How Many Have Died Needlessly?

With the honorable exception of those nice people at Fox News, almost unbelievably the MSM have managed to overlook Chloroquine and Hydroxychloriquine as treatments for Covid-19! They’re not alone – despite the success of small-scale trials governments around the world have been slow to move to full-scale trials. How many have died needlessly as a result? And how many more lives will be thrown away?

The number could end up in the tens of thousands. The first large-scale use of Hydroxychloroquine in the United States, by Dr Vladimir Zelenko in New York, has been a spectacular success, with no fewer than 699 Covid-19 patients treated successfully. My nice colleague Carol Duff on this site has reported on a successful trial in China, where the doctors have managed to avoid being shot (so far!).

Sadly my prediction of a maximum of 50,000 deaths worldwide in this outbreak (I dislike the term pandemic, which just seems to me to be over the top) turned out to be too optimistic. I’m revising it to between 100,000 and 150,000, including some 45,000 in China, where the outbreak has already peaked. It should peak in the next few weeks in Britain, America and Europe. (Manifestly the Chinese were underreporting deaths in Wuhan from the word go.)

The Sars-CoV-2 virus is pretty fragile and doesn’t like heat, expiring at about 80 deg. F. Africa is nowhere nearly as badly affected as other continents. As the weather warms up (today has been a lovely spring day in the West of England) the infection rate should slow.

Hydroxychloroquine

It turns out that the trial in Marseilles involved only 42 (some say 24) Coronavirus patients, but clearly it was a success. Manifestly large-scale trials should have been commenced on a priority basis in Britain, the USA, France, Spain and Italy.

Hydroxychloroquine (Plaquenil) is less toxic than chloroquine and combined with the antibiotic Azithromycin and Zinc Sulfate seems to be giving good results, good enough for the Chinese to be rubbishing them. (Whom do you believe – a nice French scientist with sensible views on global warming or Peking?) Moreover it seems that Hydroxychloroquine can safely be prescribed for patients with G6PD deficiency. Dr Zelenko in New York was using Zinc Sulfate as part of a combination therapy, something other physicians might wish to consider.

I applaud Tuesday’s reported decision by the FDA to sanction the use of Hydroxychloroquine. It’s a proven drug, with comparatively mild side-effects. It’s important not to get too hung up on the side-effects. One of the side-effects of getting Coronavirus is death. Which would you rather? Death or a spot of tummy-ache? Moreover side-effects can often be mitigated and dosage can be adjusted if need be. The UK has finally started a large-scale hospital trial of Hydroxychloriquine, along with two other drugs, Lopinavir-Ritonavir, an anti-HIV drug and Dexamethasone, an anti-inflammatory.

No-one is saying that patients should be taking either Chloroquine or Hydroxychloroquine without prescription from a qualified physician – I’m no more a licensed medical practitioner than the Director of the World Health Organisation. The reported case of a couple of idiots in Arizona, one of them sadly now a dead idiot, or, if you prefer, an ex-idiot, who took Chloroquine Phosphate in the form of fish-tank cleaner (!), on a prophylactic basis, is a red herring. Neither of the two anti-malarials is a vaccine and they should only be prescribed to those who have already caught Covid-19, in the correct dosage.

Throwing away thousands of lives by not prescribing a medicine which has been shown to work in a large-scale trial, the use of which is supported by peer-reviewed science, just because some patients might suffer side-effects, is, as Dr Spock might say, not logical. Penicillin can produce a severe allergic reaction in some patients – are CNN and the other idiots rubbishing Hydroxychloroquine really saying that we should stop using penicillin and its derivatives? You may as well say that we should all stop drinking gin and tonics because quinine is used to make tonic water.

In another encouraging development Altasciences is making progress with gimsilumab, a monoclonal antibody that targets granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF) in Covid-19 patients at risk of progressing to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)(PMLive, accessed March 30^th at 2020Zulu).

A kind reader has also drawn my attention to a new antibody therapy developed by bio-tech company Distributed Bio. It only works for about eight weeks, but it sounds promising.

