Letter to U.S. Senators Regarding Long Covid Research

Dear Senators on the Health Subcommittee, 

            After twenty years in Africa fighting HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and Covid-19, at great personal loss, I returned to the United States when I could no longer tolerate watching over 15,000 Americans dying every week of Covid-19. I knew most of those deaths easily could have been prevented. I cried for my country and my fellow citizens who were victims of a circumstance that should not have prevailed – the failure to apply known science and simple scientific principles that health authorities should have used to save lives, yet they did not.  

            Unfortunately, I had to sacrifice my business in South Africa to try to come to Congress to inform it how we could save lives. However in March 2022 Congress was still closed for Covid.  

            I have studied viral disease for over thirty years and know we could use the same methods to treat Covid as we could have with HIV and Ebola. However in those cases, again we did not apply those immunological strategies because they were not profitable enough for the pharmaceutical industry. It seems no matter how beneficial or fundamental a therapy may be, if it is not also highly profitable it is jettisoned from medical consideration and innovation it is swept under the rug until it is completely dismissed, despite the valid science supporting it. Once touted as a wonder drug and used for decades to treat viral colds and flu, aspirin is now disparaged. However it cracked opened the door to understanding the mechanism of how drugs like dexamethasone work. Dexamethasone is 210 times more powerful than aspirin in inhibiting the protein that fuels both viral replication and inflammation. It was the most effective drug against Covid-19 until Paxlovid arrived two years into the pandemic. However physicians could have used a dozen similar drugs with a wide range of strengths between aspirin and dexamethasone as early therapy to slow Covid progression from the start. They did not do so.  

In Southern Africa I knew a dozen senior pharmacists who died of Covid-19 before vaccines arrived to protect other’s lives. Watching the historic failure of the US to apply simple science to reduce deaths weighed heavily on my conscience. My patriotism impelled me to leave Southern Africa after two decades, despite my personal loss. My concern continues today because I know how therapeutically unprepared the US is for the next deadly pandemic that could arrive at any time, solely because we continue to fail to apply the most basic principles and facts of viral science that could reduce the mortality rate of Covid and probably reduce the future burden of Long Covid. Those basic facts relate to how the cellular protein nuclear-factor kappaB (NF-kB) stimulates viral replication and how certain common drugs inhibit the NF-kB protein that fuels viral disease progression. We also fail to appreciate the absolutely central role selenium plays in cellular and human health. [Lancet 2000 356;233-41]. Viruses attack the body’s selenium supply to wreck both cellular and human health. That causes viral disease. Until we learn to apply those basic facts and principles, the US will continue to be in danger of even worse outcomes each time a novel virus emerges to devastate world health. Like gravity or the combustion of fire, these facts are so fundamental they almost do not need to be tested. However NF-kB inhibitor drugs are so cheap they are dismissed while pharmaceutical companies view pandemics not as challenges to cure disease but as opportunities to mint money. They do their best to eliminate competition from cheaper, existing, effective drugs, and the NIH allies itself to companies, putting profits before efficacy. If lack of water caused a deadly disease, no pharmaceutical company would be interested in curing it unless they could charge $200 a day for water. Cheaper solutions need not apply. The strategic failure to use broad-spectrum antivirals to fight Covid led to an epic tragedy for our nation.         

            This letter focuses on a continuing national problem that must be recognized and acknowledged before it can be corrected and then offer a partial solution. One irrefutable but mostly unrecognized fact is that most deadly viral diseases only approach their terminal phase once viral replication has severely depleted the body of its life preserving selenium resources. This is true in HIV, Ebola, and South Korean researchers determined this is true in Covid-19 as well. [Intl. J. Infectious Disease 100;Nov2020:390-393] The second fact is that the human protein NF-kB is the primary stimulant to viral replication. If one reduces the NF-kB fuel for the viral fire, they reduce both viral replication and inflammation, slow disease progression, and in many cases can prevent serious disease and death. If physicians had supplemented selenium and inhibited NF-kB appropriately, they could have saved more than half those who died of Covid. That does not mean this is a cure. It just means that together they could have saved more than half the lives lost prior to the introduction of Paxlovid. However due to countervailing commercial interests, this obvious therapeutic approach was not tested because all economic incentives support developing new drugs, not testing cheaper, existing drugs that no company can make excessive profits with. Basic science was neglected to benefit pandemic profiteers. As a result, many Americans died and many more developed Long Covid. This systematic negligence needs to be rectified or it will be repeated in future pandemics. Unfortunately, for every dollar in profit the pharmaceutical industry made by national health authorities neglecting NF-kBIs and selenium in the recent pandemic cost the government one hundred times as much in medical and other economic costs. Who lost? Those who die or are left with Long Covid lost. The government, taxpayers and the whole society lost. It was economically absurd to ignore safe, effective, affordable medications just so a few could profiteer at the expense of our entire society. New drug development is a desirable goal, but not at the cost of excessive deaths, the hangover of Long Covid, and trillions in excess governmental expenditure.        

