Month: August 2020

On March 22, 2020 I wrote an article about an old drug – Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and a new hope in the treatment of COVID-19.  Early modelling forecast world-wide death in the millions, with very little trusted data on this novel coronavirus.  With no vaccine on the horizon, we all needed some hope.  On March 19th, President Trump tweeted:

“HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.”

Since then, much more has been learnt about SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 and also about treatment options – but we are still not out of the woods.  Although there is much chatter about promising vaccine trials, scepticism is warranted.  Big Pharma has never developed a vaccine for ANY previous coronavirus – whether SARS, MERS, Swine or Bird Flu.  The annual flu vaccine is 50% effective at best.  Why should SARS-COV-2 be any different?  Billions are being thrown at vaccine development and at “warp speed” too, so, perhaps we’ll be lucky.  Perhaps. However,

Over the past six months,

a disturbance was detected

in the force. Politics, the media

and national Health Institutes united

in an attempt to thwart the use of a very safe

and effective drug, dispensed for decades. It is

against this backdrop that I will now continue

with the next chapter of this saga, which I am calling

Is the New Hope warranted?

At the conclusion of my previous article (https://jvpienew.wpenginepowered.com/a-new-hope/), I opined that Africa could be spared much of the atrocity that comes with COVID-19.  Almost 5 months have transpired since then and I’d like to report that most of the poorest, malaria-plagued countries of sub-Saharan Africa have registered COVID-19 mortality rates that are tiny compared with many first-world nations.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” (Benjamin Franklin).  Considering the figure below, the amount of cure required and the toll on human life exacted by COVID-19 on the hospitalised cannot be overstated.

Once infected with COVID-19, a patient’s likelihood of survival drops precipitously from << 1 % to anywhere from 6 to 80% if they go to hospital.  Despite all of the best equipment and best-trained doctors and nurses, going to the ICU is akin to receiving a death sentence – especially in the Italian or New York City Hospitals during the height of the pandemic.  Late treatment options including the new drug Remdesivir and mechanical ventilators just don’t seem to have much of an impact on fatality rates.  The first world has relied heavily on its draconian practices to ensure social separation (masks, distancing, even lock-downs) and its vast array of expensive equipment and new drugs.  However, politics, greed and irrational fear seemed to have gripped areas such as New York City (as a prime example) as the leaders refused to let the healthy work, refused outpatient access to safe, inexpensive early treatment options, placed COVID-19 negative patients into COVID-19 positive hospital wards and sent COVID-19 positive patients back into nursing homes.  You couldn’t have created a worse scenario if you were an incompetent leader.  We’re supposed to protect the sick and vulnerable.  What happened?

New Yorker’s, unable to obtain HCQ as a treatment option were told to quarantine at home.  They were so fearful of going to hospital (thanks to the media and hospital malpractice), that many waited too long. 

When breathing became laboured, they presented to hospital and far too many departed in body-bags.  In a bold CYA exercise, Democratic NY Governor Anthony Cuomo, provided the state’s leaders with prosecutorial immunity.

  If you have the stomach for it, I’d recommend that you watch this video (thanks, o’l cobber) of a whistle-blower nurse, Erin Marie Olszewski, who worked at NYC’s Elmhurst hospital. 

It shows the effect that panic, greed and politics have on decision-making and hospital care in the midst of a pandemic.  I just hope some legal eagle has the gumption to challenge Cuomo’s decree.  I think this went far beyond gross incompetence.

So, what does the COVID-19 data have to say about the weak adherence of Africa’s poorest people to first-world social separation practices and their bottom quartile level health care for least developed countries?  You know, African slums are just not conducive to a healthy lifestyle.  To all this, I reckon the data says “So What?”  None of these “first world” factors seem to make much difference to COVID-19 infection or survival in the poorest of African nations.  Rather, it seems that Medical Separation combined with early treatment is keeping African COVID-19 patients away from hospitals.  This Medical Separation simply cannot be due superior nutrition.  Rather, the data shows that the comparative youth of Africans is a major factor and the prophylactic and early treatment effects of HCQ may also contribute.  This drug is already in widespread use in the fight against malaria, which kills about 400,000 Africans each year.

