no sweat!

Is it still too soon for COVID nostalgia?  After all, it’s over 6 years since Gretch shut all us Michiganders out of rakes, gardening supplies, and American flags.  I burned my last mask two years after that (1).  The changes to our lives have been legion, and so much seems to have become permanent.  Nostalgia for the days before COVID is understandable, but for the pandemic itself?  We’ve all heard our parents and grandparents speak of times characterized by forced simplicity and hardship – WWI, the Great Depression, WWII – usually speaking a bit wistfully about those times, with a survivor’s pride and sometimes a doubt that the young listener could survive something similar.  But here we are, survivors of lockdowns, gross infringements on personal liberty and of course the virus itself, which officially hit 103,436,829 Americans, of whom 1,235,885 died (2) (1.2%, quite a bit worse than the 2024-5 flu, which claimed 45,000 out of 51 million affected (0.9%)).  Of course, with the ways that death records were doctored to assign COVID as cause of death in any patient with a documented infection, even when another obvious cause existed, the COVID numbers are suspect.

Face it.  The pandemic made us do a few things we felt new or unusual.  We rediscovered home cooking and often used the time to get a little adventurous.  Whether it was reading books or just sticking our face into a screen, we got a little more cultured.  For those of us who realized we weren’t going to catch the virus from outdoor air, there was all that exercise.  Working from home proved to have so many advantages that many need to be forced to go back to the office.  Zooms were never a substitute for in-person contact, but we did get to see and talk to a lot of people we wouldn’t otherwise have thought of.  Those of us who dared to travel found uncrowded plane and train terminals and great appreciation from the hospitality workers at our destinations.  For those of us of a certain age, all that down time got us deeper into our much-needed decluttering projects.

All those experiences are easily recaptured, although I know a lot of people who would prefer not to face another Zoom meeting.  Hardest to recapture, I think, is the feeling we had while going through all this.  Both sides could claim a sense of heroic sacrifice.  The vaxxed felt their actions were saving Grandma (and the rest of the world) and bolstered that sense by haranguing the unvaxxed of their anti-social shortcomings.  We who disdained the stab saw ourselves as keepers of liberty and common sense.  I never thought while earning that microbiology master’s 50 years ago followed by a life in academic medicine that I’d be tapping all that to write argumentative blogs about a little RNA virus.  But I did, so many I could put them in a book (3).  If you want to see how crazy it sometimes got, check out (4).  It was heady stuff.  Sometimes, when proclaiming my truth, I felt like Henry V on St. Crispin’s day*.  My COVID “band of brothers” is still around, and we’re tighter than ever.

For most of us, COVID is just a fading memory.  Flickers of concern for other emerging viruses, for which the old COVID measures are proposed, just bring a snigger of derision.  We’re not going back there.  But for some, particularly the vaxxed, the nightmare continues.  The blood clots and myocarditis seen early on were just a warning.  Calls for a moratorium went unheeded (5).  The geniuses who put that Wuhan-constructed RNA fragment into a polyethylene glycol vehicle, or integrated it into a disabled adenovirus gene, forgot to install an off switch.  So, the mRNA went everywhere and never stopped translating spike protein, now recognized as the mediator for all those things that can happen after a stab: blood clots, myocarditis, neurologic injuries of many types, infertility, miscarriage, eye inflammation, other autoimmune processes, “turbo” cancers, rashes, even arthritis (6).  Then there’s the post-viral aesthenics, beset by fatigue, brain fog, and low-grade fever.  The latter seem to appear after any prolonged infection.  “Long COVID” is the grab bag term for all of these conditions (7).

I retired just months before any of this happened, so never directed the care of any patient.  It was hard to muster pride for many in my profession who toed the government line, used any means possible to force a vaxx on a patient, and disdained any intervention that might help in the early stages of the infection.  Fortunately, there were some brave doctors who spoke up.  My three public favorites were Robert Malone, Peter McCullough, and Jay Bhattacharya.  Dr. Malone was in on the early development of mRNA technology and owns some of the patents for the process.  Dr. McCullough is a Texas cardiologist with an MPH from Michigan.  He and Dr. Malone promoted hydroxychloroquine and then ivermectin as interventions that could drive down the virus in its early stages.  Dr. Battachyra now heads the NIH.  I still have in my fridge the bottle of ivermectin I bought on Amazon and administered to us before every trip.  Neither Kathy nor I ever got COVID, and we were tested weekly.  Dumb luck, or was it ivermectin, exercise, good food, and judicious use of alcohol (after all, we were rubbing it on our hands all the time)?

McCullough and colleagues pulled three natural compounds with proteolytic activity: nattokinase, curcumin, and bromelain (8).  Nattokinase is the most interesting, a product of soy fermentation that is a popular dietary supplement in Japan, prized for effects on cardiovascular health (9).  Japanese investigators described nattokinase’s effect on spike protein before Dr. McCullough adopted it (10).  Curcumin is from turmeric, the spice that permanently stains your countertop and cookware, while bromelain is derived from pineapples. 

If you don’t want to bother fermenting soybeans in your kitchen, you can buy capsules containing Dr. M’s magic trio on Amazon.  Each capsule contains 400 mg (20,000 IU) nattokinase, 500 mg curcumin, and 500 mg bromelain.  You take 2 a day.  You can get them on Amazon.  Dr. M’s own Wellness Company will sell you a bottle of 60 for $39.99, or $1.39/day (11).  You can do better assembling your own package.  Nattokinase 500 mg is as low as 21¢/capsule, curcumin 500 mg for a nickel a capsule, and bromelain 500 mg for 14¢/capsule.  So, you’ll save a little over a 61¢ a day if you roll your own (12).  It all adds up, particularly since you’ll need to take the stuff fir a year or 2.

