Have we been “barking up the wrong tree” for the last 18 months?
I would say without a doubt that we have.
Let’s start with a quick “Imagination Exercise”, in two parts.
i) Imagine you have a medication in your bathroom cabinet which you take at the first sign of Covid-19.
Could be a pill, could be a spray, but it’s cheap, and has been used for other purposes in the past, so is known to be well tolerated/not have any serious side effects.
Imagine that taking this medication, in the vast majority of cases, prevents Covid-19 progressing into a serious illness.
You might well also use this a prophylactic, take it as a precaution, prior to attending an event where there is a high likelihood of coming into close contact with someone who has the virus.
An indoor concert perhaps.
ii) Now imagine what this would mean.
It would mean the end of the pandemic, and our lives being able to return to exactly as they were before it all started.
There would be no need for annual, even biannual vaccinations, no need for international travel bans, or even travel restrictions, no need for expensive quarantining in hotels, PCR or lateral flow testing, no more local or national lockdowns.
No “two tier societies”, where anyone who hasn’t been injected “however many times the government currently decrees”,
– has their ability to live any kind of decent life, taken away from them. Prevented from visiting restaurants, cinemas, pubs, even their close friends and family in some countries…
https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/stay-safe/rules/not-fully-vaccinated
https://theconversation.com/amp/austrias-lockdown-for-the-unvaccinated-what-does-human-rights-law-say-171911
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10212701/amp/Angela-Merkel-warns-Germanys-Covid-situation-dramatic.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10218895/amp/French-protest-against-Austrias-new-Covid-apartheid-fearing-rule-spread-Europe.html
As we have seen with lockdowns previously, once “the insanity starts”, it is simply copied and spread across the globe.
Only this time, not just economically disastrous, it’s a particularly nasty and divisive version of lockdown.
Ever more clearly, “VACCINES ARE NOT OUR WAY OUT”.
“Gibraltar cancels Christmas festivities”.
This despite the fact that Gibraltar has already issued enough jabs to vaccinate 140% of its adult population…
I am not “anti-vaxx”.
I have had two jabs of the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Would be a bit of a strange thing for “an anti-vaxxer” to do…?
In the absence of a drug treatment such as the one “imagined” above, vaccines allowed us a time-limited return to something like normal life in England, over the Summer of 2021.
Very time-limited.
Scotland and Wales have had mask mandates throughout the second half of 2021. Vaccine passports have been enforced in both nations, and the venues requiring them, are rapidly being expanded.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/live-coronavirus-updates-health-minister-22110732
In England, whilst not compelled by law, many nightclubs and sports venues are already demanding to see your Health ID papers (aka “Vaccine Passport”),
– prior to allowing you to enter.
In England they are being introduced “by stealth”. You can be certain once established, use of them will only ever be expanded.
Cinemas, pubs, restaurants… in France, even supermarkets.
If you want to travel abroad, it will continue to cost you a fortune in tests. Particularly if you haven’t complied and been jabbed.
I used the phrase “something like normal life” above.
At the time of updating this (mid Nov 2021)
– 70% of people are wearing masks in my local supermarket.
Clearly most people remain very scared. Just as the government wants them to be.
Many GPs across the UK are still refusing to see patients “face to face”, and there are often delays of several weeks in getting even a telephone consultation.
Essentially if you are not trying to book a Covid-19 vaccine jab, or have symptoms which might indicate early signs of cancer, you now have near enough no chance of being treated by the NHS in many areas.
(A friend’s daughter recently went to a Birmingham A & E at 6am one weekday morning. It was “heaving” with people.
Messages were being sent out that anyone who wasn’t in danger of death, would face a seven hour wait to be seen, and was being advised to go home).
We are spending £175bn on our NHS this year.
Surely by no measure can this possibly be judged “good value for money”.
The reality for most people now is, if you want to be treated for anything other than cancer, in any kind of reasonable time frame, you are going to “go private”, and pay for it. If, of course, you can afford to do so.
