Merck's Covid Pill - Molnupiravir -- the Covid Mutation Pill

Gosh. What is with these pharmaceutical companies trying to cause mutations to Covid?

First Bayer is harvesting mutations to Covid in the HIV positive in South Africa. Now Merck wants to put a pill on the market that induces mutations in Covid.

I guess Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta weren't enough mutations for big Pharma. Phamaceutical companies want even more mutations to Covid.

The COVID-19 pill developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics appears to reduce the risk of hospitalization by inducing mutations in the coronavirus, preventing it from making copies of itself.
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But in a study led by University of North Carolina researchers earlier this year, the drug also induced low levels of mutations in the DNA of hamster cells — in theory, suggesting it could pose a slight risk of cancer.
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... — prompting Anthony Fauci, the nation’s chief infectious-disease scientist, to call the results “very impressive.”

How the drug works
Molnupiravir, the drug from Merck and Miami-based Ridgeback, is called a nucleoside analogue. That means its molecules are chemical cousins of one of the building blocks of RNA, the genetic material inside the coronavirus.

The similarity enables the molecules to incorporate themselves into the virus RNA and cause mutations in the process, said Brianne Barker, a Drew University biologist who studies the immune system’s response to viruses.

Merck’s COVID-19 pill and the ‘unknown risk’ of DNA mutation

So Merck claims their pill causes mutations, but allegedly stops replication.

Easy scenario. Person with Covid takes Merck Covid mutation pill. Person coughs after Covid mutated and mutated Covid is no longer inside the body with the pill that allegedly stops mutation. Then 5 people breathe the air after the person coughs and catch the mutations. None of them are taking the pill. Nothing to stop replication of the mutated Covid in their bodies.

Some scientists who have studied the drug warn, however, that the method it uses to kill the virus that causes Covid-19 carries potential dangers that could limit the drug’s usefulness.

Molnupiravir works by incorporating itself into the genetic material of the virus, and then causing a huge number of mutations as the virus replicates, effectively killing it. In some lab tests, the drug has also shown the ability to integrate into the genetic material of mammalian cells, causing mutations as those cells replicate.

Merck’s Covid Pill Could Pose Serious Risks, Scientists Warn

Apparently the pill also causes animal cells to mutate. But Merck denies that it could happen to humans. Merck claims "only mice." That's got to be the dumbest crock I've ever heard of. How can this be? Merck claims their pill only causes animal cells to mutate...oh...but not humans. Last time I checked, humans were animals. Do Merck scientists not realize that humans are animals too?

So I guess everybody needs to get ready for a new wave of Covid mutations. Big Pharma seems bent on making sure there's plenty of man-made and man-harvested mutations of Covid.

a reply to: MapMistress

Honestly, can you blame them for making it. These are bad people, and when you demonstrate you're willingness to be experimented on by bad people, bad things happen and will continue to happen.

I'm thinking of jumping on the bandwagon and making my own Covid drug ...... I was going to call it Getthisinyaloser.

This pill is 700 dollars. It's crazy. Who can afford it? Only government can. And why does government give it to you for free?

originally posted by: myselfaswell
a reply to: MapMistress


I'm thinking of jumping on the bandwagon and making my own Covid drug ...... I was going to call it Getthisinyaloser.

I'm brewing up a home made bath tub vaccine trademarked as Clovidfield.

It mutates people into giant ,city destroying monsters with parasites which bite you. The bites turn into giant boils which spawn more parasites then after 28 days the victims mutate into giant, city destroying monsters etc....etc.....

on the plus side, errrrrr hum erm two masks to flatten a week or something and you're a bad person if you don't agree.







May cause drowsiness.

It doesn't cause the virus to mutate into a new strain as it destroys the virus ability to copy itself.

It says that in the bit you quoted.

I think you will find that this is what happens when the layperson tries to understand something very complex without the necessary understanding required to make an assessment of it.



a reply to: MapMistress

originally posted by: Nexttimemaybe
It doesn't cause the virus to mutate into a new strain as it destroys the virus ability to copy itself.

It says that in the bit you quoted.

Unless other RNA viruses, corona virus have a self repair gene that repairs bad mutation. It still mutates quite fast, 1 million times faster than people, but typically only keeps good mutations.

a reply to: MapMistress

Last time I checked, humans were animals. Do Merck scientists not realize that humans are animals too?

