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Great news, but very expensive compared to a vaccine.
It's not either / or. Vaccines are great but they aren't 100% effective so we still want additional treatments. Hopefully drug researchers will figure out how to mass produce the active ingredients at a lower cost.
The issue with natural products is lack of patent protection, so drug developers are unwilling to develop plant extracts. It could be reasonable to anticipate non-profits such as Johns Hopkins or Vanderbilt to pursue ideas like this, but it doesn't happen.
I wonder if those down-voting have any comments, or simply think corporate medical greed is really good.
Maybe they just think the situation is a bit more nuanced than how you presented it.
You can't grow the vaccine in your garden though.

Jokes aside, there's a long way to go before this line of research leads to a product anywhere near as effective as vaccination.

Quoting from the OP:

- "CBD is quite hydrophobic and forms large micellar structures that are trapped and broken down in the liver, thereby limiting the amount of drug available to other tissues after oral administration."

- "other means of CBD administration such as vaping and smoking raise concerns about potential lung damage"

- "The purity of CBD and, in particular, the composition of the materials labelled as CBD are also important, especially in light of our findings suggesting that other cannabinoids such as THC might act to counter CBD antiviral efficacy"

- "The necessary human in vivo concentration and optimal route and formulation remain to be defined"

> You can't grow the vaccine in your garden though.

A sibling comment mentions that it's non-trivial to produce by someone with just a garden. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28122533

Yeah making CBD isolate in one's backyard is pretty unfeasible. It requires a distillation column on top of the vaccuum chamber, oven and solvent recirculation equipment required for typical cannabis extracts made in large quantities.

The process essentially involves blasting the material with solvents, evaporating the material inside a pressure controlled vacuum chamber oven then, collecting the various components in a distillation column as they're evaporated away at different temperatures.

It's a dangerous process that requires high quality equipment and a proper environment to do safely and produce a product you'd actually want to use.

Not the, 'average person can make Willy nilly in their kitchen after growing a few plants' kinda thing. It's more of a requires a trained team of technicians and a certified lab kinda thing.

It's meant to be therapeutic, not preventative. There are valid reasons for not being vaccinated (rare though) and it seems the vaccinated still have a small chance of getting Covid (albeit rare and mild) so it can be used to manage symptoms.

Maybe if I ever get Covid again it'll be mild and this will just help it along like cold and flu medicine...

Hey Mike, did you ever make good on that bet that you lost by stubbornly claiming that COVID was just a bad flu and it was never going to kill millions and fill hospitals, when the world was already burning? I'm going to go on the limb and guess not.

In case you forgot, @Lewton suggested that you donate here: https://www.givewell.org/charities/give-directly

BTW, did you actually confirm that you had COVID because as I remember it, you just had a feeling that prior sniffles might've been COVID.

Yes I did donate and I would have even if I had won the bet. I have a soft spot for good causes even if I'm stubborn sometimes.

Also, last pandemic that killed millions was a flu... Just sayin. Guess I was too optimistic about how far this one would spread.

And yes it was confirmed that I had it (antibody test when things died down a lil). Since then many people who I know got Covid, they all had less symptoms than I did. I also had to quarantine a bunch of times for having contact with them (never got sick again though). Was an interesting year.

How do you remember? As you pointed out, my bet was with Lewton (there's no DM feature here eh?).

It's hard to forget someone with such poor, but loud, judgment, and arrogant aversion to numbers and logic.
Actually, you're the one who's mouthy and arrogant.

Bay Area hospital ICUs were never even half full in 2020.

NIH estimated recetly that 5x the number of reported corona cases actually occurred. If the NIH can't determine the numbers, who are you to shame others?

It's the recent corona delta version that is mostly causing the millions of deaths.

So much for your "numbers and logic", big mouth.

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> The purity of CBD and, in particular, the composition of the materials labelled as CBD are also important, especially in light of our findings suggesting that other cannabinoids such as THC might act to counter CBD antiviral efficacy. This essentially eliminates the feasibility of marijuana serving as an effective source of antiviral CBD, in addition to issues related to its legal status.

Well shit

> This essentially eliminates the feasibility of marijuana serving as an effective source of antiviral CBD

To elaborate, it's not exactly impossible to do but likely out of reach for the average joe.

Steam and hydro distillation methods only require a bit of readily available laboratory gear, but new and improved techniques such as microwave assisted extraction [1] will only be available to large scale industrial producers for quite some time.

[1] Cannabidiol-enriched hemp essential oil obtained by an optimized microwave-assisted extraction using a central composite design https://bhas.unicam.it/bhas/sites/www.unicam.it.bhas/files/C...

I'm not well versed in reading studies like this. Could someone who is tell if there is any mention of a correlation to a reduction in inflammation caused by CBD?
They do mention activity to inhibit Cytokines, which is an important inflammation cause in Covid. The paper said nothing about inflammation from CBD itself. Since CBD is a medicine for the treatment of epilepsy many people take it already. The paper mentioned only mild side effects.
I think they meant CBD causing a reduction in inflammation, not that CBD causes inflammation. That would match its medical use more closely.
Yes, thank you. That is what I meant. My use of the phrase "caused by CBD" was unintentionally confusing.
To me the most immediately meaningful revelation is that non-prescription CBD preparations generally have practically no CBD in them. And, nobody is saying what they have instead. But, do you actually need a prescription to buy the real stuff being prescribed?
No you don't need a prescription. You can get pure 99% CBD isolate online for around $25-30 a gram or less if you're buying larger quantities.
> This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review.
And furthermore to be clear:

> We strongly caution against the urge to take CBD in presently available formulations as a preventative or treatment therapy at this time, especially without the knowledge of a rigorous randomized clinical trial with this natural product

It can't possibly hurt you to take it. Worst case you wasted some money. Why "strongly" caution?
Maybe they're afraid you'd avoid more effective preventive measures, like masks and vaccines
I think it's more just that they don't want any legal issues.