Class Action Lawsuit for Government Negligence and Fraud re Covid-19 - Letter to Law Firm

Dear Attorneys, 

            I would like to explore the possibility of filing a class action lawsuit related to the denial of the intrinsic right to life and health that was abridged through negligence, fraud, and conflict of interest on the part of US government health authorities during the Covid-19 pandemic. Both physicians and ordinary people were confused about what therapies were effective against Covid-19 and SARS-CoV-2. That eventually lead to the deaths of over 1.1 million Americans.  

As an independent AIDS, Ebola, and Covid-19 researcher since 1990 who has attended over fifty-seven AIDS and virology conferences worldwide, I bring a clarity of scientific and historic perspectives to the consideration of this massive violation of human rights. In the last year I have written two books on Covid-19 and how to reduce the impact of pandemics that help establish a foundation for such a case. Those 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. They are available on Amazon.com.  

Although I am neither a medical doctor nor a PhD, I have participated in AIDS research since 1984 and have studied viral disease seriously since 1990. I have read approximately three thousand medical journal articles on virology, immunology, and related subjects, along with almost one hundred books on those, including the history of disease, medicine, science, aging, and related topics. The focus of my research is understanding how viruses replicate, and precisely how they cause disease and death. That includes what part the viral replication factor nuclear-factor kappaB (NF-kB) plays in viral disease, and how the essential trace element selenium connects the diverse pieces of the viral disease puzzle.  

The depletion of selenium through viral replication is central to understanding the progression of viral disease and death, including Covid-19, SARS-1, HIV-1 and Ebola. As with the loss of water or oxygen, when a person loses enough selenium through viral replication, they expire. Failure to replenish this vital element back into the body leads to the proximate cause of death with Covid-19, sepsis, and multi-organ-failure. Researchers have shown that people who retain enough selenium survive Covid. People who do not die. However neither physicians nor individuals were informed of this simple, obscure, but critical fact of science. A few scientists knew this and wrote medical journal articles trying to alert the medical community. However Anthony Fauci focused on subsidizing new drug development instead of educating the medical community about the science of currently available effective therapies. Since the days of the AIDS Crisis in the 1980s Fauci has always focused on highly profitable new drug development while ignoring available, affordable, effective therapies, much to the detriment of those who suffered the consequences of early infection in pandemics. In the fifteen years prior to the development of protease inhibitor drugs in 1996, several hundred thousand Americans with HIV died. With Covid-19, at least 500-700 thousand lives could have been saved if two types of drugs had been used – NF-kB inhibitors (NF-kBIs) and selenium. NF-kBIs include over fifteen different drugs with widely varying strengths. They include both steroid and nonsteroid anti-inflammatory drugs - NSAIDs. During Covid physicians used only one of those, dexamethasone, a relatively strong NF-kBI. However medical doctors were not informed about how they could have recommended over a dozen other NF-kBI drugs of various strengths at different stages of disease to slow disease progression and prevent hospitalizations and death. The NIH also failed to inform them about the most critical medicine to prevent death from severe Covid – selenium.  

Selenium is widely available as a nutritional supplement. Even after Covid researchers determined that the selenium-based drug Ebselen was the most effective against SARS-CoV-2 out of 10,000 drugs and chemicals tested in a laboratory screening, the NIH paid no attention. The NIH ignored these drugs in Covid, just as they had disregarded them during Ebola and HIV. This was due to Anthony Fauci and the NIH focusing on earning royalties based on helping develop new, more expensive, patented drugs for the pharmaceutical industry. Instead of the NIH advising physicians to use currently available, existing, effective medicines to save lives, hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ lives were sacrificed so the NIH could earn their share of royalties from newly developed Covid drugs once they exited the two-year-long drug development and approval process. .       

