A conversation between Dr. Mobeen Syed and Dr. Vladimir Zelenko
"This is Dr Mobeen Syed from doctorbean.com... Dr Zelenko has been treating Covid-19 patients in outpatient setting... Please tell us a little bit about yourself."
Dr. Zelenko: "So first of all thank you so much for having me; I'm sorry I didn't come on sooner, I had some issues come up. I am 46 years old I've been a family physician for 20 years. Educated and trained in New York and married, I have eight children. I grew up in New York, in Brooklyn. I was born in Ukraine, in Kiev, and my family emigrated when I was four years old.
I've been a family physician for a large community of 35,000 people...my community got hit in the beginning of March... My office instead of seeing 50 patients a day, which was the average, we were seeing 250, and all the outpatient services like the laboratories, the imaging places the radiology were all closed because of the pandemic. Half my staff got sick so it was a war zone...the way that i had to practice medicine completely changed overnight.
PANIC...
You had to rely on intuition and triage and just common sense. You had no resources so it was... as if a bomb went off and you have multiple casualties and you're understaffed and you just do the best you can... at that time if you remember the whole world at that time was focused on respirators. "We need more respirators!" No one was talking about pre-hospital intervention to help people so that they don't need respirators, which didn't make sense to me because that's what we do with every other condition, right?
OR CALM THINKING
So i started doing my research and I looked around, to see what different countries were doing so i looked in the Far East, South Korea actually and they were using hydroxychloroquine ["HCQ"] and zinc, with some mild success... then i looked in France, Dr Didier Raoult in Marseille, he was using hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin with some success...
My job is to keep people out of the hospital so I decided well let me make a regimen, let's see how things go, trial and error, you know, and so I combined the Far East approach with the French approach so hydroxychloroquine was the common denominator. Azithromycin, a most common antibiotic use... I had 20 years experience with hydroxychloroquine I've been using it for my rheumatological patients and for my patients that travel abroad to malaria endemic areas, so I would give it to them for prophylaxis: it was a drug that i was very familiar with and I prescribed it for pregnant women and to children. The [three]drugs were safe, were known to me, were cheap, and were available at that time...
STAGES OF THE ILLNESS
Most important was to intervene immediately, based on clinical suspicion and not to wait for confirmatory testing... Looking at the viral load dynamics of covid, in the first five days of symptoms the virus essentially is constant in terms of concentration, about day six it explodes like wildfire. Now I don't know in your experience but in my experience most patients come to the doctor between day four and five. The first two days they're sick they think they're gonna get better. The third day they see they're not getting better so they call the doctor and they get an appointment either the next day or the day after...if they come to me on day four or five and i'm gonna do a test and it takes... at that time it took three to four days to get the test results. So I have someone on day five, I do a test and I would send them home with nothing and when the test came back on day nine I would call them back and say you have covid, we need to treat you. It was stupid because by then they were really sick.
So what I decided to do is I'm just going to treat them empirically. It was easy to diagnose simply because it wasn't flu season. The first batch of testing that i did came back 65% positive and it's flu-like symptoms and they would lose their smell and taste... it just made common sense to diagnose them based on clinical suspicion and I noticed this: if I would intervene early, within the first five days, with high-risk patients, they stopped getting sick, they stopped going to the hospital.
A SUCCESSFUL FORMULA
And i said wait a minute what's going on here I mean it's like I fell upon a kind of formula that really made a difference and I don't take credit for it; I really believe it's from God. I don't think it's me... I'm not stupid i knew what i found people were stopping to die... I need to get it to the most powerful man on the planet...I asked my 17 year old son to help me make a YouTube video because I'd never made a YouTube video and I made a video to the president ofthe United States I... said listen i found something I think it's important I need to talk to you, so the next day his chief of staff Mark Meadows calls me... and then Stephen Hahn... of the FDA then... Rudy Giuliani called me... did a few podcasts with him which went absolutely viral, like millions of people... in my practice 2200 Covid-19 patients and... 800 of them at high risk.
High risk here means a 5% mortality rate... if you take 800 and take 5% it's 40 patients you would have assumed 40 dead people and a multiple of that on ventilators. My results were two people died and four others were on a ventilator they all got extubated and they're all doing fine. That's a... better outcome than anyone else has seen.
Then i was contacted by... Professor Martin Scholz and Dr Roland Derwand...from Germany... and we collaborated together and in the first week of July [2020] we put out a paper...
