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Comment by cipher_system | Hacker News Reader

Why does everyone want to reduce the fever with pills?

The immune system works best when there is a fever and if you suppress it you are just trading long term complications for short term relief. In the Covid-19 case it would IMO be much better to drink lots of fluids and just let the fever run its course.

I'm not a doctor so you shouldn't listen to me, listen to the awesome Dr Campbell instead, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJqSdmNNwW4

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Most of the proximate-causes of death from COVID-19 come from the immune system in overdrive killing healthy cells in addition to infected ones.

Not sure you want a stronger immune system in that case; you probably want to reduce inflammation directly.

Experts seem to rapidly change of opinion about that :

https://www.sciencealert.com/who-recommends-to-avoid-taking-...

Actually not sure who to trust about this anymore.

>> Editor's note (19 March 2020): Since the publication of this article, the World Health Organization has updated its advice on the official Twitter account: "Based on currently available information, WHO does not recommend against the use of ibuprofen."

Yeah, messy situation, but I'll take their word and the Chinese doctors for it whom have been administering ibuprofen to measure success

Note that even if the WHO changed its recommendation, french doctors still recommend to _not_ take anti-inflammatory. Use paracetamol instead (but not more than usual). Maybe they didn't get the memo yet, I can't tell.

Fever works well for dealing with bacteria, not with cytokine storm induced pneumonia, which is what covid induces

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