Back to School, Back to COVID
The virus didn’t get the memo to stay home this year.
For most Americans, the pandemic ended not when the virus was eradicated, but when the institutions built to monitor it stopped taking score. Once routine testing moved into the home, the public case counts lost relevance, employers stopped asking, and schools stopped reporting. We live in a world where the virus simply doesn’t exist until there are so many absences the system breaks.
Just as the country turns its attention to yellow buses, packed hallways, football games, and the annual back-to-school spending frenzy, COVID is once again making itself inconveniently visible. In Texas, San Perlita Independent School District suspended operations for two days after what officials called a rapid spread of COVID, barely two weeks into the academic year. In Louisiana, Park Ridge Achievement Academy canceled a day of classes after 20 teachers and 80 students were out sick with COVID in a single week.
Two closures do not establish a national emergency. They do, however, expose the fragility of the new normal. We have a highly transmissible virus that is so pathogenic it can disrupt schools, the workplace, and the supply chain. It doesn't have to overwhelm every hospital in the USA to have a profound economic and societal impact.
The difference between now and March 2020 is that we are less likely to see disruption on the horizon. With formal case reporting diminished and home testing dominant, wastewater has become one of the few early-warning systems still capable of catching a rise before absenteeism becomes impossible to ignore. WastewaterSCAN has reported an upward national trend, with August concentrations reported substantially above July and the strongest activity in the West and South.
The core question is no longer whether COVID is “over.” The more relevant question is why do we have our heads in the sand about COVID when it's still out there killing people? We have no vaccine ready and no treatment worth a damn. As a nation, we are completely unprepared if this virus continues to surge. It's time to plan ahead, and there are some common sense things people can do to protect themselves.
Wastewater Levels of SARS-CoV-2 - Alarming Rises
From the beginning of SARS-CoV-2 we have seen that it can surge at any time. While many of us hope it disappeared, it percolates under the surface all the while mutating until conditions are ideal for it to explode. This explosive tendency is during the winter months and the back to school session. Home testing has replaced routine reporting which means the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is forced to rely on waste water detection to notice any trends. SARS-CoV-2 concentrations have been rising across the country since late June. WastewaterSCAN reported that viral concentrations in August were 106% higher than in July, with the strongest activity in the South and West.
A massive wave is starting in the West, and vaccines are not available as the RFK regime begins to slowly roll them out in the month of September. Whether you love or hate the idea of vaccines, you simply cannot get it right now. For all intents and purposes, America has no defense against COVID-19 at this time.
The Vaccine Paradox
The vaccination story is not that the shots categorically “do not work.” The story is more about the apathy toward the shot and disappointment about what vaccines were originally designed to do (prevent disease). There’s a lot of vaccine injury out there, so people are thinking: "What's the point of getting the shot when the side effects of taking the shot are on par with getting sick from the virus?" Add to this reality that the uptake of the vaccine has been so low that there is no meaningful protection if all it does is prevent you from going to the hospital. Last year the CDC reported that 15.3% had received the updated 2025–26 COVID vaccine as of December 6, 2025. While CDC guidance still claims that COVID vaccination protects against severe illness, hospitalization, and death, the evidence is razor thin. JAMA published a study that reported roughly 50% effectiveness against needing COVID-related emergency or urgent-care visits and 55% effectiveness against requiring a hospitalization.
That is hardly the definition of sterilizing immunity where if you're exposed you simply don’t get sick. While it is not a force field against infection, transmission, or missed work, it is better than a poke in the eye.
Paxlovid - Big Pharma’s Solution
Paxlovid has become a convenient symbol for COVID fatigue. Pfizer reported that global Paxlovid revenue fell 70% operationally in 2025, driven primarily by lower reported COVID infections and lower government purchases. Pfizer also projected a roughly $1.5 billion year-over-year decline in COVID-product revenue for 2026.
Falling Paxlovid sales may be more of a reflection of the collapse of mass government purchasing and lower testing, which leads to fewer diagnosis and fewer reported cases that ultimately results in few prescriptions. The decline also demonstrates market forces at work. The government was subsidizing a treatment option that became antiquated and impractical, so when the subsidies went away, so did the market.
Rise of Alternative Medicines
When people pushed Paxlovid away, a number of alternative medicines rushed in to try to fill this treatment gap. Namely, Ivermectin got high marks as an alternative medicine. It was promoted heavily early in the pandemic, and showed promise in a couple of early studies, but over time as the virus mutated, its effects waned. While no one can disprove the benefit of early or prophylactic ivermectin use, there are much better alternatives.
Tollovid, for one, is also a much more powerful 3CL inhibitor, and it has done studies on the effectiveness against viruses containing 3CL proteases like COVID-19. Making it a much more palatable and available option over Ivermectin. There is a new supplement filling the void, and it's unlike any other antiviral we have seen in history.
Galectovid is a Galectin-1 and Galectin-3 blocker that's all-natural. If you want to figure out why you should block galectins, then you have to read this journal article from 2023 on a clinical trial conducted by a company called Bioxytran. Before you can grasp the magnitude of this discovery, we need to put things into perspective. Over the past decade, there have been well over 10,000 clinical trials conducted, and in all that testing, how many perfect phase 2 clinical trials have there been? Just 2. In 2013, Harvoni had a 100% response rate in its clinical trial for Hepatitis C. Then again in 2023, Prolectin-M had a 100% response rate in its clinical trial for COVID-19.
Just so we are clear, Prolectin-M had a phase 1 in 2020 and a phase 2 in 2023 and had 100% response rates in both. No one paid attention to them, and now the company is grasping for its last breath of air as it tries to find funding for a disease no one seemed to care about. While this company may be on its last legs, its contribution to science stands. They also did in vitro testing on Influenza and RSV and found out that their drug neutralized both, characterizing Prolectin-M as one of the most powerful antivirals ever discovered. It's also being tested for H5N1 at the University of Ga. Their literature shows that blocking Galectin-3 had the ability to prevent or eliminate viral load in at least COVID-19.
There's a rich history of drugs that just never got over the approval finish line. Could be money, could be management, or even regulatory issues. Whatever the reason, Prolectin-M isn’t on the shelf, and people need relief now. Tollo Health seems to have the next best thing with their medical food called Galectovid. This supplement has the serious potential to fill the COVID-19 treatment gap.
Tollo Health just put out a press release that Galectovid was 50% off for those who visit the Tollo Health Website and type in the coupon code #Back2School50%. The choices are clear: be sick and lose a week of work or school while you are miserable fighting off a cold that could turn into Long COVID, or snap up a bottle and try Galectovid, which may protect you from exposure or help you get over something really quickly. It's a multi-purpose medical food and appears to make a dent in COVID-19, influenza, and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV). It's the one bottle you definitely want in your medicine cabinet. Galectovid has no claims except blocking galectin-1 and galectin-3 viruses. It doesn’t take more than a minute to realize that Bioxtyran’s clinical trials showed they could eliminate viral load with their Galectin-3 drug to undetectable levels in 3 days, which means their patients were better in one. Now connect the dots and realize that if Tollo Health's product Galectovid works half as fast, it’s a major leap in treating viruses with a medical food.