FAUCI HOSPITALIZED! COVID STORM?

hi good evening I'm Dr Philip McMillan and today we're going to talk about an important piece of news reporting because uh Dr Anthony FY was just re recently hospitalized we're glad that he's okay he's now back at home but it was apparently because of a West Nile viral infection but basically whenever I hear anything unusual my first question is around covid you could call me covid hypervigilant and it's because I know how significant the virus is and critically how difficult it can be to diagnose it is extremely subtle and so if you are not looking for it you can't see it so I would accept that I am hypervigilant literally if somebody came in with what was supposed to be a chest infection they had a cough fever shortness of breath I give them antibiotics and they haven't responded within 3 days my next thought is could it be covid that's how my mind works anything that is out of the ordinary clinically I tend to look as part of my differential as being covid and so some people would describe it as I said as hypervigilant but I think this is how we need to be in the context of what's happening around us I'm going to explain the science behind that and why why it is I'm raising this question about covid in relation to Anthony's fory even though he apparently has a diagnosis as usual before we start I want to remind you to join me on covid protection the four pillars literally if you click on this you will get access to a video where I explain some more about covid storm the four pillars of protection giving my personal Journey explaining a little bit more about what going on and this is for people who also think that we shouldn't ignore covid now as I said some people say it's just a mild infection it doesn't matter too much I don't look at it like that and I'll tell you exactly why I'm looking for covid storm and I'll explain it in just a few minutes this is not anything to be ignored the fact that the infection number is rising is an indication as to how unusual this virus is and if you want to understand a little bit of context just reflect on the fact that we still are not absolutely sure whether or not it was made in a lab believe me if it was it's not going to behave like a normal virus do not underestimated this is pretty serious stuff so let's get back to what was happening with regards to uh Dr fory we're glad that he's able to be back at home but let's look at this PBS news report to get some insight so it says he's recovering at home after being hospitalized with West Nile Virus a spokesperson said so this is on the 24th of August 2024 so just recently and it shows that he spent some time in hospital after being infected with West Nile Virus he's now recovering at home um he's expected to make a full recovery as they pointed out most people don't experience any symptoms at all with this virus but one in five can have a fever some headache body aches vomiting and diarrhea this is not usually enough to get you in hospital so he clearly had the situation about one out of 150 infected people develop serious sometimes fatal illness so the fact that he was in hospital suggests that this would probably be more likely to be the situation now you have to realize as I said because I'm hypervigilant about covid is that the westnile virus it's transmitted by mosquitoes it's an RNA virus and I'll show you some images about that just shortly and as it said it only tends to cause asymptomatic infection in 80% and 20% get or 19% could get moderate symptoms and 1% end up in hospital he was in the one % so that's what got me to be thinking something isn't right here and because I'm covid hypervigilant my first question is whether or not he had covid so the way how it works is this many people and this is from interacting with patients they don't even think that the symptoms they had were relevant and I usually am looking for very specific symptoms like fatigue sudden onset where they were fine the day before and then the next day they were just really fatigued they may have had a bit of a headache uh you know didn't feel quite well they were okay a few days later the symptoms seem to resolve they're feeling a bit better but not back to normal and this can happen sometimes weeks before the incident that may come make them come into contact with a clinical person and because it's so mild they ignore it and you have to look for it you have to dig for it and so you may have a patient for example comes in with very low blood sodium you can't find a reason you dig around it's not their medication it's not anything else and you dig in their history and you find that three weeks before they had these kinds of odd symptoms they got a bit confused in an older patient and this is the characteristic that can happen in the context of covid so it is very subtle don't underestimate it let's just take you through a few slides just to show you why I think in his case or thought that this could have been covid first let's get to the West Nile Virus now as I said it's an RNA virus and this is a picture of a Corona virus but the principles are very same similar it uses an entry receptor just like the Corona virus it gets inside the cell it will then release the RNA and it will then replicate put together all of the pieces it will then go out and send off new viral particles and this is how West Nile operates as well so both of them use the cytoplasm of a cell to then take over the machinery and get everything done typical pattern associated with uh RNA virus so as I said this is transmitted by a mosquito bite and this is what they suspect he got a mosquito bite in his backyard he didn't have it wasn't a sympt atic he