Here's what President Trump received as treatment for COVID in October 2020 @corbe: Dexamethasone (a steroid), Remdesivir, Regeneron's monoclonal antibody (single dose), Zinc, Vit D, Aspirin. https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/8-drugs-trump-has-been-given-for-his-covid-19-treatment.html#:~:text=Remdesivir%20%E2%80%94%20President%20Trump%20was%20given,%2Dday%20course%2C%20CNN%20reported.
HCQ was pulled by the FDA in Jun 2020, Ivermectin was ended by the FDA in Sep 2021 and Monoclonal antibodies were limited by the FDA in Jan 2022.
HCQ was pulled two weeks after I saw Dr. Zelenko's very lucid YouTube explaining not only the regimen, but why it worked, in terms even a layman could understand. Donald Trump mentioned Hydroxychloroquine about a week after I saw that video, and it was pulled within a week, condemned on CNN as being "deadly". Deadly? My mother had been taking it for seven years for rheumatoid arthritis, another 'off label' use
But did you read any of the studies they based the decision on to pull IVM and HCQ?
I did.
The one touted to say HCQ was deadly was actually on chloroquine, with a limited cohort in Brazil. Lethal doses of Chloroquine were administered to a small group of patients, who died after being administered doses in a week amounting to 4 times the LD50 for Chloroquine, which has a long half-life in the human body. Oops.
All CNN did was shift from talking about Hydroxychloroquine to Chloroquine, hoping people would not notice, and say the study had to be stopped because patients were dying. (Ya think?)
But they didn't bother to say why. And they didn't bother to mention that Chloroquine and its known side effects were the reason Hydroxychloroquine was developed, to reduce the likelihood of side effects (especially lengthening the q-t interval) while retaining the antimalarial effects.
Then uses for HCQ were discovered to alleviate the symptoms of Rheumatoid Arthritis and Lupus.
As with Ivermectin, an effective (Nobel Prize winning) anti-parasitic, other uses were found--and still are being found.
The HCQ/IVM was administered to patients admitted to hospitals (already in the later stages of the disease, they'd been admitted). No zinc supplementation was administered in any of the studies.
The purpose of the HCQ was to act as an ionophore to get zinc ions into the Type 1 Pneumocytes and epithelial airway cells in order to disrupt viral replication (this was an early-onset treatment, to be used at first onset of symptoms). Zinc was known to disrupt the replication of the original SARS
in vitro and
in vivo. Azithromycin, a macrolide antibiotic, not only warded off bacterial infections but acted to mute immune response and prevent a Cytokine storm, an idiopathic effect of macrolide antibiotics in general.
Some studies used Azithromycin, most did not.
So the studies, conducted on patients with advanced COVID basically showed that locking the barn door after the horses got out was not effective at keeping the horses in, by waiting until patients were already critical to administer the early onset treatment, after the viral replication that treatment was to prevent had gone on until the patient was really sick.
As a scientist, I con only conclude the studies were
designed to fail.
The same thing was done with Ivermectin/doxycycline/zinc, and in that regimen, the Ivermectin acted as the ionophore (and had other effects), the doxycycline as the antibiotic, and the Zinc as the viral replication inhibitor.
Only those who found a workaround by utilizing veterinary drugs ("horse paste", with a recommended dose of .2mg/kg for horses, same as for humans) got that treatment, myself included. My COVID symptoms (which had reached 'galloping lung crud') resolved in 5 days. I'm over 60, mildly over weight, and borderline diabetic. That's a trifecta of comorbidities, which would normally make one a candidate for a box (or urn).
Other ionophores were available, including Quercetin, which could be bought off the shelf, IF you could find it.
Note that the chief source of zinc in people's diets is red meat, one thing "healthy" diets eschew in favor of low zinc options, like skinless white chicken meat and fish.
People in assisted living and nursing home facilities are at the mercy of dieticians who have been 'educated' to this general mindset and are likely to be deficient in zinc to begin with. Add in other comorbidities, and the lack of vitamin D promoted by lockdowns and lack of sunlight, and the stage is set to have thousands die, which they did.
Now the quandary for patient treating physicians:
Do you do a double blind study (which requires the administration of placebos to a cohort of study participants for the purpose of comparing results of the treatment with sugar pills, knowing the untreated patients are likely to get even more sick or die), or do you treat your patients with the best available medication?
Of course there were no double blind studies, but there was an awful lot of information from treating physicians indicating success with the HCQ and IVM regimens, and not many of them sold a supplement line.
You could get Quercetin, zinc, Vitamins C and D at virtually any store that sold supplements, IVM could be obtained at the feed store (if they could keep it in stock), and veterinary doxycycline was still available, even though a primary and trusted source for veterinary antibiotics, Thomas Laboratories, suddenly stopped producing antibiotics at the start of COVID.
Hmm. I'd bought antibiotics from them for years, not for the fish tank, but for me, because I could take them out to the field with me and use them if I got sick. The tablets/capsules were identical to the ones at the pharmacy, and you could look them up in any pill identifier and see what they were--at least appearing to be what they were advertised as. I used them many times over the years, because where I worked there were often no doctors readily available.
Now for the big question. Why work so hard to discredit potentially effective therapies for COVID?
The answer is ugly, but simple.
If effective treatments existed for the disease, then the terms of the Emergency Use Authorization for the 'vaccine' would no longer be in effect, and full clinical testing would have to be conducted before administering the shots wholesale, and there would be no waiver of liability for the shots.
In a nutshell,
Billions of dollars were at stake, and people within the Pharma Industry and Medical Community stood to gain (or lose) a LOT.
The IVM/Doxycycline/Zinc courses of medication were available in India for under $3.00 US, and would have cost under 20 bucks here. What's more, the drugs were no longer under patent and generics could be issued. No money for Pharma there. No grants for the people who did the studies.
Were studies retracted? Oh, yes. Here, you will find not only 343 retracted studies, but the reasons for which they were removed from the scientific literature.
https://retractionwatch.com/retracted-coronavirus-covid-19-papers/Note that the NIH does not recommend Ivermectin, but is, again, hobbled by studies that used just Ivermectin, and not the vital Zinc supplementation, just as was done with hydroxychloroquine.
https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/miscellaneous-drugs/ivermectin/Incomplete regimens yield incomplete results. Kinda like sending landing craft to the beach during D-Day with no troops on board, it is only going to draw fire, and not get the job done--unless "the job" is to summarily discredit treatments to retain freedom from liability and rake in billions.
As in all things, YMMV.
