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Well, welcome to this month's March the 20th, 2020 edition of Ask Your Herb Doctor on KMUD Garberville 91.1 FM. From 7.30 until the end of the show at 8 o'clock, you'll be invited to call in with questions related to this month's very specific topic of the worldwide frenzy surrounding the coronavirus. Dr. Peat is going to be joining us and he's bringing a very interesting mental shift in the way that we're looking at this to bear. And just want to
state at the very outset of this that it's a very emotional subject and no one is taking death lightly. When you've got loved ones that are dying, it's absolutely no joke. So while some of the comments may seem a little light on it in terms of statistical numbers and some presentations from a Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg in Germany, I will give information out for people to search all of this on the internet and see for themselves how some of these statistics have been extremely skewed and that the data can be seen fairly clearly
from several other sites around the world that monitor outbreaks of viral pneumonia. So Dr. Peat, are you with us? Yes. Okay, thanks so much for joining us. As usual at the beginning of the show, I always ask you to introduce yourself so that people who are listening to the show, maybe haven't listened to you or heard you before, can find out a little more about you. And at the end of the show, we can give out your website where people
can go read some of the abstracts and articles that you've written and find out some more about you. Okay. I got a Master's of Arts degree in 1960 from University of Oregon, then a PhD in 1972 specializing in physiology and biochemistry and have been concentrating on reproductive and aging biology but with special attention to the nervous system and how nutrition interacts with those changes. And it turns out I never was at all interested in virology, but it happens that this particular virus impinges exactly on the things that
I've been working on for a long time, inflammation, aging, and cellular respiration. Excellent. Good. Okay. I know we've spoken the last few days here to thrash out some of the details surrounding the very alarming, certainly media alarming information and the lockdown statewide in California and across the states in America, similar to what they did in China. Anyway, without going too far into that, I think what I would like to try and do is to just outline influenza to people. I think a lot of the terms confuse people.
I think there's a lot of terms and a lot of, you know, synonyms given to things and that people need to understand what it is that we are working our way through here, what we are dealing with, influenza, and the various designations given to these influenzas of which there are four, type A, B, C, and D, with only really type A, producing all of the major flus, the Spanish flu and the Asian flu, Hong Kong flu, the bird flu and SARS
and MERS, et cetera. These are all the things that I think have come to the public attention over the years with, in the last 15 years for sure, the potential pandemics that never did become pandemics, but certainly were very fatal to those great percentage of people that got them from the MERS and the SARS. So influenza, I mean, when most people get a common cold, a common coronavirus, it is another coronavirus, so let's not keep them separate so people can understand that the common cold is the same type of genera of
virus as is influenza. And that the main issue I think with this, before we get into some of the political and some of the actual facts around statistics that have really, I think, alarmed people, and not just to mention the people that have been shown in hospitals and on ventilators, and unfortunately for those people that have died, it is extremely tragic. I'm not saying or downplaying it in any way. So influenza, as far as I know, the main thing with influenza is the massive amount of inflammation that comes as the body's immune response to
the virus, and it's a severe complication that we get viral pneumonia, and that is and/or secondarily bacterially infected. And then so that you can get various strains of bacteria that wouldn't normally take up residence in the lungs that can become overwhelming to a system that's already crashing because of the inflammation. Yeah, when a person gets a verified influenza virus, for example, a typical analysis will find various other viruses like common cold viruses and other respiratory pathogens as well as the true influenza virus. So even when there's a confirmed definite flu virus,
you can't be sure that that's really the culprit because like at present, most of the people getting seriously sick or dying are old, definitely beyond their mid-50s, and the highest mortality is over 70. And one place said that 99% of the people dying with the coronavirus were suffering from other very serious things such as diabetes, hypertension, stroke symptoms, and things that made it much more likely that they would die from a stress. But also other pathogens take advantage of that weak condition. And then just because you have one particular
pathogen that you have a test for, you can't be sure that that is really a contributing factor even when there are so many other pathogens present. Yeah. Okay, so somebody catches a species of virus known to cause influenza and that then either does or doesn't become complicated. We've heard a lot in the news about this particular outbreak and we'll get into the, you know, whether it's a zoonotic infection or whether it's weaponized and all of the things that have come out that are seemingly plausible.