didn't have just mild symptoms but he ended up in hospital so then my question is is well who what are the characteristic of patients who have more severe West Nile viral disease and in this case so this is what it would look like here they tend to be older he is older than 50 years um they can be imune immune compromised and this is what I'm very interested in with regards to covid um pre-existing conditions he could have some of these I don't think he would have a genetic risk factor he's certainly not pregnant at least up to the point of that we know now it doesn't sound as though he was in any um significant occupational or outdoor activity risk and he hasn't had any known as as far as I know transplant so he's older and the imuno compromised fits with covid now you may be thinking to yourself well why am I talking about covid and people being immuno compromised this is why I said you need to understand the science and when you understand the science you will treat the disease with respect here is how I describe the covid immune team this is what it tends to look like um you have your tanks big tanks which I call the monocytes which can become macrophages or dentritic cells nutrifil are like your foot soldiers your te- cells are like your phyter planes your B cells produce antibodies these are like your long range missiles your natural killer cells I call them like your Navy and your mass cells this is the histamine releasing cells is slightly on its own so this is what is relevant in relation to a covid infection and in somebody who has had a normal infection this is probably what it would look like and your immune system is quite sophisticated especially at the mucosa level it can take care of covid infections because it fundamentally is a Corona virus it is just like another cold Corona virus with exceptional characteristics with blocking into feron and also getting into other cells so the trick is is that as long as your mucosal immune system is adequate and it doesn't penetrate that barrier it becomes a nothing Burger which is how some people describe it but you have to be careful because your immune does fluctuate now the first thing to note in that in highly vaccinated regions where covid is continuing to circulate very highly the first thing you have to remember is igg4 I keep on mentioning igg4 because it's such an important point and essentially what happens they found it with regards to mRNA vaccines primarily you tend to produce a number of of long-term antibodies igg1 and igg3 tend to trigger the immune system but igg4 which can be up to 45% of antibodies in somebody who is mRNA vaccinated are tolerant antibodies where they tell your immune system not to respond so this is straight away a problem in highly vaccinated regions and this is one of the reasons why I suspect that we are having ongoing circulation of the virus it's very important to understand that I anticipate that this could be a problem and igg4 is so significant you have to remember the numbers are absolutely stunning you know this is a almost 4,000% increase in igg4 after vaccination this is the third dose it goes up 38.6 times after the third dose it is incredible we've never seen anything like this certainly not with a vaccine and it must be because the immune system is trying to tolerate the amount of Spike protein it's coming across so it's quite significant but it does mean that the immune system is unlikely to respond normally now now we have to come to the characteristics of this Omicron infection okay and in order to understand why this is a problem you just have to look at what happens with the virus so here you have an image showing this is an Omicron infection after the virus gets to your mucosal immunity all right you have to remember this is mucosal immunity this here represents mucus this is the air it's in the upper Airway within 6 hours Omicron is already replicating and getting across to another cell within 24 hours it has infected all the cells in the vicinity and it's buding quite rapidly 48 Hours it sprad spreading quite avidly now what's fascinating is that I by this point you have no symptoms this is part of the reason why the virus continues to spread so avidly because many people at even 48 Hours where it's spreading around they still have no significant symptoms other than maybe little bit of a mild headache but all of that represents an interferon response so sometimes they have no response by that time so when you combine the igg4 and the fact that in highly vaccinated regions we seem to be having recurrent infection after infection after infection this is what you need to now know occurs with your immune system this is the reality you have taken out in theory you're left with your monocytes and you're left with your neutrophils but all of the cells behind here your natural killer cells your plasma cells your tea cells are all potentially infected by the virus and become disregulated so this part of your immune system it's not that it's zero this is what it appears like it's not zero but it is significantly depressed once the virus gets into the bloodstream and starts circulating again that doesn't cause you any obvious symptoms and this is part of the problem people don't quite understand that when you have viral sepsis and that is what I describe around the covid storm and so this is what it would look like virus circulating in the bloodstream infecting other cells replicating circulating igg4 may be binding to it but it's not getting rid of it so the virus can continue this cycle and this process goes on and on and the question is sometimes which we don't know how long does it last for and this is where I'm focused