Preventing the Next Pandemic - Letter to Congressional Subcommittee on Corona Virus Pandemic

 Dear Congressional Select Subcommittee on the Corona Virus Pandemic,

            I watched the first hearing of the Congressional Subcommittee on the Corona Virus in its entirety. The bad news is it is impossible to prevent a highly contagious, respiratory, airborne virus from going pandemic. No one has ever prevented a flu pandemic or contagious respiratory virus from doing so. It is only possible to reduce its morbidity and mortality, and to a lesser extent its infection rate. It is impossible to totally prevent a pandemic.  

            It is imminently possible to greatly reduce the impact of a viral pandemic if you understand viruses better. Deaths from Covid-19 easily could have been reduced between 50% and 75% if health authorities had applied two simple scientific facts. One relates to how viruses replicate and grow exponentially. The other relates to what viruses are composed of, how that affects the immune system, and thus how viruses cause death. By ignoring these two basic scientific principles the NIH and CDC allowed more than 600,000 people to die of Covid who should have survived. This is not the fault of Republicans or Democrats. It is a scientific and human rights issue.      

Scientific subjects intimidate most people. Even many medical doctors do not think like scientists. I am the leading autodidactic AIDS researcher in the world because there are no others. I have studied virology and immunology and how viruses work since 1990 and was a consultant to the Ministry of Health of Zambia on the Technical Working Group on Selenium in 2007 and advised the Liberian Ministry of Health on Ebola in 2014. These health ministries recognized my expertise in important aspects of how HIV and Ebola viruses make us sick and how we can save lives and improve health when confronted by viral infection. If you want to improve future pandemic response you need to understand a few simple facts that taken together can reduce deaths from many viral infections by 50% to 75% or more. One fact comes from what should be extremely obvious science but apparently is not. The other derives from quite obscure, arcane science. These two insights are relatively equal. The more obvious one can reduce hospitalizations. The obscure one is more critical for preventing deaths.

Today almost anyone who studies cellular biology learns what NF-kB is. Nuclear-factor kappaB is a cellular protein that acts as a “replication factor” that cells utilize when they replace themselves with successor cells and must generate millions of new proteins rapidly. Viruses also unleash this cellular protein to powerfully stimulate their own replication. Thus NF-kB is the primary stimulant or fuel for viral replication. It is also the primary stimulant for inflammation. Many drugs inhibit NF-kB including dexamethasone. They are called anti-inflammatory drugs. There are both steroid anti-inflammatory drugs like dexamethasone and non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs – NSAIDs - including ibuprofen and diclofenac. These drugs are not just anti-inflammatory. Because they reduce the same protein stimulant for viral replication and inflammation, NF-kB inhibitors – NF-kBIs – are antiviral drugs too. That is so simple. How could everyone have missed it? We missed it because most of these drugs are cheap, off-patent medicines that have existed for decades. No one ever considered them because they are so cheap, and the medical system does not reward anyone for cheap. The NIH and Big Pharma believe Americans must have the best $1,000 pills money can buy or government pays for – or nothing at all.  

In 2020, safe, available, effective, affordable, antiviral/anti-inflammatory drugs were sitting in plain sight to treat Covid. In 1994 I handed Anthony Fauci science about using NF-kBIs against HIV disease at the Yokohama International AIDS Conference. Perhaps he forgot about them? After two years of Covid, the NIH finally helped develop Paxlovid. Will Paxlovid help against the next X-virus pandemic? Maybe not. But NF-kBIs will help slow viral disease progression and save lives in the next Covid pandemic, the next influenza pandemic, and the next XYZ-viral pandemics. As simple as taking your foot off the gas pedal and your car slows down, using existing anti-inflammatory drugs to inhibit NF-kB stimulated viral replication slows disease progression as hospitalizations and deaths can be reduced. These anti-inflammatory/antiviral drugs can be used from the first day of infection and the first day of a pandemic. People should not have to wait to be hospitalized before receiving strong NF-kBIs as they previously were. There are numerous less potent NF-kBIs that can help keep a person out of the hospital. This should have been so obvious to someone like Tony Fauci who knows this science. However he was on a mission to develop highly profitable new drugs, not to save the lives of your parents or constituents. Why did we not use NF-kBIs to save lives in Covid-19? We could have used these drugs from day one. We must do so in the next pandemic. For a list of NSAID NF-kBIs and their relative strengths see page 48 of my book Dear Bill Gates.