Listen I've checked with the animals okay? They want nothing to do with us.

a reply to: Nexttimemaybe

I would be more concerned about this part from the quote:

In some lab tests, the drug has also shown the ability to integrate into the genetic material of mammalian cells, causing mutations as those cells replicate.

So it can possibly cause mutations in human cells.

a reply to: Chalcedony

Yeah apparently there is a chance that can happen. Studies have shown it can interfere with some of our intermediates and confuse our polymerases which is odd since they are structured slightly differently and have significant error checking.

It’s supposed to put a mutagen in place of a nucleotide when the active site of RdRp is generating a new RNA transcript from a template. Don’t remember if it’s both or genomic/mRNA or it occurs more in the antisense generation of subgenomic RNAs and bouncing between the double stranded intermediates but it doesn’t really matter since the protein will have a weakness in the amino acid that sequence encodes for making it non functional or have weird arrangements that aren’t stable.

I guess kind of like replacing a brick with a paper brick or a hole, you get enough and the protein structure that makes up the virus is compromised. It could also compromise generation of RNA since it would be stopped in that cell and not spread.

It’s supposed to work on a polymerase like RdRp that generates RNA from an RNA template. So we target that active site of the polymerase and it should stop there. Almost never happens with molecular targets in vivo, always moves to something else at some point because of some variable, epigenetic factor or environmental impact.

Coronavirus also has a protein called ExoN. RdRp lacks error checking of nucleotides, RNA viruses care about speed instead of accuracy. RdRp is used by all RNA viruses except some like lentivirus or retrovirus that use reverse transcriptase. This is why drugs work on multiple RNA viruses that target RdRp like Ebola or others. RNA viruses usually attenuate because of mutations. ExoN changes this aspect. It slows down attenuation and mutation because it error checks the RNA as it’s generated. Corona does this because it has a larger genome and needs to manage it to survive. There is a potential that ExoN could just error check and repair the damage from the drug.

The true test will be if ExoN is fooled by the nucleoside analog drugs or if it can repair the damage. Either way it won’t work for long since mutations will arise that escape the drug target and those mutations will be maintained as they outcompete the original variant and ExoN maintains those mutations in the new variants.

Biden buys these pills at 700 dollars each and gives them for free. Nothing is for free. You take something, you pay the price for it.

Merck Reportedly Plans To Double Production Of New Covid-Fighting Pill As Wealthy Countries Corner Scarce Supplies

They know it will "sell" 😁

Merck said it plans to double its own production of molnupiravir from 10 million treatment courses in 2021 to at least 20 million in 2022 to meet surging demand for the drug, according to the FT.

a reply to: TheAMEDDDoc

Interesting. So it may not help since the coronavirus can detect and repair damage. I was able to read the full article the original post quoted from Barron's and here is what it says about the mutations:

Molnupiravir came to Merck through a partnership with a private firm called Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, which licensed the drug from a not-for-profit biotech concern owned by Emory University. Molnupiravir is what’s known as a prodrug, which metabolizes in the body to create NHC, which has been studied for decades.

Schinazi, who is a professor at Emory but did not work on molnupiravir, has a long history with NHC, and has written a number of papers on the compound.  He was a founder of the biotech Pharmasset, which he says considered developing NHC as a treatment for hepatitis C in 2003, but chose not to because of the risk that it could cause mutations. Pharmasset created the hepatitis C drug Sovaldi, and Schinazi told Barron’s that he did not believe that molnupiravir should be given to pregnant women, or to young people of reproductive age, until more data is available. Merck’s trials of molnupiravir have excluded pregnant women; the scientists running the trial asked male participants to “abstain from heterosexual intercourse” while taking the drug, according to the federal government website that tracks clinical trials.

And

A paper published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases in May by Schinazi and scientists at the University of North Carolina reported that NHC caused mutations in animal cell cultures in a lab test designed to detect such mutations. 