All senators believe the American people deserve pandemic and post-viral syndrome health solutions. Unfortunately we are burdened by a research paradigm that suffers from an inherent conflict of interest. In 2020-21 that conflict ended up costing hundreds of thousands more American lives than were necessary because it ignored the basic science mentioned above. This is comparable to a government ignoring food during a famine or water during a devastating drought. People can survive those for a few days. However when that extended to two years as with Covid, everyone saw the result. The price tag was trillions. Although the National Institutes of Health performed heroically by facilitating vaccines, it failed miserably with therapeutics. If we are unable to transparently examine the root causes of that failure if a more deadly pandemic like H5-N1 influenza breaks out, the US death toll will be counted in the multiple millions instead of in the hundreds of thousands. It is better to fix this problem now than to wait until the next pandemic erupts, because that will be too late. Political leaders need to understand this seemingly arcane science now rather than to be sorry they did not once the next deadly pandemic takes its toll. These facts are common knowledge in the scientific literature. But no one pays scientists generously to apply them. The pharmaceutical industry butters their bread on the other side of the scientific knife.

 Everyone knows someone who died of Covid. I know of two American families that each lost five relatives. We must learn a lesson from this huge mistake of neglecting basic science. Thus forgive me if I share the stark, bare-boned analytical truth. Too many have suffered and died to soften it to the point where it does not impact your conscience. The NIH has done wonderful work, but no institution should be beyond reproach when fatal flaws are detected in their system. When those flaws are detected, they should be rectified as soon as possible. This letter is not a comprehensive proposal how to fix the  research system, it just points out two key areas that should no longer be overlooked because they would eventually lead to a catastrophic failure unless we correct it. Americans and US senators deserve to understand the problem and demand the government correct it. Conducting independently monitored clinical trials of NF-kBIs and selenium against Covid would be a start.           

            The child’s game “Ring Around the Rosie” memorializes the massive death tolls from the bubonic plagues of the 14^th and 16^th Century. “Ring around the rosie…we all fall down.” Due to the failure of leadership at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), basic viral science was ignored in their 2020-21 feigned therapeutic fight against Covid-19. A treatment obfuscation was engineered to prioritize new drug development to profit the pharmaceutical industry and earn hundreds of millions in patent royalties for the NIH. As a result, 700,000 additional Americans “fell down” and millions more, including some senators, have been victimized by Long Covid. Most Covid deaths and most Long Covid could have been prevented. Two classes of existing, highly effective medicines were totally ignored because they were not profitable enough and earn no royalties for the NIH. Ironically, in 2020-21, national and international health authorities recommended several expensive but ineffective patented therapies including monoclonal antibodies, remdesivir, and convalescent plasma that did earn royalty payments. Meanwhile cheaper, highly effective medicines like NF-kB inhibitors (NF-kBIs) and selenium that did not earn royalties were ignored. They were too cheap to fit the distorted medical model that delayed introducing early treatments for Covid until expensive, patented pharmaceuticals finally could be developed after two years.     

