Hello, I am a 3rd year IM resident in the tri-state area (can’t be more specific). I have been on the Trump Train since the first primary debate and following COVID-19 with great concern since early January. Colleagues on a private message board have recently been floating the same therapies Trump mentioned in his recent press briefing. Since that has now turned into a political issue, and they know my political background asked me to comment on the subject here. I will attempt to present a brief relevant context and the actual medical information. I am not a professional writer, so I apologize if parts of this do not come across well. If any of you know an appropriate party you wish to send this information to, please do.

CONTEXT:

With COVID, it was clear from the onset that unless a viable treatment was found for the disease, it was going to be highly problematic. Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation (the application of Ultraviolet Light directly to the blood stream) is actually one of the most promising options to that effect.

Our current approach is lockdowns at all costs and wait for a vaccine. This is a questionable approach for a few reasons.

1. Lockdowns had a reasonable chance of working, IF, they were implemented before the virus left China to contain it, but this did not happen (notifications of a potential threat were very late…in mid February despite the internet knowing over a month before… and once Trump tried to do a travel ban, most of the establishment further delayed it….we waited until march to suggest wearing masks etc). Once the virus has become endemic in the country, it is highly questionable if the lockdown is justified as the virus can no longer be made extinct and it is very likely more damage will come from shutting the economy down. Additionally, it is very possible that allowing the virus to spread during the summer when people are less susceptible so a natural herd immunity can be obtained rather than waiting for the next flu season for it to hit hard again will save dramatically more lives.

2. It is unlikely an effective vaccine will be developed in the near future. China has attempted for a decade to make an effective vaccination against SARS with minimal success, as the vaccine was found to increase host susceptibility to a cytokine storm (in other words death) following SARS infection and no solution to this problem was ever discovered. Additionally, COVID has already mutated into numerous different strains, this significantly complicates the possibility of the eventually developed vaccine even being the correct one when it is needed (similar to the issue we run into with influenza vaccines). Optimistic projections for a vaccine are pegged at 18 months. It will be nearly impossible for our society and economy to withstand a shut down for that long, so a different solution is needed.

There are 2 fundamental questions that need to be answered by the medical field to address this calamity. The first is why are certain people so vulnerable to COVID and why does it suddenly appear in large waves in certain areas? This is not typical for a viral disease, and while there are multiple credible hypothesis to explain this phenomena, my profession has made a very small effort to evaluate this question (relative to everything else being done). Answering this question is absolutely crucial for managing our current response. The second of course, is how do you treat the disease.

Historically, Standard Medicine has been mostly unable to treat viral diseases, however a variety of other medical therapies have performed effectively for that purpose but not been adopted within Standard Medicine due to commercial interests. The treatment approaches Trump mentioned fall into that category.

The typical requirement now for a therapy to be adopted is for large peer reviewed studies to be present supporting it, as opposed to doctors independently observing consistent large improvements in difficult to treat illnesses. Typically for these studies to be approved, and for them to be conducted, it takes a lot of money. If the money is not there, everyone in the process slows things down (many academics sense of identity is based off shooting down ideas that go against their viewpoin) and the novel approaches we should be using don’t enter Standard Medical Practice even when really dedicated physicians are behind them. This leads to a systemic bias in medical evidence where many of the available therapies (especially newer ones) are just expensive patentable pharmaceutical treatments with questionable value (as industry research is often biased to support the product), and doctors are trained to be strongly biased against non-pharmaceutical drug approaches to treat illness. Historically, there are many examples of incredible medical therapies being shut out of the American Market place because there wasn’t a big fish behind them (although to be fair, many alternative therapies are also garbage), and this is a big part of why health care is so expensive.

My early hope was that everyone would recognize just how bad COVID could be and realize that they needed to come together to solve the problem rather than putting their own self interests first. Sadly this has not happened, and a very partisan approach to the disease has emerged. Most of the left does not want a cure to emerge for the disease, and they want to keep the country under lockdown until at least November to destroy the economy and Trump’s re-election. Each time a cure is proposed, it is aggressively shut down by a highly politicized half of the country and medical community (somewhat related, in the last few years big tech and big pharma have allied together with the left and most pro pharma initiatives tend to be spearheaded by democrats now). Using Hydroxychloroquine as an example, everyone who has had large scale success with it (over a 98% cure rate for patients), has reported that it has to be given with Zinc, and it is unlikely to work if given late in the disease process. Yet over and over, I see bad studies (which would normally never be considered by medical authorities for discussion due to methodological flaws) which violate these 2 requirements fail and be held as proof we should not listen to the Orange man give us medical advice. In my own experience, unless a Physician is a Republican (which should have NO bearing on your ability to practice medicine), they will not consider the possible methodological flaws in the hydroxychloroquine studies, and that is really sad (which as you might guess are a minority in my Blue city).

Currently, one of the only treatments being seriously looked at for COVID is an expensive experimental antiviral drug named Remdesivir that was developed for Ebola (and has a high side effect profile). While this is not an optimal approach, it is receiving more serious consideration (and significantly less criticism) than hydroxychloroquine (a generic medication) as there is the potential to make a lot of money off the therapy and hence investors are pushing it through being studied.