But I know we've got some facts coming out that I'd be very interested to hear from you. What you mentioned a couple of days ago, and I don't know how long it will take for that to propagate, but we'll find out from you in a moment. But the actual death rate really is as you said, it's from the older populations, although there's been reports of people, young people, old middle-aged people, have suddenly got the complications of this infection which have become viral pneumonia and overwhelming inflammation. And that's how they suddenly
end up short, very short of breath and then needing ventilation in a hospital environment. And it's the seemingly overburdened hospital system with those kind of cases that seems to be making the drastic news. So, so far as, let's get into the, let's get into the origin of this because I think most people are just buying the standard kind of doctrine that this is coming out of China, it's a Chinese origin, it's come from a wet market and there's a zoonotic infection meaning that animal species that naturally have their own influenza, because
it's not just human beings that suffer from influenza, but bats and pigs and camels and mice and civic cats, etc. Many species have their own type of influenza. But rather than the news talking about the wet markets and originating in Wuhan, you came out with some very interesting facts, interesting, controversial or shocking news about it. And in terms of the gene sequencing that's happened, it's quite interesting for people to hear this, so would you outline what you've understood as an origin for this?
The virologists in Europe and the United States, South Korea, Taiwan, as well as China have the Chinese refer to the DNA sequence analysis as showing that the trunk of the series of the family tree is in the United States. There are five different branches or varieties occurring early in the United States before the strain in China identifies as the fourth or fifth branch off this trunk. And that's based on the fact that they're analyzing substitutions of bases in the DNA chain. And when you see three different changes, the third one, if
you have one with two of the changes and then a third one with three changes and then a fourth with four changes, the ones with the fewer changes necessarily came before the last one. This is like a phylogenetic tree in botany, right, where they classify the PCO. The family tree of this virus shows that the one occurring in November in Wuhan will be the fourth or fifth descendant of this virus. So what's the position on where this would have perhaps come from then?
People have been pointing out, for example, a 2015 article in Nature magazine was just a news item mentioning that people connected to the CDC, I think working at Fort Detrick, Maryland, were working to produce a vaccine to the coronavirus. They were creating pathogens to develop a vaccine in advance so that when a natural epidemic broke out, they would have a vaccine ready because normally it takes 12 to 18 months to prepare a vaccine for a new strain. And by that time, the flu season has passed. And so the vaccine doesn't do much good. This
was pointed out in 1976 in connection with the so-called swine flu pandemic, which never existed. And the man who pointed out that the whole idea of making a vaccine for influenza, a disease of that sort, which mutates rapidly and the vaccine production takes at least a year, that the whole thing, he said, was conceptually fraudulent. So he got fired and the government announced a pandemic, but basically only one person died from that virus. So it definitely wasn't a pandemic. And that was back in 1976?
'76, yeah, the swine, great swine flu pandemic, in which the only people died were a few hundred from the vaccine and a few thousand that got paralyzed from the vaccine. Wow. Okay. So basically what you're saying is that when virologists look at the gene sequencing of the current coronavirus and then they can see the genetic changes saying that there were four or five different steps before it, meaning that the current or the one that broke out in Wuhan had ancestors that they'd already known about in the United States.
Yeah, but if the CDC could, in their lab, experimentally produce a pathogen that might naturally occur, if they could produce it before it naturally occurred, then they could have their vaccine ready for it. So they were working on that. That was reported as a news item in 2015 in Nature. But right below the title of that news item, the editors last month inserted an editorial note that people have been citing this as indicating the possibility that the virus escaped from the CDC's Fort D'Etre lab. They said that wasn't a proper thing to suggest.
