Local health officials shouldn't sleep on pre-exposure prophylaxis and early treatment.
Because mass "vaccination" is a means to and end, not the end itself, right? UPDATED: 9/29/21
Though it looks like Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine will be approved this morning, it is worth remembering: protocols using safe medicines for early treatment and pre-exposure prevention have been known since early March of 2020. Below is some history on early treatment and prophylaxis considered by doctors for well over a year.
Dr. Zelenko’s Protocols
The Zelenko Protocol. The definition of community doctor, Dr. Zelenko is a Hasidic Jewish doctor serving a community of 35,000 living in a 1 square mile area. He was one of the first in the country to treat COVID patents in early 2020. At the time (and still today), U.S. doctors offered nothing in the way of early treatment to pre-hospital COVID patients. But determined to minimize hospitalization and death in his community, Dr. Zelenko innovated by immediately treating his high risk suspected-COVID patients with a combination of Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, and Azithromycin. It worked. This peer reviewed paper shows Dr. Zelenko’s early treatment protocol reduced the odds of hospitalization and death by 84%.
Later, when Governor Cuomo banned outpatient use of hydroxychloroquine in March of 2020, Dr. Zelenko identified over-the-counter supplements Quercetin and EGCG (a green tea extract) as potential alternatives to hydroxychloroquine.
Dr. Zelenko’s protocols (as of August 22, 2021) are on his website and reprinted below.
Dr. McCullough: A Sequential Multidrug Approach
Later in 2020, Dr. Peter McCullough integrated some of Dr. Zelenko’s work and that of many others into a paper describing a broader multidrug early treatment protocol.
This linked article provides a simple explanation of the science behind Dr. Zelenko’s protocols, but the gist (as I understand it) is this:
Sufficient zinc, in the cells, is key to impairing RNA virus replication in the cells.
SARS-Cov-2 is an RNA virus.
Zinc does not pass freely into cells for biochemical reasons.
Zinc ionophores can deliver zinc into cells efficiently.
Hydroxychloroquine is a zinc ionophore and exhibits other antiviral properties.
Quercetin is a zinc ionophore (EGCG too) and exhibits antiviral properties.
Intracellular zinc levels can be rapidly increased (and maintained) by appropriate hydroxychloroquine, quercetin, or EGCG intake.
In other words, according to Dr. Zelenko, zinc is the bullet, while hydroxychloroquine (or other zinc ionophores) is the gun. He says, together, they can help ensure sufficient levels of zinc in the cells. (Azithromycin is an antibiotic used in treating pneumonia; so it is part of the early treatment protocol, but not part of the prophylaxis protocol.)
If cells are loaded with zinc before exposure or early on in infection, then, in theory, replication of SARS-CoV-2 viral particles should be impaired, thereby preventing infection or significantly reducing it early on.
Dr. Zelenko has also described this approach as the “Zinc / Zinc Ionophore approach” and has suggested that such an approach has potential benefits in dealing with coronavirus, influenza, and RSV infections.
Importantly, with regard to treatment, Dr. Zelenko has been clear that his protocol is a pre-hospital early treatment protocol to be applied in outpatients during the first stage of a SARS-Cov-2 infection—that is, when the virus is in the upper respiratory system and before it descends into the lower respiratory system.
According to Dr. Zelenko, this means treatment needs to start within about five days of first symptoms.
Why do our local health officials focus only on vaccination while ignoring pre-exposure prophylaxis and early outpatient treatment?
To back all this up, on November 19, 2020, there was a whole Senate Hearing on COVID-19 Outpatient Treatment, featuring testimony from Dr. McCullough (opening remarks; clip), Yale Prof. Dr. Harvey Risch (opening remarks; clip), and other medical professionals concerning the need for early outpatient treatment.
The safety profile, history, and potential benefits of hydroxychloroquine (particularly with zinc) were discussed. Many missed it. But it happened.
So to recap:
First, Drs. Zelenko, McCullough, Risch, and other courageous doctors have done considerable work to inform the public about pre-exposure prophylaxis and early treatment option.
Second, a growing number of published studies strongly suggest that pre-exposure prophylaxis and early outpatient treatment, including using certain antimalaria drugs, would significantly reduce the risk of hospitalization (and death) in our community. As another example, this study by Dr. Geoff Mitchell suggests antimalaria drugs, such as atovaquone-proguanil (marketed as Malarone) and artemisinin, have contributed to the profoundly persistently superior COVID outcomes seen in Nigeria and other sub-Saharan African countries as compared to the United States and other developed western nations.
