About one year ago this month, the music stopped.
This is more or less literally true: most music halls and concert venues closed, and have remained closed. As Van Morrison and Eric Clapton, among others, have pointed out, a lasting and deep wound has been inflicted on those whose business is providing live music for cheering crowds.
Playgrounds became silent. Parents were told their children could not play outside—that it was dangerous–and schools—being shuttered—had no screaming and laughing kids outside at recess any more. This is no longer universally true, but all too accurate in far too many places.
Many museums in much of the world remain mothballed, and many will not have the resources to reopen, if and when allowed to.
We were told then, and are being told now, that it HAS to be this way. There is no other option. We are being told by the public face of this Big Idea, Anthony Fauci, that things may NEVER return to how they were in March, 2020. We will never enjoy the same freedom again; never return to the high levels of optimism and prosperity we had then.
I ask: why? Why not? The fear of mass death? I would like to explore that idea a bit more, and talk specifically in this email about two medicines in use pretty everywhere BUT the richest nations of the world. I think the statistics show pretty clearly that none of this is necessary. I will deal with vaccines and masks in a future email, but for now I would like to discuss Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine.
This email is sent by an intelligent person very concerned about current events, and very eager to return to the old normal as quickly as possible, something that is in my view easily in the realm of the possible at this very moment. I am a student of history, and very concerned that whether this email is understood and acted on or not, that it is vital for the future history of this time that we describe it, NOW, as accurately as possible. In the era of smart phones, the memory of most seems to not extent back much more than a couple of news cycles.
Here is a question: if I told you five years ago that in 2020 a highly infectious, dangerous disease was going to affect nearly every nation in the world, where would you assume the most mass death would be? I would have guessed the slums in the largest, most densely populated cities of the world, places like Karachi, Dhaka, and Cairo.
Karachi has a population density of just over 24,000 people per square kilometer; Cairo about 19,000.; Dhaka 23,000. Dharavi, a locality in Mumbai, India crams 277,000 people into each square kilometer of its area. New York City, by comparison, is 27,000 per square kilometer, and is the most densely populated city we have.
The United States has one of the most advanced, best funded, and best organized healthcare systems in the world. And we are very wealthy compared to India, Egypt, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Who should have more death? Is it not obvious?
Here is the problem: NEW YORK CITY ALONE HAS MORE DEATHS THAN THE NATIONS OF PAKISTAN AND BANGLADESH PUT TOGETHER. New York, on their official website, reports, as of March 1st, 24,350 deaths with positive COVID-19 tests, and another 5,058 probable but not tested, for 29,408 total.
According to the WHO official COVID Dashboard (search WHO COVID Dashboard and input the country you are interested in) 8,408 people have died of COVID total in Bangladesh, and 12,860 in Pakistan. Egypt reports 10,688.
New York City has a population of about 8 million. If I divide that by 25,000 I get 320. 1 New Yorker out of every 320 has died of COVID.
Pakistan has a population of about 225 million. Bangladesh 165 million. Egypt 103 million. 493 million total. Total deaths attributed to COVID-19 are about 32,000. Divided out I get 15,406. 1 person out of every 15,406 in these nations has died of this “terrible” disease. New York—one of the most prosperous cities on Earth—has a death rate fully 48 times that of poor nations which contain large slums which in many cases lack basic sanitation, clean water, and any ability to “social distance” whatever.
Is it possible the numbers are severely underreported? Of course. But by that much? And if this disease were really the quasi-plague it has been made out to be, should they not be stacking bodies in the streets by now? Do you really think that would go unreported, unremarked upon?
I cannot of course say for sure what is making the difference, but it is PLAUSIBLE and empirically defensible to say that some or much of the difference has to do with the different protocols these nations are using, specifically the early and liberal use of Hydroxychloroquine, and/or Ivermectin, often in tandem with zinc supplementation.
Without getting too far into the weeds, all these nations clearly made HCQ a key part of their responses.
And if you look up c19study dot com you will find a resource listing all of the studies and metanalyses showing that when given early and in reasonable doses HCQ appears to be very effective in combating COVID-19. It is NOT effective when given late, which is to say when someone is already having trouble breathing to the point they enter the medical system. Yet, this is the scenario which was used for nearly all the criticisms of this drug.
The data clearly seems to show that by the time someone NEEDS a doctor it may be too late for HCQ. But if everyone takes HCQ when they know they have been exposed, or at first onset of symptoms, it seems to perform very well.
Now, if you have followed the media, you will likely be familiar with the claim—one repeated by Anthony Fauci—that HCQ causes heart arrhythmias. This is, in my understanding, (do your own research) empirically unsupported, when this drug is used the way the data suggests it should be to deal with COVID-19.
This drug is an anti-malarial drug. It is an improved version of quinine that was rolled out in 1955—66 years ago. It is literally related to the tonic in tonic water. Tonic water contains quinine and was a way for the British—particularly, in my understanding—to get their quinine while imbibing their nightly gin in the malaria ridden regions of their Empire.
In my understanding—and I am repeating what I read—HCQ has always been available by prescription only in the United States, because we don’t have malaria, and the other more or less off-label uses—arthritis and lupus—both benefit from the direct participation of a doctor.
But it is THOSE people—those taking HCQ regularly for years, under medical supervision—who suffered from the heart arrhythmias, or so I understand. In most of the world HCQ is available over the counter, and is somewhere between vitamins and cold medicine in terms of how it is treated. People in malarial regions make it a routine part of the lives, and have for many decades. It has no doubt saved millions of lives over the years.
And here is what should make your jaw drop: right when COVID-19 hit, and Donald Trump was touting HCQ, and right when groups all around the world were beginning trials, a FAKE STUDY was pushed on the Lancet—before this scandal the most prestigious medical journal in the world, or so I am told—which caused most or all existing studies to be stopped, and the WHO to recommend against HCQ use.
Who would do such a thing? Who would push fake data regarding a potentially potent cure or at least palliative, when doing so would cause much needless death, if a valid remedy could in fact have saved a great deal of life?
I will leave you to answer that question in your own way. The company with the fake data—or perhaps to be more precise, the “unverifiable” data–was called Surgisphere. I don’t think the obvious questions have been answered, or ever will be.
But is it not REASONABLE to assume that Egypt and Bangladesh and Pakistan and India (mentioned in a previous email), are doing something smart? Looking at the numbers, you would assume they are the smart, efficient ones, and we are the bumbling clowns.
I will also mention another seemingly very good medicine, called Ivermectin. It seems to directly short-circuit one of the mechanisms the virus uses to increase its ability to replicate, by preventing the virus from entering the cells. So I read on Drugs dot com.
Please look this medicine up. You will see little bad about it and much promise.
Here is my final point: when you have a medicine with few side effects and little danger, and a strong potential for good, as reported by licensed and credible doctors treating actual patients, there is every reason to try it, and no good, ethically defensible reason not to. That is not a call for a two year double blind study. It is a call for IMMEDIATE and WIDESPREAD use. This point is obvious to all but the morally deranged.
Please consider what I have said, and forward this email as you see fit. Most people don’t know most of this—it just occurred to me myself today to look up the nations around India, as well as Egypt—and THEY SHOULD.
I want music and live theater back, specifically, the sooner the better. I am also tired of seeing the sad looks in all the servers I see when I go out for a meal or a drink. They are suffering. Billions of people are suffering, in their own ways, from all of this.
Please do your own digging. Question all my claims. Spend an hour validating or attempting to disprove everything claimed here. I am not claiming to be an expert, merely a very concerned spectator watching what in my view is a completely unnecessary global calamity.