I would suggest that life for UK residents is a long way from “normal” currently, and is likely to move considerably “further away from normal” over the coming Autumn / Winter, 2021, 2022.
Things are steadily getting worse, not better.
Despite continual and continuing assurances from our political classes, it’s obvious “VACCINES ARE NOT OUR WAY OUT”
(just look at Gibraltar)
…but…
“A CHEAP, HIGHLY EFFECTIVE IN PREVENTING SERIOUS ILLNESS, PROVEN TO BE WELL TOLERATED, EARLY STAGE DRUG TREATMENT ,
– WOULD END THE PANDEMIC IMMEDIATELY, AND RETURN OUR LIVES TO NORMAL”
Can anyone really dispute the truth of this? I would suggest not.
Yet whenever a drug (or drugs) which might potentially fit the exact profile of the one I describe above, perform extremely well in a trial,
– rather than be excited, optimistic,
– across the world government ministers and their largely complicit mass media, either show zero interest, or quickly unite to do their very best to “rubbish” the drug(s) in question.
Why would they do this?
It couldn’t possible be connected to the fact that they have contracted to purchase tens of billions of pounds worth of vaccines for 2022 could it, largely from Pfizer, and have signed up to clauses which make it impossible for them to escape the contracts,
– even if a drug which “fits the profile above” is found, and which should mean no more vaccines are needed ?
The following text, “clause”, was recently leaked, if true… and, as claimed, appears in many/most contracts between governments and Pfizer,
– might explain a lot…
There are two main groups of drugs which can potentially be really useful in the early stages of infection with Covid-19, antiviral, and anti-inflammatory, typically “corticosteroids”.
In very simplified terms, antiviral drugs attack the virus itself, whilst anti-inflammatory ones prevent the virus from causing excessive inflammation, providing additional time for the body’s own immune system to successfully deal with the virus.
New varieties of drugs to treat “late stage” issues are appearing, there is interest in these, and some of them are very promising.
However whilst they represent a major advance in our knowledge, these will never end the pandemic.
For this to happen, we need to prevent people from becoming so ill they need to be hospitalised, not just reduce the time they spend in hospital.
A cheap, effective, well tolerated early stage treatment…. an antiviral drug, or anti-inflammatory/corticosteroid, or both,
– which prevents the virus from spreading throughout the body,
– or even getting a foothold in the first place,
– has to be hugely advantageous to vaccinating entire populations, multiple times a year, and/or late stage treatments for hospitalised patients
Yet, it appears at least, developing/testing one (or more) of these, has received almost no finance over the last year and a half, compared to vaccine development.
Worse still, those trials of drugs which are already in use for other illnesses…. and which have been evaluated against Covid-19,
– are either wilfully ignored, or deliberately sabotaged.
Sabotage is a strong word, but I will go on to explain why I believe it is entirely justified in this instance, a little later in this article.
“Vaccines v Early Stage Drug Treatments”
Vaccines
In order to try to avoid health services around the globe being overwhelmed, huge pharmaceutical companies have been developing a host of vaccines, backed by governments and other financial investors. At enormous cost.
Great.
However,
– there are already signs that they do not protect anything like so well against Covid-19 as it (inevitably) mutates into new strains, notably the so-called Delta variant, as first appeared in India.
And it now looks as though any immunity created via vaccination, wanes considerably after six months.
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2113
Hence governments across the globe pressuring people to take up “booster jabs” .
Using the UK as an example, vaccinating all adults twice a year… means around 100 million medications will be required annually
– whereas if there was an effective early stage treatment available, and you only have to medicate those who actually contract the virus and get ill,
– you would probably be looking at less than a million medications being required each year.
“Pursuing vaccination only” as a way of dealing with Covid-19,
– means having to perform constant research, in countries all over the world, to attempt to keep track on new, mutated variants which could appear in any country, at any time, and which could turn out to be “current vaccine resistant”.