By the way, HCQ is sold over the counter in most poorer nations including Africa, Latin America, Iran and yes, even Kazakhstan.

So, is there sufficient evidence to show that HCQ is a significant factor in reducing COVID-19 deaths?  As illustrated in the three phases figure above, there are many potential factors that could impact on COVID-19 mortality.  It is almost impossible to demonstrate the efficacy of HCQ without a controlled trial.  Now let’s consider some more data.

I’d like to compare three geographic locations with similar population densities:

1. The young, Malaria-ridden, bottom quartile healthcare nation of Sierra Leone (Africa)
2. The older, top quartile healthcare state of New York, USA; and
3. The oldest, top quartile healthcare state of Florida, USA.

These were selected because of their geographic similarities and to indicate the impact of HCQ usage versus not.

The Florida mortality rate is higher than that of Sierra Leone, in part because of the age demographic.  In Sierra Leone, 3 % of the population is over 64, while in Florida, the figure is 20%.  Both Sierra Leone and Florida provide HCQ for outpatient use.  New York’s population is not as old as Florida’s, but HCQ is banned in outpatient use in NY City, but not throughout NY State.

If you watched the video I mentioned earlier, you would have seen that the high mortality rates in NYC were also impacted by poor policy decisions.  However, HCQ does appear to play a role in Florida’s lower mortality rate compared to NYC.  Florida has the oldest population, yet its rate is less than one tenth of the US total COVID-19 mortality rate of 524 and one fortieth of NY State’s. Does it prove the case for HCQ? No, not yet. But it does add to the body of evidence. Speaking of a body of evidence…

Dozens of studies strongly support the efficacy of HCQ when used as a preventive or early stage treatment for COVID-19.  The web site: www.c19study.com lists all 76 HCQ studies in the global medical community by infection phase. 

A summary of these studies shows strong positive support for HCQ as an effective prophylactic for COVID-19 as well as for early treatment.  Late treatment with HCQ shows mixed results which is consistent with the drug’s primary purpose – preventing viral replication.

The web-site www.hcqtrial.com is a study of the efficacy of HCQ usage on COVID-19 mortality.  Quoting from the web-site:

“We originally used the term “country-randomized controlled trial” for this study. –  a medication is being trialled, there is a control group, and a person in the study has their group randomly assigned in advance, independent of their medical status.  As distinct from a retrospective study, the control population is not related to the treatment decisions of the treatment population.  People do not get to choose their group, and that is controlled by the countries (who are effectively running the trial), as opposed to occurring in a natural experiment.  This is perhaps a unique time in history where the world bifurcated over a treatment for a disease, with countries choosing to accept or decline treatment based on the same information, resulting in random selection for patients.

The treatment group has a 77.4% lower death rate.  Confounding factors affect this estimate.  We examined diabetes, obesity, hypertension, life expectancy, population density, urbanization, testing level, and intervention level, which do not account for the effect observed.”

I don’t know how many, if any of the studies (from www.c19study.com) used the randomised, double-blinded method.  One of the earliest studies was undertaken by Professor Didier Raoult, a world-renowned epidemiologist from Marseille, France.

He was so sure that he’d found an effective treatment for COVID-19 that he rushed his results to the global medical community in March.  It was this study and a tweet from Elon Musk about a US paper on HCQ (more later), which prompted President Trump to issue his historic March 19 tweet. 

