Although Dr. Anthony Fauci's NIAID (one of the institutes of the NIH) has lost its power to slow-walk a vaccine solution to COVID-19, he still retains his power to disparage HCQ (hydroxychloroquine), the most effective treatment against COVID-19.  During the last couple weeks, he has publicized two studies in which HCQ without zinc hasn't worked with hospitalized patients.  He has been so successful at disparaging HCQ that hospital use of HCQ has been declining.

HCQ is a zinc-ionophore (meaning that it helps transport available zinc from the bloodstream through cell walls into cells where it slows virus replication).  Medical researchers from around the world have been calling for the combo of HCQ and zinc supplements to be tested, based upon their extensive reviews of the research evidence.  These researchers include Shittu and Afolami from Michigan, Scholz and Derwand from Germany, and Noeparast and Verschelden from Belgium.

But Fauci is about to begin a study in which he will test HCQ by administering it without zinc to mild and moderately severe COVID-19 cases.  In contrast, doctors at St. Francis Hospital in New York pay attention to the medical research.  They just announced a study that will test HCQ with zinc with non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients.

A retrospective study at NYU just found that the St. Francis doctors are on the right track, but Fauci is not.  The NYU team began its study of hospitalized patients without zinc, but midway through, they read the research, which holds that the HCQ-zinc combination can be more effective, so they added zinc sulfate supplements to their HCQ-azithromycin treatment.

When they compared the results when HCQ was given with zinc to results when it was given without zinc, those who were given HCQ with zinc had much lower death rates and faster recoveries than those who were given HCQ without zinc, but only if the HCQ-zinc treatment were given before the patients became so severely sick that they required intensive care.

COVID-19 patients are largely drawn from groups that are known to have zinc deficiencies (i.e., the elderly, black Americans, diabetics, those with cancer, and those with low hemoglobin levels).  When Fauci tests HCQ on them without giving them zinc at the same time, many will die.  In the 1930s and 1940s, the NIH deprived black Americans of life-saving penicillin in the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study.  Now, under the leadership of Antony Fauci, the NIH is about to begin a study that will deprive them of life-saving zinc.

Photo credit: Whitehouse.gov.