McCullough and his global partners quickly identified a pharmacopoeia of off-the-shelf treatments demonstrating extraordinary efficacy against each stage of COVID when administered early in the course of the disease.
McCullough chronicles the rapid pace with which front-line doctors uncovered rich apothecaries of effective COVID remedies. HHS’s early studies supported hydroxychloroquine’s efficacy against coronavirus since 2005, and by March 2020, doctors from New York to Asia were using it against COVID with extraordinary effect. That month, McCullough and other physicians at his medical center organized, with the FDA, one of the first prophylactic protocols using hydroxychloroquine. “We had terrific data on ivermectin, from the medical teams in Bangladesh and elsewhere by early summer 2020. So now we had two cheap generics.” McCullough and his growing team of 50+ front-line doctors discovered that while HCQ and IVM work well against COVID, adding other medications boosts outcomes drastically. These included azithromycin or doxycycline, zinc, vitamin D, Celebrex, bromhexine, NAC, IV vitamin C, and quercetin. McCullough’s team realized that, like hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, quercetin—that ubiquitous health store nutraceutical—is an ionophore—meaning that it facilitates zinc uptake in the cells, destroying the capacity of coronavirus to replicate. “The Canadians came on with Colchicine in a high-quality trial based on an initial Greek trial,” McCullough continued. “We learned more from experts at UCLA and elsewhere with respect to blood clotting and the need for aspirin and blood thinners. We got early approval for monoclonal antibodies. It was later learned that both fluvoxamine and famotidine could play roles in multidrug treatment.” LSU Medical School professor Paul Harch discovered peer-reviewed papers from China where researchers there had been using hyperbaric chambers (HBOT) with stunning success.48 Between April and May, a group of NYU researchers reproduced that success by getting patients off ventilators and quickly recovering 18 of 20 ventilator cases using HBOT.49 (Yale is currently conducting Phase 3 with stellar early results.)
There were many other promising treatments. Asian nations were using saline nasal lavages to great effect to reduce viral loads and transmission.50 McCullough discovered he could prophylax patients and drop viral load and prevent transmission with a variety of other oral/nasal rinses and dilute virucidal agents, including povidone iodine, hydrogen peroxide, hypochlorite, and Listerine or mouthwash with cetylpyridinium chloride. Mass General’s infectious disease maven Dr. Michael Callahan had seen hundreds of patients in Wuhan in January 2020, and assessed the impressive efficacy of Pepcid, an over-the-counter indigestion medicine. The Japanese were already using Prednisone, Budesonide, and Famotidine with extraordinary results.
By July 1, McCullough and his team had developed the first protocol based on signals of benefit and acceptable safety. They submitted the protocol to the American Journal of Medicine. That study, titled “The Pathophysiologic Basis and Clinical Rationale for Early Ambulatory Treatment of COVID-19,”51 quickly became the world’s most-downloaded paper to help doctors treat COVID-19.
“It is extraordinary that Dr. Fauci never published a single treatment protocol before that,” says McCullough, “and that ‘America’s Doctor’ has never, to date, published anything on how to treat a COVID patient. It shocks the conscience that there is still no official protocol. Anyone who tries to publish a new treatment protocol will find themselves airtight blocked by the journals that are all under Fauci’s control.”
The Chinese published their own early treatment protocol on March 3, 2020,52,53 using many of the same categories of prophylactic and early treatment drugs uncovered by McCullough—chloroquine (a cousin of hydroxychloroquine), antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, antihistamines, a variety of steroids, and probiotics to stabilize and fortify the immune system and apothecaries of traditional Chinese medicines, vitamins, and minerals, including a variety of compounds containing quercetin, zinc, and glutathione precursors.54 The Chinese made early treatment the central priority of their COVID strategy. They used intense—and intrusive—track-and-trace surveillance to identify and then immediately hospitalize and treat every COVID-infected Chinese. Early treatment helped the Chinese to end their pandemic by April 2020. “We could have done the same,” says McCullough.
Though now he is often censored, the AMA still lists Dr. McCullough’s study as the most frequently downloaded paper for 2020. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) downloaded and turned McCullough’s AMA article into its official treatment guide.55 AAPS Director Dr. Jeremy Snavely told me in August 2021 that the Guide had 122,000 downloads: “We figure it has been seen by over a million people. It’s the only trusted guide. Our phone never stops ringing. Mostly the calls are from physicians and patients desperate for the help they cannot get from any HHS website.”
By autumn, front-line physicians had assembled a pharmacopeia of repurposed drugs, all of which were effective against COVID.
By that time, more than 200 studies supported treatment with hydroxychloroquine, and 60 studies supported ivermectin. “We combined these medicines with doxycycline, azithromycin to suppress infection,” says McCullough. Another meta-analysis supported the use of prednisone and hydrocortisone and other widely available steroids to combat inflammation.56 Three studies supported the use of inhaled budesonide against COVID; an Oxford University study published in February 2021 demonstrated that that treatment could reduce hospitalizations by 90 percent in low-risk patients,57 and a publication in April 2021 showed that recovery was faster for high-risk patients, too.58 Furthermore, a very large study supported colchicine as an anti-inflammatory.59 Finally, McCullough’s growing array of physicians had observational data from late-stage treatment of hospitalized patients with full-dose aspirin and antithrombotics, including Enoxaparin, Apixaban, Rivaroxaban, Dabigatran, Edoxaban, and full-dose anticoagulation with low molecular weight heparin for blood clots.60
“We were able to show that doctors can work with four to six drugs in combination, supplemented by vitamins and nutraceuticals including zinc, vitamins D and C, and Quercetin. And they can guide patients at home, even the highest-risk seniors, and avoid a dreaded outcome of hospitalization and death,” said McCullough.