on as I said before the covid storm Spike triggered autoimmune response mechanism and that's tied to this ongoing circulation of virus very difficult to predict what it's going to appear like and how it will present in terms of disease manifestation but this is very important so at this point if you imagine and this is why I went back to covid it it wouldn't surprise me if actually two weeks before or three weeks before he had a covid infection mild symptom terms a little bit of headache bit of fatigue nothing out of the ordinary continues what he's doing but all the time with the viral sepsis it's taking out his immune system and then suddenly he is no longer as immune competent as he was there's another piece of the puzzle that is very important and it's to do with interferon now interferon and this is this is very very important so this is the other part of the continued viral infection so interferon this is what it would look like inside not every cell will have interferent capabilities so if a virus enters it and starts to try to replicate this cell knows it's going to die so it warns everybody else oh my goodness there is a virus around so it sends out interferon the interferon signals to other cells listen close your windows close your doors don't get infected then infected cells because of interferon they know they have to die and it calls in the immune system this happens with almost every viral infection and some bacterial infections interferon gets um virus gets in interferon is triggered and it can then get on with protecting the body from ongoing circulation of the virus this is where SARS COV 2 is exceptional it is probably one of the best and blocking interferon so this is what it would look like so here you have now a situation where even though the virus has infected the cell it's blocking all these Pathways so no interferon is produced there is no warning cells don't die you don't pull in the immune system and so this is the characteristic pattern that I am expecting to occur in the context of viral sepsis so this is why I look for Co because I know that it's a combination of two things one the immune system um with igg4 could therefore make it higher risk that the virus could circulate once the virus is circulating and infecting cells it is going to be suppressing interferon because that's just what it does it suppresses interferent responses when you combine that when then somebody gets bitten by just a typical mosquito with westnile virus where they shouldn't have any symptoms suddenly because of interferent suppression they can't mount an effective immune response added on to that their immune cells are not functioning eff efficiently you need your natural killer cells you need the tea cells you need the B cells to produce antibodies all of that is therefore depleted and this is what increases the risk of severe disease so this is where people get very confused they would say well he just had West Nile Virus my question clinically is unless he had a significant risk factor why would he have such a severe episode of West Nile virus that's what I'd be looking for and that's where you would look at the blood test is he lymphopenic which can sometimes happen anyway because of a viral infection did he have an excess elevation of his inflammatory markers we don't know all of these things are relevant in terms of how he would have presented now as I said and I apologize to those people who are not covid storm focused this is why I'm focused on the covid Storm because the storm is not just about what happens in and around the infection is around the fact that once the immune system becomes disregulated as I anticipate it then leads to other parts of the immune system functioning in an abnormal way that's where I'm looking at the macrofagos and so on in in terms of the immune system so it's not just about the infection the question then is After The Infection how do we get the immune system to be back in a normal place in preparation for other infections or even if there was another attempt at the virus to break through the immune defense that's where the important bit is about storm and I'd encourage you as I close out please remember this information is absolutely critical four pillars of storm protection there's a reason why I have put this together because people kept on asking me no point telling us about all of this stuff what do we do you can't go to the I mean you can go to your doctor but very often the doctors don't know because I haven't even published the paper yet still working on it trying to put all the pieces together but it is relevant today to the characteristics of what can happen to people but you have at the moment limited if no options in order to manage these things this is why I'm putting this together I want people to be proactive to recognize that sometimes the responsibility well truthfully your health is your responsibility lies with you the more you know the better prepared you are the better you can educate those around you that's what I'm trying to do give you the tools that you can make the difference in terms of your life and the life of others remember join us with regards to this process the more information I get from you especially when we do our heal health and wellness webinars that will then allow me to try and see how the science changes with regards to Patient symptoms this is important information if it can affect Anthony fory with all the resources available to him believe me it can just affect anybody else anywhere in the world it just depends on which virus which infection you've been exposed to let's see how we can work together to find Solutions thank you [Music]