As the leading autodidactic AIDS researcher in the world, living in South Africa, after vaccination my health was not at immediate risk. I knew how to protect myself using anti-inflammatory drugs and selenium. In late November 2021 I suffered mild Covid symptoms for fourteen hours from the omicron variant. However in the United States both physicians and patients were flying blind because the NIH failed to inform them of the science the NIH certainly should have known. The NIH had a serious conflict of interest and failed to fulfill their responsibility to protect the lives and health of the American people. Anthony Fauci continually lied to the public claiming no effective early therapies existed to treat Covid. He repeatedly decried the absence of effective early therapies, even though that was not true. He ignored the emails I sent his long-term deputy Clifford Lane in March 2020 explaining that NF-kBIs and selenium would be effective against Covid. Science has repeatedly demonstrated that NF-kBIs and selenium are effective against almost all deadly viral diseases. Then Fauci ignored the results of laboratory screenings that proved that the selenium-based drug Ebselen was the most effective chemical compound out of 10,000 tested against Covid. The priority for Fauci and the NIH was not saving lives. He prioritized new drug development to earn the NIH future royalties. It was all about the money. New drug development was favored over informing people of existing effective therapies no matter how many people had to die or how much it cost the US Treasury, the American economy, or society at large.

Although I would not be the logical plaintiff in this case, there are millions of Americans who were severely damaged due to death or Long Covid. Two practical questions are how to narrow the universe of possible plaintiffs – perhaps to only the families of those who died - and how much to ask for in damages, $5 billion or $105 billion? By improving knowledge about therapeutics approaches to viral disease, especially in the early and terminal disease stages, in the long run this case is designed to save the government trillions of dollars when future pandemics strike.  

My primary interest is trying to bring this obscure but proven, life-saving science to public attention and put an end to the serial pandemic failure by the NIH that endangers the lives of all Americans – including you. The same health officials that prioritized royalty payments from new drugs for Covid-19 were there with HIV in the late 1980s/early 90’s, and with Ebola in 2014. Dr Fauci and the NIH could not shake their addiction to drug patent royalties, despite the fact their conflicts of interest contributed to the loss of life of those with HIV, Ebola, and now Covid. Someone needs to expose this scientific negligence that has contributed to the death of over one million Americans before an extremely pathogenic pandemic like H5N1 avian influenza arrives that could kill many more millions. Unlike most existing antiviral drugs that only work against specific viruses, selenium and NF-kBIs are broad-spectrum antivirals. They are variously effective against almost all viral diseases.   

            Perhaps it is difficult to differentiate what I am explaining from what many others falsely claimed about chloroquine and ivermectin, two drugs highly touted early in the pandemic. Although chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine showed zero benefit against Covid, ivermectin eventually proved to provide an insignificant medical benefit reducing deaths by a percentage or two. In contrast the powerful NF-kBI dexamethasone reduced Covid deaths by up to 30%. Why did health authorities fail to test or inform physicians and their patients how to use over fifteen similar drugs that work via the same immunological mechanism as dexamethasone and instead informed them about only that one drug? Meanwhile, the most important medicine that makes the critical difference between life and death in Covid, selenium was totally ignored. Research demonstrating its benefits also were covered up in 2014 in Liberia after it proved to be highly effective in reducing the Ebola mortality rate by 42.8%. Likewise selenium’s benefits were covered up in Nigeria in 2006 after a large controlled clinical trial conducted by a Harvard scientist demonstrated extraordinary benefits against AIDS. Since at least 1990 the NIH has established a pattern that could be considered a corruption of science. Science first showed that NF-kBIs were beneficial against HIV in 1989, three years after the NF-kB protein was first discovered. The NIH ignored that promising result and that research was summarily quashed. The NIH has continued to ignore the scientifically proved benefits of NF-kB inhibitors and selenium for over three decades. As a result, millions worldwide have died prematurely.      

              As mentioned, I have written two self-published books on Covid and pandemics. They contain excerpts from dozens of medical journal articles that support the points I have laid out in this letter. I recently wrote a letter to the ACLU and another to Dr Philip Zelikow who was Chair of the Covid Crisis Group. My letter to Professor Zelikow is a response to his book Lessons from the Covid War. I have attached these two letters so you can understand in greater detail what I have briefly outlined above. A good medical journal review article, “The importance of selenium for human health” is from the Lancet (2000;356:233-41). There are hundreds of medical journal articles that detail the relationship between NF-kB and viral replication and disease progression as well as the centrality of selenium to cellular and human health.    