Who is this Professor Didier Raoult; achieving rock star status in Marseille? Quoting from a NY Times article:

Raoult likes to think of himself as a doctor first, however, with a moral obligation to treat his patients that supersedes any desire to produce reliable data. “We’re not going to tell someone, ‘Listen, today’s not your lucky day, you’re getting the placebo, you’re going to be dying,’” he told me.  He believes it to be unnecessary, in addition to being unethical, to run randomized controlled trials, or R.C.T.s, of treatments for deadly infectious diseases.  If these have become the accepted standard in biomedical research, Raoult contends, it is only because they appeal to statisticians “who have never seen a patient.” He refers to these scientists disdainfully as “methodologists.”

This is a huge point of contention between Raoult and Fauci.  Fauci has continued to reject HCQ studies as being flawed or anecdotal, purely because they were not performed as part of a Placebo Controlled Trial (PCT).

Raoult’s critics believed that many of his patients would have recovered without the HCQ + Azithromycin treatment, thereby, biasing the results in favour of the drug.  Enter Dr. Vladimir Zelenko.  This GP runs a family clinic in Monroe county, NY State.  He developed a protocol based on Raoult’s work that screened out those likely to recover without treatment and gave a combination of HCQ + Zinc + Azithromycin only to those at risk.

Even though it’s not a PCT, the results from Dr. Vladimir Zelenko’s trial is very well constructed.  He selected patients based on hospitalisation criteria; that is, COVID-19 symptoms with patients that are either:

1. Over 45;
2. Under 45 with at least one underlying medical condition; or
3. Exhibiting toxicity.

Such patients would normally present to hospital, where they had a likely mortality rate of at least 5-10 % according to Zelenko.  His control group was essentially people presenting to hospitals in other parts of NY, not treated with the Zelenko protocol.  He then immediately began a regimen of Hydroxychloroquine + Zinc + Azithromycin.  He freely offers the dosages and substitutes to any who request it.  Seven nations have been in contact with him directly.

The results: 84% of the 669 patients in his initial study did not require hospitalisation and all but 2 of his cohort survived.  That is, the group using his protocol suffered a 0.3% mortality rate compared with 5-10% for the control group, a reduction of at least 94%.

I can just imagine Dr. Fauci mumbling “Anecdotal. Not a randomised study.”

Is there not a way to demonstrate the impact of HCQ without a PRT?  What we require is a scenario where all variables impacting COVID-19 mortality and recovery are held constant for a limited amount of time, with the only variable allowed to change being the use of HCQ, or not.  Well, thanks to the published, found falsified and then retracted Lancet study, we have the very data we need.

In this article by FranceSoir: http://www.francesoir.fr/societe-sante/covid-19-hydroxychloroquine-works-irrefutable-proof Switzerland’s Index of New Dead / New Cases Resolved (nrCFR) clearly shows the impact of HCQ, before and after.

There is no doubt.  HCQ significantly reduces HCQ mortality and improves case recovery.

With all of this compelling evidence available to the news media, wouldn’t you expect that by now, every nation’s leader would be united to ramp-up the development of a very safe, cheap and effective treatment for COVID-19 and prepare to get back to normal life in just a matter of weeks?

The Empire Strikes Back

Well, this is where the Empire enters the frame.  I’m defining the term “Empire” as the unelected officials who maintain the establishment – media, politics, academia and even health.  I’ll mention a few of these in this article:

• Dr. Tony Fauci – Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)

• Anthony Cuomo – Governor of New York State (USA)
• Social Media – the heads of Google, Youtube and Twitter and their minions
• Traditional Media – CNN, NY Times, Washington Post, ABC (Australia) and their minions
• World Health Organization
• Big Pharma – the heads of some large Pharmaceutical companies and their minions

I’m not claiming they have conspired in criminal activity.  I just want to report on their decisions and actions and how these have impacted on the perception and use of HCQ in the treatment of COVID-19.  I’ll let you decide whether this rises to the level of criminality.

If there’s an Empire, there must also be a Rebel Alliance.