            The Journal of the American Medical Association – JAMA 2023:329(1):39-51 – recently reported the results of a major international Covid drug trial collaboration in an article titled, “Long-term (180-day) outcomes in critically ill patients with Covid-19 in the REMAP-CAP randomized clinical trial.” They reported on seven different drug categories. The trial determined whether they were effective against Covid and Long Covid - based on the “probability of improving 6-month survival”. They reported as follows:

Drug Category                        Beneficial (somewhat effective)         Futile (not effective)       Harmful

IL-6 receptor antagonists                                99.9%

Antiplatelet agents                                          95.0%

Therapeutic anticoagulants (blood thinners)                                                  99.9%

Convalescent plasma                                                                                      99.2%                                     

Lopinavir-ritonavir (HIV protease inhibitors)                                                 96.6%

Hydroxychloroquine/chloroquine                                                                                                  96.8%

The above figures do not show how strong the benefit for any drug category is, only if it provides a consistently beneficial effect versus a harmful effect against Covid. “Beneficial” means it increases the chance of improving 6-month survival rates. “Futile” means it does not provide any survival benefit. “Harmful” reduces the chance of survival. Strangely, the statistical compilation for the seventh corticosteroid category of  hydrocortisone was terminated early when it increased to show a 57.1% to 61.6% benefit in improving 6-month survival. Why was this the only category whose calculation was prelimited and excluded from the above comparison? Evidently that statistically preset termination of assessment was meant to obscure the effectiveness of hydrocortisone – a kind of cover-up. Medical journals have reported that the stronger corticosteroid dexamethasone was able to reduce Covid mortality rates in the range of 30-35%. That made the widely used dexamethasone the most effective drug to treat Covid prior to the introduction of the double-protease inhibitor Paxlovid at the end of 2021. While the word “beneficial” means showing some or moderate but consistent benefit, that is far from being a cure and does not mean a 99.9% or 95.0% reduction in mortality. It is surprising that the names of the “beneficial” drugs were not reported, only their category. A separate authoritative meta-analysis of ivermectin demonstrated an overall 3.0% reduction in mortality. That means ivermectin is about 10% as effective as dexamethasone is in saving lives from Covid-19. Why did the NIH fail to inform people about this extensive class of both steroid and nonsteroid NF-kB inhibitors antiviral drugs that should have been used as early therapy. Why did the NIH fail to test or recommend them? They still do not inform people about these broad-spectrum antiviral drugs that can help as early therapy, slow disease progression, help reduce the incidence of severe disease, and in the case of selenium, potentially reduce the chances of infection. Why ignore science-based, safe, and effective medicines in a pandemic? What is the motivation? As Roman jurists inquired, “Who benefits?”  

   Early in the pandemic Dr. Anthony Fauci, the NIH, and the World Health Organization recommended that physicians should try using monoclonal antibodies, remdesivir, and convalescent plasma. None of those three therapies proved effective. In a JAMA 2020;324:21,2149 opinion article dated 1 December 2020 Dr Fauci’s headline pleaded “Therapy for Early Covid-19, [is] A Critical Need”. Fauci’s plea was extraordinarily insincere since he knew and had been repeatedly informed that cheap, safe, and available NF-kB inhibitors and selenium are broad-spectrum antiviral drugs that demonstrate significant effects against almost all viruses and can be used from day-one of infection. Like Donald Trump refusing to acknowledge his election defeat, Dr Fauci refused to acknowledge or act on the well-known scientific fact that both NF-kB inhibitors and selenium can slow viral disease progression and reduce viral disease mortality rates. The major benefits of these two classes of medicines, especially selenium, have been demonstrated in HIV, Ebola, and a dozen other viral diseases. Should we call ignoring the benefits of these broad-spectrum antiviral drugs during a national health emergency gross incompetence, pandemic defeatism, or a denial of science in the service of humanity? It could be called much worse.

Most doctors know the principle that early therapy is the best therapy – to slow a disease from the start. We could have easily done that if the two classes of effective medication I mention here had not been excluded from the treatment calculus. Fauci’s obfuscating plea was a facade for his failure to apply scientific knowledge and logic to slowing Covid disease progression and reducing deaths when it was most desperately needed by the American people.   

By mid-2020 physicians independently noticed the obvious benefits of dexamethasone against Covid. That was logical, but the NIH failed to extend the benefit of that independent physician’s observation to the broader use of this large class of drugs. Corticosteroids are strong NF-kBI anti-inflammatories. However more than a dozen similar life-saving NF-kBI drugs were totally ignored – both steroid and nonsteroid anti-inflammatory drugs. That trillion-dollar mistake by the NIH probably doubled the incidence of Long Covid. Among many other benefits, NF-kBIs inhibit IL-6 and are antiplatelet agents. It is important to realize that anti-inflammatory drugs also work as antiviral drugs. Selenium acts as both an NF-kBI and as an inhibitor of the SARS-CoV-2 protease. Plus it replaces the essential selenium immune support that SARS-CoV-2 depletes.  