            The coverup of effective ways to treat viral disease is a serious violation of international human rights. It violates a provision of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights that states that all people have the right to benefit from the advances of scientific knowledge. That right has been violated by the NIH and even by the World Health Organization that is dominated by the influence of the NIH, the international pharmaceutical industrial complex and the Gates Foundation that are all major donors to the WHO. It is ironic that one organization of the United Nations violates its own Universal Declaration of Human Rights.    

            If possible, I would like to consult with your law firm to firmly nail down the science this potential case is based on. Although two types of effective broad-spectrum antiviral early therapies existed, Anthony Fauci told the public there were none. When people could have prevented hospitalization by using early therapy, they were not informed of those medicines that could have slowed disease progression. Those with severe Covid were never told to take selenium, the mineral that was being rapidly depleted by the virus causing their immune systems to collapse, sepsis, terminal organ failure and death. This previously unreported massive failure on the part of government health authorities could be called a coverup because it hid effective therapies from the public. It is a continuation of the coverup of these two effective ways to treat HIV disease discovered, then forgotten in 1989, and then with Ebola in 2014 in Liberia. These are examples of when the desire for the perfect solution prevents the use of an excellent, practical, partial solution. NF-kBIs and selenium are not cures for Covid, although selenium comes close to that definition in late-stage disease. Supplementing selenium in terminal stage Covid is analogous to providing drinking water to prevent death due to dehydration.

The latest pharmaceutical royalty check to the NIH from just one vaccine company came to $200 million. The failure of the NIH to protect American’s health cost the US Treasury Department trillions. If the NIH had been honest and we had cut the death toll from Covid-19 by 50-70%, the US probably could have saved  25-30% of the estimated $4.2 to $5 trillion Covid cost the American taxpayer. With a current mortality rate of 40-50%, what would an H5N1 influenza pandemic cost in life and treasure when it finally completes jumping the species barrier into humans?

The NIH has played pussyfoot with pandemics for far too long, covering up safe, available, affordable, existing, broad-spectrum therapies in order to develop, promote, and protect the market for newly patented drugs from which the NIH profits. Developing these new drugs often takes years and people are lied to that there are no therapies until the NIH finally presents their sparkling new, revolutionary, historic breakthrough, pricey patented pharmaceuticals.  

Many Americans were severely damaged by this institutional conflict in priorities between saving lives now, versus developing new drugs with millions in royalty payments later. Although the NIH could have followed a dual-track and helped people stay alive while still developing those new drugs, they chose to suppress information about currently available, effective broad-spectrum therapies. One can only surmise this coverup was intended to maintain marketability for their new more expensive patented medications when they finally did come on market. The NIH did the same thing to protect barely effective AZT during the early AIDS pandemic, and again ignored the impressive success of selenium against Ebola in Liberia so it could test the impractical, expensive remdesivir four years later in the Congo.   

I am not an attorney. I can only explain the relevant science in understandable terms and connect the dots of history of this decades-long continuing saga of deadly bureaucratic moral collapse. Sadly, Anthony Fauci established a track record of infamy. I would welcome the opportunity to work with you as a consultant to assemble a panel of imminent expert scientists as witnesses to support this arcane science and build a class action case to help families who have been damaged by this continuing scientific negligence, conflict of interest, fraud, and bureaucratic profiteering at taxpayer’s expense. I would also be able to locate suitable plaintiffs who have lost loved ones due to the unethical and deceitful behavior of health authorities.

            If someone at your law firm is interested in pursuing this case to bring justice for those who have been damaged and prevent this injustice and danger to society from happening again, I would like to discuss this with you at greater length. You can contact me at the above number and email address.

            Scientifically yours,

            Howard Steel Armistead

Attachments: Letter to the ACLU dated 15 April 2023

            Letter to Professor Philip Zelikow dated 01 June 2023

           Lancet medical journal article “The importance of selenium to human health” (2000;356:233-41)