“The risks for the host may not be zero,” the authors concluded. “Evaluating the utility of this drug should be done in those likely to receive the greatest benefit, with monitoring provided to assess potential long-term genotoxic side effects.” One of the paper’s authors, Dr. Shuntai Zhou, a scientist at the Swanstrom Lab at UNC, said that he and his colleagues had flagged their initial findings to Merck in July 2020, roughly a year before his paper was published. “There is a concern that this will cause long-term mutation effects, even cancer,” Zhou says. Zhou says that he is certain that the drug will integrate itself into the DNA of mammalian hosts. “Biochemistry won’t lie,” he says. “This drug will be incorporated in the DNA.” What impact it will have when it’s there is unknown, given the various systems human cells use to limit the impact of mutations.

It just seems that this drug may be a waste of time then?

a reply to: Chalcedony

It sounds like they’re worried about the germ line and development of the embryo. This gets into a few different aspects including incorporating into DNA and modifying RNA or other proteins that interact with DNA. It’s obvious what will happen if it’s incorporated into DNA.

What is interesting to me is the way they talk about other influences. Maybe they are worried it could influence epigenetic changes and cause problems later on in life. This means abnormal influences with things that bind to and modify DNA maybe because something else like RNA, proteins or other things get weird that splice mRNA and modify the structure of DNA.

An epigenetic change is not a change in the sequence of DNA. It is a change in the structure and expression of DNA that can be passed on to progeny cells. That would be methylation or removal of methylation in CG islands and histone modifications. Imagine if it occurred in a stem cell or progenitor cell. This can lead to HLA autoimmune disease, autism and related behavior disorders, neurological disorders, and a whole slew of issues. Or it could do nothing since many of these disorders rely on an additional environmental influence that either confuses signaling in development or immune cells after pathogen exposure that has similarities to molecular mimicry.

I wouldn’t take it, it’s a half assed quick fix target, and I can see how it would increase the chances of developing many diseases.

originally posted by: Nexttimemaybe
It doesn't cause the virus to mutate into a new strain as it destroys the virus ability to copy itself.

It says that in the bit you quoted.

Sounds like it would work perfectly if viruses didn't adapt to survive and replicate. If it's not 100% effective, then it could be a catastrophe -- and that's aside from the risk of mutations in mammalian DNA.

Also, ivermectin is still 88% effective at preventing death and Merck's drug is said to be about 50% effective....AND the safety of ivermectin is well understood but Molnupiravir is a 'novel' drug with no safety record, at all.

It's as if no one making decisions is weighing benefits vs. risks....ever.

Just because they aren't, it doesn't mean everyone else shouldn't either.

I would enjoy that.
I can think of a few cities I would like to stomp.

Question is, can I communicate verbally in English or will it be a strangled gurgle like some Alien film?

a reply to: Tulpa

a reply to: chris_stibrany

It's not finished yet but the signs are positive.

Early tests suggest you can still speak bzzzuufrect EnglaaaAaaaWwrsh!

We'll be in touch.

originally posted by: Nexttimemaybe
It doesn't cause the virus to mutate into a new strain as it destroys the virus ability to copy itself.

It says that in the bit you quoted.

My point was that those taking the pill, perhaps the pill is able to stop replication.

BUT...if the mutations exit the body of the person taking the pill... There's nothing to stop the mutated strain from replicating in a body of a person not taking the pill.

My example. A man with Covid takes Merck's Covid mutation pill. His nostrils loaded with mutated Covid. He takes a walk in a local park on a trail. Coughs. Coughs. Coughs.

The mutated Covid in the air. Five other people walking the trail behind him breathe the air and breathe in the mutated Covid he coughed.

None of those five people are taking Merck's pill. And therefore, there's nothing to stop the mutated Covid from replicating in any of them.

originally posted by: Nexttimemaybe
It doesn't cause the virus to mutate into a new strain as it destroys the virus ability to copy itself.

It says that in the bit you quoted.

My point was that those taking the pill, perhaps the pill is able to stop replication.

BUT...if the mutations exit the body of the person taking the pill... There's nothing to stop the mutated strain from replicating in a body of a person not taking the pill.

My example. A man with Covid takes Merck's Covid mutation pill. His nostrils loaded with mutated Covid. He takes a walk in a local park on a trail. Coughs. Coughs. Coughs.

The mutated Covid in the air. Five other people walking the trail behind him breathe the air and breathe in the mutated Covid he coughed.

None of those five people are taking Merck's pill. And therefore, there's nothing to stop the mutated Covid from replicating in any of them.