The second scientific fact is quite obscure. It involves selenium.

The essential nutritional trace element selenium is the strongest immune booster known. That is because it is the strongest medicinal agent to increase CD4 count. It does that because the level of selenium in the body directly influences the ratio of how the thymus gland produces CD4 and CD8 white blood cells. Selenium is essential for all aspects of immune system function. At the subcellular level, selenium constitutes the “active site” of most antioxidants found in all cells. The active site is the part of an antioxidant that does the work. Without enough selenium to form them or when those antioxidants are destroyed, the prooxidant/antioxidant balance is upset, and cells become dysfunctional. These facts are generally well known among scientists in this field. What is not so well known, the truly obscure science, follows.

Many viruses including HIV, SARS-CoV-2, SARS-1, Ebola, and influenza genetically encode selenium proteins that are necessary to form their protective outer envelopes. When viruses replicate, they use up some of the selenium found within the cells they infect. In the case of SARS-CoV-2 the virus uses its protease cutting mechanism to destroy cellular antioxidants so the virus can release the selenium held in them and recycle it to construct their own envelope selenoproteins. Thus these viruses deplete selenium from and damage those cells. Cellular damage then leads to tissue and organ damage. That eventually depletes selenium from the body leading to the loss of CD4 cells and the eventual collapse of the immune system. That triggers the cytokine storm, sepsis, multi-organ-failure, and death. If one supplements sufficient selenium back into the body in time, this disease progression can be reversed. South Korean scientists determined that in Covid-19, the one nutritional element that is rapidly depleted in severe Covid is selenium. Other scientists have shown that those with severe Covid who have enough selenium survive. Those who cannot maintain enough selenium do not. Thus the level of selenium in the body makes the difference between life and death. Simple? Yes. It is just as simple as knowing that someone without enough food, water, or oxygen will perish. Viruses kill by genetically encoding and then depleting selenium, killing cells, and collapsing immunity. This cause and effect is simple but obscure science. 

 SARS-CoV-2 shares a characteristic with viral hemorrhagic fever diseases - DIC - distributed intravascular coagulation. DIC is widespread blood coagulation all over the body, from micro-clots in the lungs, to larger clots that cause heart attack, stroke, and brain damage. As in Ebola, DIC is caused by the loss of selenium that normally prevents blood clots and keeps blood flowing. In Covid, the loss of selenium also contributes in two ways to lack of oxygen - hypoxia. First, loss of selenium damages both capillary blood vessels and alveola cells where oxygen is transferred from lung cells into the bloodstream. Inflammation and the loss of selenium and protective antioxidants damage that critical transfer point. Second, red blood cells that carry oxygen are primarily composed of iron and selenium. The loss of selenium causes selenium deficiency anemia that reduces the capacity to transport oxygen around the body. Which is the more important factor in hypoxia? The first, but both contribute to oxygen deprivation in the blood.  

In 2014 I used my knowledge of the interactions among selenium, viral replication, and the immune system to supply the Liberian Ministry of Health the only effective therapy found to treat Ebola during the entire 2014-16 West African Ebola epidemic. (winagainstebola.com) 1.2mg of selenium daily reduced the mortality rate of Ebola by 42.8%. If they had used the 2.0mg daily dose of selenium I had recommended, the mortality rate should have fallen by 65%. If physicians in the United States had known how to use both NF-kB inhibitor antiviral drugs and selenium, they would have been able to reduce hospitalizations by approximately 50% and deaths from Covid-19 by between 50% and 75% - or perhaps more.

That is my opening statement. I apologize for taking more than five minutes. Now I will try to answer some of your questions.         

Your most important question should be, why was everyone told false information that there were no therapies to treat early Covid-19. Why were people kept waiting two years before a new drug was developed to treat Covid when they could have used NF-kBIs and selenium to save lives from the start? The second question is, will government health bureaucrats do that to the American people again in the next pandemic? Who was to blame? Politicians were not. Irresponsible senior health bureaucrats were. Now to the subcommittee’s questions.

