I’m just merry!

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    Nasal Spray is called Flo. It is said to be available at phamacies. I will try to but some this am.
    https://enttech.com.au/products/flo-travel-nasal-spray/

    Just purchased this – but got it home & found it’s base was sesame oil! It is basically just a moisturising nasal relief.

    Took husband’s out-of-date Symbicort (nasal inhaler containing steroid Budesonide) & was told they could not dispense it without a prescription.

    Are pharmacists being given a list of all the efficacious Covid treatments & being banned from dispensing them??? This was prescribed for hay fever, it is hardly a narcotic.

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      Brenda Spence

      Vicki, mine doesnt mention sesame oil. Where did you find the information?

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      • #
        Vicki

        Hi Brenda – it is listed on the label. Purchased in a rural town. Is labelled Flo Travel – so I didn’t check until I got it home!

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    • #
      GD

      Vicki, there is a range of Flo nasal sprays available.

      I just ordered some ‘Flo Travel’ from Chemist Warehouse. $12.99

      “Flo Travel is a moisturising nasal spray with natural clinically-tested Carrageenan (red seaweed extract) and isotonic saline solution..”

      On the label: Non medicated nasal saline with Carrageenan 1.6 mg/mL (20ml)

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    Old Goat

    Yonason,
    It probably depends on the quantities involved or the nasal spray would be banned – anything sprayed into the nose will tend to end in your lungs or stomach. Also I would call your attention to the source of this information – NIH which is in bed with big pharma – which makes PUBMED their creature .

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    roman

    I did a search for “Carrageenan” on a pharmacy web-site, and it shows up in various products; tooth-paste, personal lubricant and the Flo nasal spray mentioned. – So it seems almost every orifice can get some protection. Handy!

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    Bozotheclown

    I seem to recall that Irish Moss is used at pretty low concentrations to clarify wort (young beer). A teaspoon or two boiled in 5 gallons would do the job. I believe there is an electrical charge difference that attracts particulates (of yeast anyway) to stick to the Irish Moss in solution.

    It might not take much moss to be effective in a home concoction nasal spray.

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    TimiBoy

    While you’re at it, why don’t they treat Gout with Carb Soda? It works. Ok, it’s gross, but it works!

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    Yonason

    Hi, O.G.

    Certainly plausible that quantity may matter. But I think we’d be surprised at how much food it’s in. A little here, a little there. It adds up.

    As to who’s in bed with who these days, it’s probably easier to just assume they all are, until proven otherwise. The NIH publications are probably ok for the most part, and the fakers can be spotted with a bit of effort. What I worry about isn’t what’s published, but what isn’t allowed to be.

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