7.5.5 Early Treatments

Introduction

According to a large number of attending physicians and researchers, an important pillar of pandemic management which was particularly evaded, not to say actively suppressed in most rich countries, was the off-label use of generic drugs whose harmlessness had been demonstrated by decades of use on large populations.

Recommending against early treatments was based on layers of lies, cowardice, and treason to the Hippocratic oath. Sadly, the decision to suppress early treatment exposed the corruption of our institutions, which enthusiastically persecuted the courageous doctors who dared treating COVID-19 patients with all kinds of generic drugs that had been part of the pharmacy for decades and for which the safety profile had already been well established.

Meanwhile, the majority of doctors sat in silence as accomplices of the colleges of physicians, doing treatments discreetly, underground, or doing nothing, out of fear of retribution.

Using an approved drug off-label was far from unusual, as the majority of drugs are prescribed off-label. The fact that drugs proposed as early treatments had not been officially approved by the health agencies for COVID-19 treatment was a bogus excuse to suppress their use.

Besides, we were in the middle of a pandemic, and in the past, the recommendation was to try any potential generic drugs to get some therapeutic benefits. However, the advent of any potential treatment posed a serious threat to the eventual interim authorization of the COVID-19 vaccines. The suppression of early treatment was not for public health reasons—quite the contrary. The data speaks volumes: the death toll was much lower across the world where early treatments were deployed en masse.

Unfortunately, for the longest time, the medical establishment in collaboration with the health authorities collaborated to justify their harassment of the courageous doctors. They claimed to have been protecting the public against alleged snake oil peddlers. To this day, the health authorities have downplayed the importance of vitamin D in the prevention of infectious seasonal diseases, which occur more frequently in the winter when vitamin D levels typically drop below the healthy threshold.

Even in the face of all the evidence on early treatments, advocates were ignored and vilified by the authorities. The c19early.org website regularly updated all observational studies, randomized trials and meta-analyses. As of August of 2023, there was a real-time compilation of 3013 studies examining 4468 potential COVID-19 treatments, of which 52 have already been approved as early treatments in 102 countries. Of all these treatments, ivermectin was among the most effective, with 62 per cent improvement observed in 99 combined studies enrolling 137,255 patients. Ivermectin was recommended in several countries, including Japan, where it was created.

In spite of the evidence, several attending physicians experienced enormous difficulties, including sanctions. In order to prevent the physicians from deploying ivermectin and the panoply of other treatments which were used freely in several countries, the authorities threatened to revoke, and sometimes did revoke, their licence to practise medicine.

Without speculating on the motivations that led to such a suppression of early treatments, it is likely that the recognition of any treatment whatsoever would have compromised the interim authorization of the experimental vaccines that, by April 2020, were being promoted as a panacea for the pandemic. This all-vaccination strategy required that any valid therapeutic approach be inoperative. And that was what happened, whatever the real intentions were behind those decisions.

It appears, and it is noteworthy, that not a single one of our health agencies did a systematic analysis of peer-reviewed literature of potential treatments. Some bureaucrats, when challenged in court, claimed they were unaware of the information on the c19early.org website. Instead, they cited as gospel the information on the Health Canada website.

Pioneers of Early Treatments

Many doctors faced being reprimanded by their regulators for treating their patients, and many paid the price for their courageous actions to respect their Hippocratic oath. In many states, even taking care of sick people in person was discouraged to fuel the perceived dangers of COVID-19 that propaganda equated with the Spanish flu.

Even earlier on, we knew that this was a lie. The data had clearly shown that in terms of adjusted life years lost, the death toll of the Spanish flu was about 100-fold higher than COVID-19, and they treated the sick people back then.

Considering that many frontline care workers treat Ebola-infected people at their peril, we have to appreciate the level of fear-mongering that made healthcare workers so afraid to take care of putative COVID-19 patients and led them to mistreat the “dangerous“ unvaccinated.

Among the pioneers of early treatments was Professor Didier Raoult. By following the scientific literature, he found that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), a drug he was familiar with for the treatment of malaria, had been shown to be an effective COVID-19 treatment by a Chinese team. He immediately tested it in his institute, the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire en Maladies Infectieuses de Marseille (IHU of Marseilles), and found very interesting results, both alone or in combination with azithromycin (AZ).

His first report attracted some positive comments but also some surprisingly negative ones. While many other doctors in France and across the world followed up on these initial successes, a targeted campaign of denigration was put in place to suppress the use of HCQ by any means.

All of a sudden, HCQ not only had to be shown to be ineffective by fraudulent trials, but it also had to be shown to be toxic. The infamous Lancet-gate paper fraudulently claimed a 10 per cent cardiac toxicity based on fabricated data that had to be retracted in a few days. However, as soon as the Lancet paper was out, the Minister of Health used it as a pretext to suppress the use of HCQ in France for COVID-19. Astoundingly, after the paper was retracted, the Minister maintained his proscription of HCQ. This had a chilling effect on HCQ use in France, even to this day.