Governments will believe they need to keep rapidly closing off all travel to/from certain countries, and also instantly, and very strictly, “locking down” / mass testing people in large areas of the UK,
– until scientists can “tweak” the mRNA vaccines to protect against the new variant(s)
Operating the way that we are currently, as a nation, is clearly not a sustainable way to continue for any significant period of time.
Focussing entirely on vaccination, mass testing, and “keeping further lockdowns in reserve”.
No country can seriously contemplate this as a way forward for many years, decades to come.
It’s the ultimate in “tail chasing”. A never ending game of “catch up”.
It’s a race you can never win, the best you can ever hope for…
– “not being too far behind”.
Unless we abandon international travel near enough completely,
– we can never hope to detect new mutant strains (which may potentially appear anywhere around the world), determine if existing vaccines will protect against them, and if not, close our borders….
– in time to keep them out of the UK population.
“Cheap, highly effective, well tolerated, early stage drug treatments”, no such thing, right ?
In November 2020, the Nuffield Department of Primary Health Care Service, Medical Sciences Division ran this headline:
“Inhaled corticosteroids to be investigated as a possible treatment for Covid-19 in national PRINCIPLE Trial”
Then on the 8th of February 2021, another announcement was, very quietly made:
(although briefly, blink and you would have missed it…)
“Common asthma treatment (budesonide) reduces need for hospitalisation in Covid-19 patients, study suggests”
And not by a small amount…
“Inhaled budesonide reduced the relative risk of requiring urgent care or hospitalisation by 90% in the 28-day study period.”
“Participants allocated the budesonide inhaler also had a quicker resolution of fever, symptoms and fewer persistent symptoms after 28 days”.
A 90% reduction in risk of needing urgent care/hospitalisation (!)
Why were the results of this trial not splashed across the front page of every newspaper ?
Why not indeed….
The idea of budesonide being a potential highly effective treatment for Covid-19 must be fairly recent?
No.
Back in July last year (2020), the Lancet was already suggesting corticosteroids could be a useful treatment for Covid-19.
So why have incredibly promising, cheap, early stage treatments for Covid-19 been largely ignored, or worse, deliberately “played down”, “rubbished” even?
Q: Why did it take seven months to get to the point where a trial of budesonide was carried out, with spectacularly good results?
A: Because there was, and continues to be, little or no interest in treatments,
– government interest remains solely focussed on vaccines and mass testing.
A further clinical trial of budesonide was carried out in August of 2021, and essentially confirmed the results of the February one…
Second study confirms benefits of budesonide in early stages of COVID-19
In the same time that it has taken to develop a brand new vaccine “from scratch”, test it, trial it, get it approved by medical regulators, manufactured, distributed, and administered to millions of people, around nine months,
– drug companies managed to…. arrange a small trial for the pre-existing drug budesonide.
Seemingly very reluctantly, many months later, a second one is carried out, confirming the results of the first
Government and mass media response?
Nothing. No interest. There simply has to be a reason for this.
Surely this should be being “splashed across the front page of every paper”, and all of us encouraged to keep a spray containing budesonide in their bathroom cabinet, ready to use at the first sign of Covid-19,
– or if we are planning to go to a large indoor event… (?)
Apparently not.
(Just in case you might like to keep a budesonide spray in your bathroom cupboard…
– obviously entirely up to you….)
This is not the first time a drug which seemingly has huge potential to save, possibly millions of lives, has been “downplayed”, “rubbished”, “ignored”. Without any obvious justification.
(Other than it might threaten the massive amount of money being made from vaccines).
You may, or may not, have heard of another drug, Ivermectin.