Given these things, we must ask ourselves — Why do our local health officials focus only on vaccination while continuing to ignore pre-exposure prophylaxis and early outpatient treatment?
This is not an argument against vaccination, but instead it is a valid question that should be asked if reducing hospitalization and death is truly the goal.
Additionally, should health officials allocate all available resources to convincing hesitant minority zip codes to “get vaccinated,” as they are planning to do in Dallas, or might it be worthwhile to direct some of those resources to educating residents on ways to secure early outpatient treatment should illness arise?
If mass vaccination is not then end itself, then such questions must be asked of our officials? These questions become are even more important, given the ongoing discussion of booster injections.
Until the next update, below are a few scientific publications that concerning the early treatment concepts advanced by Drs. Zelenko, McCullough, Risch, and others.
Roland Derwand, Martin Scholz, Vladimir Zelenko. COVID-19 outpatients: early risk-stratified treatment with zinc plus low-dose hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin: a retrospective case series study. International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, 2020, 56(6), 106214. ISSN 0924-8579. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijantimicag.2020.106214 [PDF]
Peter A. McCullough, Paul E. Alexander, Robin Armstrong, Cristian Arvinte, Alan F. Bain, Richard P. Bartlett, Robert L. Berkowitz, Andrew C. Berry, Thomas J. Borody, Joseph H. Brewer, Adam M. Brufsky, Teryn Clarke, Roland Derwand, Alieta Eck, John Eck, Richard A. Eisner, George C. Fareed, Angelina Farella, Silvia N. S. Fonseca, Charles E. Geyer, Jr., Russell S. Gonnering, Karladine E. Graves, Kenneth B. V. Gross, Sabine Hazan, Kristin S. Held, H. Thomas Hight, Stella Immanuel, Michael M. Jacobs, Joseph A. Ladapo, Lionel H. Lee, John Littell, Ivette Lozano, Harpal S. Mangat, Ben Marble, John E. McKinnon, Lee D. Merritt, Jane M. Orient, Ramin Oskoui, Donald C. Pompan, Brian C. Procter, Chad Prodromos, Juliana Cepelowicz Rajter, Jean-Jacques Rajter, C. Venkata S. Ram, Salete S. Rios, Harvey A. Risch, Michael J. A. Robb, Molly Rutherford, Martin Scholz, Marilyn M. Singleton, James A. Tumlin, Brian M. Tyson, Richard G. Urso, Kelly Victory, Elizabeth Lee Vliet, Craig M. Wax, Alexandre G. Wolkoff, Vicki Wooll, Vladimir Zelenko. Multifaceted highly targeted sequential multidrug treatment of early ambulatory high-risk SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19). Reviews in Cardiovascular Medicine, 2020, 21(4): 517-530 doi:10.31083/j.rcm.2020.04.264 [PDF]
Vincent, M. J., Bergeron, E., Benjannet, S., Erickson, B. R., Rollin, P. E., Ksiazek, T. G., Seidah, N. G., & Nichol, S. T. Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread. Virology journal, 2005, 2, 69. https://doi.org/10.1186/1743-422X-2-69 [PDF]
te Veldhuis AJW, van den Worm SHE, Sims AC, Baric RS, Snijder EJ, et al. Zn2+ Inhibits Coronavirus and Arterivirus RNA Polymerase Activity In Vitro and Zinc Ionophores Block the Replication of These Viruses in Cell Culture. PLOS Pathogens, 2010, 6(11): e1001176. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1001176 [PDF]
Husam Dabbagh-Bazarbachi, Gael Clergeaud, Isabel M. Quesada, Mayreli Ortiz, Ciara K. O’Sullivan, and Juan B. Fernández-Larrea. Zinc Ionophore Activity of Quercetin and Epigallocatechin-gallate: From Hepa 1-6 Cells to a Liposome Model. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 2014, 62(32), 8085-8093. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf5014633
Mitchell G, Naryshkin S. 2021 Aug. Profound and persistent disparity in COVID-19 mortality rates between USA / Western Europe and sub-Saharan Africa: A crossover effect of antimalarial drugs? http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.24727.09122 [PDF]