[Update: 3/28/20. The video has been removed. I figured this would happen.
As you will read, he placed himself at great risk professionally. What I did not know on March 26 is that he had already been shut down on the morning of March 24. He was ordered by the New York authorities to stop treating people. But Vice President Mike Pence announced that afternoon the FDA has now authorized its use. There has been no testing. However, the physician has the coronavirus. He is self-quarantined. The story is here.
This information is now relevant. Other physicians can now use this drug to treat COVID-19.]
This man says that he is a board-certified physician in New York state. He posted this video on his successes in treating people for the coronavirus.
He is using a combination of hydroxychloroquine and zinc.
He sounds serious to me. I don't think a Hasidic Jew would post a video based on a lie regarding the Hasidic community's rate of infection. He says that something in the range of 60% of that community already is carrying the coronavirus. If he is right, then the figures we are getting from the CDC and the other reporting agencies are abysmally underreported.
If 60% of the community is already carrying the coronavirus, then the coronavirus has already reached something close to the maximum that it can reach statistically. There won't be 100% of the people in any large community who catch it.
There have been no deaths reported so far. If 60% of a community of 30,000 people have it, but no one has died, then the coronavirus is a nothingburger (available only by take-out).
I am sure that he is the only physician in the community who is using this combination of medically untested ingredients. So, the absence of any deaths in his community of 30,000 Hasidic Jews is not based on his treatment.
Again, all of this assumes the accuracy of his statistical extrapolation to 30,000 people based on the patients he has dealt with.
The pieces in his story do not add up. That's the problem. How did he get the test kits? How many people did he test? How did they know they might be carriers? How did they know to come in and ask for the test? Why does this handful of people represent the Hasidic community as a whole?
In short, I don't believe his story, even though I think he thinks he is telling the truth. But what matters is this: his success rate in curing the coronavirus. It matters for the people he cured. It does not matter for the rest of us. We cannot get the medicine he used.
IRRELEVANT FOR THE NATION
I am happy to hear that the treatment he implemented has been successful. But there is no way that the medical establishment is going to allow this. What he did was illegal. I'm glad he did it, but it broke the law. He was using a medicine designed to deal with malaria, and approved only for use in treating malaria, to treat the coronavirus. That's illegal.
I hope that he is not shut down by the government or by the medical establishment. They could do so if they wanted to.
What I am sure of is this: his advice is not going to be taken by President Trump, the CDC, the FDA, and the medical establishment. These people cannot even deliver test kits to America's physicians. We have been told that such tests will be available at CVS, Walmart, and other retail outlets. They will be conducted in the parking lots. I have seen nothing like this yet. I live two miles from the Walmart Supercenter that launched the new Walmart Health program a few months ago. I reported on this. If there is one Walmart Supercenter in the United States that would be dedicating part of the parking lot to the tests, it would be this one. It has not happened so far.
So, what do I make of this video? The man sounds honest. I do not think he is lying. He is putting his reputation on the line. More than this, he is putting his medical practice on the line. He could be shut down today for conducting an unofficial, unapproved test of a drug used in the treatment of malaria. No physician would do this except on this basis: he is trying to save lives and trying to keep coronavirus victims out of hospitals.
If I was diagnosed as having the coronavirus, I would personally take the risk of accepting his treatment. (So would Dr. Anthony Fauci.) It would be more risky for me than it would be for you, or so I believe. The physician I respect most on treating cancer is the late Nicholas Gonzalez. He reported that zinc should not be used by people who have prostate cancer. I do not take a zinc supplement. But if I were tested positive for the coronavirus, I would take it in combination with hydroxychloroquine. Of course, this is all hypothetical. Unless I went to New York to become a patient of the physician who made the video, this treatment would not be available to me. Anyway, I don't know anyone else who is making it available.
This is why the good news of the treatment is irrelevant.
What would be phenomenally good news is this: the high accuracy of his extrapolation from his own practice to the entire Hasidic Jewish community he lives in. If 60% of them have the coronavirus, and nobody has died, then there is nothing much to fear from the coronavirus. The trouble is, I don't think his extrapolation is accurate. It was not based on a statistical sample that would be considered relevant for such an extrapolation.
In short, I do not believe that 60% of the Hasidic community he lives in have contracted the coronavirus. I do not think it has run its course in New York state or even in the Hasidic community. I think it is just getting started.
For the sake of the people who can get into his office, I hope the government and the medical establishment do not shut him down. Over 80,000 people have seen the video. This is a threat to the medical establishment. He is necessarily implying that the medical establishment is asleep at the wheel. Anybody who does this is playing with fire.
Note: Nevada's governor has banned the use of this drug to treat coronavirus. I hope other governors do not imitate him.
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