My interview with Dr. Joseph Mercola on the origin of Covid-19

Why Is Protecting COVID-19 Origin Narrative so Important?

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

·       The manufactured anthrax crisis of 2001 initiated the PATRIOT Act, one of the most severe compromises of our personal freedoms up to that point. Now, the COVID-19 pandemic is being used to take away even more freedoms

·       It appears influential virologists are protecting the narrative that SARS-CoV-2 arose naturally, and did not originate from a lab in China or elsewhere, even though their scientific justification for that conclusion is faulty

·       Strong evidence suggests SARS-CoV-2 cannot be the result of a natural mutation

·       The National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), under Dr. Anthony Fauci’s leadership, has funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses for about two decades

·       Efforts to develop coronavirus vaccines have failed for two decades, as the vaccines tend to cause paradoxical immune enhancement resulting in damaging and lethal cytokine storms

Click on the link for the rest.

A Lancet study with over-the-top data tries to sound a death knell for chloroquine, fails

A big news story came out today regarding the results of a Lancet study of chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin in hospitalized Covid-19 patients.  The first author is, naturally, from Harvard.

What the authors found were considerably higher rates of arrhythmia and death in the patients who received a chloroquine drug, with even worse outcomes if patients received azithromycin (Z-pak) too.

Important, smart doctors were interviewed, and they said things like, "Now we know these drugs kill."  "Stop using them, except possibly in a clinical trial setting."

Maybe the Lancet study is giving us the last word on the chloroquine drugs and Covid-19. 

But let me tell you a few things about this study that give me pause.

The retrospective study included 96,000 people, of whom nearly 15,000 received a chloroquine drug.  Now those are really large numbers, so this should be a well powered study.  How did the authors get so much data?  The second author, Sapan S Desai (SSD), founder of Surgisphere Corporation, appears to have provided it.  Which makes me wonder how the 671 hospitals or the 96,000 patients felt about their medical and financial data being used, with no ethical review...

"Acquisition of data and statistical analysis of the data were supervised and performed by SSD...
SSD is the founder of Surgisphere Corporation.

The Surgical Outcomes Collaborative (Surgisphere Corporation, Chicago, IL, USA) consists of de-identified data obtained by automated data extraction from inpatient and outpatient electronic health records, supply chain databases, and financial records. The registry uses a cloud-based health-care data analytics platform that includes specific modules for data acquisition, data warehousing, data analytics, and data reporting." 

The data came from 671 hospitals on 6 continents.  Wow.  And here is just a bit of what the authors tell us about data collection:

"The standardised Health Level Seven-compliant data dictionary used by the Collaborative serves as the focal point for all data acquisition and warehousing. Once this data dictionary is harmonised with electronic health record data, data acquisition is completed using automated interfaces to expedite data transfer and improve data integrity. Collection of a 100% sample from each health- care entity is validated against financial records and external databases to minimise selection bias. To reduce the risk of inadvertent protected health information disclosures, all such information is stripped before storage in the cloud-based data warehouse...The data collection and analyses are deemed exempt from ethics review." 

You harmonise the data, then you improve its integrity.  Wait, what?  The only way to improve the integrity of electronic data is to compare it to hard copies of the data.  I am guessing that what the authors mean is that data points that an algorithm determined were incorrect got changed or dropped.  And financial records were available, too.  How the heck did that happen?  Then Surgisphere stored all of this in the cloud, after de-identifying it. 

Besides the privacy issues (having a private US company get hold of blended medical and financial records from 671 hospitals on 6 continents) is the issue of the accuracy of this data and analysis.  Could the data have been manipulated?  I doubt data accuracy was checked with 671 individual hospitals...who might not have been happy their data were being used... How do you verify the validity of data from so many different sites?

In the UK, 33% of 17,000 hospitalized patients died from Covid-19.  A Chinese study found 28% of those hospitalized died. A US study revealed a 21% mortality rate in those hospitalized for Covid-19. Another US study had a 20.3% mortality in hospitalized patients, but found that those who received chloroquine drugs were sicker than those who did not.