Authorities’ response to a “pre-existing” drug, used previously for some other purpose, but which shows promise in treating the early stages of Covid-19 infection, preventing it from leading to serious illness, always follows a similar pattern
i) Try to stop the public from acquiring it,
ii) Repeatedly state that results from trials are not yet available / it’s therefore unsafe
(despite it having been used without any real issues for many years, for other purposes)
iii) Attempt to drag any trials out indefinitely, or blatantly “sabotage them”…
– by only giving the drug(s) in question to people who are already hospitalised / severely ill, and at a point where realistically nothing will ever be able to save them.
There is already quite a long history of “lack of interest” by politicians and media… in cheap, effective, early stage Covid-19 drug treatments.
Perhaps the most famous early example was hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin and zinc.
This immunosuppressive and anti-parasitic drug, “HCQ”, has been used to treat malaria, lupus and arthritis for a long time, and so as a result we already know for certain that it is extremely safe / well tolerated, when administered to people in low doses.
Very successful small scale trials were performed, and appeared to demonstrate that, in conjunction with azithromycin and zinc, hydroxychloroquine was extremely effective in preventing Covid-19 progressing and causing serious illness, as long as it was taken in the early stages of infection.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920304258
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The aim of this study was to describe the outcomes of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the outpatient setting after early treatmen…
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None of its proponents had ever claimed that it was effective in treating “late stage”, seriously ill, hospitalised patients.
Yet when the large scale trials were set up, instead of using hydroxychloroquine in small doses on patients in the early stages of infection, they instead used them on severely ill patients, who were already in hospital, and submitted them to huge amounts.
The people in charge of running these trials, once completed, immediately declared the drugs to be either useless, or worse still, “dangerous”.
Try Googling them. You will get results which say things like:
“The antibiotic azithromycin was considered as a potential treatment for COVID-19, but has been found to have no meaningful clinical benefit for patients hospitalised with severe forms of the disease”
Why use hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin on late stage, severely ill, hospitalised patients, when the smaller trials, which found these drugs to be extremely effective in preventing progression on to serious illness
– employed only low doses, and exclusively administered them to patients in the early stages of infection.
Why would you set up a much larger trial, administering only very large doses, to already extremely ill people, in the very late stages of infection,
– and then claim that they are “useless/dangerous” when used in these circumstances ?
I can only think of one reason.
Those organising/running the trials, actually wanted the drugs to be declared “useless”, rapidly discredited/discarded.
– and simply hoped that “no one who mattered”,
– would notice that they had deliberately trialled against “completely the wrong type of patients” (late stage, not early stage of infection).
I would call this “deliberate sabotage”.
I think the term is fair.
This is what the FDA in the US said after these, it would appear “very deliberately set up to fail trials” …had duly failed:
“The FDA cautions against the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat COVID-19”.
The FDA revoked the drugs’ emergency authorization in June after finding these medicines “showed no benefit for decreasing the likelihood of death or speeding recovery.”
“A review of safety issues also finds that the drugs were linked to serious heart rhythm problems, blood and lymph system disorders, kidney injuries and liver problems in hospitalised COVID-19 patients.”
There was never a valid reason to give even small doses to severely ill, “hospitalised COVID-19 patients”,
– never mind the very large ones that were administered in the clearly “deliberately set up to fail” trials.
By the time patients have been hospitalised, it’s too late to use antiviral drugs. The virus has passed the point where they can hope to stop it progressing.
It has invariably already taken over the whole body by this time.
The body is, by this stage, being subjected to what is known as “a cytokine storm”.
The patient’s immune system is now “going wild”, and is effectively attacking their own major organs.
It is this “cytokine storm” which generally leads to the death of the person involved.
Hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and zinc had been shown to be highly effective in smaller trials, when small amounts were administered to patients in the early stages of infection.
Yet they deliberately set up the large trials, on very late stage patients, and gave them stupidly huge amounts.
Why?
A cynical person might suggest, “because at the time Donald Trump was promoting HCQ, AZM and zinc”, and the consequences of him being proven correct, would simply have been “too much to bear”, for most of the world’s political classes, and mass media,
– who in the main, rightly or wrongly, largely for reasons which had nothing to with Covid-19, absolutely detested him.
