I don’t want to survive; I want to live. –Captain of Axiom, Wall-E
Going into my sophomore year at college, I chose to study abroad in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. You could say I did it to improve my Portuguese, but if you knew me at all, it had more to do with my anxiety over a romantic relationship that was moving too fast for me. Of course, that’s a whole other story.
As I prepared to leave the country, I made a doctor’s visit to update my shots–yellow fever and hepatitis were the two I remember. My physician also made a prescription available to me in the form of malarial pills. I told her I didn’t think I probably needed to use it–I was going to the city, not the rainforest.
“Take one every week as a precaution,” she said. “And if you forget to take it while you’re in Rio, at the very least try to begin using it a week before–if and when–you visit the rainforest.”
Turns out, this anti-malarial drug was something called mefloquine, a safer cousin of quinine (what the folks used back in the olden days to prevent sickness). It is also a cousin to the presently-hated, President Trump-touted hydroxychloroquine.
The tiny dosage–one pill a week–seemed peculiarly small, possibly too small to prevent at anything at all. But after some more research, I discovered it is used to fight a host of diseases. My grandma was probably on it at some point for her rheumatoid arthritis. My mother might have used it during treatment for colon cancer. Patients with lupus, renal failure, diabetes–all have seen positive results when treated with this magic drug. All ages, all stages of life can use it with proper dosing and frequency–this is a miracle, life-saving pill. And having been proven safe to use for nearly seventy years, this drug has been available over-the-counter, for any Joe off the street to buy. Countries with malaria buy it by the gobs and take it “Sunday-Sunday”, a weekly regimen for the whole family to fend off disease.
Until now, when the coronavirus threatens to take down our schools, economy, and way of life. Nevermind that scientists have proven on a cellular level how it congregates in the lungs, preventing the virus from making copies of itself.
Peculiar, isn’t it?
Let me tell you what else is peculiar:
Studies in highly respected, peer-reviewed journals are being published and then removed. This is a major red flag warning, nearly unprecedented in the medical community, where research is always on-going. https://www.netadvisor.org/2020/06/05/studies-removed-from-medical-journals-claimed-hydroxychloroquine-was-harmful/
When you type the drug’s name into any search bar, the main study that pops up is one published by the VA where toxic doses of hydroxychloroquine were administered to very sick people, who of course died by over-medication and co-morbidity factors. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.16.20065920v1.full.pdf
(Scroll to page 13 to read the discrediting one sentence: Administering higher doses of hydroxychloroquine to achieve presumed antiviral concentrations might increase the risk of adverse events.)
The general media and public is basically ignoring research done by the esteemed epidemiologist Harvey Risch of Yale, urging widespread, immediate prophylactic use of hydroxychloroquine. https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwaa093/5847586
In African countries where this drug is already being administered as an preventative anti-malarial solution, Covid death rates are an incredible 400 times lower than countries like Spain, Italy, and the US. (Dig around on the John Hopkins website and look at death rate graphics.)
Doctors and pharmacists have been prescribing this drug for years but are now being threatened with the loss of their license in some states where hydroxychloroquine is currently flagged as untested and dangerous in Covid treatment.
Grassroots doctors’ organizations who try to speak out about the benefits of this drug are being censored and deleted from social media platforms. (Google America’s Frontline Doctors and just try and see if you can find them. Their presence is being scrubbed from the very internet, even though they are primary care physicians successfully treating Covid patients every day. I especially love listening to Dr. Stella Immanuel–please look her up on Twitter or elsewhere and support her. She is a black, immigrant doctor, and if anyone should have a voice and internet presence in the age of Black Lives Matter, this is your gal.)
What is peculiar is this: If there were a life-saving drug available and people were dying at a rate of 411 deaths per 1 million, if your grandma in the nursing home could be protected from catching this awful disease, if kids could go back to school and recover the five month “summer slide” due to Covid, why in the world are we not talking about it? Why in the world are we not standing in line to get it?
It is safe to take as a preventative medication against malaria, whether or not you go to a rainforest or ever encounter mosquitoes. Yet we are pressured into hiding in our houses, avoiding social contact, and not talking about it. This is oppressing. This is fear-mongering.
The lengths at which some medical professionals, the World Health Organization, CDC, FDA and politicians are willing to go to prevent solving this Covid crisis is alarming. Whoever is pressuring you to stay home and “save lives”, whoever is telling you life isn’t safe to live–if their voices are louder than your own desire to find the truth–then get out of the way. You are of no use to the living.
I can speak about it because I have nothing to lose, no physician’s license. I’m an unemployed mother with an unimpressive blog. Our schools have abandoned in-school learning, so my kids are home with me for the foreseeable future. What would retaliation look like–cutting me off from the world? Sorry, folks, already there.
Look, there is a cure. But as Lavar Burton says, don’t take my word for it.
Check out this video conference with America’s Frontline Doctors while it is available.