Yet in the Surgisphere Corporation dataset of 96,000 hospitalized patients, only 11.1% of hospitalized patients died.  And in the control group, who did not get any chloroquine drugs, in-hospital mortality was only 9.3%. Mortality in the chloroquine groups ranged from 18% to 23.8%.

I find the data presented in this Lancet article hard to believe.  The mortality rates in the non-chloroquine patients are simply too good to be true.  It is also possible that the chloroquine patients were a sicker cohort. In any event, their mortality rates are in keeping with overall rates in the US, and are better than published rates in the UK and China.  

How did this group of hospitals do twice as well as the US, and 3 times as well as the UK in preventing Covid deaths???

I don't think the debate on use of these drugs is over.

Update May 31:  The Scientist has uncovered a long litany of lies and exaggerations from Dr. Sapan Desai in a detailed investigative piece here.  And I uncovered the odd fact that Dr. Desai wrote a 2013 article titled "Combating fraud in medical research."

CDC: Chloroquine works against SARS: 2005 International Virology Journal

 US CDC proved efficacy of chloroquine for SARS 15 years ago.

Virol J. 2005; 2: 69.

Chloroquine is a Potent Inhibitor of SARS Coronavirus Infection and Spread

Published online 2005 Aug 22. doi: 10.1186/1743-422X-2-69

Martin J Vincent,1 Eric Bergeron,2 Suzanne Benjannet,2 Bobbie R Erickson,1 Pierre E Rollin,1 Thomas G Ksiazek,1 Nabil G Seidah,2 and Stuart T Nichol1

PMCID: PMC1232869

PMID: 16115318

¹Special Pathogens Brach, Division of Viral and Rickettsial Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton Road, Atlanta, Georgia, 30333, USA

²Laboratory of Biochemical Neuroendocrinology, Clinical Research Institute of Montreal, 110 Pine Ave West, Montreal, QCH2W1R7, Canada

Corresponding author.

Martin J Vincent: vog.cdc@tnecnivm; Eric Bergeron: ac.cq.mcri@eregreb; Suzanne Benjannet: ac.cq.mcri@snajneb; Bobbie R Erickson: vog.cdc@1noskcirEB; Pierre E Rollin: vog.cdc@nilloRP; Thomas G Ksiazek: vog.cdc@kezaisKT; Nabil G Seidah: ac.cq.mcri@nhadies; Stuart T Nichol: vog.cdc@lohciNS

Abstract

Background

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is caused by a newly discovered coronavirus (SARS-CoV). No effective prophylactic or post-exposure therapy is currently available.

Results

We report, however, that chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage. In addition to the well-known functions of chloroquine such as elevations of endosomal pH, the drug appears to interfere with terminal glycosylation of the cellular receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. This may negatively influence the virus-receptor binding and abrogate the infection, with further ramifications by the elevation of vesicular pH, resulting in the inhibition of infection and spread of SARS CoV at clinically admissible concentrations.

Conclusion

Chloroquine is effective in preventing the spread of SARS CoV in cell culture. Favorable inhibition of virus spread was observed when the cells were either treated with chloroquine prior to or after SARS CoV infection. In addition, the indirect immunofluorescence assay described herein represents a simple and rapid method for screening SARS-CoV antiviral compounds.

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC.

Pompeo and virus' Origin/ CNN

From CNN:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo appears to be backing away from a theory he and President Donald Trump were pushing that the coronavirus pandemic may have originated at a lab in Wuhan, China...

Yet he still wants to "punish" China.  What a blustering fellow he is, drunk on power, ignorant of facts (as are we all) but still wanting to strike out.   

In his interview with Breitbart, Pompeo emphasized that knowing where the outbreak began is "key" for scientists working on developing a vaccine, and blamed China for "attempting ... to undermine the central understandings of transparency that every country has a responsibility to deliver."