THREATS
In the process of trying to bring this information to the world, I came across a lot of opposition, intense opposition and I didn't understand why I mean I understand now but at that time it just didn't make sense and ultimately came down to you know what's motivating you... either life has sanctity because we're made in the image of God or we're nothing more than animals and like animals we can be bought and sold, our lives can be bought and sold...
Dr. Syed: I remember i received so many threats I was also one of the early adopters and I received so many threats that we'll get you jailed and we will get you. This will happen and that will happen. And here you were leading the pack...
CANCER
Dr. Zelenko: Let me tell you, life experience teaches you, and two and a half years ago I was diagnosed with pulmonary artery sarcoma... it's around 10 cases a year in the world and they're all found at autopsy, 100%mortality rate and through the literature there's only around 250 cases ever reported I guess when I choose to get cancer I get the right one and they thought it was a blood clot and I ended up having open heart surgery and they found instead of a blood clot this huge tumor and it killed my right lung as well so I had my lung resected and my pulmonary artery resected and reconstructed so think about it I went to sleep thinking i have a blood clot I wake up I have lethal cancer and I'm missing a lung.
And so at that point I really thought I was dying and there were no treatments... so I was like thrown into this very unusual psychological state and so I realized that if there's no answer for something maybe should look for the answer myself and not wait for others I mea had skin in the game it was my life right so I started doing research and I came across you know some interesting studies that were used in different settings different drugs there was this one drug that was used in a different type of sarcoma in stage four metastatic disease that showed a survival benefit so I went to my oncologist and said listen...maybe we can use this for prophylaxis and he said to me you know i invented that drug... so i took that as a sign so he agreed and I took that treatment it wasn't easy and still I'll tell you at that time when i thought i was dying I was preparing to say goodbye to my children.
So I just decided that you know God runs the world and I'm just going to do what I believe is right and whatever happens happens... I wasn't afraid I'm still not afraid I just do what I think is right and what my instincts tell me is right...I saw that it worked and my experience no one can deny. No one could tell me that out of 2200 patients I had more than two people die.
Dr. Syed: Dr zelenko tell me how is your health you've had some surgeries how are you doing now. We are praying for you, we are blessed to have you with us, we are worried about you tell us first about your health as well please.
Dr. Zelenko: So six weeks ago i went for surveillance or routine cat scan... and unfortunately they found a recurrence another tumor...obviously it's a systemic disease right now and we need to eradicate any residual cancer cells so that's my health issue... you know the prayers of the positive energy that I received from the public I really feel makes a big difference to me it's priceless I really feel it keeps my heart beating...
FRAUD TO BLOCK HCQ
Dr. Zelenko: I live in the real world and what that means is that sometimes I can't get patients HCQ because of governmental restrictions or whatever the reason or public stigma, fear. So I needed some other options that we can circumvent all these barriers and so when I came across quercetin and EGCG I started doing research and at this point I have a lot of experience with quercetin and zinc, very effective for prophylaxis, very effective in treating symptoms in low risk patients or these patients are going to get better anyway but you can reduce the severity of their symptoms however in critically or high-risk sick patients I found that hydroxychloroquine works much better... Since it had multiple mechanisms of action and it's been well studied and it's extremely safe it is still my first choice it makes sense, however if you can't get it you can't get it. So I use others...
There's been 70 studies, at this point from around the world, on hydroxychloroquine usage. Fifty-six of them were positive and showed some benefit in some way to the hydroxychloroquine and no major side effects.
Fourteen of them were negative or neutral... out of those 56 positive ones, 40 were peer reviewed so you can get all this information on the palmer foundation website... Now if you look at the 14 studies that were negative or neutral, 10 of them were done on ICU patients on ventilators. The remaining four: the discovery trial from England used homicidal dosing of hydroxychloroquine
Dr. Syed: That was a very damaging dose that they used
Dr. Zelenko: 2400 milligrams. I was using 400 milligrams they were using six times that was enough to kill an elephant yeah so all that study proved is that if you give homicidal dosing of medication they're going to kill a patient so that was interesting and then the Lancet study was retracted for outright fraud
Dr. Syed: Absolutely, and i'm still surprised that there is nothing that came out of that, meaning it created such a negative news cycle it made people so afraid of hydroxychloroquine and then there is no repercussions for the people who did that fraud."
