BROAD-SPECTRUM ANTIVIRAL DRUGS IGNORED IN COVID FIGHT( PART 3)
BY HOWARD ARMISTEAD The key to reversing this deadly microbiological cascade is maintaining control of the immune system by maximizing CD4 count through selenium supplementation.
CD4 cells are manufactured and processed in the thymus gland from naïve CD cells that originate in the bone marrow. The thymus can process naïve cells into either CD4, or CD8 cells, depending on the signals it receives. The dominant signal is based on the level of selenium in the body. When selenium is low the thymus produces more CD8 and fewer CD4. When levels are high it produces more CD4 and less CD8. Different viruses require different amounts of selenium, so depletion occurs at different rates. Elongated Ebola and Marburg filoviruses require more selenium atoms and replicate faster than most. When the rate of viral replication soars out of control, in part due to the loss of selenium and CD4, the level of selenium and CD4 production can drop precipitously. The collapse of the entire immune system can be relatively swift, as with Ebola. Scientists have shown that in Covid-19, 100% of those who have severe disease or die are deficient in selenium. The same is true of AIDS, Ebola, Marburg, Hantavirus and many, probably most deadly viral diseases. Selenium deficiency increases rapidly as Covid progresses, showing it to be the key nutritional deficiency caused by SARS-2, propelling physiological decline as viral load escalates.
Between early 2020 and the end of March 2022, one million Americans died of Covid-19. That is a third more deaths than in America’s costliest war, the Civil War. Just as in 2014 when a moderately high dose of selenium reduced the mortality rate of Ebola in Liberia by approximately half, if an adequate dose of selenium had been used against Covid-19 at least half of those American deaths could have been prevented. If moderate to strong NF-kB inhibitor NSAID drugs had been used in conjunction with selenium from initial infection, even more lives should have been saved.
In 1896 Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan made an impassioned Cross of Gold speech at the Democratic convention in Chicago highlighting how the common person in America had been financially burdened by a currency tied to the gold standard that was causing widespread depression in a national economy still largely tied to agriculture. Today candidate Bryan might make a Cross of Pharmaceuticals speech highlighting the fact that scientifically based beneficial health information and life saving medicines are obscured by and for the benefit of huge corporations in their rush for excessive profits for the pharmaceutical-industrial-complex. This has cost American families hundreds of thousands of lives and extreme medical bills, bankrupting many. It has cost the national treasury trillions.
Today it is all the rage to talk about the need for pandemic preparedness. But how can America and the world be prepared for the next pandemic if we continue to ignore science and fail to learn the obvious lessons of this and previous epidemics and pandemics?
A common nostrum is that military generals always prepare to fight the last war. But even if one prepares to fight that last war, if they fail to update their military science with the latest technological understanding, they are sure to fail. It is essential to understand how all the pieces of the viral-immunity puzzle fit together, and if a significant piece of that puzzle is missing. Unfortunately, in our response to Covid-19 to date, it has been. We urgently need to remedy that for the coming endemic Covid phase that may last for years or a lifetime.
America and the World Health Organization have failed to utilize twenty-year-old scientific knowledge in the face of the AIDS pandemic, the Ebola epidemic, Zika, and now the SARS-2 pandemic. If they have failed to learn these lessons for over twenty years, when will they ever learn? How many more people must die in this pandemic, the next one, and the one after that due to this negligence? Serial pandemic failure by health authorities is a menace to society and a costly burden for all to bear. Where is William Jennings Bryan now that we need him? How long must Americans bear this heavy cross and the cost of excess profits for the pharmaceutical industry? How much longer must thousands continue to die when effective treatments sit on the pharmacy shelf, but knowledge of their use is hidden behind the pharmaceutical curtain? When will enough dying be enough?
Howard Armistead is Director of the Selenium Education and Research Centre, Johannesburg, howard@sercsa.org. Visit winagainstcorona.com, winagaisnthiv.com, winagainstebola.com or sercsa.org