Who was asleep at the wheel when Americans were dying by the thousands each week? The NIH strategy developed during the early AIDS pandemic took years to develop new patented drugs instead of testing and using cheaper existing effective NF-kBI drugs and selenium that could have reduced opportunistic infections and slowed disease progression and benefited people with HIV immediately. That strategy did not work so well against Covid because Covid kills much faster than AIDS and more people were infected. In March 2020 I emailed Tony Fauci’s deputy Dr. Clifford Lane several times and attached essays reminding him of these scientifically solid but unutilized therapeutic approaches. Fauci’s group was informed. The experts knew this obvious science. But they ignored these broad-spectrum antivirals because they did not fit the NIH’s new drug development only profit paradigm. How many Americans “all fell down” because of that one gross mistake of ignoring existing early therapies – 500,000 or 700,000? In the clinical trial reported above by the AMA, did the authors stop calculating the benefit of corticosteroid NF-kBIs to obscure its benefit? Why did the article fail to report that result on an equal basis as the other categories? How many more millions of Americans suffer from Long Covid (PASC) today because of the failure in 2020-21 to use early therapies because of the NIH conflict of interest between focusing on earning hundreds of millions in patent royalties through new drug development, versus prioritizing the health of the American public? Pandemic after pandemic – HIV, Ebola, and Covid, excess pharmaceutical profits have trumped saving lives. This is an established modus operandi. The exorbitantly priced, rather toxic, barely effective AZT is a primary example. As a reverse transcriptase inhibitor (RTI), AZT was not even as effective as aspirin that works as a nuclear factor kappa B inhibitor (NF-kBI) to reduce viral replication and boost immunity in HIV disease. Yet AZT cost $1,200 a month in 1987 – aspirin only pennies. As always it seems, profit uber alles – even American lives.       

I have been HIV positive since 1983 and have studied viral diseases since 1989. Understanding the central role selenium plays in viral disease is key to understanding how most viral diseases work. Selenium is the essential element required for both cellular and human health. It is the critical element antioxidants need to protect cellular health and for mitochondria to provide energy for cells. Likewise, because of its direct effect on the thymus gland, selenium is the most powerful medicinal agent to boost immunity. It is the strongest medicine to increase CD4 count. Most viruses attack a cell’s selenium supply, destroying its antioxidants to acquire the selenium molecules they need to replicate. Destruction of antioxidants damages cellular health and eventually causes immune dysfunction by viral depletion of the body’s selenium supply. Severe Covid causes rapid selenium depletion leading to massive cell death, a cytokine storm, sepsis, and multiorgan failure. Like providing water for dehydration, replenishing selenium in a timely manner usually can halt and even reverse the Covid terminal death spiral. This has been demonstrated in clinical trials of selenium against sepsis.      

Selenium is as critical to health as water or oxygen. Everyone knows about water and oxygen. Why do they remain in the dark about selenium? Well documented in science, there is a dangerous void in applying practical health-science knowledge that inexplicitly ignores selenium to the detriment of both patients and the health of the nation. This benefits big pharma because less preventative healthcare and poorer population health contributes to larger profits for them.    

Despite its golden reputation, the NIH suffers from a festering flaw in the form of a  blackhole-sized yet almost undetectable conflict of interest. The National Institutes of Health prioritizes new drug develop and earning patent royalties over applying established science and logic to protecting the health, welfare, and lives of the American people – not to mention safeguarding the American economy. Ask the NIH for a cure for dehydration and instead of water you will eventually get a $100-a-day H2O pill. Ask for a cure for hypoxia, if you wait a few years, you’ll get a $200-a-day oxygen tablet. Ask them for a cure for Covid and you’ll eventually get a $300-a-day newly patented selenium-compound pill. (Selenium nutritional tablets normally cost ten cents each.) In 2020 a selenium compound drug Ebselen proved more effective against Covid than 10,000 other chemicals tested. Why was Ebselen never used against Covid? When did the NIH kill off both logic and empathy? Someone should investigate their disappearance.    