While I want to know the origin of the coronavirus, that information has nothing to do with developing a successful vaccine.  Unless you believe the lab that developed this coronavirus also has produced a successful vaccine against it.  But as far as we know, many labs have tried and none succeeded in creating a safe vaccine for any of the human or animal coronavirus diseases.

Perspectives on the Pandemic. Episode 7, Sam Husseini

I have worked with investigative reporter Sam Husseini to help with background information on biodefense, biological warfare, lab escapes. Sam was featured in this 1 hour documentary about gain of function research, biolabs, and the origin of SARS-CoV-2. He provides a profound and detailed discussion of these subjects in this extremely worthwhile film, made by John Kirby.

The Testing Mess

I have not written much about testing since the early days of this crisis, because there is almost no reliable information.  The Infectious Diseases Society of America issued recommendations about testing two days ago, yet the authors admit that their advice is almost evidence-free. So, this is all I can say reliably at this time.

1.  A fabulous review article describing many aspects of SARS-1, written by scientists from Hong Kong, discusses the testing issues for SARS-1.  Sensitivity of PCR at best was 80%.  Repeat tests are necessary to demonstrate lack of infectiousness.  I highly recommend this article for concise but detailed background material on SARS-1, as no compilation like this exists yet for SARS-2, and they are extremely similar viruses.

2.  CDC decided in January it would develop a nasal swab PCR COVID test and that no one else could market COVID tests in the US.  It failed to create a usable test, so on Feb 29 FDA said others could apply to FDA for an emergency use authorization (EUA) for their tests.  But their EUA process was very cumbersome, so few applied.  Until March 16, only 4 EUAs had been issued, including the EUA for CDC's failed test.  

Still lacking testing, FDA on March 16 said that anyone could offer COVID tests in the US, and apply later for FDA approval. Between then and now, over 100 companies poured into the testing market, and FDA issued 65 emergency use approvals for both PCR and antibody tests.  These were approved on an emergency basis, and do not reflect a guarantee by FDA of test validity.  

Beginning March 31, FDA also approved tests that had been developed by 24 university and commercial labs, but only if they were performed on-site at the lab that developed them. 

On May 4, FDA issued new guidelines which will attempt to bring some order into this chaos.

3.  Antibody tests measure antibodies but do not necessarily identify immunity.  As in Lyme disease:  you may have antibodies but are still susceptible to another infection.  Or, you may have Lyme disease but are not making enough antibody to detect with existing tests, even after weeks or months.  

It is a lot more important to determine if you are immune, than to determine if you just have antibodies.  I will wait to spend my money on tests that have been shown to indicate immunity to SARS-2, as well as an antibody, if and when they become available.

4.  PCR (aka "molecular") tests look for a small portion of the virus, generally in your nasopharynx.  This is not a culture test for the virus, and does not absolutely guarantee that you have active infection and are contagious--but it is the closest we can come to diagnosing active infection in a medical lab, as a culture must be performed in a high-containment BSL-3 biosafety lab, by law.  

We don't know how sensitive nor specific each of the many available tests are, but in China the rule was to perform multiple tests before releasing people from quarantine.  We should expect false negatives, which can also result from sampling error.  Here is what the FDA says about negative results, indicating they too are concerned about false negatives:

What does it mean if the specimen tests negative for the virus that causes COVID-19? 

A negative test result for this test means that SARS CoV-2 RNA was not present in the specimen above the limit of detection. However, a negative result does not rule out COVID-19 and should not be used as the sole basis for treatment or patient management decisions. A negative result does not exclude the possibility of COVID-19. When diagnostic testing is negative, the possibility of a false negative result should be considered in the context of a patient’s recent exposures and the presence of clinical signs and symptoms consistent with COVID-19. The possibility of a false negative result should especially be considered if the patient’s recent exposures or clinical presentation indicate that COVID19 is likely, and diagnostic tests for other causes of illness (e.g., other respiratory illness) are negative. If COVID-19 is still suspected based on exposure history together with other clinical findings, re-testing should be considered by healthcare providers in consultation with public health authorities. 

