Are viruses cleverer than humans?
Viruses have existed for over a billion years - humans as we known them, for less than two million years. Does that make viruses smarter than people? Perhaps. They certainly have lasted longer.
Viruses surely have the upper hand against many humans, especially those who are fooled into believing they do not need vaccinations because their immune systems alone can fight off all viral invaders. In cases where people’s immune systems have experienced those viruses before or even their immediate ancestors have had those viral infections, they are often right. But when totally new viruses emerge and there is no historic human immunity, those overly confident people often end up literally dead wrong.
Like humans, viruses are quite varied. Just as humans come in all skin shades, sizes, sexes, and attitudes; viruses can be RNA, or DNA based. They can possess a protective outer skin- like envelope or be unenveloped – also called necked viruses. And there are about as many different families of viruses as there are tribes in Africa.
An ancient Greek adage states, “Pride precedes a fall.” That is, a person with great pride may be headed for a personal downfall. This happens all too often, not only to people but to nations.
Like the United States, South Africa often considers itself “exceptional” – special. In many ways, both countries are. But when it comes to viral warfare, despite the high level of technical and scientific achievement in both countries, cultural factors in each have led to vaccine resistance and a higher mortality rate than in many comparable nations. In March 2022, the United States approached a Covid death toll of one million, about .35 percent of its population. South African’s “excessive deaths” since the pandemic started are 270,000 or almost .50 percent of the population. Given the younger average age in South Africa, this suggests South Africa has done even worse than the USA, that itself has done worse than most comparable European nations.
This is despite South Africa and the United States being leaders in scientific research and expertise on their respective continents. This is largely due to vaccine hesitancy in both countries. Indeed, pride does precede a fall - at least when they confronted emerging viral challenges like HIV in the past, and SARS- CoV- 2 ( SARS- 2) today. While both leading nations have fallen short in some ways in this viral world war, what will happen when the next, possibly worse novel virus jumps the species barrier three, six, or nine years hence? Will these two “advanced” nations again score huge losses? Yes – unless attitudes change – and not just attitudes towards vaccines.
While proudly advanced countries think they have nothing to learn about viruses, more humble nations are glad to try scientifically based innovations against viral attacks. In others, corrupt governmental officials subverted the popular will of those who want common sense, scientifically based solutions.
When I arrived in Zambia in 2002 with 20,000 bottles of selenium to help fight AIDS, less than 1 percent of people with HIV could afford anti- retroviral drugs ( ARVs). Selenium supplements had proved to slow HIV progression to AIDS and to strongly increase CD4 immune blood cell count. Almost immediately the HIV employee committees in every government ministry bought selenium and saw its clear benefits – all except the ministry of health.
All the media in Zambia – newspapers, radio, and TV, both public and private, wanted to know about selenium. When the corrupt Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Health blocked selenium from getting to the people, even the government newspapers editorialised asking to be provided with it. In five years, 500,000 Zambians died of AIDS. All died much sooner than they would have because they were denied the availability of selenium supplements. In the 2014 Ebola epidemic in West Africa the result was far different. After the Liberian Ministry of Health reviewed the scientific reports of how selenium had helped against other viral epidemics, they tested a moderately- high dose of selenium supplements on hospitalized Ebola patients. This informal clinical trial quickly showed that adding 1.2mg of selenium to their WHO recommended standard of “supportive care” cut the mortality rate by almost half.
The Liberian Ministry of Health immediately ordered one hundred 200mcg selenium nutritional tablets for every Ebola patient they had.
Selenium works as a broad- spectrum antiviral that reduces the impact of and death from almost all deadly viral infections, at least of enveloped viruses, including SARS- 2. According to a 2020 article in the International Journal of
Infectious Diseases ( 100,390- 393), 100 percent of those who are seriously ill or die of Covid- 19 are selenium deficient. Thus, the difference between life and death with Covid is the body’s level of selenium. Yet both the American and South African Ministries of Health and the media in both countries have totally ignored this critically important but not widely known science. This has been a deadly oversight. Why? Too many previous false alarms touting ill- conceived remedies? Is this the boy who cried wolf syndrome, or is it merely sci- phobia on the part of the media, fearing to ask questions about a scientific phenomenon that is just a bit more complex than the average reportorial assignment?