The same cynical person might further suggest that “Big Pharma”, the global pharmaceutical companies, had already invested billions into the development of, mostly extremely expensive vaccines, by the middle of 2020,
– and, if HCQ, AZM and zinc had been proven to prevent serious illness in almost everyone who took the combination, as soon as they experienced symptoms (as many doctors who have been using these drugs in the United States for a long time now have been claiming),
– or even before developing any symptoms, ie, being used as a “prophylactic”, “a disease preventer”,
– these global companies would instantly be out of pocket, to the tune of many tens of billions.
Maybe even hundreds of billions.
A large scale trial of HCQ, AZM and zinc, using it as a prophylactic (to prevent disease, prior to symptoms developing), or as an early stage treatment, soon after they have appeared,
– was due to take place in the UK, in June 2020,
– however it then mysteriously, “had the plug pulled on it”…
– with no sensible reason offered as to why.
Now that vaccines are clearly not going to return our lives to normal, wouldn’t it be an idea to start properly investigating early stage treatment drugs, which actually might do exactly this?
HCQ/Azithromycin/zinc, budesonide, and ivermectin,
– three extremely promising, early stage drug treatments, all highly successful in reducing fatality rates significantly in initial trials,
– all apparently of zero interest to politicians and Big Pharma
(other than to squash/prevent/sabotage any large trials of them)
But wait, Merck and Pfizer are coming out with pills which might prevent up to 90% of hospitalisations, if taken in the early stages of infection. In other words, exactly what the above medications appeared to do in trials.
8 lingering questions about the new Covid pills from Merck and Pfizer
Won’t availability of these risk their vaccine profits?
Most of Big Pharma profits will come in 2021 and 2022, they know they can’t keep “milking the vaccine cash cow” forever.
As long at they can make astronomic profits for these two years, they will be largely content.
To achieve this they will need to delay these drugs being widely available until near the end of 2022…. they can do this by withholding trial data etc.
These are new drugs, so you would imagine will be required to go through a lot of trials. Unlike budesonide, which has been used in asthma sprays for decades.
They will also almost certainly be many times more expensive. An asthma spray containing budesonide costs less than £10.
Even if they can’t delay availability, doesn’t really matter. Pfizer have orders on their books for billions of pounds of vaccines, up until the end of 2022 at least, which can’t be cancelled.
Conclusion
The UK government, along with almost all others across the globe,
– continues to “put all its eggs” in the “vaccines and mass testing basket”, and largely ignore any/all potential early stage drug treatments.
This, despite the fact that a cheap, already-approved-for-another-use, generic, well tolerated drug, which taken in the early stages of Covid-19 infection “stops it in its tracks”,
– would do exactly the same for the pandemic, stop it in its tracks, “end it”,
– not just in the UK, but across the globe.
Why might the UK government, in fairness, similarly to almost all the others across the world, behave in this bizarre way?
“Theories abound” :
. it’s “in cahoots” with enormous pharmaceutical companies, to the point where it is effectively being controlled by them
. it sees the pandemic as an opportunity to massively increase the state’s monitoring and control of its citizens, via implementation of such things as so-called “Vaccine Passport” (Health Id papers)
. ministers are simply “drunk on their new powers”, and consequently have no intention of giving them up, any time soon
. (as detailed above) contracts have already been signed which commit governments to spending tens of billions of pound on Pfizer vaccines until the end of 2022 at least…
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-signs-deal-with-pfizerbiontech-for-35-million-vaccines
Governments don’t like to look stupid. They won’t want to have purchased billions of pounds worth of vaccines which aren’t needed, can’t be stored, unless at -70C, so can’t even easily be given away and used in other countries. If they wanted them.
Perhaps there is another explanation, maybe it’s “none of the above”, or maybe it’s “all of the above”, to differing degrees.
I’ll leave that for you to form your own opinion….
Pete Durnell 