I’ll mention just a few of these now:

• Donald Trump (US President) – Han Solo

• Professor Didier Raoult – Chewbacca
• Dr. Vladimir Zalenko – Chief Chirpa (Ewoks leader)

Back to the ice plant Hoth…

As soon as Trump made his bold, hope-laden prediction, the Empire embarked on a mission to destroy any chance HCQ had for humanity’s good.  I initially thought it was

simply because Trump promoted it.  I now believe that there may be other, more sinister reasons.  For the Empire had already been at work, building their Death Star (more later).

Professor Didier Raoult has been fighting epidemics on the front-line for decades and is very familiar with the safety profile and efficacy of CQ and HCQ in different medical contexts.  Raoult was familiar with the 2005 study on the efficacy of HCQ in the treatment of SARS-COV.  When news broke of SARS-COV2, he immediately prepared a treatment plan based on his broad use of the safe and effective anti-malarial.

Now, Fauci and Raoult have very different opinions regarding PCTs and this has played out in the media.  Raoult is very accomplished, very self-confident and opinionated on social media and has pilloried those who opposed his study.  The Empire immediately trained its guns onto him in an attempt to discredit his work.  He copped a barrage of libelous materials including a sciencemag.org article and a forbetterscience.com article which includes the quote: “Chloroquine is about to become a major embarrassment for everyone. And Raoult is the central figure in this international Il pleut de la merde.”  I’ll let you do the translation.

In my previous article, I wrote about some of the early press that came out against President Trump and his HCQ tweet.  Jake Tapper (CNN Anchor) tweeted (Apr 22 2020) that “One can’t Sharpie an untested drug into safe status.” (Excuse me, Mr. Tapper, it was approved by the FDA as being safe in 1955).  Joy Behar (co-host of The View) said (Apr 23 2020) of Trump’s encouragement of the use of HCQ: “This is killing people.”  Clueless.

And I’m sure you also heard about the couple who drank aquarium cleaner.  The media blamed the death of Gary Lenius on Trump.   What they failed to report was that his wife had served him soda mixed with fish tank cleaner without his knowledge.  A friend of his said: “What bothers me about this is that Gary was a very intelligent man, a retired engineer who designed systems for John Deere in Waterloo, Iowa, and I really can’t see the scenario where Gary would say, ‘Yes, please, I would love to drink some of that Koi fish tank cleaner.’”  “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

The Fauci Effect

Dr. Fauci has never had anything positive to say about HCQ.  He described Raoult’s HCQ study results as “anecdotal; not done in a clinical trial.”  Dr. Fauci spoke publicly on the retracted Lancet study, agreeing that HCQ should not be used as a COVID-19 treatment unless it could be proven safe.  This article suggests that Fauci had an agenda in stopping HCQ use on behalf of Gilead. https://www.palmerfoundation.com.au/the-corruption-of-science-the-hydroxychloroquine-lancet-study-scandal-who-was-behind-it-anthony-faucis-intent-to-block-hcq-on-behalf-of-big-pharma/

It was only after Trump’s urging that the FDA allowed HCQ to be prescribed in the US for COVID-19 treatment (providing some additional legal protection for US doctors).  However, many US State Governors took the extraordinary step of banning HCQ for outpatient use.  That is, it could only be administered by doctors to people in a hospital – often in the later stages of COVID-19.

A retrospective study in Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals (April 23): https://www.the-hospitalist.org/hospitalist/article/221227/arrhythmias-ep/hydroxychloroquine-ineffective-covid-19-va-study-suggests suggested HCQ provided no benefit to the critically ill.  Raoult outlined several glaring instances of “scientific misconduct” within the study via the letter: https://www.palmerfoundation.com.au/response-to-magagnoli-medrxiv-2020-matthieu-million-yanis-roussel-didier-raoult/

On 22^nd May, a very large study https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext was published in the prestigious Lancet journal.