But even if it wasn't an escaped virus from a bioweapons lab, if they were working on viruses that occur naturally and trying to find vaccines for those viruses, then... Yeah, that was a perfectly proper thing to do, according to their... They patented a coronavirus in 2003 specifically to work on that project. So there was nothing improper conceptually that they wanted to be ready with a vaccine. But that was a 2015 news report in Nature magazine. And then last summer, either July or August, it was in the news
that the CDC had ordered the closure of the virus lab at Fort D'Etre because they had carelessly let their escape protection system deteriorate and their water filtering system wasn't working. So they closed the lab because of the danger of an escaped virus. That was in August of last year, just two months before the outbreak. And then American soldiers have been participating in international military athletic contests. It's been an opportunity for Olympic athletes to practice becoming soldiers so they can full-time train while still being an amateur. And normally, they've scored very well in
world competitions. But last year, for unknown reasons, there were either 180 or more soldiers there in the competitions. And they came in 35th in rank among all of the countries of the world. The US soldiers came in 35th in the competition that was held in Wuhan. Yeah, that's what I've been reading. And the Chinese were ridiculing what miserable athletes they were and commenting on whether that reflected on the American army. But normally, the army athletes were outstanding Olympic quality. Interesting. So it went from what you would normally expect in an Olympic competition
presentation, you'd have people of the highest level. It went from that, what would normally happen to a stunning 35th place and comments about how amateurish the competitors from America seemed. Yeah, the Chinese in particular were saying it was hard to imagine why they came in so poorly. Okay, you're listening to Ask Your Doctor on KMED Garbleville 91.1 FM from 7.30 to the end of the show at 8 o'clock. You're invited to call in with questions related to this current pandemic and the frenzy and hysteria that's been generated for sure about COVID-19.
So Dr. Peat, you were also mindful that when I first heard it, I just couldn't quite believe it but the potential source of this could potentially have been from this country. And that I know there's been sparring between both nations about who to blame because most people in the press wants to just take the natural assumption that these zoonotic infections, they do occur and it's typically the finger pointing was at the wet market in Wuhan because it exists and animals have been known throughout history really to transmit disease to humans.
But this information about the phylogenetic tree of the virus' genome and how it's changed over time indicates a historical timeline for it and that it was prior to the outbreak here in Wuhan that the sequence originated. So that's very interesting. A very recent article was published by top rank virologists saying that this particular virus was impossible to anticipate and to engineer. So even though that was the intent of the CDC for years was to make a pathogen, these recent virologists say that just the
nature of this particular one, they can't foresee that anyone could have engineered this one. Okay, I think probably what we want to talk about at this point in time is the numbers. Certainly from the alarmist point of view, it's gripped everybody's attention. I would say that spectacularly having spectacularly gathered everybody's attention in one go, they, I say they, but I won't say they, this event has shut down most of the western and the rest of the world in terms of paralyzing
it both economically and financially. And I guess it's one thing to see or to wonder how we're going to come out of this economically and another to speculate that people were shorting the stocks or selling. We've had a couple of examples here of some senators who've sold several million dollars worth of stocks prior to this happening because of the briefing that was given back in late January. Yeah, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, the morning before
he gave a talk and a week before announcing it to the public, he one morning sold 1.7 billion. Okay, let's briefly mention this doctor's name because he's certainly in the news and he's been in the news before in 2010 when he basically said the same kind of thing about a previous, I won't call it a pandemic because it never did turn out to be a pandemic, but Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, so Wolfgang, W-O-L-F-G-A-N-G, Wolfgang, and his last name is Wodarg, W-O-D-A-R-G. Would you like to speak a little bit to Wolfgang,
his background, or we can get into the statistics that he highlights that at this point in time really basically flat out refuse to believe that this is anything exceptional. And obviously there are links to potential for producing vaccines and all the money that's involved in giving those contracts out and not only that, but to the people that would readily take it up given the scaremongering that's gone on with this. John Ioannidis is another very well-known professor who has analyzed other statistical disease situations and he is suggesting that this might be history's greatest evidence fiasco.
If that happens, though, considering the ruining the economy of the world, no one is going to be able to admit that. There's going to be a great campaign of trying to convince the world that something really is happening despite Ioannidis and Wodarg's points that they can't see the evidence because they weren't doing the testing in previous years in a way that can be compared. And the testing, creating many new testing kits, it's very useful and can be used to help to control the virus.
But when you look at its application in China, first it looked like 2.7% of those infected were dying. But as they produced huge amounts of the test kits and were testing very large numbers of people, the mortality rate per infection decreased to 0.6% was the most recent one I saw. And people like Ioannidis are saying the actual mortality figure from statistically interpreting the available information could range from 0.025 up to 5%. Italy and Iran have been in areas reporting 5 or 8 or 10% mortality of those infected.