I caught Dr. McCullough recently offering a new recommendation.  Recall all those athletes dropping dead from myocarditis early in the vaxx era?  So does Dr. M, who pointed out you don’t hear about them anymore.  I submit the stories are being suppressed, but if not, Dr. M’s take is interesting as he starts to talk about sweat (13).  He surmises – correctly – that no one sweats more than competitive athletes.  And sweat is one of the main ways that spike protein exits the body (14).  If you’re one of the unfortunate vaxxed upon whom Mr. Spike is doing a number, your main goal is to get rid of as much spike protein as possible.  Those capsules can only do so much.  If you can’t swing a natural way to do this, like spending summer in St. Louis, there’s saunas!  The Wellness Company doesn’t sell them (yet), but Amazon sure does, and cheap!  You can get one for less than 100 bucks (15).  There’ll be intact spike protein in that sweat, but once out of your internal milieu, it doesn’t do harm.

One of my former fellows, now practicing in Wisconsin, wrote me about 3 years into COVID “Dr. Ike, you were right about everything all along.”  Sweet music.  I’ve yet to hear it from any of my neighbors.  But, if any of them ask me how I’m doing in this post-COVID era, I can respond with confidence “no sweat!”

References  

1. Ike B.  Burn on II.  WordPress 3/11/22.  https://theviewfromharbal.com/2022/03/11/burn-on-ii/
2. COVID-19 pandemic and the United States,  Wikipedia 3/3/26.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_the_United_States#:~:text=In%20the%20United%20States%2C%20there,rose%2C%20and%20life%20expectancy%20fell.
3. Ike R. Musing through a Pandemic. My year and a half with Mr. Corona. Volume I. about Mr. Corona. Amazon (Kindle) 2021. Published 7/2.  https://a.co/d/09QLTYbn
4. Ike B.  Fauci’s Feeble-Minded Fear-Filled Followers.  WordPress 2/5/21.  https:/theviewfromharbal.com/2021/02/05/faucis-feeble-minded-fear-filled-followers
5. Mead NM, Seneff S, Rose J, Wolfinger R, Hulscher N, McCullough PA.  COVID-19 Modified mRNA “Vaccines”: Lessons Learned from Clinical Trials, Mass Vaccination, and the Bio-Pharmaceutical Complex, Part 2.  Int J Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Res 2024:3(2)1275-1344.  https://ijvtpr.com/index.php/IJVTPR/article/view/104/371
6. Santana-de Anda K, Torres-Ruiz J, Mejía-Domínguez NR, Alcalá-Carmona B, Maravillas-Montero JL, Páez-Franco JC, Vargas-Castro AS, Lira-Luna J, Camacho-Morán EA, Juarez-Vega G, Meza-Sánchez D, Núñez-Álvarez C, Rull-Gabayet M, Gómez-Martín D. Novel Clinical, Immunological, and Metabolic Features Associated with Persistent Post-Acute COVID-19 Syndrome. Int J Mol Sci. 2024 Sep 6;25(17):9661. https://www.mdpi.com/2945660
7. Lesgards JF, Cerdan D, Perronne C. Do Long COVID and COVID Vaccine Side Effects Share Pathophysiological Picture and Biochemical Pathways? Int J Mol Sci. 2025 Aug 15;26(16):7879. Doi: 10.3390/ijms26167879. Erratum in: Int J Mol Sci. 2025 Sep 29;26(19):9513. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40869200/
8. Hulscher N, Procter BC, Wynn C, McCullough PA. Clinical Approach to Post-acute Sequelae After COVID-19 Infection and Vaccination. Cureus. 2023 Nov 21;15(11):e49204. https://www.cureus.com/articles/207654-clinical-approach-to-post-acute-sequelae-after-covid-19-infection-and-vaccination#!/
9. Chen H, McGowan EM, Ren N, Lal S, Nassif N, Shad-Kaneez F, Qu X, Lin Y. Nattokinase: A Promising Alternative in Prevention and Treatment of Cardiovascular Diseases. Biomark Insights. 2018 Jul 5;13:1177271918785130.  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epub/10.1177/1177271918785130
10. Tanikawa T, Kiba Y, Yu J, Hsu K, Chen S, Ishii A, Yokogawa T, Suzuki R, Inoue Y, Kitamura M. Degradative Effect of Nattokinase on Spike Protein of SARS-CoV-2. Molecules. 2022 Aug 24;27(17):5405.  https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/27/17/5405
11. Spike Support – Detox, Immune Health, Blood Flow, Anti-Clotting – Nattokinase, Dandelion Root, & Black Sativa | 60ct (1 Month Supply).  Amazon https://a.co/d/03zfjP05
12. Roll Your Own.  Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen – Topic.  YouTube 11/8/14.  https://youtu.be/FHhpa_XqOcE?si=4DtLXZWQOpMeuvyC
13. McCullough PA.  Health Benefits of Sweating.  Focal Points 10/22/25.  https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/health-benefits-of-sweating?r=xihj0&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web  
14. Recalcati S, Tonolo S, Meroni E, Fantini F. SARS-CoV-2 in the sweat of COVID-19-positive patients: a possible route of transmission? J Eur Acad Dermatol Venereol. 2021 Dec;35(12):e865-e866. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8656368/
15. BOCHPOWER.  Portable Sauna Box, 3.0L Steamer, Remote Control, Folding Chair, 9 Levels (Full Size).  Amazon https://a.co/d/00lbdX7A

    

*The St. Crispin’s Day speech from Henry V

by: William Shakespeare

King Henry V: What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin:
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

From Henry V, Act IV, Scene III