This study indicated that COVID-19 patients were more likely to die when given HCQ in a hospital setting versus standard care.  Upon reading the study (prior to its retraction), Dr Fauci “told CNN that ‘the data shows hydroxychloroquine is not an effective treatment’ …Referring to the Surgisphere report: ‘The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy for it [HCQ],’ said Dr. Fauci.  Two weeks later, Lancet retracted the paper after it was found that the data had been falsified.

Too late.  As a result of this Lancet report, the WHO stopped a randomised, PCT study of HCQ already in progress and the US FDA issued a warning on HCQ use for COVID-19.

Before I continue with how the Empire attempted to strike back, I want to take a brief excursion and discuss the development of the new drug Remdesivir, by Gilead Sciences.  Here are some facts:

• HCQ is a cheap drug (about $20 per course with Zinc and Zpac).
• There are several newer experimental drugs being trialled to treat COVID-19.  Remdesivir by Gilead Sciences is one of these new drugs.  It can only be given in a hospital setting and costs between$3000 and $5000 per course.
• The stock price of Gilead rose steadily through February and March as Remdesivir was being discussed as a possible treatment for COVID-19.
• Even though President Trump spoke positively about HCQ and Remdesivir on March 19^th, focus moved quickly toward the cheaper HCQ option and away from Remdesivir.  Gilead’s stock price began dropping.
• On April 29^th, Dr. Fauci spoke positively about the first stage of the Remdesivir trial – Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT), sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Dr. Fauci’s organisation).  He stated that the results – a 31% reduction in the time to recovery – were “highly significant”, presented “quite good news” and that Remdesivir would become “the standard of care” for US hospitalised COVID-19 patients.

However, the following data were not publicised:

• The study’s primary endpoint was changed just weeks before its conclusion;

• 60% of patients reported adverse events during follow-up.  Of these, 23% had serious adverse events including multiple-organ-dysfunction syndrome, septic shock, acute kidney injury, and hypotension.

• Dr. Fauci said that the mortality rate “trended” towards being better.  But how does that square with his follow-up comment that Remdesivir’s impact on mortality rate “has not yet reached statistical significance.”
• Results from a third study in China suggesting Remdesivir failed to help COVID-19 patients were released in the British medical journal, The Lancet, after review by a peer group of scientists.
• Some have suggested that Fauci’s comments represent a conflicted double standard; he used his White House platform to praise his agency’s sponsored study (not published nor peer-reviewed), while slamming a peer-reviewed and published Chinese study.

Refer to https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2020/04/what-the-public-didnt-hear-about-the-nih-remdesivir-trial/ for more details.

• The first phase of a PRTrial on the use of Remdesivir showed only mildly promising results, even against the adjusted outcomes.
• Dr. Fauci reversed his strongly-held views on PCTs, stating that denying a patient Remdesivir would be unethical because it could have some benefit. Not OK for HCQ, but good enough for Remdesivir, Dr. Fauci?
• Big Pharma companies are very large donors to Dr. Fauci’s NIAID, the CDC and other large, national Health groups.
• Big Pharma are also all fighting for the prestige of creating the world’s first COVID-19 vaccine – and the REALLY big money that comes with that.

NOTE:  I had written all of the above several weeks ago and only yesterday came across this article https://www.medicineuncensored.com/twenty-one-billion-reasons by Dr. James Todaro.  All of my speculations were confirmed.  More about Dr. Todaro in the Section on Medical Cancel Culture.

Here is another great article that shows how the Empire had tried to kill off HCQ: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/04/an_effective_covid_treatment_the_media_continues_to_besmirch_143875.html

One could just imagine what a safe, cheap and effective COVID-19 treatment option would do for the world right now, in terms of saving lives and eliminating the COVID-19 plague.  But what would it do for Big Pharma stock prices?  The vaccines may not be required.

Rebel Alliance Heroes and Casualities

Many doctors are risking and have risked their reputations and livelihoods by advocating for the use of HCQ, as part of a combination of drugs including Zinc and Zpac, as a useful early-stage treatment for COVID-19.