Dr. Zelenko: ...that Lancet study, it caused the WHO to make a moratorium on the use of HCQ worldwide, and after it was retracted there was very little effort made to make aware those countries that hydroxychloroquine should again be used and what's interesting was in the United States the FDA... withdrew the emergency use authorization on the basis of the Lancet study after it was retracted for fraud.
OTHER MEDICATIONS
For low-risk patients... we suggest rest and drink a lot of fluids and then I will give them a zinc ionophore [lipid-soluble entities that transport ions across the cell membrane] either quercetin or EGCG together with zinc; by the way one caveat: for quercetin to work, you need vitamin C... let me tell you these patients are not going to go to the hospital they're not going to end up on the respirator and they're not going to die. However, they are miserable so if i can help them with their symptoms lower their fever make their cough better give them a little more energy important thing is you have to have close follow-up with the doctor you know because if things don't progress well then that person transitions to high risk and we need to treat them in the high-risk way...
Now if i cannot get hydroxychloroquine which unfortunately in some states in America you can't so then I have to go to plan B... so I would use quercetin or EGCG to replace the role of HCQ and then in terms of antibiotics I either use azithromycin or doxycycline...
IVERMECTIN
Now to answer your ivermectin question as things have developed i have modified my approach... the best treatment available should be given to patients regardless of who gets credit for it so doing my research and seeing studies and speaking to other physicians i found that ivermectin 12 milligrams one-time dose has tremendous clinical benefit in some cases and then budesonide which is an inhaled corticosteroid and I sometimes use dexamethasone. There was a study in Europe that showed that it had beneficial effects, blood thinners like lovenox because one of the complications of Covid-19 is a hypercoagulable state, people clot and then home oxygen and iv the concept for me was to bring the hospital to the people not send the people to the hospital I was seeing patients of different stages of the disease not everyone came right away so I would see someone on day eight or nine they're having difficulty breathing and I really don't want to send them to the hospital... so what i'll do is i'll give them my protocol and on top of that I'll blast them with ivermectin give them some methazone put them on logonox... give them a whole iv if I need to, even budesonide and follow them like four times a day with this approach i've not admitted one patient in hospital in months...
Dr. Syed: I love this protocol simple inexpensive to the point and aggressive right in the beginning to prevent a patient from going to the hospital... have been using ivermectin as well in some of the cases where a six milligram twice a day and I give that alternatively for one week alternative days for one week so I have tried actually ivermectin with lots of success for three days in a week and twice daily for these three days...the patients that you have been managing in outpatient with this protocol they probably did not end up in that long haul state is that correct to assume?"
LONG COVID
Dr. Zelenko: Oh absolutely the long-haul state is the byproduct of lung damage through to a cytokine release to a variant of acute respiratory distress syndrome and a byproduct of hypercoagulation.
Dr. Syed: ... my observation was those patients who were not managed early on properly most of them start becoming long haulers...
Dr. Zelenko: Covid-19 is two diseases when it's in the upper respiratory system if it's in the sinuses or in the nasopharynx it's extremely easy to eradicate however if it begins to descend down into the lower respiratory tree and that's when all the terrible complications begin this descent down begins around day five the key is to kill it when it's here and not let go here.
Dr.Syed: ...at the very first sign... I start very aggressive treatment and till now 100% of the patients have recovered... how about the prophylaxis this is the most common question that people have been asking. "
Dr. Zelenko: It depends; for example, if you look at the kids, Covid-19 is safer in kids than influenza so there are certain patients that if they get it it's a good thing because they have very mild symptoms more importantly they develop an immunity to it and that helps build a societal immunity.
Dr. Syed: ...Next question this is from twitter: how come he was allowed to be a doctor and do that while others were stopped did he experience pressure to stop or suppression of this message.
Dr. Zelenko: I was self-employed so I ran my own practice I was my own boss so that was very helpful because I didn't have an employer sitting on my head saying that if you use hydroxychloroquine or talk about it you're going to get fired so that's very useful. I had the Attorney General of New York try to investigate me and at the Department of Justice from Washington try to start off with me but I took care of them and thank God everything's fine.
[Quercetin for prophylaxisis] is not as effective as hydroxychloroquine front loading... although quercetin I've actually probably used it on over 100 patients for prophylaxis I only had one that actually developed covid and he was older and he had very mild symptoms so I would say that it's reasonably good in terms of prophylaxis; I'm not so excited about using it in high-risk patients that are sick.
