With the 180-degree policy shift, and the large-scale opening up after the lockdowns, if you ask what medicine is the most popular now, it is of course the miracle drug Lianhua Qingwen. Various versions of Chinese medical guidelines have included this medicine.
First, let’s talk about how this medicine came about. In July 2003, the State Food and Drug Administration approved “Lianhua Qingwen Capsules” for clinical research. This was the first time the State Food and Drug Administration approved a traditional Chinese medicine for the treatment of SARS after launching a fast-track approval process for drugs to prevent and treat atypical pneumonia. In other words, this medicine was developed for SARS.
In June 2004, the “China Traditional Chinese Medicine Newspaper” revealed more details, “They worked day and night, within a short 15 days, completed the extraction, concentration, drying, shaping and other production processes and quality standards research of ‘Lianhua Qingwen Capsules’ … From research and development to obtaining the approval number from the provincial drug administration, and then entering the fast-track approval process of the State Food and Drug Administration, it only took a month, which is indeed a miracle.”
It took only 15 days to develop a medicine. What’s the concept? Let me popularize the widely recognized double-10 law in the pharmaceutical industry, which is that the average cost of developing and launching an innovative drug exceeds $1 billion, and the research and development cycle is more than 10 years.
In addition, according to a search on China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), from 1992 to 2003, Wu Yiling published several medical articles in some medical journals, with the themes of prevention and treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and myasthenia gravis. During this period, there was no research related to the prevention and treatment of respiratory diseases or colds, represented by Lianhua Qingwen. So how did Yiling Pharmaceutical become so proficient in respiratory diseases overnight?
So, a drug that was made in 15 days, developed without experience in respiratory diseases, not scientifically validated, not subjected to extensive clinical trials, a combination of a bunch of traditional Chinese medicines, a drug not developed for COVID-19, suddenly claims to be able to prevent or treat COVID-19, do you believe it?
Let’s not talk about the efficacy first. Lianhua Qingwen is quick, accurate, and ruthless in seizing opportunities. From SARS in 2003, hand, foot, and mouth disease in 2008, the H1N1 flu in 2009, the COVID-19 pandemic starting in 2020, and the flu every year, Lianhua Qingwen has repeatedly played the role of savior, not missing any opportunity for disaster. Even in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, Lianhua Qingwen could also try its best to create the image of a pharmaceutical company that makes medicine for the country. Especially since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Lianhua Qingwen, which is on the altar, has reached sales of billions of yuan.
This pandemic is particularly prominent. In various official home guidelines, there is the presence of Lianhua Qingwen. I want to seriously ask the people who wrote the guidelines, what is the basis for setting a Lianhua Qingwen developed in 15 days in it? Is there any interest transfer?
Now the whole country is scrambling to buy it, and the price has been raised from a dozen yuan to over 70, or even 90, 100 yuan. Isn’t this making a fortune from national disaster? What is it if it’s not blood steamed buns? If a vegetable price increases by a few cents or a few yuan, you used to fine others hundreds of thousands. Lianhua Qingwen openly raises prices and sells it here. What is the market supervision administration doing? Why don’t they care?
At this time, friends will say, I used to take Lianhua Qingwen for a cold and it did work. Of course, it works, because Lianhua Qingwen is tricky here, in the ingredient list of Lianhua Qingwen:
There is something called Zhi Mahuang (processed Ephedra), which contains ephedrine.
Ephedrine, also known as ephedrine, is an alkaloid with the chemical formula C10H15NO. Ephedrine is a sympathomimetic drug. It can stimulate the sympathetic nerves, and its effect is more lasting than adrenaline; it can relax bronchial smooth muscle and constrict blood vessels; it has a significant central nervous system stimulant effect.
Ephedrine is one of the best temporary effective drugs for relieving cold symptoms, such as nasal congestion and runny nose caused by the flu virus, including headache, dizziness, and cough. It works immediately. And most people are not tolerant to it.