Risks to a patient of a false negative include: delayed or lack of supportive treatment, lack of monitoring of infected individuals and their household or other close contacts for symptoms resulting in increased risk of spread of COVID-19 within the community, or other unintended adverse events.

5.  What concerns me as much as unreliable tests, however, is an unreliable supply of testing machines and supplies.  I want to know that FDA is identifying the best tests, and that the government is adequately stockpiling the materials needed to perform them, in the event of a massive "second wave" of illness.  Since we still lack sufficient supplies to test everyone suspected of COVID now, what plans are being put in place for a potentially much worse situation ahead?  The media should report on this.  

In Maine, state government has just announced a partnership with local animal lab testing company IDEXX to triple available COVID tests.  

It should be of interest to all that our federal government has spent roughly $100 billion dollars on pandemic and bioterrorism preparedness since 9/11, including the creation of a National Strategic Stockpile worth $7 billion, but when the emergency arrived, the federal government told the states they were on their own to obtain most of the PPE, ventilators and tests needed.  What an abject negation of responsibility!  The feds have a lot more bargaining power than individual states do, plus they have a massive contracting infrastructure that knows the suppliers and how to get things done.

Maybe when tax day comes the fat check should be going to the state, while we starve the federal infrastructure that so grossly failed us. 

Americans in need of N95 masks go without so money could be spent on $2.8 billion sweetheart deal for anthrax vaccine manufacturer/ WaPo

A spectacular Washington Post article of May 4 connected the lack of protective respirators (aka N95 masks) with Emergent BioSolutions (the anthrax vaccine manufacturer). Emergent received incredible insider contracts from the current Assistant DHHS Secretary of Preparedness and Response (ASPR), Robert Kadlec, who early in life attended the Air Force Academy and DOD medical school, but has forgotten his air force and physician oaths.  He is better described as a voracious Beltway Bandit with little concern for the health of those in his trust. 

He is also a former partner and contractor for the majority owner of Emergent BioSolutions, Fuad El-hibri, which he omitted disclosing to Congress, as required, when approved for the job of Assistant Secretary.

Until 2018 the Strategic National Stockpile of drugs, vaccines, devices and personal protective equipment (PPE) was controlled by CDC.  CDC failed to resupply needed PPE after the 2009 swine flu and 2014 Ebola epidemics. But at least, under the Obama administration, a contract had been initiated to design and build a machine that would produce 1.5 million N95 masks per day.  These are the only masks that protect well against the inhalation of pathogens, including SARS-2.  They cost about $1.00 apiece, retail, before this pandemic. They are lifesaving.  And they used to be discarded after each use.

The design for the N95 machine was completed, but the current Assistant Secretary, Robert Kadlec, cancelled the $35 million contract to build it.  He instead spent that money on contracts for more smallpox vaccine, even though there was enough in the stockpile for all Americans, giving Emergent BioSolutions a deal worth $2.8 billion, 8 times as much as the previous contract, immediately after they purchased the smallpox vaccine maker.

From the April 3 Washington Post:

In September 2018, the Trump administration received detailed plans for a new machine designed to churn out millions of protective respirator masks at high speed during a pandemic.

The plans, submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) by medical manufacturer O&M Halyard, were the culmination of a venture unveiled almost three years earlier by the Obama administration.

But HHS did not proceed with making the machine.
The project was one of two N95 mask ventures — totaling $9.8 million — that the federal government embarked on over the past five years to better prepare for pandemics.

The other involves the development of reusable masks to replace the single-use variety currently so scarce that medical professionals are using theirs over and over. Expert panels have advised the government for at least 14 years that reusable masks were vital.
That effort, like the quick mask machine, has not led to a single new mask for the government’s response...

