The three blind men and COVID- 19

A2,500- year- old Indian proverb used by both Hindus and Buddhists teaches that people perceive the same reality in different ways. It tells how seven blind men learned an elephant was coming to town and all wanted to examine the exotic beast with their own hands to see what it was. Each approached the elephant from a different direction. One grabbed the elephant’s trunk and exclaimed, “An elephant is a giant snake.” Another touched a tusk and said, “An elephant is a sharp spear.” The next felt the pachyderm’s ears and explained, “An elephant is a fan.” The fourth felt the side of the jumbo. “Oh, an elephant is like a wall.” Another grabbed a leg and commented, “This elephant is a tree.” The sixth curious one handled the tail, convinced the beast was a rope.

The final blind man felt the end of the tail and pronounced, “An elephant is a brush.” All of them had felt the elephant and were convinced their own understanding was correct. They had “seen” it themselves. After the elephant left town, the blind friends fell to arguing among themselves, each claiming only they knew the true meaning of an elephant. Different subjective experiences produce different understandings. No corner of knowledge or medicine possesses a monopoly on absolute truth. The scientific consensus of today is not always the consensus of tomorrow.

When one analyses a complex problem, it is best to consider it from several points of reference. Otherwise, one merely acquires a one- dimensional understanding. Life, society, and diseases are complex. People need perspective. That is why we have two eyes instead of just one. What if one walked across the Namibian desert and kicked a dull, dirty glass- like rock? It might be a crystal. Or it might be a diamond. Cut and polished by a master, that dull, dirty rock might be worth a fortune.

Understandably, medical science is amazingly complicated. Visit a major medical school library and millions of journal articles there each convey an infinitely small piece of scientific knowledge. Not even top doctors know absolutely everything, or precisely how 100 percent of it fits together. Medical understanding is constantly evolving as discoveries are only gradually accepted as proven science. Medicine is a conservative profession. Historically, some of the most important breakthroughs have taken decades to gain acceptance. Examples abound – from inoculation and genetics forward. Today, one of those breakthrough understandings is how selenium affects viral disease – and vice versa.

Like a three- dimensional jigsaw puzzle, medical science is multilayered. Virology and immunology are the preeminent specialties that consider viral disease. But other physicians also examine the elephant of viral infection from their own specialist viewpoints. None possess a monopoly on understanding the complexities of SARS- CoV- 2 ( SARS- 2) and Covid- 19. Authoritative articles continue to appear announcing that one group of doctors finally has determined exactly how Covid- 19 causes death, supposedly superseding other recent consensus. With a threedimensional jigsaw puzzle where each piece is a different size, shape, and thickness, no one interpretation is 100 percent correct. No group of doctors knows how every piece of the puzzle fits together if they are missing a single puzzle piece.

Twenty years after HIV was discovered, Dr. David Ho who developed protease inhibitors announced that HIV could not possibly cause AIDS by killing CD4 cells because it only infects 1 percent of those cells. Dr. Tony Fauci of the US NIH responded with a journal article defending the existing AIDS paradigm saying, of course it does. But Fauci could not explain exactly how, offering five possible alternative explanations. Not quite an irrefutable rebuttal. As a scientific analyst myself, I suggest HIV causes AIDS by reducing the production of new CD4 cells. Who is right? Time will tell. This is the legendary “scientific debate” we often hear about, but seldom witness.

Most high school biology students look through a microscope to see the world of bacteria, paramecia, amoeba, and other miscellaneous microorganisms. You can see each organism at a certain magnification. However, if you change the magnification from 10x to 100x to 1000x to a million times, a different universe comes into view each time. No single magnification reveals all of nature’s secrets.

2,500 years after the seven blind men examined the elephant in India, hundreds of scientists have assessed an even more unusual creature - the vi- se- co- im. That stands for the virus- selenium- Covid- immune system interaction. You will not find that microorganism- function- junction in the zoo or the dictionary. Instead, it lurks in its often- unrecognised form inside Covid patients in the hospital. As with the elephant, many scientific research groups have explored aspects of the vi- se- co- im interaction from different angles.

The first group of scientists that checked out the vi- se- co- im found that people living in areas of China with the highest selenium content in their soil and food had three times the chance of recovering from Covid than on average in China. In contrast, in the area with the lowest selenium in soil and food, people with Covid had a five times greater chance of dying from Covid- 19 than average.