Like Quick, Contac, and Baijiahei, these cold medicines all contain pseudoephedrine (ephedrine is now basically replaced by pseudoephedrine because it can be used to make ice meth), which has a similar effect.
So you feel that Lianhua Qingwen is effective because this ingredient is effective, not because the medicine is effective. All similar cold medicines are equally effective.
Shamelessly printing COVID-19 on the medicine box
Since it is somewhat effective for colds, are there any relevant academic papers that say Lianhua Qingwen can prevent or treat COVID-19? There really are.
On April 18, after “Dingxiang Doctor” published an article stating that Lianhua Qingwen cannot be used for COVID-19 prevention, Yiling Pharmaceutical announced high-profile: “Lianhua Qingwen’s COVID-19 prevention research has been published.” Let’s take a look at this paper (because it’s in English, I won’t put screenshots, you can search and watch it yourself if you are interested).
The research team of the Affiliated Hospital of Hebei Medical University published a paper on the prevention of COVID-19 by Lianhua Qingwen in the journal “Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine”. It seems that this is Yiling Pharmaceutical’s strong counterattack against Dingxiang Doctor.
However, before I could open the paper to study it carefully, two doubts arose:
1. The founder of Yiling Pharmaceutical, Academician Wu Yiling, is a school leader of Hebei Medical University: In other words, the research team of his own school published a paper to prove that the medicine of his own company can prevent COVID-19. Good heavens, the team of his own school wrote an article saying that the medicine of the school leader is useful. Is this both an athlete and a referee?
2. The journal in which this paper was published is only a low-level journal with an impact factor of 1.8-2.0, in the 4th zone of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ medical journals.
But, I think we still have to be realistic. We can’t directly deny the quality of the paper just because the paper is highly related to the interests of the company, and because the journal score is low, right?
The title goes straight to the point:
Efficacy and Safety of Lianhua Qingwen in Preventing COVID-19: A Prospective Open-Label Clinical Trial.
Open-label, which means that no blinding was used. No matter what conclusion this paper draws, because there is no blinding, the effectiveness of this conclusion has been greatly reduced. I have to say that I am very disappointed. After all, so far, we have been using Lianhua Qingwen to treat COVID-19 for more than 2 years, and there is no research on Lianhua Qingwen to treat or prevent COVID-19 that has adopted rigorous verification of multi-center, placebo-controlled, and double-blind methods.
Next, let’s look at the subjects (close contacts and secondary close contacts of COVID-19, totaling 1976 people) were divided into 2 groups: one was the Lianhua Qingwen capsule group, with a total of 1101 people, and the other was the control group, with 875 people. (Fools know that to make a comparison, you should at least make the number of people the same, there is a difference of nearly 40% of the number of people, and you tell me you are doing research?)
Then look at his experimental steps:
The Lianhua Qingwen group, which is the experimental group, according to the 8th edition of the COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment guidelines, took 4 capsules of Lianhua Qingwen capsules orally, 3 times a day; while the control group only underwent medical observation, and then counted the incidence of COVID-19 in the two groups. If the incidence of COVID-19 in the Lianhua Qingwen group is lower than that in the control group, then the conclusion is: Lianhua Qingwen can prevent COVID-19.
All positive close contact methods in the paper are divided into two types, one is close contact in the same space, and the other is close contact with medical staff.
Among the 1101 people in the Lianhua Qingwen group, only 115 people were “close contacts in the same space”, while in the control group of 875 people, as many as 240 people were “close contacts in the same space”. (Really good at choosing)
In addition, there were 29 medical staff close contacts in the 1101 people in the Lianhua Qingwen group, while there were 45 medical staff close contacts in the 875 people in the control group. (Really good at choosing X2)
Fools can see that the distribution of the number of people in these two close contact methods is very uneven in the two groups, and the control group is obviously more than the Lianhua Qingwen group.
The result is really ideal!