And in the May 4 Washington Post: 

In the two years before the coronavirus pandemic, Kadlec aggressively pursued efforts to fulfill his vision for national preparedness, the Post examination found. He assumed greater control over acquisitions for the Strategic National Stockpile, which in 2018 was moved from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and placed under his authority, the examination found.

Executives at Emergent BioSolutions specifically identified transferring the stockpile from the CDC to ASPR as part of its annual corporate strategy for 2017, according to people familiar with it. Like many large contractors, the company has long cultivated relationships in Washington, and it has spent almost $45 million on lobbying since 2005, records show.

Kadlec scaled back a long-standing interagency process for spending billions of dollars on stockpile purchases, diminishing the role of government experts and restricting decision-making to himself and a small circle of advisers...

Kadlec committed additional spending to biodefense countermeasures such as smallpox and anthrax vaccines while cutting planned spending on emerging infectious diseases, despite warnings from scientists that a natural contagion could also be devastating. Citing limited resources, his office halted an Obama-era initiative to spend $35 million to build a machine that could produce 1.5 million N95 masks per day, as The Post previously reported...

By the time Kadlec’s office finalized the deal, records and interviews show, it had been extended from five years to 10 and the number of doses per year had doubled, to 18 million. An Emergent executive said the price per dose is $9.44 in the first year, more than twice what the government paid its previous supplier.

Kadlec has largely replaced the old system for making final buying decisions with more-exclusive gatherings in a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF. Invitees often include his deputy and his counterpart for chemical and biological defense at the Pentagon, the official said.

Last year, a simulation organized by Kadlec’s office dubbed “Crimson Contagion” revealed how unprepared the government was for a pandemic. An internal report on the exercise found officials would face “cascading” funding and supply-chain shortages, including “scarce medical countermeasures such as personal protective equipment, diagnostics, and antivirals.”

Facing intense criticism for the stockpile’s inadequate supplies of protective gear and other medical equipment, Kadlec’s office has recently announced new contracts worth billions of dollars for respirator masks, ventilators and other medical supplies...

Chris Meekins, a former congressional staffer who was then an applicant for a senior position in ASPR... and later became Kadlec’s chief of staff at ASPR, wrote that he had told HHS secretary Price in 2017 that putting the stockpile under the control of the assistant secretary would improve the nation’s response in a crisis.

In February 2018, the administration signaled in its proposed budget for the following year that it intended to transfer the stockpile, with contents worth $7 billion, to Kadlec’s office.

------------------------------

Update: Recent emergency relief efforts are also failing Americans who need the N95 masks.  Project Airbridge, Trump's project to pay for flights bringing in medical equipment from overseas, has distributed just 768,000 N95 masks, — far fewer than the 85 million N95 masks procured through conventional federal relief efforts, according to the latest FEMA records.  In 122 flights so far.

Update:  The Intercept reports on demoted head of BARDA's complaints about his efforts to procure N95 masks, starting in January, in vain.  It does not explain why the head of BARDA did not already have more than 30 million masks in his stockpile, which was less than 1% of what was predicted the US would need.

It is medically illogical to wait until someone is very sick before treating them

Here's the thing.  For the first week of clinical illness, disease is primarily in the respiratory tract, and viral titers are rising.  After a week, you start making detectable antibodies, and usually viral titers decline. But other processes are at work making you sick, especially an inappropriate immune response. And you are still dealing with damage that was caused by the virus.

While many things can go very wrong after that first week (heart failure, kidney failure, blood clots neurologic damage, etc.) the main killer is ARDS and inappropriate immune-mediated damage.  

ARDS has a mortality rate of about 40%, and nothing tried over decades has made much impact on that.  Likewise, there are no great treatments for kidney and heart failure, nor for most neurologic illness.  

It should be obvious that with a disease whose course evolves over time in the manner of COVID-19, you have to attack the virus hard and fast, rather than the mess it leaves in its wake.  That can only be done in the early stage.  Treatment trials need to enroll patients when they first become ill, rather than holding off.