The second group of vi- se- co- im researchers determined that the only two nutrients depleted in Covid- 19 are vitamin D3 and selenium. However, whereas the deficiency of vitamin D3 increased only 16 percent as Covid progressed from mild to severe disease, selenium deficiency increased by 125 percent. 100 percent of patients on ventilation, or with severe Covid, or that die, are selenium deficient. Declining selenium levels caused by higher viral loads correlate highly with disease progression. This cause- and- effect relationship plays an integral part in Covid disease progression. Doctors should remedy this nutritional deficiency in patients immediately.

The third group of vi- se- co- im scientists tested 10,000 different chemical compounds and drugs against Covid- 19 in the laboratory. They discovered that out of all 10,000, the one that had the greatest effect against

Covid was Ebselen, a selenium- based compound.

Other physicians found that corticosteroid drugs had a great impact against advanced Covid, perhaps not realising the reason for this is steroids strongly inhibit a key protein that controls both inflammation and viral replication - NF- kB. Unfortunately, doctors failed to apply the understanding of this known virologic pathway to expand that strategy to using much safer NF- kB inhibitors in the early phase of Covid where they likely would be able to slow or perhaps even prevent progression to more serious disease. This has been a deadly oversight.

A fifth group of brilliant researchers determined the SARS- 2 virus that causes Covid- 19 directly attacks and cuts- up antioxidants in the cells they infect. SARS- 2 steals the selenium those antioxidants contain and uses it to create their own viral antioxidants to protect themselves from the prooxidants human macrophage immune cells spray out to destroy viral invaders.

Years ago, scientists established that virally induced selenium deficiency progresses in tandem with many viral diseases.

When doctors treated those viral diseases with between 1mg and 2mg of selenium daily, mortality rates were drastically reduced, in the range of 45 percent to 80 percent. This applies to highly deadly haemorrhagic fever viruses such as Ebola, Marburg and Hantavirus, and less fatal viruses too.

Scientists had already documented that as the viral load of many RNA viruses like SARS- 2 increases with disease progression, they progressively steal more selenium from the body. CD4 count declines as the selenium level does. Scientists in Hawaii determined that the level of selenium in the body has a direct effect on the thymus gland where CD4 cells are produced. When selenium levels are increased through supplementation, CD4 cells that control immune responses also increase, strongly boosting the body’s ability to combat viral infection. Because of this and because selenium is needed for all aspects of immune function, selenium is the most important nutrient required for immunity.

From a final scientific perspective and the eighth current piece of the vi- se- co- im puzzle, over the last three decades, hundreds of researchers have established selenium helps against most symptoms associated with Covid- 19 and its underlying hyperinflammation. Those symptoms include but are not limited to reducing NF- kB, inflammation and viral replication, aches and pains, headache, fever, pneumonia, skin problems, blood coagulation, sepsis, and organ failure, and increasing haemoglobin. Selenium is not a cure for any of these symptoms, but it reduces them by various degrees.

The eight pieces of the Covid- 19 vi- se- co- im puzzle listed above seem beyond the ability of medical practitioners and responsible health authorities to recognise or assemble. Given these established scientific facts, all pointing in one direction, they should at least take a hint. If this were the best of all possible worlds and things worked as they should, health authorities would follow these obvious clues toward improving Covid therapy. Because of conflicts of interest on the part of some major organisations, they do not.

In this pandemic era, the world looks for wisemen to propose solutions. Instead, it is burdened with three blind men - three organisational structures that incredibly lack the perspective to think or act outside the boxes of their own self- interest. As a result, millions perish. The first blind- man is the World Health Organization ( WHO). The WHO does amazing, highly commendable work around the world in public health trying to reduce disease and improve health in so many ways. Yet no organisation is without fault or beyond criticism. Every organisation responds first and foremost to those that fund it.

The preponderance of WHO financing comes from the governments of advanced nations where the international pharmaceutical industry is based, and from pharmaceutical companies themselves. That creates a conflict of interest between the parties that fund it and the people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that most need its assistance. When there is any question how to decide an issue, the interests of the funders always prevail against pure science and the interests of average people that needs help. That is the only possible explanation why twenty- four years after researchers explained how selenium has a major impact against HIV disease and years after selenium proved to significantly increase CD4 count and reduce progression of HIV to AIDS, the WHO has ignobly failed to use this life saving information to inform governments and people how to use selenium to improve HIV treatment. The WHO also ignored the benefit selenium showed against Ebola and other deadly viral diseases. Why? Their imperative is to protect the pharmaceutical- industrial- complex so these companies will continue donating ten- million- dollar cheques. If selenium were a drug requiring a prescription with a high price- tag, the situation would be different.