As Chair Brad Wenstrup said, the subcommittee’s work “must be done with an eye on the truth, based on facts.” This must include the basic scientific facts outlined above of a) how cells and viruses work with NF-kB and antioxidants, b) how the immune system functions with its requirement for selenium c) what viruses are made of including selenoproteins and d) what element is rapidly depleted in severe Covid and other deadly viral diseases – selenium. If you do not understand the a-b-c-d of how viral diseases work, you will be up Rock Creek Park without a paddle in the next pandemic. Unfortunately, virtually no physicians know all these pieces of the puzzle. Only a few scientists do. I know this because it has been the focus of my research for thirty-three years, how HIV, and by extension, how other deadly viruses cause disease. Ignoring basic scientific principles and factual truth does not solve the pandemic problem. Putting the varied pieces of the scientific puzzle together does. In part, this may answer Chair Brad Wenstrup’s question of what policies went wrong and how we as a country can improve. As Dr Wenstrup said, “American’s feel that time and time again the government failed to protect the American people and often failed to follow the science.” Yes, the above science existed but in disparate pieces. No one put those pieces of the scientific puzzle together, although Fauci could and should have. I emailed his deputy Clifford Lane in March 2020 to remind him. However Fauci’s primary goal was new drug development, not saving grandpa’s life. If this subcommittee wants to “prepare, protect, and prevent” hospitalizations and deaths in the next pandemic, more than half that challenge can be accomplished by putting together the a-b-c-d puzzle laid out above. It is all based on peer reviewed medical journals extracted in my book Understanding Covid-19. After twenty years in Africa I returned to try to explain this to Congress. It does not take a genius to assemble a four-piece puzzle. We must end serial pandemic failure. You cannot do that unless you connect these four pieces of science. Broad-spectrum antiviral drugs will be effective against any viral pandemic from the word go.

Ranking Member Raul Ruiz also makes excellent points warning of the ”extreme danger of misinformation and disinformation” and “the need to speak of lessons learned and of what went wrong.” “Our work must lead with facts and follow the science”, with the “critical purpose of preventing and preparing for future pandemics.” Although it is almost impossible to prevent pandemics, we can save a huge percentage of lives if we use safe, effective, available, affordable, anti-inflammatory/antiviral drugs that exist in almost every pharmacy in America from day one and the first sign of infection. The Covid-19 pandemic was a disaster in America because the NIH and CDC ignored basic science because evidently it was not in their institutional interest. They catered to the health of the pharmaceutical industry, not the health of the American people. At least the NIH did.

“Dogma, intense arrogance, ignoring science.” Those are some of the words that might describe the reaction Dr Jerry Brown of Liberia faced when he showed representatives of the NIH and CDC the results of our trial of selenium against Ebola in 2014 in Liberia. A 42.8% reduction in mortality rate did not impress them because the NIH was planning to test four of their own candidate therapies against Ebola as soon as they were ready to go – three years later in Kivu Province, Congo. As Dr Martin Makary testified in the hearing, “The greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic is the United States government.” The dogmatic refrain was the same with Ebola and Covid-19, “There is no treatment. There is no cure.” Yes, there was no cure. But there were more than a dozen steroid and NSAID antiviral drugs that could have been used against Covid-19 but were not. We sacrificed 600,000 lives on the altar of new drug development – maybe more. The government spent five trillion dollars on pandemic mitigation. If we had used effective drugs from day one, that expense could have been halfed.

As Representative Wenstrup suggested, we need to “search for better answers” and “you base your decisions on data and studies.” I might also add logic, including putting two plus two together. Sometimes preexisting data and studies are widely scattered in medical journal articles, just as the a-b-c-d pieces of the puzzle are. The peer reviewed science is there. However it has not been assembled in logical, recognizable form. Is that why we lost 600,000 excess people? Because no one put the a-b-c-d scientific facts together? Dr Fauci ignored my March 2020 prompt to do so. If the experts had the answers, they would have provided them already.                          

As Ranking Member Ruiz asked, “What lessons can we learn…to prepare our nation for future health threats?” Answer – safe, effective, affordable, broad-spectrum antiviral drugs exist that can be used from day one. Are they proven effective? If they are effective against inflammation, they are effective to the same degree against viral replication because they work through the exact same mechanism, by inhibiting a viral replication factor. Selenium has been proved beneficial against numerous viral diseases, working through several different mechanisms. The benefit of dexamethasone saving lives is another point proving the power of NF-kB inhibitors.  

