Over this past month, the Chinese coronavirus (CCV) found its way into my suburban Chicago home. Three cases, two weeks apart. Two patients were vaccinated, and one was not. All three were symptomatic.
What did these three CCV sufferers have in common besides shared residency? All three of them were treated for the disease immediately and all three were fever-free and almost symptom-free in under 24 hours.
Today we are hearing reports of new pills being produced by Pfizer and Merck to treat the disease early before it transitions from being a simple viral infection into that of a deadly respiratory infection. Lives will now be saved that before were doomed to be lost.
That, my dear reader, is an outright lie. The members of my household were all treated using drugs and methods available and known to us since almost the very start of the pandemic in March of 2020. Here is what we were prescribed:
- Ivermectin (3 mg tablets, one per day, five days)
- Prednisone (4 mg tablets, six-day declining dose regimen)
- Azithromycin (6 tablets, 250 mg, five-day regimen)
- Budesonide (0.5 mg/2 ml, PRN) administered through a nebulizer
- Supplemented with both zinc and Vitamin D
The ivermectin could just as easily have been hydroxychloroquine, except for the fact that hydroxychloroquine is sometimes more difficult to get a pharmacy to fill these days than is ivermectin.
Side note on ivermectin: There have been many reports about Ivermectin being a “horse dewormer.” While the animal formulation of Ivermectin is used for that purpose, it is never mentioned that there are over 300 drugs that are used in both humans and animals and not necessarily for the same purpose nor in the same formulation. There are reports of people using the animal formulation of ivermectin. No credible member of the medical community promotes such action. People are doing this because they are desperate and cannot get early treatment from the mainstream medical community.
Here are some interesting facts. Both of the vaccinated household members, presenting with full symptoms, went to a clinic operated by NorthShore Medical Group (one of the two major medical groups near where I live along with Northwestern). Both were initially diagnosed on the spot as having simple sinus infections and were given a script for Flonase. Both were also tested for COVID-19. Both received phone calls an hour later telling them they tested positive. Neither of them was offered treatment by NorthShore.
Because of my connections (this is not how American medicine is supposed to work) I was able to go around NorthShore and get prescriptions for household members. All three very symptomatic patients were fever and symptom-free the day following the commencement of treatment. In one case, the symptoms had been present for three days.
To be specific about my own case (59 years old, mildly asthmatic, above-average physical condition), when I woke up on a Friday morning, I was asymptomatic. By early evening, I had a fever of 102.5, a congested head, and the beginning of wheezing breathing. I lost my sense of smell (taste, oddly, never left) and had a migraine headache. I do not get headaches, my last one being well over 30 years ago.
I began taking my prescribed medication at 9:30 p.m. By noon Saturday, my fever was gone. By Monday I felt well enough to resume my normal weightlifting routine, which is intense (I refrained, however, until the following weekend knowing that I was likely not as well as I felt).
For those who like irony, the family members who visited NorthShore, five days after each of their respective visits, and three days after their treatment administered by a non-NorthShore physician had helped them get well, they received a finger-mount oxygen meter at our home so they could tell when their illness had progressed to the point where they needed to come into the hospital ER and get admitted for a ventilator and last rites.
The prescriptions my family received cost us a grand total of $20 out of pocket, excluding the vitamin supplements. So common are the medications that they are very insurance company friendly.
To recap: three cases of Chinese coronavirus in my home in two weeks. Two people vaccinated (with those two vaccinated people becoming the sickest). Two people not offered treatment by a major physician and hospital group. All three treated by a physician. All three better within 24 hours. What’s going on?
Money and Politics
In June 2020, President Trump made a statement indicating there was some promising news about the use of hydroxychloroquine in treating the CCV. Almost immediately the corporate leftist media along with what we can term the medical establishment (doctors, health officials, bureaucrats) began to attack the president. How could a drug known as an antimalarial possibly help in treating the virus? Very quickly, the press presented studies that “proved” hydroxychloroquine was not effective against COVID-19, thus “discrediting” the president’s claim.
Those studies had a couple of problems. One used hydroxychloroquine without the incorporation of Azithromycin or zinc. The other was using the treatment for late-stage patients. Neither study focused on using hydroxychloroquine early after diagnosis and in conjunction with other medications.
Despite the well-publicized success of some treating physicians, most notably Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, in using hydroxychloroquine as part of a bundled treatment method, the media and the medical establishment continued to insist there was “nothing to see here, folks” when it came to early and aggressive treatment of the disease. Why would the media and the medical establishment go out of their way to discredit effective treatment of a novel disease? Three simple reasons:
1) Money. If you could have demonstrated there was a straightforward and cost-effective way to treat this disease, there would not have been a path to getting an emergency use authorization for a vaccine from the FDA.
2) Money again. If you did effectively treat this disease with easily available and affordable medications, then fewer people would be hospitalized which meant less money for those institutions.
3) Politics. President Trump had mentioned HCQ in a favorable manner and it was better to let people die than it was to acknowledge something he said may have been right.