MEDICAL INFORMATION: (references are at the bottom of this section) There are a variety of therapies that have been demonstrated to have some degree of success in treating viral conditions over the last 100+ years, including in pandemics with high death rates where nothing worked, yet lacking commercial potential were never adopted into Standard Medicine. Similarly, there were various lessons observed, such as the significantly increased death rate from viral conditions following medications to reduce fevers (ie. Aspirin in 1918), that has been repeatedly ignored (despite France going on record saying Ibuprofen increased the death rate and there being many case reports of people with early COVID crashing following Ibuprofen, the medical community and the WHO refuse to stop recommending NSAIDS..which you don’t need to begin with…as no large trials have proven this adverse effect).

There are a group of related therapies (including Ozone, Hydrogen Peroxide, Ultraviolet Light, High Dose Vitamin C…all which were developed in the USA about 100 years ago) that create similar effects in the body, as Ozone in the blood creates hydrogen peroxide, Ultraviolet light applied to blood creates Ozone, and IV Vitamin C creates hydrogen peroxide (oral cannot reach high enough levels to do this). All of them share characteristics including an ability to rapidly neutralize easily oxidizeable viruses (COVID is in this category), improve immune system elimination of pathogens, stop severe autoimmune responses (such as cytokine storms), and rapidly restore your ability to oxygenate the body, which are essentially exactly what you need to rapidly treat COVID. As these therapies showed a high degree of effectiveness in the past viral disease, it was naturally suspected they would also be effective for COVID. Outside of hospitals, many physicians on private message boards (and occasionally publicly) reported of each of these therapies being utilized and being highly effective at treating COVID that was on it’s way to a hospitalization. Typically any severe one at the about to be hospitalized stage (including something as simple as nebulizing dilute hydrogen peroxide), plus avoidance of fever medications, oral vitamin D and oral Vitamin C seemed to do the job. For more complex conditions, it is generally found a combination of these (Ie. Ultraviolet Blood irradiation with Ozone mixed in followed by Vitamin C) produces the best results. Some work has also been done in hospitals which suggests a very effective COVID cure exists. I’ll try to break down the evidence for each of these. It should be noted each of these has a very high safety profile with adverse effects almost unheard of (whereas with medications like Remdesivir they have been frequent enough to stop trials on the therapy).

*Ozone has been used for many similar viral conditions, most recently Ebola. One of the oldest organizations promoting Ozone therapy is based in Italy and named SIOOT. Due to their connection with the hospital system, they were able to trial Ozone for critically ill COVID patients. 2 small studies were performed showing a consistent dramatic improvement in patients expected to have a poor prognosis (to my knowledge there is nothing besides possibly hydroxychloroquine so far that has shown a comparable effect to what they observed), along side another hospital in italy which reported similar results. Another Italian hospital outside their group reported similar results. There have also been reports of similar results observed in China (only 1 is presently available to verify), and a clinic in Ibiza Spain has also found the same effect (rapid normalization of vital signs, treatment of cytokine storm, complete recovery and discharge instead of death on a ventilator). One large study has been initiated in Italy and others are in the process of being applied for. Ozone has also been touted as one of the best ways to decontaminate COVID areas as it rapidly destroys the virus, diffuses throughout a room without the need for labor and quickly decays after being produced. Many of the confusions around Ozone relate to the fact it irritates lung tissue (especially if produced without medical oxygen as other toxic compounds are then formed), so when used medically, it is directly applied to the bloodstream, most commonly by removing blood, injecting ozone gas into the blood, and then returning blood to circulation (which is what all the studies so far has done), although other approaches also exist.

*IV Vitamin C does not directly relate to anything Trump discussed, however, I am briefly mentioning it here as it has shown promise and IV Vitamin C is the most familiar to the medical field (in the last few years, some more “alternative” hospitals have started using it for sepsis since there is some evidence suggesting it helps there). Early studies in China found it to be fairly effective for improving the course of the disease, leading to studies of it being launched in China, Canada and Italy. One hospital system in NY is now using it for COVID.

*Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation (various means of getting UV light in the blood): This therapy has the most evidence supporting it. It was developed in America about 100 years ago, widely used in the hospital system, and then displaced by antibiotic therapy. At this point, it is most utilized in Russia (requiring you to be able to search the Russian internet) but also employed in my outpatient alternative medicinal centers with a high degree of success and neglibile adverse effects.. It has been used in the past for viral pneumonias with high success (whereas conventional treatments have difficulty treating this ailment). There are

*Hydrogen Peroxide is commonly thought of as a disinfectant. There is in reality a long history of it being used intravenously since the early 1900s (including to treat viral pneumonias on the verge of death in the 1918 pandemic), or taken orally or nebulized. Most doctors came to the conclusion Ozone was superior to hydrogen peroxide, so intravenous applications are rarer now. Also, hydrogen peroxide is naturally produced within the body. On a less complex basis, it is often used as a gargle to clean the throat (which is where COVID initially replicates), sometimes taken orally and sometimes nebulized. Much of the confusion with utilizing hydrogen peroxide relates to the appropriate concentrations. The stuff you buy over the counter (3.5%) for instance, is effective as a gargle or surface cleaner, but much too strong to put into the body where it requires significant dilution.

In short, there is actually a very good case for “applying disinfectants and UV light to the blood” even though these are considered to be absurd on the surface. As far as I know, they represent the most effective way to treat the virus. However, since a lot of people are invested in no cure being found and our economy being destroyed, like many other things over the last 4 years you can expect to hear the opposite from any “expert” asked. I wish more people knew about these approaches, as it could have prevented a lot of the grief we have dealt with so far.

References are in the first comment.