But if you look at just the people reporting to hospitals, for example, then 10% wouldn't be an unreasonable expectation because the sickest people will be the ones you're measuring. But as the population expands, for example, in South Korea and China where they measured larger numbers of people, the mortality rate ended up closer to 0.6%. And then of course there's people that might have this species of coronavirus, but they aren't getting tested. So if everybody, the whole entire population were tested, then that mortality rate would drop to what you're saying, something like 0.025.
So the mortality rate is very skewed. It's not an accurate way to look at this. It's approaching the normal flu mortality of one in a thousand. So Dr. Peat, you're probably just the right person to speak to about statistics, having gone through everything that you did back at university and going through just providing data and comparing and understanding the way that statistics do get skewed, certainly to benefit the editor or the magazine it's being published in. Just give us an idea about some of the statistical skewing and then we'll look at the numbers
of people that they're quoting on various news sources and sites about this particular outbreak. I've been mentally comparing it to what has happened historically with cancer incidence, mortality, and diagnosis. I saw a General Electric television advertisement years ago saying that if everyone would buy their x-ray machines, we could increase the cure rate of cancer to close to 100 percent, 97 percent cure rate, I think they said. Because if only, say, 40 percent of the population is going to die of cancer, but you diagnose
it in 100 percent of the population at a certain age, only 1 percent might be dying in that population range. But if you increase the number that you treat and you're treating people that otherwise would never have discovered their cancer, you'll seem to have a high cure rate. Fifty percent of people, 100 percent of people 50 years old and older have somewhere in their body tissue that can be diagnosed as cancer. So if you look hard enough, you can say there's 100 percent cancer incidence. No, 100 percent of people will die from cancer.
Yeah, only a smaller percentage die. So you can claim to have cured it if you find it in those people who never would have developed it. But when you treat the cancer increasingly as you diagnose it at an earlier age, if your treatment is killing people, then the mortality rate will increase with the diagnostic rate. And starting in 1945, the American Cancer Society publicized that you should regularly have a checkup for cancer and watch for the signs. And steadily, 40 years after that cancer, mortality increased.
In the two or three years after the prostate-specific antigen test became available, the number of diagnoses increased radically. And since there was no change in the population, the mortality would be expected to stay the same. But since the treatment went up in proportion to the extreme increase in diagnosis, also the mortality suddenly surged up, strongly implying that it was the treatment they were dying of. And when you look at the people going to the hospitals, a certain proportion of those historically in the United States, between 200,000 and 440,000 are being killed by medical mistakes
in the hospital. So even with the doctors being the ones judging what happens to you in the hospital, when you use a diagnostic test to herd people to see their doctors and go to the hospital, you're for sure going to subject them to this very high rate of medical accidents. We've always said that the heterogenic drug deaths, the figures are pretty startling in terms of the sheer numbers. Okay, you're listening to Ask Your AbDoctor on KMEDGalbaville 91.1 FM. From now until the end of the show, you're invited to call in the questions about this
month's topic on the outbreak of coronavirus and its impact worldwide. The number is 707-923-3911. That's 707-923-3911. My name's Andrew Murray. My name's Sarah Johanneson Murray, and we're joined by Dr. Raymond Peat. Okay, I think we have a caller on the air. So let's just take this next caller. Caller, you're on the air. Where are you from and what's your question? Hello? Caller, I told you to listen on the phone. Oh, well, try again. Okay, try again. I do actually have someone else called in with one for me to ask you about.
