The world economy is collapsing because of the terror and mounting death toll caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. But the anti-malarial drug chloroquine is effective both as a prophylactic and treatment for the virus – and the medical establishment has known about this since at least the SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2005. What the hell is going on?
Yesterday, I reported the existence of three studies, all claiming that chloroquine phosphate had proved effective in treating the COVID-19.
This has since been confirmed by a more recent open-label non-randomised clinical trial in France by Didier Raoult M.D/Ph.D et al, completed just days ago. The sample was small but the results were convincing.
As the summary reports:
100% of patients that received a combination of HCQ and Azithromycin tested negative and were virologically cured within 6 days of treatment.
In addition, recent guidelines from South Korea and China report that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are effective antiviral therapeutic treatments for novel coronavirus.
But the story gets more extraordinary still. It turns out that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has known since at least 2005 that chloroquine is effective against coronaviruses.
In 2005, Martin J Vincent et al published a study in Virology Journal titled ‘Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread.’
Here are its findings:
Background
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is caused by a newly discovered coronavirus (SARS-CoV). No effective prophylactic or post-exposure therapy is currently available. Results
We report, however, that chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage. In addition to the well-known functions of chloroquine such as elevations of endosomal pH, the drug appears to interfere with terminal glycosylation of the cellular receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2. This may negatively influence the virus-receptor binding and abrogate the infection, with further ramifications by the elevation of vesicular pH, resulting in the inhibition of infection and spread of SARS CoV at clinically admissible concentrations. Conclusion
Chloroquine is effective in preventing the spread of SARS CoV in cell culture. Favorable inhibition of virus spread was observed when the cells were either treated with chloroquine prior to or after SARS CoV infection. In addition, the indirect immunofluorescence assay described herein represents a simple and rapid method for screening SARS-CoV antiviral compounds.
It ought to be no surprise that chloroquine is effective against both SARS and COVID-19. After all, they are both coronaviruses and COVID-19 has often been described in medical and research sources as SARS-2.
Chloroquine works by enabling the body’s cells better to absorb zinc, which is key in preventing viral RNA transcription – and disrupting the often fatal cytokine storm.
As at least one person has noticed, the implications of this are enormous. If the medical establishment – including CDC – has been aware of the efficacy of chloroquine in treating coronavirus for at least 14 years, why has it not been mass produced and made available sooner?
Here, you might have imagined, is the dream solution: a stop gap treatment for coronavirus which could save many lives and obviate the need for this global lockdown which is destroying our economies.
Why isn’t the solution being shouted from the rooftops?
One possibility, as I suggested yesterday, is that there is no money in it for Big Pharma. Chloroquine is a generic drug. That’s why Big Pharma’s lobbyists have worked hard to persuade governments that there can be no acceptable solution till a patented vaccine is brought on to the market. Even if this happens it won’t be till long after the pandemic is over – probably not till at least next year.
I don’t think our businesses, our livelihoods, our sanity can wait that long. Do you?