Do the Chinese have a vaccine?

Another thoughtful reader (not all my readers are Democrats!) has pointed out that when he visited Wuhan at the height of the outbreak, with tens of thousands of locals snuffing it from Coronavirus, the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping limited himself to a pretty basic mask. Like most dictators Jinping has a pretty high opinion of himself. Was he vaccinated against Covid-19 before his visit?

It’s quite common to develop counter-measures alongside bio-weapons. I would be surprised if the ChiComs weren’t sitting on a vaccine. They couldn’t announce it for fear of giving the game away.

The European Medicines Agency

One reason why Dr Zelenko’s patients in New York are getting better and NHS patients are dying in Britain by the hundreds every day is the notorious European Medicines Agency. The EMA has the EU and the UK in its death grip and up till now has blocked the use of Hydroxychloroquine. Since there is no clinical or scientific reason not to use it I assume that the EMA’s stance is political.

Once word gets out in Europe that an EU agency has been blocking effective treatment for Covid-19 and that thousands of Spanish and Italian citizens have been sacrificed needlessly there will be hell to be pay. The EU has failed utterly to respond either timeously or effectively to this crisis. It may soon become an existential crisis for the EU itself.

Even convinced Euronutters, no offense intended, like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, have switched from supporting the EU to calling for world dictatorship. They don’t quite put it like that of course, but democracy requires a demos, or a people. World ‘government’ would in practice mean world dictatorship, under DVD control.

Interestingly the newly announced UK trials suggest that we might be breaking free of the EMA’s death grip. Just because the EU wants to throw Spain and Italy under the bus doesn’t mean that we have to be run over as well!

Her Highness Princess Maria Teresa of Bourbon Palma

Sadly Princess Maria Teresa succumbed to Coronavirus last week. I didn’t have the privilege of knowing Her Highness but I worked with her charming brother, Sixte, on behalf of that nice man General Pinochet, still the nicest military dictator I’ve ever met.

The Chinese have also managed to knock off comedian Eddie Large, of the Little and Large comedy duo. That isn’t going to make Peking any more popular in the UK. They’ll be knocking off Eddie Murphy next.

Belt and Road Initiative

Those nice people at Stand Up America US, led by Major-General Paul Vallely, have pointed out that Italian involvement in China’s Belt and Road Initiative greatly increased Italy’s vulnerability to Covid-19. I respectfully agree. The Italians weren’t helped by Chinese duplicity and Peking’s decision to suppress news of the outbreak in Wuhan for around six weeks.

ChiCom or US Deep State weapon?

I respectfully disagree with those of my colleagues who are continuing to push the Peking line that Covid-19 was brought to Wuhan by the US delegation to the World Military Games. I’ve seen reporting suggesting that the containment breach in Wuhan was on November 17^th, which makes sense.

UK experience is that people only spread the virus for about 60 hours before coming down with symptoms. As I argued in my last column the timings don’t work. Moreover the US was clearly unprepared for this, partly as a result of a catastrophic intelligence failure (or deliberate decision to suppress the intelligence) by the CIA, who it turns out helped to develop the weapon. There is no way that the US military would have launched a WMD attack on the People’s Republic of China, but even if they had been that crazy there is no way they would not have been ready with a vaccine.

Whilst China has the highest death toll, taking 45,000 dead as a realistic estimate, America was always going to be exposed. That is to say the US couldn’t have attacked China without injuring herself, badly. The official US death toll has already exceeded the official Chinese total.

I still maintain that this was a non-intentional containment breach. I see no sign of deliberate intent whatsoever. That still doesn’t let Peking off the hook – indeed there may yet have to be an International Military Tribunal, along Nuremberg lines, trying China’s leadership for their lives.

