This is my critique and fact-check of the “America’s Frontline Doctors” video that went “viral” on July 27, 2020 and was soon taken down.
NOTE: The transcript of the video is shown in black text. My critique is shown in red.
Congressman Norman (00:00)
… I’ll turn it over.
A congressman introduces the first speaker. He may personally believe in what these doctors will be saying, and the event takes place in front of the Supreme Court building. These associations make the event appear official, but that does not make it an officially organized or sanctioned event.
Dr. Simone Gold (00:01)
Thank you. Thank you so much congressmen. So we’re here because we feel as though the American people have not heard from all the expertise that’s out there all across our country. We do have some experts speaking, but there’s lots and lots of experts across the country, so some of us decided to get together. We’re America’s Frontline Doctors. We’re here only to help American patients and the American nation heal. We have a lot of information to share. Americans are riveted and captured by fear at the moment. We are not held down by the virus as much as we’re being held down by the spiderweb of fear. That spiderweb is all around us and it’s constricting us and it’s draining the lifeblood of the American people, American society, and American economy.
Fear and healing are important points to bring up at the beginning, which makes getting the facts ever more important.
This does not… this does not make sense. Covid-19 is a virus that exists in essentially two phases. There’s the early phase disease, and there’s the late phase disease. In the early phase either before you get the virus or early, when you’ve gotten the virus, if you’ve gotten the virus, there’s treatment. That’s what we’re here to tell you. We’re going to talk about that this afternoon. You can find it on America’s Frontline Doctors, there’s many other sites that are streaming it live on Facebook. But we implore you to hear this because this message has been silenced. There are many thousands of physicians who have been silenced for telling the American people the good news about the situation, that we can manage the virus carefully and intelligently, but we cannot live with this spiderweb of fear that’s constricting our country.
The last sentence seems to imply that there’s a choice between listening to their advice about getting treatment or living in fear, but of course there are still other choices on what to believe. Treatment continues to be developed, and there’s very good reason to be hopeful as science advances, but there still is no simple treatment that is even nearly as successful as she implies. Moreover, she distinguishes between an early phase and a later phase and indicates there’s treatment in the earlier phase. However, treatments are rather instead being developed or discovered so far with some success for a later stage (when patients are in an ICU with serious Covid-19), but no success to speak of for any earlier phase of the disease.
So we’re going to hear now from various positions. Some are going to talk to you about what the lockdown has done to young, to older, to businesses, to the economy, and how we can get ourselves out of the cycle of fear. Dr. Hamilton.
Dr. Bob Hamilton (02:03)
Thank you, Simone, and thank you all for being here today. I’m Dr. Bob Hamilton. I’m a pediatrician from Santa Monica, California. I’ve been in private practice there for 36 years, and today I have good news for you. The good news is the children as a general rule are taking this virus very, very well. Few are getting infected. Those who are getting infected are being hospitalized in low numbers. And fortunately the mortality rate of children is about one fifth of 1%. So kids are tolerating the infection very frequently, but are actually asymptomatic.
The mortality rate of children is indeed very low, in particular for those under 15 years of age. It is also true that relatively fewer children become infected compared to adults, although perhaps not as few as are implied by Dr. Hamilton. As a point of reference, in Austria, the percentage of cases of children aged 5 to 14 years (0.09%) is around 40% of the percentage of cases of adults aged 55 to 64 years (0.23%) . If an adult is only around two and a half times more likely to get infected than a child under 15, this is still certainly cause for concern. As children may certainly be less likely to be tested than adults, there may not even be that big of a difference between how many children and how many adults are infected!
I also want to say that children are not the drivers of this pandemic. People were worried about, initially, if children were going to actually be the ones to push the infection along. The very opposite is happening. Kids are being, are tolerating it very well, they’re not passing it on to their parents, they’re not passing it onto their teachers. Dr. Mark Woolhouse from Scotland, who is a pediatric infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist said the following: He said, “There has not been one documented case of Covid being transferred from a student to a teacher in the world.” In the world.
Evidence of recent studies indicate that children 0 to 9 years of age are quite unlikely to pass the virus onto adults (although it is still possible), but children and adolescents 10 to 19 years of age can perhaps transmit the virus as readily as adults do. The Dr. Woolhouse quote is apparently true, but cases do not generally get documented without a focus on contact tracing. By the time many countries started contact tracing, in the vast majority of communities schools were already closed.
I think that is important that all of us who are here today realize that our kids are not really the ones who are driving the infection. It is being driven by older individuals. And yes, we can send the kids back to school I think without fear. And this is the big issue right now, as Congressman Norman alluded to, this is the really important thing we need to do. We need to normalize the lives of our children. How do we do that? We do that by getting them back in the classroom. And the good news is they’re not driving this infection at all. Yes, we can use security measures. Yes, we can be careful. I’m all for that. We all are. But I think the important thing is we need to not act out of fear. We need to act out of science. We need to do it. We need to get it done.
It seems quite misleading to say that children are “not driving this infection at all”, as the verb “to drive” refers to those who are primarily involved in spreading it, which appear to be the adults. However, evidence has been mounting that the “drivers” include the 10 to 19 age range! The verb does not mean that school-age children of any age group are not contributing “at all” to the spread. The general advice among experts worldwide is to reopen schools much more cautiously than Dr. Hamilton is advising.
Finally, the barrier, and I hate to say this, but the barrier to getting our kids back in school is not going to be the science, it’s going to be the national unions, the teachers union, the National Education Association, other groups who are going to demand money. And listen, I think that it’s fine to give people money for PPE and different things in the classroom. But some of their demands are really ridiculous. They’re talking about, where I’m from in California, the UTLA, which is United Teachers of Los Angeles, is demanding that we defund the police. What does that have to do with education? They’re demanding that they stop or they shut all private charter schools, privately funded charter schools. These are the schools that are actually getting the kids educated. So clearly there are going to be barriers. The barriers will not be science. There will not be barriers for the sake of the children. That’s going to be for the sake of the adults, the teachers, and everybody else, and for the union. So that’s where we need to focus our efforts and fight back. So thank you all for being here and let’s get our kids back in school.
Science should not be a barrier, especially to issues as important to society as education. It should be a guide, not a barrier, but Dr. Hamilton does not appear concerned enough about the issue to advise on how science can guide the reopening of schools.
[In the US, for political reasons, Republicans are generally advocating for a more rapid reopening (and not just of schools) and Democrats generally for a slower and more cautious reopening, so it is important to consider that there may be biases that depend on political ideologies. No further comment here from me on politics.]
Dr. Stella Immanuel (05:27)
Hello, I’m Dr. Stella Immanuel. I’m a primary care physician in Houston, Texas. You know … I actually went to medical school in West Africa, Nigeria, where I took care of malaria patients, treated them with hydroxychloroquine and stuff like that, so I’m actually used to these medications. I’m here because I have personally treated over 350 patients with Covid. Patients that have diabetes, patients that have high blood pressure, patients that have asthma, old people, I think my oldest patient is 92, 87 year olds. And the result has been the same. I put them on hydroxychloroquine, I put them on zinc, I put them on Zithromax, and they’re all well.
When I first saw the video, I was “blown away” with Dr. Immanuel’s public speaking skills, so it was no surprise when I found out she is a also a minister (and with some beliefs outside of mainstream Christianity). There’s no reason that a minister can’t also be a physician, but it is disconcerting that a report by Snopes.com found far more evidence of her role as minister than as a doctor. She has licenses to practice medicine in Texas, but the medical board “has not verified her medical license or education” nor has it verified the 24 years she states she practiced medicine in the US or Canada. Records show that she practiced medicine for less than one year in Texas. A Google street view of the Rehoboth Medical Center she indicates she practices in only displays a “Fire Power Ministries Christian Resource Center” (if you pan to the right).
For the past few months, after taking of over 350 patients, we’ve not lost one, not a diabetic, not a somebody with high blood pressure, not somebody who asthma, not an old person. We’ve not lost one patient. And, on top of that, I’ve put myself, my staff, and many doctors that I know on hydroxychloroquine for prevention, because by the very mechanism of action, it works early and as a prophylactic. We see patients, 10 to 15 Covid patients, every day. We give them breathing treatments. We only wear surgical mask. None of us has gotten sick. It works.
It’s difficult to believe that she has had as much success as she says she had with hydroxychloroquine (HCQ), far more than in any of the dozens of trials conducted on this drug.
So right now, I came here to Washington DC to say, America, nobody needs to die. The study that made me start using hydroxychloroquine was a study that they did under the NIH in 2005 that say it works. Recently, I was doing some research about a patient that had hiccups and I found out that they even did a recent study in the NIH, which is our National Institute, that is the National, NIH, National Institute of Health. They actually had a study and go look it up. Type hiccups and Covid, you will see it. They treated a patient that had hiccups with hydroxychloroquine and it proved that Covid is a symptom of hydrox-, hiccups is a symptom of Covid, so if the NIH knows that treating the patient would hydroxychloroquine proves that hiccup is a symptom of Covid, then they definitely know that hydroxychloroquine works.
If the trial in 2005 convinced her that HCQ worked, it did not work then on Covid-19, four years before the pandemic. It works well for malaria and other diseases which she apparently has studied and may well have ample experience in, but that does not mean it would work well for Covid-19. Her statement on hiccups does not seem to make any scientific sense, as practically nothing in medical science can be proven based on one incidence.
I’m upset. Why I am upset is that I see people that cannot breathe. I see parents walk in, I see diabetic sit in my office knowing that this is a death sentence, and they can’t breathe, and I hug them and I tell them, “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to live.” And we treat them and they live. None has died. So if some fake science, some person sponsored by all these fake pharma companies comes out say, “We’ve done studies and they found out that it doesn’t work.” I can tell you categorically it’s fake science, I want to know who is sponsoring that study, I want to know who is behind it, because there is no way I can treat 350 patients and counting and nobody is dead, and they all did better, and then you’re going to tell me that you treated 20 people, 40 people, and it didn’t work. I’m a true testimony. So I came here to Washington, DC, to tell America nobody needs to get sick. This virus has a cure – it is called hydroxychloroquine, zinc and Zithromax. I know you who want to talk about a mask. Hello? You don’t need mask. There is a cure. I know they don’t want to open schools. No, you don’t need people to be locked down. There is prevention and there is a cure.
She is making some very strong statements related to Covid-19 and providing very little more than her word of having successfully treated 350 patients as evidence for “categorically” making a claim of that much fake science contradicting her. That’s not the way to convince people who understand how science advances. There is so far no available scientific evidence that there is any “cure” for Covid-19, and if there is, whether it is HCQ or not, I would imagine there would not only be far more doctors using it, but also many people cashing in financially somehow on its effectiveness! Not only does it make no sense regarding how science advances, but it also makes little sense to me in consideration of how I would imagine any capitalist society would advance!
And let me tell you something, all you fake doctors out there that tell me, “oh yeah, I want a double blinded study,” I just tell you, quit sounding like a computer, double blinded, double blinded. I don’t know whether your chips are malfunctioning, but I’m a real doctor. I have radiologists, we have plastic surgeons, we have neurosurgeons, like Sanjay Gupta, saying, “oh yeah, it doesn’t work and it causes heart disease.” Let me ask you, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, hear me, have you ever seen a Covid patient? Have you ever treated anybody with hydroxychloroquine and they died from heart disease? When you do, come and talk to me, because I sit down in my clinic every day and I see these patients walk in every day scared to death. I see people driving two, three hours to my clinic because some ER doctor is scared of the Texas board or they’re scared of something, and they will not prescribe medication to these people.
There are good reasons for double-blind (not “double-blinded”) studies. This is the only way to remove from the statistical analysis the effect of human belief on the actions of a drug and therefore the only way to properly perform science in a trial. This does not mean a doctor should waste time with the studies if it keeps her from saving lives. Patients have been able to ask for HCQ and doctors have been allowed to use it while studies have been conducted and this is still so in the vast majority of US states! It has been the doctors primarily that have essentially lost hope in the effectiveness of the drug. If both doctor and patient believe in a drug like HCQ and it is forbidden or not available in parts of the US because of political reasons, it is a great disservice, not only to the patient, but also to the doctor and to science itself, because in the crisis of the pandemic we can always benefit from any additional scientific evidence. Patients and doctors should be welcome to volunteer in such “experimentation”. But at the same time we should all try to be properly informed of the science without politics interfering.
I tell all of you doctors that are sitting down and watching Americans die. You’re like the good Nazi, the good one, the good Germans that watch Jews get killed and do not speak up, if they come after me, they threaten me, they’ve threatened to, I mean, I’ve gotten all kinds of threats, or they’re going to report me to the boards. They’re gonna, you know what? – I don’t care, I’m not going to let Americans die. And if this is the mount, if this is the hill where I get nailed on, I will get nailed on it. I don’t care. You can report me to the boards, you can kill me, you can do whatever, but I’m not going to let Americans die.
And today I’m here to say it, that America, there is a cure for Covid. All this foolishness is not, does not need to happen. There is a cure for Covid. There is a cure for Covid, it’s called hydroxychloroquine, it’s called zinc, it’s called Zithromax, and it is time for the grassroots to wake up and say, “no, we’re not going to take this any longer, we’re not going to die,” because let me tell you something, when somebody is dead, they are dead. They’re not coming back tomorrow to have an argument. They are not come back tomorrow to discuss the double blinded study and the data. All of you doctors that are waiting for data, if six months down the line you actually found out that this data shows that this medication works, how about your patients that have died? You want a double blinded study where people are dying? It’s unethical. So, guys, we don’t need to die. There is a cure for Covid.
Her statements do not appear to be congruent with any scientific experts that I am familiar with.
Dr. Simone Gold (11:02)
Oh my God, oh. Dr. Immanuelle, also known as warrior. Now, before I introduce the next guest, I just want to say that I wish all doctors that are listening to this bring that kind of passion to their patients, and the study that Dr. Immanuel was referring to is in Virology, which talks about a SARS viral epidemic that affects the lungs that came from China, and they didn’t know what would work. The study showed that chloroquine would work. It sounds exactly like it could have been written three months ago, but in fact, that’s study in Virology, which was published by the NIH, the National Institute of Health when Dr. Anthony Fauci was the director. Again, the official publication of the NIH, Virology, 15 years ago showed that chloroquine, we use hydroxychloroquine, it’s the same, little safer, works. They proved this 15 years ago when we got this novel coronavirus, which is not that novel, it’s 78% similar to the prior version, the COV-1, not surprisingly, it works. I’m now going to introduce our next speaker. Sorry, I forgot to say your name.
78% difference in the genome between any species or between any two viruses amounts to a huge difference. Our prior knowledge of SARS-CoV (also known as SARS-CoV-1, which she refers to) gave science a good head start when scientists the world over dove right into the study of the novel virus back in January, but there was still very much to learn. Almost any property of the virus could be different and the properties are indeed quite different between these viruses.
Dr. Dan Erickson (12:12)
It’s all right. Dr. Dan Erickson, Dr. Gold asked me to talk about the lockdowns, how effective they were and do that cause anything non-financial? They always talk about the financial, but you have to realize that lockdowns, we haven’t taken a $21 trillion economy and locked it down. So when you lock it down, it causes public health issues. Our suicide hotlines are up 600%, our spousal abuse, different areas of alcoholism are all on the rise. These are public health problems from a financial lockdown. So we have to be clear on that fact that there is, it’s not like you just lock it down and have consequences to people’s jobs. They also have consequences, health consequences at home. So we’re talking about having a little more of a measured approach, a consistent approach. If we have another spike coming in cold and flu season, let’s do something that’s sustainable. What’s sustainable? Well we can socially distance and wear some masks, but we can also open the schools and open businesses, so this measured approach I’m talking about, isn’t made up, it’s going on in Sweden and their deaths are about 564 per million. UK, full lockdown, 600 deaths per million. So we’re seeing that the lockdowns aren’t decreasing significantly the amount of deaths per million. Some of their Nordic neighbors have less deaths for a variety of reasons, I don’t have time to go into today, so what, my quick message here in a minute or two is just that we need to take an approach that’s sustainable. A sustainable approach is slowing things down, opening up schools, opening up businesses, and then we can allow the people to have their independence and their personal responsibility to choose to wear masks and socially distance, as opposed to putting edicts on them, kind of controlling them. Let’s empower them with data and let them study what other countries have done and make their own decision. That’s what I’d like to share. Thank you.
There are good reasons to social distance, primarily to avoid reaching limits of hospital capacity and to give science time to learn and develop treatments and a vaccine, but social distancing doesn’t have to mean “lockdown”. The trick is to balance lives on the one hand with the normal functioning of society on the other. Science can’t answer the question on how to reach that balance, unless perhaps we put a price tag on each life the way that airlines and insurance companies must do in order to use any math at all to keep airplanes flying and insurance companies solvent. There are scientists working on such mathematics for Covid-19, as gruesome as it may seem to the layman, but we need to explore our options. Contrary to what Dr. Erickson states, there is plenty of evidence that social distancing has been saving lives.
Jenny Beth Martin (14:28)
Are there any questions?
Dr. Simone Gold (14:29)
Are there any questions?
#2 (14:32)
You guys, we’re so excited, I’m from South Dakota, you might have heard.
Dr. Simone Gold (14:36)
Yes.
#2 (14:38)
I’m so glad you guys are preaching this message.
Dr. Simone Gold (14:39)
You know, South Dakota did something interesting. It’s interesting that you’re from there, so the governor did not restrict access to hydroxychloroquine.
In NASPA’s COVID-19: Information from the States page (no longer available), there seems to be only about a dozen states, districts or territories that list some kind of restriction that could limit the use of HCQ for treatment in any significant way (and not many more states limiting its use as a prophylactic) but apparently only four states that would forbid its use as categorically as New York, Rhode Island, Oregon or Texas does. Dr. Gold seems to be implying that South Dakota is one of the few states where HCQ is still available, but this does not seem to be the case at all. The restrictions (mostly limits) are necessary anyway to ensure that individuals who require HCQ for other conditions such as lupus, for which the drug is known to work, will have access to the drug. Otherwise it would certainly cause suffering.
#2 (14:46)
We know, we took a lot of flak for that.
Dr. Simone Gold (14:49)
Right. And you were, I believe you were the only state in the union that did that, and there’s been studies out there that attempt to show that it doesn’t work. They’re inaccurate because they’re given at the wrong time, the wrong dose, the wrong patient, either too much or a long time. So, South Dakota did better because it had access to hydroxychloroquine. Thank you so much.
This doesn’t seem to be at all consistent with the way clinical trials are supposed to work. Moreover, if Dr. Gold is convinced of what she is saying, she would be of great service to the scientific community in communicating more precisely why the dosage of the drug was “wrong” in order for her to do her own part in advancing science.
#3 (15:06)
Okay, so if someone we love does get sick with Covid and you said the word hydro-, or however you say it, it’s restricted. How do we get access to that?
Dr. Simone Gold (15:16)
That’s the number one question we’re all asked every day. I want you to know that you’re not alone. I’ve had many congressmen ask me, how can I get it? So the congressmen can’t get it, it’s tough luck for the average American Joe getting it. It’s very difficult. You have to overcome a few hurdles. Your doctor has to have read the science with a critical eye and have eliminated the junk science. Many studies have been retracted as you know, and number two, the pharmacist has to not restrict it. Many states have empowered their pharmacists to not honor physician prescriptions. That’s never happened before. That interferes with the doctor-patient relationship, where the patient talks to the doctor honestly and the doctor answers the patient honestly, has been violated.
It does not seem to be as hard as Dr. Gold is saying to procure HCQ in most states if both the doctor and the patient agree to its use.
So you have a very difficult time as the average American. Some of the information we’ll share later this afternoon is to show that mortality rates in countries where it’s not restricted and the mortality rates where it is restricted. So, I have friends all over the world now because of this. And in Indonesia, you can just buy it over the counter. It’s in the vitamin section. And I’m here to tell the American people that you could buy it over the counter in Iran. Because the leaders in Iran, the mullahs in Iran, think that they should have more freedom than Americans. I have a problem with that. My colleagues have problems with that. We don’t like to watch patients die.
There are many powerful drugs that are available over the counter in many countries, but that does not at all mean that those countries deem the drug to be safe. There certainly are known risks that you can read about on the Treatment Development page.
Julie (16:26)
When people have problems, they should be picking up the phone, they should be calling their state and their federal representatives and senators and say, we are the American people.
It might also be a good idea to understand the science better before one rushes to contact the authorities.
Jenny Beth Martin (16:49)
Thank you, thank you, Julie, that is exactly right. If you hear what you’re, when you hear this, if you’re concerned and wondering why you may not be able to get access to it, we need you to make four calls, call your governor, call both of your senators and call your Congressman and tell them that you want to know why you’re not able to get access to a drug that doctors are telling you will help end this and help us reduce the number of hospitalizations and reduce the number of deaths. Urge them to read Dr. Harvey Rich’s study from Yale, he’s a Yale professor of epidemiology, and from there you’ll find other studies.
It would also be a good idea to reach the doctors you trust the most to get their opinion. There doesn’t seem to be much available at all on the Web on Dr. Harvey Rich’s study through an advanced Google search for the past year (search terms: coronavirus covid-19 “Dr. Harvey Rich” “Yale”).
#4 (17:31)
Yes. I wanted to ask how do people trust the data that they are looking at every day? The numbers are so variable when you go to Johns Hopkins, CDC, which divides Covid deaths in different categories, you know, related to pneumonia, other things, so how do we get the right information to make …?
Dr. Simone Gold (17:52)
So the only number that I think is worth paying any attention to, and even that number is not so helpful, is mortality because that’s a hard and fast number. So the case number is almost irrelevant, and that’s because there’s a lot of inaccuracies with the testing. And also even if the test is accurate, most people are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, so it’s not that important to know, so the case number, which you see rising all the time in the news is basically irrelevant. And if you had told us a few months ago, that that was the number that the media was going to go crazy over, we all would have just laughed at that. I mean, that’s essentially herd immunity. There’s lots of people out there who have tested positive without symptoms or with very mild symptoms, so the only number that’s worth paying attention to is mortality.
Most of what Dr. Gold is saying here makes sense. It is difficult to learn much at all through the case count alone, which does however help sensationalize the pandemic. When she states “that’s essentially herd immunity“, she is implying that we are close to herd immunity, which, if it were the case, would soon bring down the number of new cases. We are however still very far from the number of cases that would provide herd immunity.
When you look at the mortality, this is a disease that takes, that unfortunately kills our most frail members of society, people with multiple comorbid conditions, specifically diabetes, obesity is a big one. We don’t talk about that, but it is, it’s a fact. Coronary artery disease, severe coronary artery disease, people like that. And also if you’re older, it’s a risk factor, but the biggest risk factor is if you have comorbid conditions. If you’re young and healthy, this is not, you’re going to recover. If you’re under 60 with no comorbid conditions, it’s less deadly than influenza. This seems to come as great news to Americans, because this is not what you’re being told. I would say the answer is it’s very difficult to get accurate numbers.
I would imagine it could very well be correct that for a healthy individual below a certain age Covid-19 would be less deadly than influenza, but depending on what “healthy” means, I think that age cut-off would be far less than 60 years of age. And who knows if they’re really “healthy” when serious Covid-19, for example, attacks the endothelial cells in the inner lining of blood vessels and people of all ages have been dying, not knowing that these particular cells of theirs were somehow compromised?
#5 (19:13)
… Breitbart News, if you had a message to Dr. Anthony Fauci, what would you say to him?
Jenny Beth Martin (19:18)
Listen to the doctors. … Have a meeting with the frontline doctors, and maybe I need to say that into the microphone. My message to Dr. Anthony Fauci is to have a meeting with these frontline doctors who are seeing real patients, they’re touching human skin, they’re looking people in the eye, they’re diagnosing them and they’re helping them beat the virus. They’re the ones who are talking to the patients. Have meetings with them and do it every single day and find out what they are learning about the virus firsthand. And this is, and it’s important to understand, we have doctors here who are not emergency room doctors. They’re preventing patients from even hitting the emergency room. So if they’re only listening to emergency room or ICU at the very tragic end of a person’s life, they’re not getting the full story. They need to come back and hear the earlier portion. And they also need to understand what the lockdowns and the fears are doing to patients around this country, because there are a lot of unintended consequences, which the doctors can speak about.
I would find it almost impossible to believe that a person in the position of Dr. Fauci, who has dedicated his life to his profession, who has been very successful, who gives every indication of being responsible and being committed to his career, would not be listening every day to doctors on the front lines. There seems to be many indications that he has reached such a prestigious position because he is passionately committed to his career. He does not need to go every day in person to the clinics. There are many channels of information from front line doctors to the rest of the medical community and to researchers. He is certainly not confined to an ivory tower.
Dr. Stella Immanuel (20:30)
Can I say something. My message to Dr. Anthony Fauci is, when is the last time you put a stethoscope on a patient? That when you start seeing patients, like we see on a daily basis, you will understand the frustration that we feel. You need to start feeling for American people like we, the frontline doctors, feel. I need to start realizing that. They are listening to you. And if they are going to you, you got to give them a message of hope. Got to give them a message that goes with what you already know that hydroxychloroquine works.
Dr. Fauci seems to have displayed his frustration on these matters very genuinely to the world.
#6 (21:06)
I have a question for Dr. Warrior.
Simone Gold (21:09)
Dr. Immanuel.
#6 (21:10)
Dr. Immanuel. You mentioned before some remarkable results that you’ve had treating your own patients. She said, I believe she said 300 patients.
Dr. Stella Immanuel (21:17)
Yes. Yes.
#6 (21:19)
Have you been able to publish your findings and results from …
Dr. Stella Immanuel (21:22)
We’re working on publishing it right now. We’re working on that, but this is what I’ll say. People like Dr. Samuel had published the data. And my question is, and? That will make you see patients. There’s no data around the world. Yes. My data will come out. When that comes out, that’s great, but right now people are dying, so my data is not important for you to see patients. I’m saying that to my colleagues out there that talk about data, data, data.
The advancement of science requires data. It could not advance very far without it. If she is having that much success with her patients, she is doing a great disservice to the world of science if she is not showing her data. If she’s in front of the Supreme Court building during the video, wouldn’t she also be taking time away from her patients as the Covid-19 numbers are rapidly rising in Texas where she treats patients? If she could take time to be in DC, why can’t she find some time to let researchers see some of her data?
#6 (21:44)
If I can ask just one more question.
Dr. Simone Gold (21:46)
May I just interject. There is a lot of … data on this. Not every clinician needs to publish their data to be taken seriously. The media has not covered it. There is a ton. I’ve got a compendium on americasfrontlinedoctors.com, there is a compendium of all the studies that work with hydroxychloroquine. The mortality rate was published in Detroit, less than … it was July 4th weekend. They published it. Mortality by half in the critically ill patients, the patients who are get it early, it’s been estimated that one half to three quarters of those patients, wouldn’t be dead. We’re talking 70,000 to 105 … 70 to 100,000 patients would still be alive if we had followed this policy. …
For various reasons the Henry Ford study she refers to in Detroit is considered flawed by Dr. Fauci and many other scientists. Even if it weren’t flawed, one study is rarely enough to convince the scientific community, especially when dozens of studies have contradicted its findings.
Dr. Stella Immanuel (22:26)
Even with Dr. Rich. Dr. Rich published data recently. So there’s a lot of data out there. They don’t need mine to make those decisions.
Dr. Rich’s results seem not to have been credible. The scientific community would certainly want to see credible data that Dr. Immanuel might have, which could change the course of the pandemic!
#6 (22:34)
If I can ask one more question. There was a little girl who just a few days ago … otherwise healthy and it was concluded that she died of Covid-19, so I was curious from your perspective, do you feel that this little girl possibly died from some other condition … attributed to Covid-19 or is there some other reason why she would have died …
Dr. Stella Immanuel (22:52)
I will not. I will not be able to say that till I look at the little girl’s history and whatever happened. I know I’ve taken care of a lot of family members and I see a lot of children and they usually get mild symptoms, but I cannot talk about kids that I have not looked at.
Dr. Bob Hamilton (23:07)
What was the age of the child again?
#6 (23:10)
She was nine years old.
Dr. Bob Hamilton (23:10)
Okay, so listen, there are children who are dying of this infection, and the reality is that when they do die, they seem to have comorbidities. Really, you have to kind of look at each individual case. Uniquely there have been a little over 30 patients in the entire country, in the age category of 15 and below who have died of Covid. Frequently they do have comorbidities like heart disease, they have asthma, they have other pulmonary issues. So I don’t know, we don’t know the answer to this nine year old girl, tragically. She passed, and she’s no longer with us, but there’s probably, if you dig into it, there’s probably a story behind it.
There is plenty of evidence that young people of any age who for all intents and purposes appeared to be healthy have died from Covid-19. Science theorizes it may be for reasons such as the condition of the endothelial cells of blood vessels, which never had reasons to present any symptoms before (like there are generally no symptoms from high blood pressure that can compromise those cells). It is not at all easy in hectic clinical settings to know for sure whether such a “comorbidity” could have been a cause or an effect, and autopsies are expensive, time consuming and difficult to schedule even in normal times.
Jenny Beth Martin (23:48)
Dr. Hamilton, have you seen any patients who are having adverse side effects because schools have been closed, who have depression or suicide?
Dr. Bob Hamilton (23:54)
I mean, I think that it is common knowledge that with the schools not being open, when you think about what your experience in junior high and high school, what do you think about? You think about parties and you think about football games, socializing. Those are the things we think about. Those are all being shut down, folks. Nobody is having fun anymore. And I will tell you that these are critical years of life to be out mixing with other kids, other people, and that has been shut down. So yes, there are lots of comorbidities that go along with shutting down. We’re talking about anxiety, we’re talking about depression, loneliness, abuse is happening, and kids who have particular, children who have special needs, kids are not doing well either. So, there is a long list of complications that occur when you quarantine and lockdown people.
No scientific theory should commit anyone who is suffering from a mental illness or any other illness to stay locked down. Social distancing does not mean “lockdown”, especially if both authorities and citizens can understand the science so it may guide them to devise and agree to follow rules that can minimize death and suffering.
#7 (24:48)
So an extension to what you were just talking about, we hear all these studies and all this polling that moms are afraid to go back to work because of letting their children go to school, they shouldn’t go to school because then they’re exposed, and if the moms go back to school, then the elderly grandparents, they’re …
…
Dr. Bob Hamilton (25:07)
Sure. Yeah, this is a big issue because people are afraid not that their children are going to get particularly ill, because I think they’re learning the truth is that this infection is being tolerated well by children, but certainly, they look at their environment, their particular unique family, and I think in some situations that may be an appropriate fear. However, I do think that as a general comment, a general rule through the country, kids can go back to school. Maybe a few kids here and there, their living situation, who they’re being cared for, that can be a potential problem. But again, for younger children in particular, they’re not the ones passing on the disease to the adults.
If by “younger” he means those below ten or below 15 years of age, it would be good to know what he means. Either way, we would at least need to be more concerned about high school age students, because studies are now telling us that they might be far more likely to spread Covid-19 than the younger students.
#7 (25:52)
Wouldn’t the hydroxychloroquine be…
Dr. Stella Immanuel (25:52)
I’ll talk about that.
#7 (25:52)
Maybe Dr. Immanuel can speak to that, or somebody else.
Dr. Bob Hamilton (25:53)
Well, hydroxychloroquine, yeah …
#7 (25:53)
… prophylactic.
Dr. Bob Hamilton (25:53)
That can be done. Yes, that can be used …
Dr. Stella Immanuel (26:06)
… we’re talking about, we can’t also open our businesses, we can’t go to school and parents are scared to get treated, and I personally have put over a hundred people on hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis. Doctors, teachers, people who are health care workers, my staff, me, I see over 15 to 20, sometimes 20, 15, 10 patients a day. I use a surgical mask. I’ve not been infected. Nobody I know has been infected that’s around me. So this is the answer to this question. You want to open schools, everybody get on hydroxychloroquine. That is the prevention for Covid. One tablet every other week is good enough, and that is what we need to get across to the American people. There’s prevention and there is cure. We don’t have to lock down schools, we don’t have to lockdown our businesses, there’s prevention, and there is cure. So instead of talking about a mask, instead of talking about lockdowns, instead of talking about all these things, put our teachers on hydroxychloroquine. Put those that are high risk on hydroxychloroquine. Those that want it, if you want to catch Covid, that’s cool, but you should be given the right to take it and be prevented. So that’s the message, we don’t, all this stuff that we’re putting together, it’s not necessary because hydroxychloroquine has a prevention, hydroxychloroquine is a prevention for Covid.
It’s even less likely for a scientist to believe a claim that the same drug can be used for multiple purposes. However, there have been several studies on the use of HCQ as a prophylactic (for prevention), for example on health care workers and these results have also been inconclusive.
#8 (27:17)
Earlier I heard you say that…
Dr. Stella Immanuel (27:18)
Hydroxychloroquine.
#8 (27:21)
… yeah, that that drug was the cure.
Dr. Stella Immanuel (27:22)
Cure, mm-hm (affirmative).
#8 (27:25)
But you also said measured with zinc and other things.
Dr. Stella Immanuel (27:27)
Yes.
#8 (27:27)
And you guys also said that previous doctors have used it, but they’ve used it in the wrong dosage. So I keep hearing the drug, but then what is the right dosage. What is the right mixture?
Dr. Stella Immanuel (27:39)
Yeah, that you’re going to discuss with your doctor, but let make … take that.
Dr. Immanuel is making claims of knowing what the correct dosages are, yet she is advising this person to discuss the matter with her doctor. Why should she hold on to her secrets?
#9 (27:45)
Yeah, that’s a great question, because the fear of this drug had driven, the whole political situation has driven the fear towards this drug, so let’s address that. This drug is super safe. It’s safer than aspirin, Motrin, Tylenol. It’s super safe, all right, so what the problem is in a lot of those studies, they did very, very high doses, massive doses all through the country, they did the REMAP study, the Solidarity trial, that was the world health organization trial, and also the RECOVERY trial. They use 2400 milligrams in the first day. All you need is 200 twice a week for prophylaxis. They used massive toxic doses, and guess what they found out? When you use massive toxic doses, you get toxic results. The drug doesn’t work when you give toxic doses, OK. It’s a very safe drug. It concentrates in the lungs, 200 to 700 times higher in the lungs.
The drug is not super safe. It has known side effects as practically all drugs do. It is a powerful drug for the right disease and powerful drugs can generally have powerful side effects. Read on the Treatment Development page about vision tests that lupus sufferers who start on HCQ are advised to have to avoid the chance of losing their vision. Moreover, there are known side effects involving irregular heartbeats.
#9 (28:38)
It’s an amazing drug because in the bloodstream, you’re not going to get high levels, but you get massive levels in the lungs, so you’re going to find yourself, if you prophylax, that as soon as the virus gets there, it’s going to have a hard time getting through, because the hydroxychloroquine blocks it from getting in. And then once it gets in, it won’t let the virus actually replicate. Bring in zinc and zinc will mess up the copy machine called the RDRP. So, with the combination of drugs, it’s incredibly effective in the early disease. By itself, it’s incredibly effective as a prophylaxis. So, I hope, does that answer the question?
An antiviral drug works by keeping the virus from replicating. I’m not aware of any other “blocking” mechanism that can happen prior to that as described here. It is true that there is a lot of research on zinc, but I’m not aware of any conclusive studies.
Dr. Simone Gold (29:15)
Yeah. I want to emphasize on something that Dr. … just said, because I love the question. This is a treatment regimen that’s very simple, and it should be in the hands of the American people. The difficult aspect of this is that at the moment, because of politics, it’s being blocked from doctors prescribing it, and it’s being blocked from pharmacists releasing it. They’ve been empowered to overrule the doctor’s opinion. Why is this not over the counter? As you can get it in much of the world, in almost all of Latin America, in Iran, in Indonesia, in Subsaharan Africa, you can just go and buy it yourself. And the dose, my friends is 200 milligrams twice in a week and zinc daily. That’s the dose. I’m in favor of it being over the counter. Give it to the people. Give it to the people.
Moderator (30:06)
… two more, who can answer this question and they know this information.
Dr. James Todaro (30:12)
Hi, Dr. James Todaro … I just want to add a couple of comments to what Dr. Gold was saying. If it seems like there is an orchestrated attack that’s going on against hydroxychloroquine it’s because there is. When have you ever heard of a medication generating this degree of controversy? A 65 year old medication that has been on the World Health Organization’s safe, essential list of medications for years. OK, it’s over the counter in many countries. And what we’re seeing is a lot of misinformation, so I coauthored the first document on hydroxychloroquine as a potential treatment for coronavirus. This is back in March and that kind of kicked off a whole series of a storm on it. And since then, there’s been a tremendous amount of censorship on doctors like us and what we’re saying, and a number of us have already been censored. That Google document that I coauthored was actually pulled down by Google, and this is after now, many studies have shown that it is effective and it is safe. You still can’t read that article. And there’s also this misinformation out there. And unfortunately, this has reached the highest orders of medicine. In May there was an article published in The Lancet. So this is one of the world’s most prestigious medical journals in the world, OK. The World Health Organization stopped all their clinical trials on hydroxychloroquine because of this study. And it was independent researchers like us who care about patients, who care about the truth that dug into this study and determined that it was actually fabricated data. The data was not real. And it was so, we did this so convincingly that this study was retracted by The Lancet less than two weeks after it was published. This is almost unheard of, especially for study of this magnitude. So it’s, I apologize to everyone for the fact that there is so much misinformation out there, and it’s so hard to find the truth. And unfortunately, it’s going to take looking at other places for the truth. That’s why we formed frontline doctors here to try to help get the real information out there.
Yes, it is practically unheard of that leading journals would retract such a study, but one reason this seems to have happened is that the drug has become politicized and some Democrats may well have been trying to make the drug appear to be more dangerous than it is while some Republicans may well be trying to make the drug appear more effective than it really is. The truth between extremes might likely somewhere in between them. HCQ showed promise earlier this year with antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2 in cells in the laboratory. To the best of my understanding, it has not shown itself to be significantly effective in most clinical trials since then, and in other trials there appeared to have been flaws. From what I understand, the drug might still be only marginally effective, but not enough to lead to conclusive results in trials or to convince the vast majority of doctors, not only in the US, but in the world (and in countries where the drug is not politicized). Moreover, it is only when one has conclusive results that science can use such results to make better drugs.
#10 (32:00)
What did you say your name was?
Dr. James Todaro (32:01)
I’m James Todaro.
Moderator (32:02)
Give me your website.
Dr. James Todaro (32:05)
Most of my thoughts, I actually publish on Twitter. Twitter has been great lately. So, James Todaro, M. D. T-O-D-A-R-O M. D. but I also have a website, medicineuncensored.com, which contains kind of a lot of the information about hydroxychloroquine I think is much more objective than what’s going on in other media channels.
#10 (32:28)
… one point, in terms of Twitter. That’s important because as I understand not only from doctors, but from other people in the media, that YouTube has blocked information, specifically about hydroxychloroquine.
Dr. James Todaro (32:42)
So, I’ll go ahead and address that real quickly. I would say Facebook and YouTube have taken the most draconian measures to silence and censorship people. And this is coming from the CEO of YouTube, as well as Mark Zuckerberg saying anything that goes against what the World Health Organization has said is subject to censorship. And we all know the World Health Organization has made a number of mistakes during this pandemic. They have not been perfect by any means. Twitter, although they have some flaws and faults and flag certain content and stuff, they really still remain one of the freest platforms to share dialogue, intelligent discussion regarding this information. And many of us here today actually connected on social platform mediums like that.
The WHO seems to be attacked politically in many ways these past few months. What I generally see censored is claims that contradict what science is learning worldwide, which has been considerable and which the vast majority of scientists seem to believe is heading in the right direction, and these claims are directed to the public rather than to other scientists. I don’t wish to condone this kind of censorship, but I see a logical pattern. The best would be if we all could learn and scientists could have debates and the public would learn through them who is doing science correctly. It seems to me unfortunately however that most humans during a crisis such as this one are drawn to optimistic news rather than news that is consistent with prior scientific evidence.
#11 (33:21)
Could you talk about what you mentioned earlier about the medication and how long it’s been around?
Dr. Joe Ladapo (33:27)
Sure thing. I’m Dr. Joe. Ladapo. I’m a physician at UCLA and I’m a clinical researcher also, and I’m speaking for myself and not on behalf of UCLA. So I want to say that I’m thinking of the people who are behind the screens that are watching what you guys were broadcasting. And I want to share with you because there’s so much controversy and the atmosphere is so full of conflict right now that what this group of doctors is trying to do, fundamentally, is really to bring more light to this conversation about how we manage Covid-19 and the huge challenge, and that’s what this is ultimately about. And bringing light to something means thinking more about trade-offs, about one of my colleagues said on unintended consequences. And I actually think that’s not even the right word, the right word is unanticipated consequences. Really thinking about the implications of the decisions we’re making in this really, really extraordinary time that we’re in.
So, you know, so I’m sure people are listening to some of the discussion about hydroxychloroquine and wondering, what are these doctors talking about? And, these are doctors that take care of patients, board certified, med school, great med schools, all of that. How could they possibly be saying this? I watch CNN and NBC, and they don’t say anything about this. And that’s actually, that’s the point. There are issues that are moral issues, that really there should be a singular voice. So for me, issues related to whether people are treated differently based on their sex or race, or their sexual orientation. I personally think those are moral issues and there’s only one position on those. But Covid-19 is not a moral issue. Covid-19 is a challenging, complex issue that we benefit from having multiple perspectives on. So it’s not good for the American people when everyone is hearing one perspective on the main stations. There’s no way that’s going to service. So, the perspective most people have been hearing is that hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work, right, that’s the perspective that most people have been hearing on the mainstream television. And I believe that perspective too, until I started talking to doctors who would look more closely … some of the physicians behind me here, who would look more closely at the data and at the studies.
Covid-19 is certainly a moral issue, because if involves death and suffering. It is also a scientific issue because it involves viruses that are governed by “objective” scientific truth. Science involves objective truth that humans can acquire through proper scientific experimentation. When done properly, it should never lead to different science for different people. Science can’t speak for morality, as they are independent domains. If people in the US can rise above their ideologies just enough to allow science to advance as it should, it can be enabled to guide humankind most effectively, even though the process necessarily takes time, while moral, societal and political issues are sorted out without contradicting the helpful guidance borne of objective scientific truth.
So it is a fact that several randomized trials have come out so far, that’s our highest level of evidence, and have shown that hydroxychloroquine, their findings have generally been that there’s no significant effect … health benefit. So, that’s a fact, that the randomized control trials have come out, so far that have come out. In fact, there were two or three big ones that came out over the last two weeks, Annals of Internal Medicine, New England Journal of Medicine and I think one other journal.
It is also a fact that there have been several observational studies, so these are just not randomized controlled trials, but patients who are getting treated with this medication that have found that hydroxychloroquine improves outcomes. So both of those things are true. So there’s evidence against it and there’s evidence for it. It is also a fact that we are in an extraordinarily challenging time. So, given those considerations, how can the right answer be … to limit physician’s use of the medication? That can’t possibly be the right answer. And when you consider that this medication before Covid-19 had been used for decades, by patients with rheumatoid arthritis, by patients with lupus, by patients with other conditions, by patients who needed, who were traveling to West Africa and needed malaria prophylaxis, we’ve been using it for a long time, but all of a sudden it’s elevated to this area of looking like some poisonous drug. That just doesn’t make sense.
And then when you add onto that the fact that we’ve had two of the biggest journals in the world, New England Journal of Medicine, and Lancet, as my colleagues say, retract studies that found, interestingly, that hydroxychloroquine harmed patients. Both of these studies. They had to retract these studies, which really is unheard of. That should raise everyone’s concern about what is going on. So, at the very least, we can live in a world where there are differences of opinion about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, but still allow more data to come, still allow physicians who feel like they have expertise with it use that medication, and still talk, and learn, and get better at helping people with Covid-19. So why we’re not there is not good, it doesn’t make sense, and we need to get out of there.
Earlier this year it seemed clear that the solution to the dilemma of contradictory news about HCQ was to allow doctors to continue using it off-label if they are convinced it might help. Many of the doctors who have used it when there was no other drug that could help have become convinced it wasn’t helping. Moreover, there are many drugs that are starting to be used and it seems that this a very good reason for an apparent drop in mortality rates. These are not one-size-fits-all drugs like HCQ, but are drugs that must be administered at the proper times based on the course of the disease through the body. See What we knew about how the disease spreads in the human body to learn more.
Dr. Stella Immanuel (38:58)
Listen, let me just put a little bit of that. I have seen 350 patients and counting. Put them on hydroxychloroquine. They all got better. This is what I would say to all those studies, they had high doses, they were given to wrong patients. I will call them fake science. Any study that says hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work, is fake science and I want them to show me how it doesn’t work. How is it going to work for 350 patients for me and they’re all alive, and then somebody say it doesn’t work? Guys, all them studies, fake science.
Dr. Simone Gold (39:30)
What was your question? Thank you.
#14 (39:31)
Last question.
Dr. Simone Gold (39:31)
Last question.
#13 (39:35)
I’ve heard there’s an increase in anxiety, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, and various mental health issues as a result of school closures and shutdowns. Is it your recommendation that … federal funding for programs will help deal with those issues …?
Dr. Simone Gold (39:54)
Yeah, I don’t understand how you would go to that conclusion. If the problem was that the schools are shut down, and it’s causing it, then we need to open up the schools.
#14 (40:03)
…
Dr. Simone Gold (40:06)
Yeah. I would go to the school. I would open up the schools, because the most important thing for children is to socialize, and to be with other kids, and to learn. Yeah. … yeah. Let’s get kids back in school.
#14 (40:17)
You don’t believe that?
Dr. Simone Gold (40:20)
Kids back in school. We’re in favor of kids back in school.
#15 (40:22)
Thank you everyone, thank you very much. And we are going to be going back live continuing our summit, so you can continue watching. Once we get back, we may be running a couple of minute late, but …
…
Doctor 1 (40:56)
That depression is caused by low zinc levels. When you go into a hospital nowadays, they don’t test for those zinc levels. Low zinc levels are manifested by loss of sense of smell, loss of taste. Why are these also symptoms of Covid, right? Covid, loss of sense of smell, loss of taste, right? And the reason is because zinc is the natural thing that used to fight the Covid. What happens is the zinc stops RNA polymerase, and the hydroxychloroquine allows the zinc to go into the cells …to stop the RNA polymerase-
…
Doctor 1 (41:43)
Let me explain it a little bit better. The zinc stops RNA polymerase, and it’s used up by your cells in the normal fighting of Covid. So if you never took hydroxychloroquine, you’d still be zinc depleted. We’re in a natural state of zinc depletion in the United States, but the Covid decreases your zinc even more, and you need it to fight off any virus. That’s why your mom always said, “Take your zinc,” right?
…
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