Then along came real research with actual patients treated early with hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin in conjunction with other therapeutics, such as nitazoxanide. The study out of Henry Ford Hospital in July 2020 is one such example. While there were numerous studies that showed clinically advantageous outcomes when using either of the two above-mentioned drugs in a comprehensive protocol, one study in particular caught my eye—not because the findings were unique—but because of where you can find it and what the last line of the abstract says.
In a study titled, “Early COVID-19 therapy with azithromycin plus nitazoxanide, ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine in outpatient settings significantly improved COVID-19 outcomes compared to known outcomes in untreated patients” and published on the National Institutes of Health’s website (that’s a .gov website for those all-trusting of government), you can read the following in the abstract:
[Those treated in the study and not given a placebo] showed reduction of 31.5-36.5% in viral shedding (p < 0.0001), 70-85% in disease duration (p < 0.0001), and 100% in respiratory complications, hospitalization, mechanical ventilation, deaths and post-COVID manifestations (p < 0.0001 for all). For every 1,000 confirmed cases for COVID-19, at least 70 hospitalizations, 50 mechanical ventilations and five deaths were prevented.
This is quite telling and shows the benefit of early treatment. There are other studies in support, but I mentioned this one caught my eye. It did so because of the line that immediately follows the one quoted above:
Benefits from the combination of early COVID-19 detection and early pharmacological approaches were consistent and overwhelming when compared to untreated groups, which, together with the well-established safety profile of the drug combinations tested in the Pre-AndroCoV Trial, precluded our study from continuing employing full placebo in early COVID-19 [emphasis added].
Allow that to sink in for a moment. What that says, in effect, is that the benefits of the early intervention treatment for the Chinese coronavirus are so clear that using a control group to give a fake dosage to is essentially immoral. Researchers would have been letting patients run the risk of serious illness or death needlessly because they simply should be treated.
There are three categories of doctors in this country. One is completely ignorant of the beneficial effects of early treatment for CCV. Another is aware of the benefits and is courageous and principled enough to treat patients and prescribe medications. The third knows of the benefits but chooses to ignore them for financial or political reasons.
The first group should be banned from the practice of medicine. Any doctor who is truly ignorant of the research and clinical results for early treatment of this disease at this point is a special sort of medical imbecile. They should not be allowed to splint a finger let alone diagnose and treat patients with serious afflictions.
The second group are heroes. We use the term “hero” quite recklessly these days. The Dr. Zelenkos of the world—the ones willing to fight against the medical bureaucracy to treat people and save lives—are bona fide heroes. They deserve our thanks and our praise.
And the third? Nothing short of monsters. These are people who know full well that clinical evidence suggests people can be effectively treated for this disease in the early stages. They know that treatment greatly reduces the likelihood of hospitalization. They know it, but they also know that treating people is not politically rewarding and puts them at risk for being recognized as nonconforming. And, if they are part of a major medical group, it makes it less likely that their patients will end up in one of their hospitals where the real money is to be made.
I want to be clear because it might sound as though I am suggesting that the medical establishment is deliberately letting people die in this country over money and politics. To make sure there is no misunderstanding, that is exactly what I am saying.
Disproportionate Impacts
I have a female friend (black, mid-50s, previous history of stroke, high blood pressure, and cardiac issues) who recently shared her CCV story with me. She was diagnosed on a Friday at a South Side Chicago hospital. She was sent home and told to drink water. The following week she was back at the ER and admitted as a patient where she spent several days. She told me that on day three, “I felt myself slipping away.” She thought she was dying. Mercifully, she didn’t.
When I told her about my family’s treatment she said, “I have so many friends of mine, people of color, who have been diagnosed with this disease. Some have died. Not a single one of them was ever treated upon diagnosis.”
Here’s a question, America. Since we hear so much about how the CCV has disproportionately impacted minority communities, why haven’t these affordable treatments, shown to be effective in studies, at least been tried in those communities? What would have been the harm? If they were at higher risk, shouldn’t even the most skeptical of doctors have been willing to try something? Were there, perhaps, other motives at work?
When I was diagnosed with the CCV, I was excited. I was texting friends telling them I had “good news.” I felt that way because I have long known that when I got this disease I was going to get treated and I was going to get better. Then I would be able to write this column. I needed the street cred.
I personally know people who are trying to stockpile drugs from Third World countries to treat themselves should they become infected. While I understand the thought process, that seems risky to me. My approach was to find a doctor in advance who would treat me if I became sick, and then find a pharmacy that would fill the prescriptions.
I heard this past week that 4,000 nurses have died from COVID-19. I have not been able to find a verifying citation for this, but let’s posit it as true for the purpose of asking this question: Of those 4,000 nurses, each of whom would have been affiliated with a doctor at some level, how many were not treated for CCV upon diagnosis when their doctor knew there was an effective treatment available?
How many of you lost friends or family during this pandemic? How many of them were treated upon diagnosis? All of them could have been. Many of them would have lived.