If there is a shortage of hydroxychloroquine, for example, and that is the reason for waiting to treat, then the public needs to be told, and to be told what the plan is to ameliorate the shortage, if it turns out to be effective.  

We won't be able to identify a really good COVID drug unless we start using it early.  Why are our federal health agencies doing everything wrong?

The N95 Debacle. Hospitals refuse to allow staff to wear their own personal N95 masks, presumably to cover their incompetent stocking practices, despite high rates of healthcare worker infections/ Scientific American

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/widely-used-surgical-masks-are-putting-health-care-workers-at-serious-risk/

With medical supplies in high demand, federal authorities say health workers can wear surgical masks for protection while treating COVID-19 patients—but growing evidence suggests the practice is putting workers in jeopardy.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently said lower-grade surgical masks are “an acceptable alternative” to N95 masks unless workers are performing an intubation or another procedure on a COVID patient that could unleash a high volume of virus particles.

But scholars, nonprofit leaders and former regulators in the specialized field of occupational safety say relying on surgical masks—which are considerably less protective than N95 respirators—is almost certainly fueling illness among front-line health workers, who likely make up about 11% of all known COVID-19 cases.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that that’s one of the reasons that so many health care workers are getting sick and many are dying,” said Jonathan Rosen, a health and safety expert who advises unions, states and the federal government.

As of April 23, more than 21,800 health care workers had gotten the coronavirus and 71 had died, according to a House Education and Labor Committee staffer briefed by the CDC.

The CDC’s advice contrasts with another CDC webpage that says a surgical mask does “NOT provide the wearer with a reliable level of protection from inhaling smaller airborne particles and is not considered respiratory protection.”

Put simply, in worker safety, “a surgical mask is not PPE,” or personal protective equipment, said Amber Mitchell, president and executive director of the International Safety Center and immediate past chair of the occupational health and safety section of the American Public Health Association.

The allowance for surgical masks made more sense when scientists initially thought the virus was spread by large droplets. But a growing body of research shows it’s spread by minuscule viral particles that can linger in the air as long as 16 hours...

Murder Most Foul: the Perps behind COVID-19/ Ronnie Cummins

https://www.organicconsumers.org/blog/murder-most-foul-perps-behind-covid-19

... But here we are. As our new reality sinks in, as we adjust to lockdowns and home schooling and long lines at grocery stores, as we look for ways to protect ourselves and our families—and as some grieve for lost loved ones—most of us are also seeking answers.

Why does this virus cause so many mysterious symptoms? Why are some cases mild, others deadly? How can we protect ourselves? Whose advice should we follow?

But the biggest questions of all are these: Where did COVID-19 come from? And how can we prevent this from ever happening again?

The answers to these questions may be too disturbing to ponder, especially while we’re still grappling with the impact of the virus on nearly every aspect of our lives.

But our failure to investigate, and directly address, the origins of COVID-19 almost certainly guarantees our failure to protect ourselves from future, possibly even more deadly, pandemics...

The feds have failed us; but we can solve some of the basic questions about COVID-19 at the state and local level

My state has had 1156 positive COVID cases, 0.1% of the population, and 30 new cases in the last day.   Twenty-two percent of cases have been in healthcare workers.  New cases peaked in early April.  My county has had only 10 diagnosed cases, though we don't know how many people who have second homes here, and are sheltering in them, are affected.  They are not counted in our totals.

In any event, the case numbers are small enough for Department of Health employees to do case finding, trace contacts, and maybe identify some asymptomatic spreaders.  Is this happening? This is the basic way public health professionals respond to many infectious diseases, for example tuberculosis, syphilis and hepatitis.  

Mapping out the spread of the disease at the individual level would be extremely useful.  There are so many basic questions that need to be answered, and this would help provide some answers.  What were the risk factors in each case?  How many people were infected through close contact?  How many by touching infected surfaces? How many by simply breathing the same indoor air as someone else?  Would opening windows help?  What are our highest risk behaviors?  Does wearing a homemade mask, never tried before, reduce cases? Are surgical masks acceptable for healthcare workers' safety?

