Thus, if any FDA-approved drug like hydroxychloroquine (or ivermectin) proved effective against COVID, pharmaceutical companies would no longer be legally allowed to fast-track their billion-dollar vaccines to market under Emergency Use Authorization. Instead, vaccines would have to endure the years-long delays that have always accompanied methodical safety and efficacy testing, and that would mean less profits, more uncertainty, longer runways to market, and a disappointing end to the lucrative COVID-19 vaccine gold rush. Dr. Fauci has invested $6 billion in taxpayer lucre in the Moderna vaccine alone.3 His agency is co-owner4 of the patent and stands to collect a fortune in royalties. At least four of Fauci’s hand-picked deputies are in line to collect royalties of $150,000/year based on Moderna’s success, and that’s on top of the salaries already paid by the American public.5,6
So there was good reason that very powerful potentates of the medical cartel were already targeting HCQ long before President Trump began his infamous romance with the malaria remedy. President Trump’s endorsement of HCQ on March 19, 20207 hyper-politicized the debate and gave Dr. Fauci’s defamation campaign against HCQ a soft landing among Democrats and the media. Trump’s critics relegated any further claims of HCQ efficacy to the same anti-science waste bin as Trump’s notorious recommendation for bleach to cure COVID and his denial of climate change. But HCQ had a long history of safe medical use that got lost in the politics and propaganda.
HCQ Before Dr. Fauci’s Smear Campaign
Dr. Fauci’s challenge—to prove that HCQ is dangerous—was daunting because hydroxychloroquine is a 65-year-old formula that regulators around the globe long ago approved as both safe and effective against a variety of illnesses. HCQ is an analog of the quinine found in the bark of the cinchona tree that George Washington used to protect his troops from malaria. For decades, WHO has listed HCQ as an “essential medicine,” proven effective against a long list of ailments.8 It is a generally benign prescription medicine, far safer—according to the manufacturer’s package inserts9—than many popular over-the-counter drugs.
Generations have used HCQ billions of times throughout the world, practically without restriction. During my many childhood trips to Africa, I took HCQ daily as a preventive against malaria, a ritual that millions of other African visitors and residents embrace. Long use has thoroughly established HCQ’s safety and efficacy such that most African countries authorize HCQ as an over-the-counter medication. Africans call the drug “Sunday-Sunday”10 because millions of them take it religiously, once a week, as a malaria prophylaxis. It’s probably not a coincidence that these nations enjoyed some of the world’s lowest mortality rates from COVID. HCQ is the #1 most used medication in India, the second-most populous nation on the planet, with 1.3 billion people. Prior to the COVID pandemic, HCQ and its progenitor, chloroquine (CQ), were freely available over the counter in most of the world, including France, Canada, Iran, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, and many other countries.
In the United States, the FDA has approved HCQ without limitation for 65 years, meaning that physicians can prescribe it for any off-label use. CDC’s information sheet deems hydroxychloroquine safe for pregnant women, breastfeeding women, children, infants, elderly and immune-compromised patients and healthy persons of all ages.11 The CDC sets no limits on the lengthy and indefinite use of hydroxychloroquine for the prevention of malaria. Many people in Africa and India take it for a lifetime. Since its recommended protocol as a remedy for COVID requires only one week’s use, Dr. Fauci’s sudden revelation that the drug is dangerous was specious at best.
According to Dr. Peter McCullough, “To date, there has not been a single credible report that the medication increases the risk of death in COVID-19 patients when prescribed by competent physicians who understand its safety profile.”12
Efficacy Against Coronavirus with Early Intervention HCQ Protocol
Some 200 peer-reviewed studies (C19Study.com) by government and independent researchers deem HCQ safe and effective against Coronavirus, especially when taken prophylactically or when taken in the initial stages of illness along with zinc and Zithromax.
The chart below lists 32 studies of early outpatient treatment of COVID using hydroxychloroquine. Thirty-one of the studies showed benefit, and only one study showed harm. The study showing harm resulted from a single patient in the treatment group requiring hospitalization. When all the studies are collected together, despite having different outcome measures, the average benefit is 64 percent. This means that subjects who received hydroxychloroquine were only 36 percent as likely to reach the negative outcomes as subjects in the control groups.
The scientific literature first suggested that HCQ or CQ might be effective treatments for Coronavirus in 2004.13 In that era, following an outbreak, Chinese and Western governments were pouring millions of dollars into an effort to identify existing, a.k.a. “repurposed,” medicines that were effective against coronaviruses. With HCQ, they had stumbled across the Holy Grail. In 2004, Belgian researchers found that chloroquine was effective at viral killing at doses equivalent to those used to treat malaria, i.e., doses that are safe.14 A CDC study published in 2005 in the Virology Journal, “Chloroquine is a Potent Inhibitor of SARS Coronavirus Infection and Spread” demonstrated that CQ quickly eliminated coronavirus in primate cell culture during the SARS outbreak. That study concludes: “We report . . . that chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-Coronavirus infection of primate cells . . . [both] before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage.”15
This conclusion was particularly threatening to vaccine makers since it implies that chloroquine functions both as a preventive “vaccine” as well as a cure for SARS coronavirus. Common sense would presume it to be effective against other coronavirus strains. Worse still for Dr. Fauci and his vaccine-making friends, a NIAID study16 and a Dutch paper,17 both in 2014, confirmed chloroquine was effective against MERS—still another coronavirus.
In response to their studies, physicians worldwide discovered early in the pandemic that they could successfully treat high-risk COVID-19 patients as outpatients, within the first five to seven days of the onset of symptoms, with a chloroquine drug alone or with a “cocktail” consisting of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin (or doxycycline). Multiple scholarly contributions to the literature quickly confirmed the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and hydroxychloroquine-based combination treatment when administered within days of COVID symptoms. Studies confirming this occurred in China,18 France,19 Saudi Arabia,20 Iran,21 Italy,22 India,23 New York City,24 upstate New York,25 Michigan,26 and Brazil.27
HCQ’s first prominent champion was Dr. Didier Raoult, the iconic French infectious disease professor, who has published more than 2,700 papers and is famous for having discovered 100 microorganisms, including the pathogen that causes Whipple’s Disease. On March 17, 2020, Dr. Raoult provided a preliminary report on 36 patients treated successfully with hydroxychloroquine and sometimes azithromycin at his institution in Marseille.28