Letter to Congressional Select Subcommittee on Coronavirus Pandemic

Dear Representative,

            On the verge of the potential outbreak of a highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) pandemic, Congress should not be playing politics. Instead, it should address the therapeutic failures that cost hundreds of thousands of Americans their lives in the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic. Failure to rectify this disastrous mistake may cost millions more lives once the H5N1 influenza-A virus finally achieves human-to human transmission. That may happen sooner than anticipated.

            Although it may be intellectually or politically satisfying to debate whether the Covid-19 pandemic originated in the Wuhan Seafood Live Animal Market or was a laboratory leak, it is almost impossible to absolutely prove either case. Meanwhile that debate distracts from the more urgent questions of what avoidable policy failures led to doubling the death toll during the Covid-19 pandemic and what actions health authorities must take immediately to minimize loss of life in the widely predicted pandemic of HPAI/H5N1 influenza that may be months, or at most, a few years away. By best estimates, HPAI is currently forty times as deadly to humans as Covid-19 was. However, that mortality rate may or may not decrease significantly once the final mutations occur allowing human-to-human transmission. Some mammals such as sea lions, recently have experienced greater than a 90% mortality rate with H5N1.

            While flu vaccines have been developed that probably will be effective against H5N1, it takes many months to produce and distribute them. A vaccine skeptical public will endanger both themselves and the nation if they ignore the difference between a virus like SARS-CoV-2 that had a 1% mortality rate, from one that may have up to a 40% rate. However, most influenza vaccines are only about 70-80% effective. Personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks are about 75% effective, but only when in use. A third effective method of protection should be used that will reduce both the chance of infection and the chance of severe illness and death. This safe medication should gain acceptance among those who are vaccine skeptical. That is immune boosting, antiviral, selenium tablets. A strategic stockpile of supplemental selenium should be established immediately to protect the nation from the sudden advent of human-to-human H5N1 transmission. This stockpile will never go to waste, since as a basic element that boosts immunity, selenium has an extremely long shelf-life. Selenium supplements also can be used as complementary therapy for other health conditions including all viral infections, many chronic diseases, and cancer prevention.    

            Although the government has stockpiled the anti-influenza medicine Tamiflu, some medical journal articles report that this drug is often ineffective, even against normal flu. Although several other prescription anti-influenza medications exist, their effectiveness, distribution, and supply are questionable. Meanwhile, if the failure to learn the lessons of the previous Covid-19 pandemic are repeated in the anticipated H5N1 pandemic, not just hundreds of thousands but millions of American lives may be lost. We need a Viral Defense Department.

            While members of the House Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Covid-19 Pandemic are looking squarely in the rear view mirror to finger point about who let the virus out the laboratory door when chances are it probably emerged from the Wuhan Seafood Live Animal Market, you are whistling past the graveyard as the forty times more pathogenic H5N1 virus is currently transmitting between dairy cows in at least nine states in the U.S. H5N1 is probably being transmitted cow to cow via the milking machinery.

            Do parents ever fail to try to teach children to learn from their mistakes? Now, both you and the NIH/CDC are failing to face the fact that the next, far more deadly pandemic is waiting to catch fire on American farms, the same place from which the devastating 1918-20 Spanish flu originated in pigs. As respected media outlets that follow this closely assure us, we do not have anything to worry about “yet”. But “yet” could come tomorrow, next month, or next year. If we do not plan in advance what to do once those last one or two viral mutations click into place, “yet” will be too late. We need to improve our scientific understanding of how viruses cause death and stockpile effective preventative treatments now – before “yet” happens. 

            In plague times, only fools ignore established science. Unfortunately, the NIH and CDC ignored the science of broad-spectrum, antiviral, nuclear-factor kappaB inhibitor (NF-kBI) drugs and selenium depletion. Our nation suffered mightily from Covid by ignoring known science. However, SARS-CoV-2 was merely a shot across the bow of national pandemic preparedness. Today, the Gargantua of deadly viral pandemics is creeping ever closer. Only the misguided remain focused on trying to assign blame for the precise origin of the previous pandemic. That makes no difference in how many Americans lost their lives. Meanwhile we fail to analyze the biggest mistakes and misrepresentations that were perpetrated that doubled the death-toll America experienced, half a world away from its origin. The initial outbreak probably could not have been prevented. However, the deaths of over half a million Americans could have been. Today we need to recognize the mistakes we made here in the U.S. and correct them in time to save potentially millions of lives in the approaching H5N1 viral tsunami.            

            The biggest falsehood perpetrated by US medical authorities during the Covid pandemic was that were no early therapies to treat Covid-19. In fact, there were numerous effective, broad-spectrum, antiviral steroid and nonsteroid anti-inflammatory NF-kBIs/NSAIDs. NF-kB inhibitors inhibit the protein that stimulates both inflammation and viral replication. My several emails during March 2020 to Tony Fauci’s deputy reminding him of this science are found on pages 122-125 of Understanding Covid-19, How 500,000 American Lives Could Have Been Saved. While physicians did use the powerful NF-kBI dexamethasone, they failed to use the many similar NSAIDs that inhibit the same target protein but with difference strengths. A list of some of those NF-kBI drugs is found on page 48 of Dear Bill Gates, How to End Serial Pandemic Failure, HIV-1 to Covid-19. The additional failure of the NIH to recognize that the key difference between those who lived and those who died of Covid was the level of selenium a person was able to retain in their body doomed efforts to prevent more deaths. Those who retained enough selenium lived. Those who were not able to, died. Today that critical difference has been reaffirmed and referenced by scientists in numerous medical journal articles. Congress must pay attention to the basic science. They should question those who are solely focused on new drug development for the sake of gaining royalty payments to fill their bureaucratic coffers and pad their reputations. We should remember to practice the medical mantra that “early therapy is the best therapy” and my suggestion, “Doctors, use what works.”     

            As Covid-19 continues to kill three to four times as many annually in the U.S. as the current strain of influenza does, we should take advantage of this quiet before the next viral pandemic storm to conduct randomized controlled clinical trials of selenium against Covid-19 to reverify its effectiveness in preventing death from severe viral infection. This confirmatory research should be conducted on an expedited basis - before it is too late.    

            Scientifically yours

            Howard Steel Armistead

            Citizen Scientist                                                                                                                   

Attachments:

1. Analysis of 2020 Covid-19 Therapy Recommendations

2. Relative Ranking of Strengths of Nuclear-Factor kappa-B Inhibitors Relative to Aspirin

3.100% of those who are on ventilators, have severe Covid-19 or die, are deficient in Selenium,

Howard Armistead has been HIV positive since 1983. By 1989 he became an AIDS researcher to save his own life and has attended over 57 AIDS and virology conferences worldwide. From 2002 to 2022 he owned a company that distributed selenium supplements to pharmacies in five Southern Africa countries. In 2006/07 he was an ad hoc advisor to the Zambian Ministry of Health on H5N1 avian influenza and on selenium for HIV disease. He authored the Zambian Ministry of Health

Report of the Technical Working Group on Selenium. In 2014 He was an ad hoc consultant to the Ministry of Health of Liberia where they showed that 1.2mg of selenium daily could reduce the mortality rate from Ebola by 43.6%.