Dr. Syed: So Dr Zelenko thank you so much, thank you for leading the way, thank you for standing your ground, as you are going through your own personal health issues as well, thank you for keeping saving the lives so thank you very much
Dr. Zelenko: Thank you, God bless you all.
A STUDY COMPARING DR. ZELENKO'S PROTOCOL TO STANDARD TREATMENT
COVID-19 outpatients: early risk-stratified treatment with zinc plus low-dose hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin: a retrospective case series study
The aim of this study was to describe the outcomes of patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the outpatient setting after early treatment with zinc, low-dose hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin (triple therapy) dependent on risk stratification. This was a retrospective case series study in the general practice setting. A total of 141 COVID-19 patients with laboratory-confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in the year 2020 were included. The main outcome measures were risk-stratified treatment decision and rates of hospitalisation and all-cause death. A median of 4 days [interquartile range (IQR) 3-6 days; available for n = 66/141 patients] after the onset of symptoms, 141 patients (median age 58 years, IQR 40-67 years; 73.0% male) received a prescription for triple therapy for 5 days. Independent public reference data from 377 confirmed COVID-19 patients in the same community were used as untreated controls. Of 141 treated patients, 4 (2.8%) were hospitalised, which was significantly fewer (P < 0.001) compared with 58 (15.4%) of 377 untreated patients [odds ratio (OR) = 0.16, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.06-0.5]. One patient (0.7%) in the treatment group died versus 13 patients (3.4%) in the untreated group (OR = 0.2, 95% CI 0.03-1.5; P = 0.12). No cardiac side effects were observed. Risk stratification-based treatment of COVID-19 outpatients as early as possible after symptom onset using triple therapy, including the combination of zinc with low-dose hydroxychloroquine, was associated with significantly fewer hospitalisations. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920304258
Vladimir Zelenko
Dr. Zelenko and his protocol were attacked in the US by politicians, media, and medical societies. From CDC in Washington and from WHO in Geneva, directives were issued to reject or ignore all positive reports about herbs, vitamin C, or vitamin D.
About 40 years ago, when I asked my father, an MD, about Linus Pauling's theory, he was dismissive. Then, 30 years ago, I noted that he had bought a pound of vitamin C and had joined the dissidents. I had no influence on that, but he just read about it, had tried it, and liked it
Dr. Fauci is in a similar situation: he takes 1-2 grams of C and 6000 IU of D; that was revealed in a private email, see details under vitamin D heading. Medicine rejects herbs and vitamins, and MD's, even powerful ones, are afraid of breaking an unwritten code of silence. Similarly, about 100 members of congress have approached FMCCC and have been prescribed ivermectin
If you take vitamins and herbs, doctors normally do not like it. That's normal, doctors do not like to see strangers confusing the way they do business. Just as you would not appreciate it if a friend who came to visit, while you are cooking dinner, begins to rearrange the furniture and throws out in the garbage your grandmother's oriental carpet.
Pharma and regulators saw, in the pandemic, a great opportunity to expand their wealth and power. The appearance of a cheap solution to Covid-19 was not in their interests, and they acted as if to sabotage such events. The campaigns against Vitamin D, HCQ, and ivermectin appeared to develop as if there had been a plan to sabotage their application.
The Zelenko Protocol has been changing, on the basis of clinical experience, as medical doctors, all over the world, against orders of the local Ministers of Health, have been saving patients from death and disability. The protocol now includes other medications, such as ivermectin and quercetin.
COVID-19 treatment claims
On March 21, 2020, Zelenko posted a video to YouTube and Facebook addressed to U.S. president Donald Trump, in which he claimed to have successfully tested an experimental treatment for COVID-19 on hundreds of patients with coronavirus-like symptoms.[3] He described the treatment as a three-drug combination consisting of the anti-malarial medication hydroxychloroquine, the antibiotic azithromycin, and zinc sulfate,[6] and posted an open letter to Trump with similar claims two days later.[7]
At the time, ongoing research was being conducted by various groups, including the World Health Organization, to determine the efficacy of using hydroxychloroquine and/or azithromycin to treat COVID-19.[8]
Until the Spring of 2020, hydroxychloroquine ("HCQ") was the medication advised by the FDA for travel in certain malaria areas; it was safe for children of all ages and for pregnant women--see the FDA advice under the heading hydroxychloroquine. Then Trump mentioned it, and it became a clear and present danger to all.