Wanted you to talk about the origins of the Spanish flu and theories about that and conspiracies surrounding that. Okay, well, before we do that, let's just give out the number again, Michael, and then you can just let me know when we've got more callers lined up here. The number is 707-923-3911. So, Dr. Peat, Spanish flu, 1918, extremely virulent, wiped out, they imagine between 50 and 100 million. They've up right up revised that number from 25 million, but very deadly and not necessarily
due to the end of the war and, well, obviously the end of the war, but people were sick and malnourished, but it was a very virulent form of H1N1 virus that just seemingly had a perfect storm of genetic ability to rapidly take over human cells, mammalian cells. The data, it's a very few actual tissue samples that that's based on compared to the millions of deaths. Yeah. So, at that time, the flu was thought to be a bacterial infection and there was one popular
treatment for it using camphor, injecting camphor dissolved in oil such as olive oil and it turns out that even though they thought it was a bacteria and they believed they were curing people with this camphor treatment, about 40 or 50 years ago, someone noticed that a distillate of petroleum smelled like camphor and they purified it and added an amino group to it to make it water soluble and found that it's an anti-influenza agent. I think it really grew out of the perception that natural camphor was being used widely
in the First World War and this drug that was created about 50 years ago, amandadine and its relative remandidine and the newer mimantine, which it's most known for treating Alzheimer's disease, but these are all broad spectrum antivirals and they happen to be safe genetically for many of the antivirals being recommended, especially in the United States recently. So, acyclovir, ribavirin and chloroquine, I think it is, antimanaril, all of those happen to interfere with human DNA and they're recognized as genotoxic. So if you have many millions of people taking those preventively, you're going to have millions
of people with genetic damage and you don't want that in the young population. I know you've spoken to this in the past when we've done various radio shows on viral disease and you're not very, I know you really want people to be healthy and you want them to be as healthy as they can be and do it as naturally as possible, but you're really not into antivirals as such, are you, in terms of safety treatment? These related to camphor, mimantine for example, I think they're safe genetically and they're
moderately effective against a wide variety of viruses, but aspirin, if it was under patent, it would be considered the super antiviral because it's active against such a variety including influenza and herpes and rhinovirus and various hepatitis viruses. I just want to hold you there for a moment, Dr. Peay. We definitely have to make sure we have time for strategies here to mitigate this, but I think we have a caller on the air, so let's take this next caller. Caller, you're on the air, where are you from? Yes, hello, am I in the air?
Yes, go ahead. Yeah, well I'm wondering that since the transmission is by droplets rather than aerosol, that are coming from the oral or nasal cavity, which could be considered like a point source, similar to a point source in pollution, why isn't, wouldn't you think that mandatory wearing of masks when you're around other people would stop the spread in its tracks? That does seem reasonable since the aerosol will likely be trapped on a fairly fine porous mask. And I've always mentioned the regular hand washing as being a number one preventative
because most people unfortunately don't even think about it, but they're constantly touching their nose, rubbing their eyes, putting their fingers near their mouth, and I think people do it probably a hundred times a day unconsciously, and I think that's as much a... Soap is a surefire virus for this type of virus, but that was in the news shortly after a man was hospitalized because he ate soap thinking it would be internally, but it's not safety, but it's very virus idle on the skin. Okay, you're listening to Ask Your Doctor, K. McGarvable, 91.1 FM.
From now until eight o'clock, you're invited to call in with questions related to this month's topic of the coronavirus, and the number is 707-923-3911. So Michael, is there anybody else here that's waiting at this point in time? Yes, that's what the theme music means. You have two calls. Okay, okay. Yeah, it's difficult to see. So, Cora, you're on the air. Where are you from, and what's your question? Hi, I just had a quick comment, and the question, I'll take my answer off the air. So hi, this is me. Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
My comment is that a few months ago, Dr. Peat mentioned a few times that just forming organizations would be the best way to fight whatever negative kind of impact the ruling class is having, and I realized that this new concept of social distancing is just a great way to crush all organizations going forward. I mean, not to sound too conservative, but that's just something interesting I noticed. And my question is that the governor of California said around half the population is going to get infected with this virus. Do you think that's an accurate projection?