What treatment did each case receive, or administer to themself?  Were vitamins, supplements, medications used? How long did the illness last?  Did early treatment prevent hospitalizations? Shorten the course? Did any recovered cases spread the disease to others?  Is there actual evidence of reinfection?

These data could be collected by employees with minimal training.  They would be useful in my state, even with just 1156 cases.  But think how valuable they would be if collected, as much as possible, throughout the country.  Throughout the world?  

Our federal experts are clearly failing us.  They present us with no safe off ramps, except for that faraway and elusive vaccine.  (See final paragraph for info on what happened the last time the federal government rushed into a vaccine program for all.)*
----------------------------

Perhaps generating our own data, at the state or local level, is something we can do, now, to help us find our way out of the maze.

The lockdown should have bought precious time, during which we could figure out how to resupply needed medical and protective equipment, identify drugs that were useful and plan how to obtain them in sufficient supply.  We could have learned what countries with low death rates did right, and try to emulate them.  We could have figured out which tests were accurate, approved them, stopped the rest from being used, and expanded the production of the good ones.

But these past weeks seem to have been squandered.  There is still not enough PPE, so how will there be enough if we have a second large wave of cases? Testing is an unregulated jungle.

And instead of identifying and resolving the issue of effective drugs, our top COVID doctor (Fauci) greenlighted a scheme to alter the endpoints of NIAID's clinical trial of remdesivir, not just once but twice, to make the drug appear to have a little efficacy.  Meanwhile, he railed against hydroxychloroquine.  Subsequently, over thirty states have limited hydroxychloroquine prescribing, most commonly restricting the drug to severe, hospitalized cases. Yet 3 of 4 hospital systems in San Diego, for example, are using it. Is Fauci playing us, claiming we need better data before it can be recommended, but then refusing to fund any trials to obtain that data, when the stakes could not be higher?  And offering a nothingburger instead.

Since hydroxychloroquine reduces viral load, it should be given as early as possible.  Didier Raoult, France's most famous infectious disease doctor, says it does not work when its use is delayed. With over 1 million diagnosed cases, why are the American people still in the dark about almost every aspect of this pandemic, and especially about how the treatments that have been used, have done? 

It's past time to start gathering our own detailed data, at the state and local level.  Encourage your governor to participate and be a hero. Time to light a candle in the dark, and dig our own way out. 

Update May 8:  It looks like some states have gotten serious about contact tracing.  Maine would be a very manageable state to do it. No new cases diagnosed in my county for a week! Hallelujah.
-----------------

*The WaPo tells us today about the disaster that occurred the last time the federal government decided to produce a vaccine at warp speed.  But for a much better understanding of that fiasco, read Maurice Hilleman's JAMA article, or take a detailed peek behind the curtain of the federal health bureaucracy in this study of the 1976 swine flu program, produced by the National Academy of Sciences. 

Faking results: Fauci's NIAID-paid Remdesivir Study changed its Outcome Measures Twice, in order to show even a whiff of benefit

Below you can go to the ClinicalTrials.gov site for the NAIAD Remdesivir trial (ACTT) that Fauci claimed created a new "standard of care" for COVID-19.  The same Fauci who claimed to be a purist about hydroxychloroquine, demanding well designed randomized clinical trials before using it, has done the unthinkable in medicine: changed the goalposts, twice, on his remdesivir study in order to provide the appearance of benefit.  

Even then, benefit was quite small.  

A month ago, I wondered if Fauci was a fraud and a hypocrite.  He has now proven he is both.  When will Trump hire a competent doctor to lead an effective response to COVID-19?  Preferably one who was not, like Fauci, responsible for funding the creation of novel, virulent coronaviruses.