I entirely agree with those of my valued colleagues at VeteransToday.com who are making a connection between Coronavirus, UNC at Chapel Hill, the Agency and USAID, a known CIA front organisation. However to describe UNC as “evil”, in the sense of Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse-Tung, the Boston Strangler and Nancy Pelosi (no offense intended) seems to me to be a bit strong. It is entirely possible that UNC were just working on an antidote or a vaccine.

Moreover the research goes back to 2015, that is to say it was an Obama-era program, which is going to pose HUGE problems for Joe Biden come November. The Democrats have already got big problems of course, principal among them working out how to get through an entire presidential election campaign without either their candidate or Tara Reade opening their mouths.

It’s a bio-weapon alright, and it’s clearly a development of SARS, using some of the genetic code developed by the DVD in its HIV program, but it’s a ChiCom, not an American, weapon. The only real questions are whether the Chinese or the Iranians were going to use it, and if so against whom.

I see no reason to depart from my analysis that the weapon was being developed for Iran, but I am unclear as to whether the Iranians were intending to use it against Israel or Saudi Arabia. It’s just possible that they only wanted it as a deterrent, given their anti-semitic and paranoid view of Israel, although I doubt it.

Confirmation that it’s airborne

We’re now starting to see confirmation that it’s airborne. Scientists have detected the virus in rooms vacated by patients, some of whom sadly have gone out feet first. This is particularly crucial for medical personnel.

I trust I will be forgiven for reminding governments and legislators (and governments, MPs and Congressmen see my stuff) that I first said this on February 24^th. How many doctors and nurses have died because my advice was not followed? We’ve been here before – I was amongst the first to detect that Ebola had been weaponized and that the version in the last outbreak was airborne. Medical personnel following dangerously inadequate guidelines died needlessly as a result.

I am totally opposed to the Cabinet Office policy of sacrificing the lives of British doctors and nurses in order to protect Peking. The fact that airborne transmission points towards weaponization is neither here nor there – medical personnel need to be able to protect themselves, in their own interests and those of the patients they are caring for. Cruise liner captains similarly need to be turning off the air-conditioning.

Boris gets it

Speaking of the Cabinet Secretary, hopes are rising in England that the Prime Minister may have given him a touch of Coronavirus, efforts to persuade Sir Mark to go on a Princess cruise having failed. For the PM to have come down with Coronavirus whilst telling everybody else how to avoid it was a bit odd, with respect. Happily his dog, Dilyn, is OK.

The silly climate summit

It’s not all bad news. The silly climate summit due to be held in Glasgow in November has been cancelled. In theory it’s only been postponed, but it’s entirely possible that it may not happen at all.

There are going to be a lot of changes as we emerge from this Chinese-caused crisis, indeed Peking may yet have to be reminded who won the Opium Wars. Up till now the West has been willing to go along with this global warming nonsense, but all Western governments are fully aware that President Trump is right, with respect. Man-made global warming is the biggest scientific hoax since the Piltdown Skull.

As our economies look to recover from the immense damage caused by the bio-containment failure in Wuhan we’re going to have to cut out frivolous expenditure on things like ‘combating’ climate change, when nothing we can do can make a blind bit of difference. If we want to cool our planet down we would need to change orbit, and that’s not quite as easy as changing lanes on a freeway, even on I-5 in LA. (I did that once, but it took ages, probably because I made the mistake of using my indicators!)

Environmentalists like George Monbiot of the Guardian (known affectionately by my old friend Christopher Booker of the Sunday Telegraph as ‘Moonbat’) are of course trying to blame Coronavirus on Western governments, like it was their bug. Coronavirus has nothing whatsoever to do with Western environmental policies.

Best Coronavirus joke of the week

I should emphasise two things about the following joke. Firstly, it’s the only Coronavirus joke that I’ve been sent this week, so it’s not exactly been up against stiff competition. Secondly, it has been rigorously checked for compliance with the Bar Standards Board’s valuable equal opportunities and diversity guidelines.

The Chinese authorities have released the names of the first three Chinamen to die from Coronavirus: Sum Ting Wong, Ho Lee Fuk and Yu Dai Soon, whose mother may have been Welsh.