Thankfully, there are many experienced doctors who are too big to be silenced.  Examples of them include:

• Dr. Harvey Risch, MD, PhD (Yale School of Medicine)
• Dr. Mark Siegel, MD (NYU Langone Health)
• Dr. William Grace (Lennox Hill, Oncologist)
• Dr Stephen Smith (The Smith Center for Infectious Diseases and Urban Health)
• Dr. Drew Pinsky (TV and Radio celebrity doctor)
• Dr. Mehmet Oz (TV celebrity doctor)
• Dr. Oskoui (CEO of Foxhall Cardiology, Johns Hopkins Medicine)

All of these have extensive experience with the safe and effective use of HCQ for conditions other than COVID-19 and are advocating strongly for its use in prevention and early treatment of COVID-19.

Dr. Harvey Risch is perhaps the most credentialled of the above group.  He helped to promote the results of Dr. Vladimir Zalenko, who I wrote about earlier in this article.

A group of doctors, led by Simone Gold, held a summit in Washington DC (July 27-28 2020) to discuss their experiences with HCQ and other treatments for COVID-19.  This was live-streamed to about 20 Million people within a few hours and summarily de-platformed by Google, Youtube and Twitter.  What you may see now on the internet are some irrelevant, fringe views of one of the doctors as an attempt to discredit the entire group.  Their web-site www.americasfrontlinedoctors.com was removed by their ISP the next day.

However, the summit has been preserved at: https://americasfrontlinedoctorsummit.com/  prefaced by a press conference introducing the doctors and their purpose for meeting.  The summit videos are now available via Vimeo.  There are alternatives to Google, Youtube and Twitter.

I’d like to advocate for two of these videos at https://americasfrontlinedoctorsummit.com/sessions/ in particular:

The 3 pm Session on Hydroxychloroquine Science:

The doctors explain the five ways that HCQ stops and stalls the replication of SAR-COV2 virus in the cell, both by virtue of its alkalinity and its ability to

curtail the production of viral components; by providing a channel for the Zinc to enter through the membrane and disrupt the virus RNA in the cell and by altering the ACE2 receptors on the cell membrane so that SARS-COV2 cannot bind.   The session ends with Doctor Richard Urso explaining numerous studies extolling the benefits of HCQ to assist with many other medical conditions.  He ended by saying: “If I ever get stuck on a desert island, the drug I want is Hydroxychloroquine.”

Medical Cancel Culture

The 11:45 am Session on Medical Cancel Culture:

Various doctors discussed their experiences in being reprimanded, de-platformed and threatened with expulsion by their State Boards for holding views contrary to the establishment.

One of these was Dr. Mark Todaro.  I’ll quote from the following report https://americasfrontlinedoctorsummit.com/references/#white-paper  (page 13 ) to explain his story:

“The clearest example of physician free speech censorship is what happened to James Todaro, MD.  Dr. Todaro, who up until these events was a mere private citizen, tweeted his thoughts about HCQ including a link to a public Google doc six days before the President endorsed HCQ.  Dr. Todaro’s apolitical scientific commentary was his opinion of a scientific study that appeared to be fabricated, despite being published in a world-class journal.  It turns out Dr. Todaro was so spot-on correct, that the study, which unfortunately had enormous worldwide influence, was retracted which is exceedingly rare.  But before the public could read Dr. Todaro’s prescient words, the President happened to endorse HCQ, and Google scrubbed the document within hours.

And by scrubbed we mean that Google didn’t want you to think it was missing, they wanted you to not know such a thing ever even existed.  This is how is happens.

First, Dr. Todaro has already learned that he will be censored, so he decides to bypass the censor by not even attempting to get a mainstream news source to publish his story about HCQ. He has accepted that even though his story is exactly the kind of counter-culture story that used to be sought after by journalists, those days are gone.