In the 1101 “close contacts” and “secondary close contacts” in the Lianhua Qingwen group, only 3 people were positive for COVID-19; while 10 people in the control group of 875 people were positive. The positive rate of the Lianhua Qingwen group was far lower than that of the control group! Then, with a big stroke, the conclusion was drawn: Lianhua Qingwen capsules can prevent COVID-19!
Let’s take a look at the distribution of these 13 patients with positive nucleic acid tests. Is something wrong? Among them, 8 people were “close contacts in the same space”, and 5 people were “close contacts with medical staff”. The nucleic acid tests for other close contact methods were all 0! (The number of people in these two types of close contacts in the two groups is completely unequal).
In other words, the team of Hebei Medical University, by intentionally setting unequal numbers of samples, created such data that is favorable to them, and used this data that is completely unscientific and has no reference value to prove the effectiveness of their medicine, which is purely treating everyone as fools.
Of course, the common people can’t understand English papers, don’t understand what a control group is, and don’t care whether they are fabricated or what, as long as there is a result, that is, Lianhua Qingwen can prevent COVID-19, that’s enough. In this regard, Yiling Pharmaceutical perfectly meets the pain points of consumers.
Zhong Nanshan and the People’s Liberation Army Daily also emphasized that there is no preventive medicine for COVID-19.
Chinese people have really suffered in these 3 years. They started being harvested by mask companies, then by nucleic acid companies, locked down and harvested by supply guarantee companies, and opened up and harvested by pharmaceutical companies. The already not wealthy Chinese people are harvested wave after wave by these capitals, but the above are indifferent and condone their behavior.
From SARS to COVID-19, Lianhua Qingwen has been officially brought to the surface time and time again, for what? To put it bluntly, it’s two words – face. Our Chinese companies can’t make effective drugs, so what should we do? Use Lianhua Qingwen! How can we lose face internationally? Can it be said that traditional Chinese medicine can’t beat Western medicine? Whether it’s SARS or COVID-19, are the really seriously ill patients treated with traditional Chinese medicine or ventilators and ECMO? Are they taking Western medicine or drinking traditional Chinese medicine? I don’t need to say more about this. The same situation happened with the COVID-19 vaccine. The Sinovac vaccine is higher than the foreign Pfizer vaccine (in Hong Kong it is called Fosun Pharma, also known as BNT vaccine) in terms of severe illness rate and death rate, but we just don’t introduce the Pfizer vaccine. The masses who want to get the Pfizer vaccine can only go abroad to get it, because why? Because we don’t want to admit that Sinovac is not good, and we don’t want to admit that domestic products are not as good as foreign ones. To put it bluntly, it’s still that we have risen to become a great power, and our mentality is becoming less and less humble. Everywhere we go, it’s China wins.
Traditional Chinese medicine, whether it is a philosophy, a way of health preservation, or some treatment methods, has been passed down for so many years and must be useful. But there are many companies that, under the guise of traditional Chinese medicine, randomly put together some ingredients to create some useless drugs, and through the relationship of the heavens and tens of billions of marketing expenses every year, not only tarnish the brand of traditional Chinese medicine, but also harvest the money of all Chinese people. This conscience is completely rotten.
Finally, I call on everyone not to blindly follow the trend to grab Lianhua Qingwen as leeks. Life has evolved for 4 billion years to become a person. Does mankind still need to rely on a drug developed in 15 days to defeat this virus?
Finally, finally, I would like to recommend a COVID-19 effective drug recognized by the whole world:
The ingredients are dihydrogen monoxide, zero alcohol, oxygen phenol, hydroxy hydrogen, hydrooxy acid, caustic hydrogen, di-zero ether, normal oxygen alkane, oxygen ethylene, hydrogen hydroxide, decarbonized formaldehyde, hydrogenated superoxyacyl, decyano zero aldehyde oxime, dihydrogenoxy acid anhydride, hydrogenated desulfurized sulfuric acid, and oxidized decarboxylated acetic acid.
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