MI5’s new DG

Good luck to MI5’s new Director-General, Ken McCallum, who takes over from Sir Andrew Parker at the end of the month. I owe Sir Andrew no favors, so this may be a welcome change. (He failed to pass MI5’s copies of the intercepts in my case to Home Secretary Priti Patel, leaving her in the dark.)

Ken was involved in the smear operation against GRU over the Skripals, who have not been heard of for some time, possibly because they’ve been whacked by GO2. Hopefully it was just a case of his being taken in by the nonsense coming from Porton Down about the bio-weapon in question, which as regular readers know was BX, not Novichok.

Speaking of Russia, the one European leader to come out of this crisis with his reputation enhanced is dear old Pooters, a.k.a President Putin. He acted quickly to protect the Russian people and deserves credit, as of course does President Trump. New readers might have noticed that not of all of my colleagues here at VT share my respect for your fine President, but we enjoy editorial independence. Each columnist is free to speak his or her mind.

The new Labour leader

As expected, the new leader of the Labour Party is euro-nutter Sir Keir ‘von’ Starmer. Ministers should now assume that all civil service advice will be given in bad faith with a view to getting Labour elected in 2024. That isn’t because the Cabinet Office are socialists. It’s because ‘von’ Starmer is opposed to democracy and thinks that the country should be governed by the unelected Cabinet Secretary. Sir Keir isn’t interested in Labour’s policies, only the Cabinet Office’s, no offense intended. He will be a terrible failure.

Alex Salmond

One of the few criminal trials still running in the UK last week was that of former SNP leader Alex Salmond. Unsurprisingly, he was acquitted of a series of bogus sex allegations. Very frankly, given that they were made either by civil servants or political enemies in the SNP and were in no way corroborated, there was never any need to take any of the allegations seriously. There is a close parallel here with the bad faith bullying allegations made by bent civil servants against Home Secretary Priti Patel.

I hold no brief for Alex Salmond and despise him for his role in the cover-up of the DVD’s sabotage of the Piper Alpha oil-rig in 1988, which involved the murder of some 167 souls. However, not least having been the victim of false allegations myself, I am not prepared to see anyone being tried on trumpery charges. The ridiculous ring-back bomb hoax allegation and the indecent images charge against me, based as it was on a substituted memory stick without my fingerprints or DNA on it, brought the English legal system into disrepute. At least the Scottish legal system has avoided similar damage in the Salmond case.

This week’s movie review: We Dive At Dawn (1943, dir. Anthony Asquith)

Talking Pictures satellite TV channel in the UK has been doing its best to cheer everybody up by showing movies of the Royal Navy killing Germans. We Dive At Dawn is one of the best movies ever made about the Submarine Service.

Starring John Mills as the skipper of the fictional ‘S’ class submarine HMS Sea Tiger, the plot revolves around an attempt to sink the equally fictional new German pocket battleship, the Brandenberg. Not finding her where she was supposed to be, at the North Sea end of the Kiel Canal, the CO comes up with a cunning plan. Why not enter the Baltic and sink her as she comes out the other end?

The plan works and the intrepid Sea Tiger torpedoes the Brandenberg. The movie is surprisingly objective, for a war-time production, about our community partners, who are portrayed variously as fat, sleazy or cowardly. Our brave Jack Tars, on the other hand, are portrayed as square-jawed, courageous and clean-living, as one would expect from the Royal Navy.

It doesn’t matter how many times you see it, the scene where the Sea Tiger attacks the Brandenberg is still exciting, as the attack plot is built up. (It’s always very important of course not to lose the plot when torpedoing your community partner.) Well worth seeing again.

Michael Shrimpton

Michael Shrimpton was a barrister from his call to the Bar in London in 1983 until being disbarred in 2019 over a fraudulently obtained conviction. He is a specialist in National Security and Constitutional Law, Strategic Intelligence and Counter-terrorism. He is a former Adjunct Professor of Intelligence Studies at the American Military University.

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