 Although selenium is not a cure for Covid, it comes closer than anything else, because the way SARS-CoV-2 causes Covid-19 is by depleting cells and the immune system of their protective selenium. If physicians had reduced viral replication with NF-kBIs, as somewhat belatedly they often did with dexamethasone, and they had replenished selenium, they usually could have reversed progression of even severe Covid. But who would profit? The conflict of interest is between what is more profitable for the NIH and big pharma, and what is most beneficial for the health of the American people. This is like a cancer embedded in the medical research system that reoccurs with each pandemic, destroying lives each time.  

I have written two self-published books available on Amazon, 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. If you want to find a solution for Covid and Long Covid, part of that solution may be found in using the proper dose of selenium and NF-kBIs for each stage of illness. Treat hypoxia with oxygen. Treat dehydration with water. Treat severe selenium deficiency in severe Covid with selenium. It is important for physicians to be more cognizant of selenium deficiency and begin to use a blood-test to test for it in relevant diseases such as serious viral infections, trauma, burns, chronic and acute disease, and cancer. Currently selenium levels are rarely tested for. Physicians do not treat what they do not recognize. They do not recognize what they do not test for. They fail to remedy severe selenium depletion because they do not recognize it. That is even though severe selenium deficiency is the onramp to the superhighway to the cytokine storm, sepsis, multiorgan failure, and death.  

Neither selenium nor NF-kBIs are cures, but they should be incorporated as a cornerstone of the standard of supportive care for Covid. However once Covid has caused its damage, primarily by deselenization damaging cells, nerves, and organs -  it takes time to heal. Some damage may be permanent. If people with Long Covid want to restore their health, they should consider supplementing the essential trace element that the virus initially depleted that caused the deterioration of their health. Selenium can be used safely as complementary therapy with any other drugs used to treat Covid or Long Covid. Like water, it is a neutral substance, so there are no drug contraindications. No one should consider Paxlovid the final word in Covid therapy. Other useful therapies should be used in combination, before, with, and after. Thus selenium and NF-kBIs do not replace any other medication. They complement Paxlovid that works as a protease inhibitor (PI).    

 The US Senate should act to protect the American people from both pandemics and from governmental   medical research conflicts of interests. You should not simply sit enthralled by “expert” health authorities who, unbeknownst to senators, have ignored logic and fundamental scientific knowledge by pursuing a distorted research agenda, perpetuated by a blackhole-sized conflict of interest that failed the American people during an existential national health crisis.      

            Covid will linger for years, perhaps decades and mutate as it does. Over a dozen effective NF-kB inhibitor drugs and selenium are approved, safe, available, effective, and affordable, and could be used to reduce its impact. Why did we fail to test and use them against Covid from the start? The use of these effective antiviral therapies has been obscured behind a smoke screen of professional negligence, enforced by countervailing corporate interests. Who benefited from this unethical convolution of science? Certainly not the American people.

Congress can appropriate a billion dollars for research on Long Covid. However rather than placing all funding for Long Covid research in the NIH, it would be better to parcel out some to the fifty state departments of health, and crowd source Long Covid research at medical schools nationwide. Better yet, it should establish an independent authority to test old drugs for new uses, free from the corrupting influence of the pharmaceutical industry. Then taxpayers will get what they expect. That is innovative research not focused primarily on new drug development that mostly benefits big pharma, but on research that will benefit the health of the American people.

To paraphrase Smokey the Bear; Senators, Only You Can End Serial Pandemic Failure. It is past time for a national viral reality checkup before an even more deadly pandemic arrives to kill millions more as the United States medical authorities continue to fail both the future pandemic preparedness test and the test of logic.       

Scientifically yours,

Howard Steel Armistead

Antiviral Campaigner

Howard Armistead has been researching AIDS and other viral diseases since 1989. In 2006 and 2007 he was an ad hoc advisor to the Ministry of Health of Zambia on avian influenza and HIV and authored the report of the Technical Working Group on Selenium. In 2014 he worked with the Liberian Ministry of Health and Time Magazine’s Person of the Year Dr Jerry Brown to show that 1.2mg daily of sodium selenite could reduce the mortality rate of Ebola virus disease by 42.8%. Selenium could have done the same for Covid-19 but was ignored.