Representative Debbie Dingle rightly questions misinformation and disinformation. In addition I question the lack of information – a coverup some might say - of NF-kB inhibitors and selenium. As most physicians know, early therapy is the best therapy. Anthony Fauci repeatedly decried the lack of early therapy even though he suggested several expensive therapies that did not work. He ignored cheap NF-KBI broad-spectrum antivirals and selenium that do work. Then after two years he presented Paxlovid, a highly effective drug for early therapy that can only be used for five days. Different strength NK-kBIs and selenium can be used continuously.   

Representative Dr Rich McCormick suggests that “The only progress we make through medicine is by dissent.” I would not put it so absolutely, but it is true that nothing was ever discovered by thinking inside the box. Historically, many important discoveries in science and medicine initially have been disputed by the medical or scientific establishment. The dilemma of discovery is how once a person discovers something, how do they drag that into the box of accepted knowledge? One medical journal article does not accomplish that. Personally, I would not recommend ivermectin because it is a poison, nor chloroquine because it is a prooxidant that increases NF-kB.

My sympathy goes out to Representative Robert Garcia on the loss of his mother and stepfather to Covid. Working in Southern Africa at the time, I knew a dozen older pharmacists who died of Covid prior to the advent of vaccines. As treating pharmacists, they worked on the frontline of the pandemic. I also lost the man who guarded the parking lot of my office in Johannesburg. As Mr. Garcia explained “The pandemic was the single largest loss of life event in the modern era.” That is at least since the 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic that killed 675,000 in the US alone when the population was one third the size of today. If the H5N1 virus jumps the species barrier and begins to spread person-to-person with it current human mortality rate of 40% we will be headed for a ten times worst disaster than Covid-19. We need to rethink these issues fast to start using effective broad-spectrum antiviral therapies from the start, both NF-kB inhibitors and selenium. Although selenium also is a weak NF-kBI, it works tremendously more powerfully as selenium replacement therapy, boosting immunity, preventing death.      

Representative Deborah Ross stated, “I want to know what kind of research and initiatives we need to invest in to prevent and get ahead of future pandemics.” Prevention is a pipe dream. It is better to be realistic and use therapies that save lives. NF-kBIs and selenium are broad-spectrum antiviral drugs that work. They work for virtually all viruses. No one knows what the next pathogenic virus will be, so it is best to understand how these antiviral drugs work and how to use them. I have explained that above in simple terms. I will gladly go into more detail if you like, or you may read my two books, especially the extended excerpts from peer reviewed medical journals. My books are Understanding Covid-19, How 500,00 American lives Could have been Saved and Dear Bill Gates, How to End Serial Pandemic Failure, HIV-1 to Covid-19. Both are available from Amazon.com.      

Representative Dr Ami Bera was curious to understand why Japan’s pandemic experience was different. My brother lives in Japan and I lived in Japan for one-year, decades ago. Although the American diet is selenium replete, the Japanese diet, heavy in selenium-rich seafood and seaweed, is more than twice as high in selenium as the American diet. The Japanese diet has the second highest selenium content of any in the world, more than 300mcg daily. A higher level of selenium kept people from dying and many from getting sick. Sorry if that sounds too simple, but that should account for 70% of the difference. The Japanese are also consistent mask wearers and have universal health care. I would not bet my life on the Cochrane Consortium conclusion regarding face masks, especially if I worked in healthcare, was currently infected, had long Covid, or a major comorbidity. Yes Dr Bera, “admitting and learning from our mistakes” is the only way forward. Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The next pandemic might not have a fatality rate of 1.0%. It could be ten or more times that with H5N1. The SARS-1 mortality rate was 9.6% and the MERS rate has been 37%.

Although new drug development is important, that should not be an excuse for failing to inform people about the antiviral benefits of safe and available NF-kBIs and life-saving selenium. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees people the right to benefit from advances in science. This basic human right should not be abridged just so some drug company can make billions in profits, while costing American taxpayers trillions, including an epochal loss of life. We can and must do better. It is time to think outside the box and put the pieces of the pandemic science puzzle together. It is time to learn from our deadly mistakes and failures and better understand how viruses work.

Scientifically yours,

Howard Steel Armistead