Prepare for the Next Deadly Pandemic - End Serial Pandemic Failure

Dear Member of the Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus,

            The Chairman of the Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus of the House Oversight Committee, Representative Brad Wenstrup said, America needs to “predict, prepare, protect, or prevent [a pandemic] from happening again.” Unfortunately, as the title of my book explains, when faced with viral pandemics, the United States government has continued to perpetuate Serial Pandemic Failure. It will continue to do so until there is a drastic 90 degree change in strategy when confronting viral pandemics that continue to emerge at an ever-increasing pace. Until American public health authorities place the lives of citizens above the potential profits that pharmaceutical giants make through government subsidized new drug development, our nation is almost guaranteed to lose millions of lives unnecessarily when the next major influenza pandemic strikes. This tragic, unnecessary loss of innocent life is exactly what my two recent books address. They are Understanding Covid-19, How 500,000 American Lives Could Have Been Saved and Dear Bill Gates, How to End Serial Pandemic Failure, HIV-1 to Covid-19.

            Bill Gates said, “The world needs to prepare for pandemics in the same serious way it prepares for war.” Unfortunately, Mr. Gates shares the same tunnel vision paradigm the NIH has used when it repeatedly failed to save hundreds of thousands of lives. Mr. Gates and Dr Fauci believe new drug development and vaccinations are the only two weapons needed to conquer pandemics. They are dead wrong. While those are important weapons in the fight against viral pandemics, they are far from the only effective ones. In focusing on those two antiviral weapon systems alone, they totally ignore a significant arsenal of numerous existing broad-spectrum antiviral drugs that can be stockpiled and used from day one to inhibit both inflammation and viral replication. Those antiviral/anti-inflammatory drugs can prevent many, perhaps most people from needing to be hospitalized. Fauci’s narrow approach also ignores nature’s most powerful immune booster that lies at the heart of how viruses, cells, and the immune system interact – selenium. While the far too limited two-weapon system strategy may have gotten this nation through the Covid pandemic with only half a million unnecessary deaths compared to a more enlightened approach, in the coming pandemic we are unlikely to be so lucky. If H5N1 strikes without major de-escalatory modulating mutations, add a zero onto that 500,000 excess mortality.   

            Although the next pandemic could appear from anywhere, the most likely source will be H5N1- influenza A virus. H5N1 is currently jumping the species barrier from birds into numerous mammal species. It may be only months before it starts to spread among humans. Or maybe not. H5N1 has already infected close to a dozen mammal species. Can humans be far behind? This is the exact kind of highly pathogenic pandemic influenza the CDC and other health authorities have been dreading and thought long overdue when Covid-19 struck. Soon H5N1 could be standing on the doorstep of a national catastrophe. No one can predict accurately when or if it may cross that threshold. As you may be aware, the mortality rate of H5N1 in humans has been estimated to be between 56% and 85%. If it mutates to become more transmissible in humans, it might also mutate toward a much lower mortality rate – or not. Who is willing to gamble millions of lives on the direction or timing of future viral mutations?   

            In March 2020 I emailed Tony Fauci via his deputy, Dr Clifford Lane that the Covid pandemic may be worse than most people were predicting. I suggested how the death toll could be minimized – by using existing broad-spectrum NF-kB antiviral drugs and selenium. Fauci ignored my sound scientific advice. An estimated 500,000 extra Americans met their maker due to his failure to recommend proven science to reduce viral replication and inflammation. Almost every doctor knows it is best to treat a disease as early as possible instead of waiting for an illness to progress to a more serious stage. Why did we fail to treat Covid-19 earlier? We failed to do so due to a seriously flawed NIH ideological paradigm that suggests we need a new drug to treat each new viral disease. That is a formula for disaster and excess deaths of people who should not have been allowed to die. That did not have to happen. Obviously, it will happen again unless there is a 90 degree change towards a more balanced therapeutic strategy that includes effective early treatment – from day one.  

            In 2014 the Ministry of Health of Liberia called me to bring selenium from  Johannesburg to Monrovia where Dr Jerry Brown administered 1.2mg of selenium daily to his Ebola patients. He quickly saw a 42.8% reduction in mortality rate in his ELWA-2 Ebola treatment unit. When this tremendously positive result was reported to the recently arrived American officials from the CDC and NIH who were in Liberia, they ignored it. They were waiting for the next Ebola epidemic to test their own drugs that were then in development. That occurred three years later in Kivu Province, Republic of Congo. By using selenium, we could have saved lives in the 2014-2016 West African Ebola Crisis at the cost of $14 for each additional life saved. We did not. It was another example of Serial Pandemic Failure. That follows on the heals of the same mistake in the early 1990s in the American AIDS pandemic. Between 1991 and 1996, one hundred thousand American lives could have been saved when Anthony Fauci and Company failed to use NF-kB inhibitors and selenium to save the lives of those who only had d4T and toxic AZT to help them limp toward life-saving protease inhibitor drugs that finally came online in 1996 and stopped the dying. That was the first costly pandemic failure… Dr Jerry Brown of Liberia was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2014. No mention was made of the success we had testing selenium against Ebola virus disease.                                       

            Because the NIH and Fauci failed to apply broad-spectrum NF-kB inhibitors and selenium against Covid-19, not only did America suffer 500,000 excess deaths, but American public health authorities also contributed to millions of Americans suffering from more serious cases of Long Covid. That will tax our health care system to the tune of close to a trillion extra dollars over the next two decades. More severe cases of Covid-19 resulted in more serious cases of post-acute sequela of Covid – PASC – the medical term for Long Covid.  

            I have been writing about Covid since the last week of January 2020, just days after the Chinese government announced the initial outbreak. However I have been writing about viral disease since the early 1990s when I became a viral disease researcher, because my life depended on it. On almost the exact date the Chinese CDC announced a new flu-like illness, I penned an essay titled “Thinking Like a Virus”. Perhaps if more people could understand how a virus thinks, we would be better able to escape the NIH infinity loop of Serial Pandemic Failure. Thinking outside the box may not be Anthony Fauci’s strong suit. His box looks too much like a cozy bank vault lined with unlimited profit potential for his friends. Bill Gates enjoys a suite there too. Meanwhile, half a million Americans and their families were suite out of luck.

            My book Understanding Covid-19, How 500,000 American Lives Could Have Been Saved is revised and in its final form. Self-published on Amazon.com, it is solidly anchored in science. Since 1992 I have attended over fifty-eight AIDS and virology conferences worldwide. I am inclosing my second book for your review. Dear Bill Gates, How to End Serial Pandemic Failure, HIV-1 to Covid-19 is my first published draft. I am currently revising it, editing parts, and adding several additional chapters, plus extracts from a dozen more medical journal articles. Those articles fully substantiate the scientific analysis I relate concerning both selenium and NF-kB NSAID and steroid drugs, subjects I have studied for over twenty-five years.  Because we failed to inhibit viral replication and inflammation early on in Covid, we ended up with excessive deaths and millions of extra, more serious cases of PASC. Tony Fauci knew this science because I emailed to remind him in March 2020. If Dr Fauci knows as much about immunology and virology as I do, he already knew this but chose to ignore it due to his warped ideology that places potential future gross profits above his fiduciary responsibility to first do no harm and save American lives. Anthony Fauci failed miserably and hundreds of thousands of American families paid the ultimate price because of his repetitive failure, misdirection, and deceit. American taxpayers are left holding the bag for his mistakes.         

I welcome your questions about this line of inquiry. This tragic failure should be investigated. It must be corrected for the health, safety, and security of the American people.  

Scientifically yours, 

Howard S. Armistead