And I'll take my answer off the air. Thank you. Okay, so Dr. Peat, I guess we should talk about this looking forward, and I guess historically we'll be vindicated by whatever the outcome is. But what do you think? I mean, he said, Newsom said 50 to 60 million people, or 50 to 60%. I think it was 60% of the population he said expected to contract this virus. I think in this go-around, not just in this general yearly return. I think that's within the historical range that almost none of them will have a serious
sickness, but the stuff blows around. And the reason there's a flu season from winter until late spring is that during, in the temperate zones, the sun exposure goes down and most people become to some extent vitamin D deficient and extremely susceptible to infection, especially viruses. And by summer, the vitamin D is rising and viral immunity rises very strongly, ending the flu season year after year. Interesting. I just want to speak to that in terms of I have a friend who's using 20,000, okay, so
most people would be listening, vitamin D comes in drops and without naming names, there's plenty of people that manufacture it. But there's one particular manufacturer in Chicago, I think that's where they're based, that produce a vitamin D of 4,000 international units per drop. And I don't think the CDC or the other health bodies here in the States recommend anything more than 800 international units or 1,000 international units. Anyway, this vitamin D product is a 4,000 IU per drop product. And this particular person has been using 20,000 IU per day, okay, so well over what
would normally be recommended. And they've had labs and blood work to test their vitamin D and their vitamin D is just about in the middle of the range because it was very low to begin with. And so they started using more and more and more and they had three or four labs done. And at this point in time, their vitamin D is about 50 pg/ml when the reference is between 25 or 30 to 100. So how about that? It's such a variance in people.
So people taking your vitamin D, the best way to know whether you're taking enough is with a skin prick test and you can get that from the vitamin D council online. And that way you need to be aware of actually what your level is and Dr. Peat recommends it's not below 50 ng/ml. 50 to 60 is a safe range. And I've seen probably 95% of the people I've been in contact with have been below that range and there are lots of other symptoms that go with low vitamin D. Fatigue, muscle weakness,
high blood pressure is strongly connected with it and the virus I mentioned that it interacts with the endocrine and inflammatory systems and vitamin D and adequate calcium in the diet happen to work on the same part of the immune system that the drugs that the Chinese have been having success with in treating people who already have the infection. One drug is cinanserin which is a serotonin blocker. The other is Losartan, an androtensin receptor blocker, AT1 receptor blocker. And Losartan has been used for treating high blood pressure mostly.
But it turns out that all of these anti-inflammatory natural substances, a good calcium intake in the diet, adequate vitamin D, normal level of progesterone, aspirin and almost everything anti-inflammatory that has been studied in relation to this inflammatory system works in the same direction as this drug recommended by the Chinese. So would you recommend that people go see their doctor and ask for a prescription of Losartan and Mementine and any other drugs or would you recommend people wait until they get sick to use them? And what is your recommendation?
A man in Italy about a week ago emailed me about his friend with confirmed coronavirus and I mentioned the Chinese recommendations to him. He rushed out and got a Losartan prescription. The next day he said his friend was up and out of bed and feeling good. And today I got an email from him saying that not just good, he feels like he has new lungs. I wanted you to outline here, you mentioned that the ACE1 and ACE2, the drugs that block that, that the Losartan is one of those drugs isn't it?
Well, there's a lot of confusion going around because the ACE inhibiting drugs have been available for decades, but in just the last 10 or 15 years, a lot of subtle details have been discovered. Some people are saying that since the virus attacks the ACE2 enzyme, that this is the receptor so-called for the virus and that this receptor combines with the ACE1 and the receptor site to infect the cell and reproduce. They say that anything that increases ACE2 enzyme must increase your susceptibility to
the virus, but it's exactly the opposite because ACE2 is a defensive anti-inflammatory enzyme that destroys androtensin, even though it's called androtensin converting enzyme number two. What it's doing is trimming two amino acids off the end of androtensin molecule, turning it into what they call androtensin one to seven, which is doing the opposite, curing, preventing the fibrotic and inflammatory processes that damage your lungs, arteries, bones, heart, nerves, kidneys and so on. So the things that block the AT1 receptor also increase the ACE2 enzyme, which is protective.
So as it turns out, in fact, it looks confusing to the old textbook idea that the ACE enzymes are simply making the androtensin. I don't think the show would be complete without mentioning herbs, obviously, given the title of the radio show. I kind of get lost in a lot of the science and a lot of the science does support a lot of the interactions of herbs and herbal medicines. I know in Europe for countless, countless years, pneumonia has been present in England and in Ireland and people have died obviously from pneumonia.
It's very common in the winter. There are products like pleurisy root, which has been well documented for its antibacterial effect for pleurisy and then obviously other material that works to either cause an anti-inflammatory effect. We did mention the whole point of what they call the cytokine storm in the pneumonic version or the primary kind of pneumonia. You really want anti-inflammatories and so Echinacea root is definitely an anti-inflammatory rather than the flowers. The flowers do have an antiviral action, but I think they're probably a little bit too maybe stimulating.