So Dr. Todaro self-publishes a document that he wrote and puts it out for public view, on a site that calls itself content-neutral: Google. Google claims it is a platform and not a publisher, which is a huge distinction.  Platforms are just the vehicle to get the words from point a to point b.  Publishers are responsible for content.  If Google is a platform, which it represents itself to be, including before Congress, then it should not censor non-salacious content written by a scientist about science.

Censorship is evident for those who wish to see it.”

The group’s leader, Simone Gold is also the lead author on the group’s White Paper.  On Page 19 she wrote a section entitled:

Why Is HCQ Being Maligned?

“COVID-19 is an acronym for SARS-CoV-2. It is so named because it turns out there was a SARS-CoV-1.  Reading the scientific literature related to the first SARS is so eerily similar that excerpts are copy/pasted on the next page. In 2002 there was a new coronavirus, originating in China, which rapidly spread to dozens of countries, within a few months, leading to worldwide efforts to contain it.  The scientists discovered that CQ had a strong antiviral effect on this SARS-CoV virus, whether the CQ was used before or after infection.  It was concluded that CQ had both prophylactic and therapeutic use.

The study “Chloroquine is a Potent Inhibitor of SARS Coronavirus Infection and Spread” by Vincent, Bergeron, Benjannet, et. al., was published by the official publication of the National Institutes of Health when Dr. Fauci was NIH Director.  Given that CQ was demonstrated to be very effective against a 78% identical coronavirus less than 15 years ago during a very similar situation, it is very curious that there was a multinational effort to restrict it starting in mid-January. (CQ is a precursor to the more modern HCQ. We now use HCQ in the USA.  But studies of CQ are as reliable as studies of HCQ.)

On January 13, 2020 France quietly changed the status of HCQ from its years long over the-counter status to “List II poisonous substance.”  This was an unprecedented demotion.  And in the USA: “Dr. Anthony Fauci said Wednesday that data shows HCQ is not an effective agent for the coronavirus, disputing use of the drug to fight the deadly virus even as President Donald Trump touts it as a potential cure.”

It is unclear when Dr. Fauci came to believe the opposite of what the NIH published when he was the NIH Director.  What we do know is that 70,000-100,000 excess American lives have been lost due to lack of access to HCQ.  So why did a medication that had been over the counter for decades, suddenly but quietly get pulled from the shelves, in the midst of a pandemic, due to a virus that is so similar it shares a name?

It is well known that newly patented drugs can be extremely profitable if there is demand and no other supply.  The demand for Gilead’s Remdisivir, which is used late in the disease, obviously will plummet if the disease is stopped by HCQ early. Remdisivir is sold for $3200-$5700 per treatment and the federal government has already purchased all or most of it.  The generic HCQ is ~$10 per treatment.”

Dr. Simone Gold was fired from her position only days later.  In a tweet on August 3, Dr. Gold wrote “After our press conference, I was defamed by the media, censored by social media companies, terminated from employment, and viciously attacked, all for advocating for the right of physicians to prescribe what they believe is best for their patients.”

I’ll leave you with one final question.  What did the heads of the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) know on January 13, 2020 that would cause them to quietly change the status of HCQ from the over-the-counter to “List II poisonous substance?” https://www.trustnodes.com/2020/03/30/france-banned-chloroquine-days-before-first-western-scientific-report-on-pandemic

So, do I think that HCQ will be the game-changer that Donald Trump hoped for?

I’m not sure.  “Difficult to see.

Always in motion is the future” says Master Yoda.

The Empire is very powerful and I think that the damage done to HCQ’s reputation is very great.  Many people fear for their lives and have forfeited much of their freedom.  Many doctors fear losing their livelihoods.  It also seems that the pathway for HCQ to undergo a PCT has been destroyed.

But has the Empire actually won?  Before I answer that question, I’d like to leave you with one final Star Wars image: