Howard S. Armistead
CAPE TOWN - As the official death toll from Covid-19 in South Africa approaches 100 000, two years into this pandemic, unofficial excess deaths attributed to Covid approximate 270 000, almost three times as high as the official figure.
Does the Sars-CoV-2 (Sars-2) virus bear the sole responsibility for this monumental tragedy, or has human error and neglect of science played a major role in the mounting death toll? Will this same scientific ignorance contribute to more unnecessary deaths when the next Sars-2 variant or the next newly emergent viral pandemic hits sometime in the next few months or years? Obviously, it will, and more deaths will follow.
The discovery of Aids in 1981 opened the Pandemic Era. That was followed by the spread of West Nile Virus, Ebola, Zika and Covid-19, not to mention the Hantavirus epidemic in China and the ever-threatening next strain of influenza-A.
All these viruses attack different cells and are affected by various co-factors in ultimately yielding widely disparate mortality rates. However, these are all enveloped RNA viruses and genetically encode selenium containing proteins they require to form their viral skin – their envelope.
Just as an animal without skin cannot live, a virus without an envelope cannot survive. Enveloped viruses need selenium to form their protective envelopes. Viruses attack the cellular antioxidants that keep cells healthy. They cut them to pieces to obtain the selenium that antioxidants contain but viruses need. That makes infected cells and then a person sick. The dramatic loss of selenium has been clearly demonstrated in Aids, Hantavirus, Ebola, and Covid/Sars-2.
Unfortunately, the major co-factor in death from Aids, Ebola, and Covid is the failure of international and national health authorities to recognise and utilise basic, established science.
Newspapers and the press fail to hold authorities accountable, even after they have been shown the science. This forms a circular firing squad with the public in the middle when health authorities are ignorant or claim ignorance of the science, and they then share that neglect of science with the press. Reporters question the same reliable academic sources that are unaware of this obscure bit of science or have competing conflicts of interest. That has resulted in hundreds of thousands more deaths from pandemic disease than necessary.
100% of those who die of Covid, Aids, Ebola, and Hantavirus do so because of a selenium deficiency that accelerates as viral replication increasingly drains this essential trace element from the immune system. Selenium depletion causes CD4 counts to fall and the selenium-dependent immune system to collapse. When selenium is supplemented back into the body at adequate doses, 60-80% of those deaths can be averted, or in the case of Aids, significantly delayed.
The sooner health authorities acknowledge this simple fact and pro actively apply this knowledge, the sooner pandemics will become less deadly, and hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved. Newspaper editors and the press in general should investigate this issue by questioning the experts who are familiar with this arcane science instead of only questioning their usual sources who do not.
The science is clear. It is also clearly not used to benefit society as it should be. Failure to inform the public of scientific advances that can benefit society contravenes the United Nations Charter of Human Rights. The resultant extraordinarily high number of unnecessary deaths can be considered a crime against humanity.
What are the scientific facts?
Hantavirus is a Chinese haemorrhagic fever virus that, like Ebola, kills 60 to 90% of those that develop the full-blown disease. Clinical trials have shown that 2mg – milligrams – of selenium daily reduces the mortality rate of deadly Hantavirus by 80%.
Ebola is also a haemorrhagic fever virus that rapidly drains the human selenium reserve. During the 2014-16 epidemic, the Liberian Ministry of Health tested 1.2mg of selenium on Ebola patients. That daily dose reduced the mortality rate by 46.8%. If they had used the 2mg daily dose of selenium I had recommended for Ebola, it should have reduced the mortality rate by 65%.
In 2006, the Nigerian Institute of Medical Research reported that adding just 200mg of selenium daily to anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) in advanced Aids patients increased CD4 count 140% more than using ARVs alone. Adding selenium to ARVs tripled the increase in haemoglobin, reduced hospitalisations and improved feelings of well-being.
A more beneficial result would have been achieved if the correct 400 to 600mg of selenium for advanced Aids had been used. Why is this long-known scientific knowledge not being used to help those with HIV in Africa today?
In 2015, a research team working with the Rwandan Ministry of Health reported that one tablet of 200mg selenium daily slows HIV becoming Aids by 43.6%. Doubling that dose should slow progression by approximately 65%. Why is this knowledge not applied to assist the almost ten million people with HIV worldwide who are not on ARVs – three million of whom live in South Africa?
Finally, studies show that 100% of patients with severe Covid-19 or who die of Covid are selenium deficient. This deficiency increases rapidly as viral load increases and the disease progresses. This mineral deficiency is essentially what causes the immune system to collapse and patients to die – just like with other killer viral diseases.
Why are selenium supplements not being used to remedy the severe nutritional deficiency Sars-2 causes? This is a medical mistake of monumental proportions. Much of how selenium works against viral infection has been known for over twenty years.
In her 2000 article in the Lancet medical journal, Margaret Rayman wrote that selenium is “a key nutrient counteracting the development of virulence” of viruses. Selenium is not only essential to all aspects of how the immune system functions, it also helps suppress viral infections from the start. Besides replacing the selenium lost to viral replication, selenium supplements work as NF-kappaB inhibitors (NF-kBIs) to directly reduce both viral replication and inflammation.
Millions of lives have been cut short from Aids by the failure of the WHO and national health authorities to utilise this established health science. Today, millions of people are dying from Covid-19 due to the failure of these same authorities to interrupt and correct the severe-selenium-deficiency pathway that leads to sepsis, multi-organ failure, and death from the most deadly viral diseases.
While it is easy to point fingers at health authorities for this failure, this also reflects the failure of the press to bring this critical issue to light through investigative reporting.
How many more Sars-2 variants and emerging viral pandemics must humanity endure before someone asks the question, “who was asleep at the science-based-medicine wheel?” How many more millions must perish before health authorities finally connect the dots and realise exactly how viruses cause the diseases they do? Selenium is not a panacea for curing viral disease.
However, selenium depletion and the attendant loss of protective cellular antioxidants are at the very core of how viral diseases cause the damage they do. This knowledge points towards an obvious way to save hundreds of thousands of lives from Covid, as well as from the next emerging zoonotic virus that will jump the species barrier in the next few years.
Would the WHO ignore vitamin C if a pandemic of scurvy were killing millions? It is still not too late for the press and health authorities to wake up and smell the selenium. Millions are dying worldwide. This will continue. This gross medical dereliction of duty must not be allowed to continue. We must remedy the selenium deficiency that causes death from viral disease – NOW! The whole world should be watching.
Ignoring the facts of how viruses cause their damage and how that easily can be remedied constitutes both medical negligence and a mortal sin. This systemic incompetence that is both immoral and unethical must be rectified.
People are not dying only due to viral infection. They are dying because of what a virus specifically does to them – depleting their immune-sustaining selenium. They are also dying from the medical profession’s neglect of known science that necessarily should be applied to save lives. This constitutes a monumentally shameful oversight of historic proportion.
The media should expose this inhumane negligence and end it - as soon as possible.
* Armistead is director, Selenium Education and Research Centre
Cape Times