So it's the anti-inflammatories and then I know elderberry has been picked up a lot, certainly in the press and on the internet as being beneficial for this particular virus. Obviously things like thyme and again the antibacterials that the labiates, the daisy family, sorry, the mint family exhibit. A lot of those monoterpenes and terpenes there are very positively antibacterial, but I think from an inflammatory perspective, that's the main thing is to try and get on top of the inflammation and then for secondary infections, those things that would be used as volatile
oil herbs to control bacterial infection. Okay, so I know we do have callers on the air here and we want to make sure that the callers can get on. So let's, and we're probably going to do this next month if we're all still here. I'm sure we will be, but let's take this next caller. Caller you're on the air, where are you from and what's your question? And we need to be fairly quick. I am from the San Francisco Bay Area and I'll take this off my phone.
What will it take for our economy to bounce back to where it was before the coronavirus? Well good question. I know you're not an economist, Dr. Peat. What do you think about the potential fallout from the financial meltdown that's going on? The government is talking about giving large amounts of money to corporations rather than emphasizing getting it directly to the population. The extremely conservative economist Milton Friedman decades ago proposed minimum basic income as a way to stabilize. He proposed, for example, that it would allow industry to have stayed in the United States
instead of going to China and at this point his proposal probably wouldn't do much to recover the industry from China, but I think he was on the right track that it's necessary to get money to the consumers, not just to the corporations that are losing money. If I could jump in for a second, I'm going to be on Bud Rogers' show. It's not until the 19th of April, his next, I guess it's the third Sunday of the month, 1.30, and we'll be talking about modern monetary theory and sort of how that works in because
the basic guaranteed income is sort of related to that. So I know it's a long way away, but people are asking about it. I have some interesting facts that I wanted to mention, Dr. Peat. I was looking at the number of deaths. After you had told me that there was an average of 44,000 people that die in the United States from flu, and right now when they've done the math, they've extrapolated that about 10% of those flu cases were caused by the coronavirus in previous years. Now this is a different strain.
But anyways, if it was going to stick with previous years, it would be about 10% of that 44,000 would die from this coronavirus. Am I understanding you correctly, Dr. Peat? Yeah. Dr. Vodarg made the same point that he said according to the historical curve using those figures, he would have expected, I think he said 2,000 to 2,500 deaths in Germany, where at that point it was 200. So they were behind the mortality curve. And then I found another database that talks about deaths from pneumonia, which can be pneumonia caused by anything.
So it could be because someone had bacterial infection and older people. So basically there was 85,000 people died in the United States in 2017, and 58,000 of those were 70 plus years old. And in China they had in 2017 161,000 and 125,000 of those people were 70 years or older. So these deaths are from pneumonia of various causes. Yeah. Old age causes sepsis and pneumonia as the most common causes of death, other than specific things like heart disease and cancer. But it happens that old age changes the inflammatory system the same way this particular virus
does, increasing antitansin receptor and decreasing the protective ACE2 enzyme system. So anything you're doing to protect against the viral effects really are protecting against aging. And the main outcome of the pneumonia produced by these viruses is a chronic fibrosis of the lungs and all of the things protective against the inflammatory system helped to reverse the fibrosis once it had started. So would you recommend people go after a doctor for prescription of Lusartan or would you recommend they just wait until they get it, get the virus or get the flu?
I think it's not such a problem that a person needs to go to the doctor for it. Almost everyone is going to have only mild symptoms from it. Right. And everyone has access to aspirin and herbs like echinacea and elderberry and astragalus and bicol school caps and then also those antihistamines if you do get the flu, loratadine and cyproheptadine, otherwise known as Periactin. Vitamin D, vitamin B1 and aspirin are moving the system in the corrective direction. And if you are really sick in the hospital, get your doctor to give you a prescription of Lusartan.
Okay, we better hold it there. We're really close to the top of the hour. Thank you so much for joining us Dr. Peat. Let me quickly mention your website and thanks for your time. Okay, thanks. Okay, so Dr. Peat can be found at www.raypeat.com. (lighthearted music)