Prof. Raoult, against wind and tide, continued to use the HCQ-AZ therapy at the IHU. He published the largest observational study, with more than 30,000 IHU patients, showing an indisputable benefit of the combination of HCQ and AZ for the early treatment of COVID-19. In an unprecedented move, he had his study verified by a bailiff as a preemptive measure against the horde of fact-checkers paid by the corrupt mainstream media on behalf of the political establishment.

The saga continued. His study was attacked by the French medical establishment, fighting ferociously to avoid the judicial consequences of having suppressed this early treatment and be found responsible for preventable deaths of thousands of COVID-19 patients.

Another important pioneer in the development and use of early treatments was Dr. Peter McCullough. In August 2020, in front of the Texas Senate, he presented his work on the various phases of SARS-CoV-2 infection—viral proliferation, cytokine injuries, and thrombosis—that have discrete symptom manifestations but overlap over the 30 days of COVID-19 disease.

Dr. McCullough was among the first to actively promote to the medical community a panoply of various treatments that could lead to very effective therapeutic support for COVID-19 patients. His treatments included intracellular anti-infectives, antivirals, antibodies, corticosteroid, immunomodulators, and anti-platelet, anticoagulants. His clear message, based on his medical practice, was that many therapeutic interventions were available to avoid serious disease and death from COVID-19.

This message was echoed by other pioneers, like Dr. Pierre Kory and his colleagues at the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC). Dr. Kory made a remarkable presentation in front of the U.S. Senate in December 2020 to promote the use of ivermectin, which had shown solid clinical results.

Although the promise of ivermectin had been strongly disputed by authorities in several countries, a flurry of examples demonstrated its clear effectiveness. Again, as with HCQ, ivermectin was attacked by the medical establishment in many creative ways to suppress its use.

After successes in Mexico, Peru, Japan, and India during the Delta wave where the majority of states treated with ivermectin, the waves lasted 40 days and caused comparatively half the number of deaths in the states that treated, such as in Uttar Pradesh, versus states like Kerala, which had banned ivermectin. At that time, only three per cent were vaccinated in India.

The Delta wave in India was much weaker than in France, which curiously experienced two delta waves that spread over several months, while the wave quickly subsided in India. During the first Delta wave, the vaccination rate in France was 40 per cent; during the stronger second wave, the vaccinated rate was 80 per cent. India‘s better performance could not be explained by a low rate of infection in the population because serological tests in June–July 2021 (in 21 of the 30 states in India, enrolling 37,000 people), 67 per cent of people were identified as infected and contributing to herd immunity.

In India, the Omicron variant arrived 10 days later. They had 20 per cent fewer cases than with Delta, and it subsided earlier than in France. France had 10 times more cases with Omicron than with the Delta. In India, natural immunity provided much better protection than did the genetic vaccines in France.

States that treated with ivermectin had much weaker Omicron waves than states that did not treat. For example, in Nigeria (220 million inhabitants) there were 10 times fewer deaths with Omicron (69) than with Delta (800) and 444 times fewer deaths than in France.

These observations strongly suggest that the combination of natural immunity with early treatments such as ivermectin, which is both preventive and therapeutic, was a very effective approach for the control of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recommendations

Given the incontestable better outcomes in countries that deployed early treatments using a panoply of generic molecules with an established safety record for the management of the COVID-19 epidemic, our recommendations are to:

A. Reinstate positive incentives to allow physicians to practise medicine according to an ethical, personalized, and evidence-based science and art, according to their Hippocratic oath. Repudiate algorithmic centralized protocols and punitive administrative edicts.

B. Investigate alleged corruption that has interfered with the customary practice of medicine under the fallacious pretext of promoting public health while diverting the health measures to alternative political and commercial interests.

C. Promote preventative health measures grounded in healthy lifestyles and real food, avoiding processed foods and sugar overconsumption and promoting adequate vitamin supplementation, physical exercise, sufficient sleep, stress management, and a vibrant social life.

D. Encourage open and evidence-based discussions among healthcare professionals, researchers, and regulatory bodies regarding the use of generic drugs for early COVID-19 treatment.

E. Review and revise treatment guidelines to include early intervention options that have demonstrated safety and efficacy in large populations. Consider the experience of countries that successfully employed such treatments.

F. Address institutional corruption by investigating cases of corruption and suppression of early treatments within healthcare institutions and regulatory agencies. Implement measures to ensure transparency and ethical conduct in decision-making.

G. Support early treatment research into the efficacy and safety of early treatment options for COVID-19 by allocating resources. Promote collaboration between medical professionals and researchers in this field.

H. Ensure patients give Informed Consent for their chosen treatment by discussing all available treatment options, including early interventions.

I. Establish independent medical advisory committees, free from conflicts of interest, to assess treatment recommendations and provide guidance to regulatory agencies. Enhance transparency in decision-making.

J. Promote awareness of vitamin D and its importance in preventing infectious seasonal diseases, especially during the winter months when vitamin D levels tend to decrease. Encourage further research in this area.

K. Hold public health agencies accountable for conducting systematic analyses of peer-reviewed literature on potential treatments. Ensure that decision-making is evidence-based and prioritizes public health over the public health establishment.