History of Changes for Study: NCT04280705

Adaptive COVID-19 Treatment Trial (ACTT)

Latest version (submitted April 23, 2020) on ClinicalTrials.gov

UK has world's highest COVID mortality, but has not revealed what treatments led to its Prime Minister's rapid recovery

The UK has had a surge in diagnosed cases and deaths over the past few weeks.  Its lockdown started late compared to the rest of western Europe. The initial strategy was to protect the most vulnerable and allow the rest of the country to develop herd immunity.  Some say that is still part of the strategy.

Then Boris Johnson wound up in the ICU.  There has still been no reporting on what treatment he received, despite reports he was "responding to treatment," even on a website for doctors which provided a day by day account of his progress. Boris Johnson needed a "significant level of specialist treatment" at the worst points of his battle against coronavirus, according to his spokesman, and he himself said there was no question but that the NHS had saved his life.  He certainly made a rapid recovery, and left the ICU having avoided ventilation.

His fiancee was also ill, but  but did not require hospitalization, and 3 days ago gave birth to a healthy baby boy.

The UK is just behind Italy in the number of deaths (over 28,000) and 15% of those with a positive diagnosis in the UK have died.  This makes the UK the country with the highest rate of deaths to positive COVID-19 diagnoses in the world.  By comparison, the US mortality rate has remained stable over the past week, with a 5.8% mortality rate (66,383 deaths) of the total who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 (1,138,834 Americans).

You might think the people of the UK would be interested in learning exactly what the prime minister's "significant level of specialist care" entailed, and whether applying it in the rest of the UK might reduce its abysmal COVID-19 mortality rate.

Update May 4:  According to the Financial Times, "David Spiegelhalter, professor of the public understanding of risk at Cambridge university, said the daily counts in the UK were “far too low” because they only accounted for hospital deaths. 

Spooky history: 3 scientists who tried to silence debate on the possible lab origin of COVID-19, previously tried to kill debate on the origin of AIDS

http://www.aidsorigins.com/covid-19-and-origins-aids-debate

Ed Hooper took a very deep dive into the origin of AIDS in his highly lauded book, The River. How did HIV jump species from monkey to man?  While blamed by some on the consumption of bush meat, Hooper suggested that the use of monkey kidneys to manufacture live polio vaccines, in the Belgian Congo, was a much more likely explanation.  Today, the consumption of bat meat has been offered as the route by which SARS-CoV-2 leapt to humans.

Nature Medicine ran a highly cited (including by the Director of the NIH, Francis Collins) article on March 17 which insisted that it was the final word on the subject of COVID'S origin, and should "end any speculation about deliberate genetic engineering." Yet the argument was full of holes.

While there are many curious things about that article, which I and others have noted, Ed Hooper discovered an astonishing coincidence.  Three of the five authors of the Nature Medicine paper had tried to influence him regarding the origin of AIDS, separately, many years earlier. Two of them had debated him and published papers insisting they had disproved the oral polio vaccine theory of AIDS origin.  The third author, a virologist who frequently strays from virology, had 2 peculiar encounters with Hooper, and claimed AIDS had been around for hundreds of years. 

This coauthor, Robert Garry, also had some run-ins with me about 21 years ago.  His research partner on the issue of anti-squalene antibodies in anthrax vaccine, Pam Asa, claimed to a number of sick soldiers and veterans, who then related the story to me, that I (Meryl Nass) was an intelligence asset.  

Garry and Asa attempted to misdirect the discourse on the cause of anthrax vaccine's toxicity. They reported it was exclusively due to squalene. Had their claim been accepted, anthrax vaccines that omitted squalene would have been wrongly deemed safe.

You have to scratch your head. Are these scientists longstanding members of a "clean-up" crew, whose role is to misdirect us from a potential laboratory contribution in the two most deadly epidemics of modern times?  And to misdirect us about potential safety issues in vaccines? 

The Bible says, "Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them."

Here are Ed Hooper's thoughts on the debate regarding the origins of COVID-19 and AIDS.