It's false that the WHO was running trials on HCQ when Dr. Zelenko wrote to Trump. The claim that the WHO leadership has or ever had any interest in investigating the effectiveness of any cheap medication like HCQ is counterfactual.
It's false that the Who or any other official body run a trial to determine the efficacy of HCQ.
Trump mentioned HCQ medicine on March 19; by March 23, the fix was in, and Governor Cuomo of NY made the use HCQ illegal unless it was part of a state-approved clinical trial or was used for listed indications.
Meanwhile, Trump supported trials of HCQ, but did not notice the trap he was falling into. Trials were organized to falsely prove that HCQ was ineffective, by giving HCQ in hospital. HCQ, like ivermectin, must be given during the viral phase of the illness, in the first five or six days. Giving it to patients sick enough to be hospitalized is pretty useless.
The fact that they organized fraudulent trials--as detailed under the hydroxychlorquine heading--suggests that a commercial decision had been made to crush all competition to vaccines.
In March 2020, Alex Kasprak, a science writer for Snopes, noted that since Zelenko did not describe his study design nor publish any data, his claims were unverifiable.[7] In December 2020, Zelenko with co-authors published an article on a retrospective case study of outpatient treatment with zinc, low-dose hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents.[9]
It takes time to send a study to a journal, it takes time to be accepted, it takes time to be peer reviewed, it takes months. Dr. Zelenko did not have a staff to help him publish, and was overwhelmed by too many patients at his door. Dr. Zelenko wanted to broadcast the news, as rapidly as possible: his patients were not dying.
His choice of appealing to the President worked to create attention, but created organized hostility in the media.
The Satmar Hasidic community in Kiryas Joel, New York in Monroe, New York, where Zelenko was a long-time community physician, issued a disclaimer to Zelenko's claims about the potential infection rate in their community as was reported in Jewish media sources, which announced that "Jewish MD who promoted virus cocktail is leaving [the] community where he tested it: Dr. Vladimir ‘Zev’ Zelenko, an Orthodox doctor credited with bringing controversial malaria drug to Trump's attention, accused of spreading disinformation about infection rates."[10][11][12]
It's true that one can find ignorant folks ready to attack their benefactor in any neighbourhood. So a few people were found, who were concerned about the attention that Dr. Zelenko was bringing to an isolated Jewish community, far from their base in Brooklyn. They feared attention; perhaps they feared the idea of being associated with Trump.
To give us an idea of the situation, the letter against Dr. Zelenko was not signed. It was an odd bird, an anonymous open letter.
Without doubt, they tried to find someone ready to say that Dr. Zelenko had not treated them well or successfully. They could not find that, and that is the only thing that a doctor should be concerned about.
Federal investigation
In April 2020, Zelenko presented a lecture over Zoom to a group of physicians, in which he appeared to falsely suggest that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had granted approval to a clinical trial he was helping organize.[12] The lecture was attended by conservative commentator Jerome Corsi, who had been collaborating with Zelenko on a telemedicine website. Corsi inadvertently sent an email mentioning that Zelenko had "an FDA approved randomized test of HCQ underway" to federal prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky, instead of Zelenko.[13] Zelinsky, who worked on former special counsel Robert Mueller's team, had previously questioned Corsi during the investigation of Roger Stone.[14]
According to Corsi, Zelinsky responded to his email and asked whether he had an attorney, and subsequently informed Corsi's attorney that he had discovered that Zelenko's study was not listed on a government website of FDA-approved clinical trials.[15] Zelinsky requested all communications between Corsi and Zelenko, including text messages, podcast documents, and marketing materials for their website, which Corsi supplied.[16] Zelenko denied any wrongdoing and said that he thought that his study had FDA approval because he had spoken with FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn.[12]
Dr. Zelenko got a call from Mark Meadow, President Trump's chief of staff. Dr. Zelenko got a call from Rudy Giuliani. Dr. Zelenko got a call from Dr. Stephen, FDA commissioner, who offered his help to secure medicines for clinical trial organized at Saint Francis Hospital. Dr. Zelenko assumed that the trial was authorised by the FDA. Those were the heady days of March 2020, and he mentioned that in a doctors' conference call.
That was enough to cause the nice guys at Wikipedia to accuse him of presenting false information.
Apparently, federal authorities agreed that the words of Dr. Zelenko were not fraudulent and relented, closing their investigation. Wikipedia's truthers did not relent.