If this were true would not the World Health Organization tell us? Obviously not. There is either a conflict of interest, incompetence, or some form of corruption in the international health information system. This gross negligence or coverup of a scientifically sound, proven therapy should be investigated. The WHO has been aware of selenium’s benefits against HIV for over twenty years but has taken no action on that. This constitutes a shameful, deadly dereliction of duty – medical negligence on a global scale.
Hydroxychloroquine ( HCQ) was the first drug falsely touted to treat Covid. HCQ treats malaria, caused by a parasite. It acts as a pro- oxidant and increases viral replication. That is counterproductive in Covid. A nother drug proposed for Covid, ivermectin is used to kill worms in animals. Ivermectin is essentially a poison that works on the principle that it is strong enough to kill worms, but not a person – at least if one does not take too much. However, the SARS- 2 virus is neither a parasite nor a worm. Thus, HCQ and ivermectin have little or no benefit against Covid- 19. HCQ would make it worse. Covid requires therapies targeted at viruses or immune disfunction, not parasites or worms.
Selenium is not a drug. It is an essential trace element mineral, the key to antioxidant formation in every cell of the body. Because it is required for all aspects of immune function and has a direct effect on CD4 count, it is the most critical element required for the immune system to function properly. Simply put, selenium is the fuel the immune system runs on. Without enough selenium, immunity collapses. That is the secret of how many viruses make people sick and kill them – by draining selenium from the body.
The United States, the World Health Organization ( WHO) and South Africa are not interested in selenium. Neither is their media. But viruses sure are. As death tolls from Covid continue to mount, these countries are oblivious to the peer- reviewed, published science that points the way to cutting viral- induced death tolls by at least half. Health officials rejoice that one thousand dollar a course pills will soon be available with big discounts for African nations – just as ARVs were once on the way for Zambia. Unfortunately, as in Zambia, hundreds of thousands have and will die due to the delay required to protect the interests of pharmaceutical giants to gorge at the trough of excessive pandemic profits. Those thousand- dollar pills may be no better than and maybe not even as effective as selenium. When scientists tested over one thousand chemical compounds against Covid in 2020, the one that proved most effective largely consisted of selenium. Do these one- thousand- dollar pills contain selenium? It would not be surprising. After all, testing showed that the key difference between living and dying with Covid is the level of selenium in the body. Those with enough live. Those depleted of selenium die.
Pandemics are a time of both panic and profit making. As the ancient Chinese axiom goes, “Inside every crisis there is opportunity”. It is tragic so many people must lose their lives due to governmental neglect and inaction concerning known but rather obscure science. When authorities miss seeing or simply ignore the golden- needle of a partial solution hidden in the scientific haystack, their entire citizenry and their national economies suffer.
The world has entered the Age of Pandemics – AIDS, SARS, West Nile Virus, Zika, Ebola, SARS- 2. What will come next? As the SARS- 2 virus becomes endemic worldwide with undoubtedly more new variants to come, is another pandemic caused by a completely new virus right around the corner? Perhaps. Will it be worse than Covid with its average 1.5% mortality rate? Maybe. Will governments be more prepared after learning the lessons of the AIDS and Covid pandemics? Definitely not. Not unless something changes drastically.
If the WHO and government health ministries continue to ignore how viruses act to deplete the body’s lifegiving selenium supply and thereby collapse the immune system, the next pandemic may take a much greater toll. It is past time the WHO lives up to its name and not acts just as a front for its funders – the pharmaceutical industry and the governments that host those mega corporations.
Ignoring how viruses affect selenium, the immune system, and life itself; and how selenium in turn affects viruses and the integrity and health of human cells, is a fatal mistake of global proportions. This mistake must be corrected before the next viral pandemic strikes. We owe it to our children and future generations to recognize and act responsibility by beginning to apply known beneficial science now – before it is too late.