The second blind- man organisational structures are national ministries of health ( MOH). Every MOH is closely tied to the WHO because the WHO provides funding, expertise, guidance, and program assistance to most MOHs around the world. That is a good thing. It also explains why MOHs in Africa have failed miserably to either use or inform people with HIV they can use selenium to improve therapy for HIV/ AIDS, and the other conditions selenium has been shown to be helpful against, including heart disease, cancer, skin problems, depression, and autoimmunity, among others. This failure caused millions to die prematurely of AIDS in Africa. The WHO failed to apply the lesson it should have learned in 2014 with Ebola in Liberia, that selenium used at the correct moderately high dose can reduce the mortality rate of Ebola and other haemorrhagic fevers by 45 percent or more.

One system failure leads to another. Failure with HIV, followed by failure with Ebola, has led to the current miserable failure where almost twenty months into this pandemic the WHO and MOHs still have no recommendation for safe, affordable, effective, therapies to help people slow Covid progression in its early stages and avoid hospitalisation.

The third blind- man structures are professional medical associations. 2,300 years ago the Hippocratic Oath was devised to prevent unregulated medical practitioners from poisoning their patients and ruining the reputation of legitimately trained, ethical physicians. “First, do no harm.” But the essence of the traditional Hippocratic Oath was not to do no harm to the patient, although that was included. Instead, it was to do no harm to the profession of medicine itself. It was the first guild oath. Today that medical profession self- protection scheme extends to the pharmaceutical industry. As gatekeepers, doctors perceive a self- interest in recommending only drugs that require prescriptions and ignoring rare effective therapies, like selenium, that do not.

Any reasonable person could understand by looking at the above eight pieces of the vi- se- co- im puzzle assembled through decades of research that show from multiple, logical perspectives selenium works as a broad- spectrum antiviral and should be extremely beneficial against Covid- 19. Physician associations rightfully ask, where are the results of your controlled clinical trial? Well, who will pay for that?

The WHO? The MOH? The medical association? All are directly or indirectly in the pocket of the most profitable industry on the planet. The pharmaceutical industry has zero interest in showing that safe, affordable, broad- spectrum, antiviral selenium supplement are highly effective in saving lives. This circular conflict of interest extends infinitely. Meanwhile friends, family, neighbours, and political leaders continue to die from Covid, sacrificed on the altar of greater pharmaceutical corporate profits.

Today millions are dying of viral pandemic diseases without understanding that what causes the final death spiral is severe selenium depletion and the resultant immune dysregulation caused by rapid viral proliferation. AIDS, Ebola, Hantavirus, Marburg virus and Covid- 19 are all caused by viruses whose increasing replication eventually drains too much of the most essential nutrient for immunity. Selenium levels collapse, and with it the immune system that sustains life.

No medical consensus can remain unchallenged, and no picture of Covid- 19 complete while an elephantine- sized piece in the heart of this three- dimensional puzzle remains missing. Selenium provides the central tentpole that holds up the big tent of the immune system, sustaining life and health. SARS- 2 and other deadly viral diseases pull down that protective tent of immunity by eroding, then destroying that central tentpole. Without sufficient selenium, the immune system and life itself collapses.

Thousands die daily as physicians passively wait for someone to conduct a clinical trial of selenium against Covid- 19. Selenium scientists know it works. Protecting their own self- interests, doctors, MOHs, the WHO and medical researchers, all rest comfortably in the pocket of the pharmaceutical- industrial- complex while ignoring the elephant- sized missing puzzle piece in the middle of the Covid- 19 analysis room. How many people must die before someone steps up and calls an elephant an elephant, or a vi- se- co- im a vi- se- co- im? How many millions are doomed to perish unnecessarily?

This pandemic will not end soon. The best survival strategy is first, get fully vaccinated. Then have a supply of 200mcg selenium on hand. Take one tablet daily while the pandemic continues to reduce the chance of an infection catching fire. Importantly, if one does start experiencing cold or flulike symptoms of early Covid, replace lost selenium quickly. Doctors should inform themselves how to escalate dosage when severe Covid develops. They should realize that “doing no harm” includes not ignoring a safe, effective, adjunct therapy – even if it does not require a prescription.

Howard Armistead has been HIV+ for 38 years. He is an AIDS, Ebola, and Covid- 19 researcher and Director of the Selenium Education and Research Centre in Johannesburg. Read more at winagainstcorona. com