Day: January 10, 2023

• An investigation by The Associated Press reveals pandemic-era mass surveillance technologies are being utilized as instruments of control

• In China, COVID-19 QR codes have been used to restrict movement, protests and other forms of dissent

• In Israel, the Shin Bet security agency used COVID-19 contact tracing technology to send text messages accusing innocent people of acts of violence

• There is fear that COVID-19 mass surveillance technologies will become a measure for widespread social control in which health data, housing information, financial profiles and more are used to create a comprehensive profile of each individual on earth

• The solution to opting out of the madness and protecting your personal privacy and liberties as much as possible is not to voluntarily give up your control and information

Much like air travel was fundamentally changed post-9/11 — justified by national security and the “war on terror” — the world is now profoundly different than its pre-COVID-19 state. Freedoms taken for granted in 2019 were abruptly taken away in 2020, again justified by national security and public health.

But now, even with COVID-19 neutralized, technologies supposedly put in place to monitor and track the virus haven’t gone away. On the contrary, they’re still being used and expanded throughout the world, revealing that mass monitoring of the global population wasn’t about COVID-19 after all but something much bigger, with the potential to eliminate freedom as we know it.

A year-plus investigation by The Associated Press reveals a concerning trend worldwide in which pandemic-era mass surveillance technologies are being utilized as instruments of control.

“In the pandemic’s bewildering early days, millions worldwide believed government officials who said they needed confidential data for new tech tools that could help stop coronavirus’ spread. In return, governments got a firehose of individuals’ private health details, photographs that captured their facial measurements and their home addresses,” AP noted.

Now individuals are finding that data is being used against them — restricting travel and activism, in law enforcement cases and even being shared with spy agencies. As John Scott-Railton with internet watchdog Citizen Lab told AP, “Any intervention that increases state power to monitor individuals has a long tail and is a ratcheting system. Once you get it, is very unlikely it will ever go away.”

In China, citizens were required to install cellphone apps that produce QR codes depending on health status. A green result, based on PCR test results, allows a person to move about freely while a yellow or red result restricted travel or required home confinement. Following widespread demonstrations, the country stated it would no longer enforce national-level health codes to open up travel between provinces.

But Beijing was still requiring local codes for admittance into restaurants, gyms, offices and more. At times over the last three years, entry to a supermarket could be restricted unless a green code was presented, and residents could be quarantined if they were a close contact to someone who tested positive for COVID-19.

The AP investigation, supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, also revealed that the government used COVID-19 codes to stop dissent:

“In early September, former wealth manager Yang Jiahao bought a train ticket to Beijing, where he planned to lodge various complaints with the central government. The night before, a woman he described as a handler invited him to dinner. Handlers are usually hired by state security as part of ‘stability maintenance’ operations and can require people to meet or travel when authorities worry they could cause trouble.

Yang had a meal with the handler, and the next morning Guangzhou health authorities reported a COVID-19 case less than a kilometer from where they dined, he said. Based on city regulations, Yang’s code should have turned yellow, requiring him to take a few COVID tests to show he was negative.

Instead, the app turned red, even though tests showed that he didn’t have COVID. Yang was ordered to quarantine and a paper seal was placed on his door.”

In another example, bank customers who were unable to access their online bank accounts attempted to travel to Zhengzhou to protest. When they arrived at the train station, their QR codes turned red and they were escorted by police to quarantine in the basement. In all 1,317 people traveling to the city to protest the banking commission received red codes — picked up at the high-speed rail train station, the airport and the highway.

A similar trend is occurring in Israel, where the Shin Bet security agency repurposed phone surveillance technology used to monitor militants for COVID-19 contact tracing. It’s since been repurposed again and has sent text messages accusing innocent people of acts of violence during a period of unrest in May 2021 at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and vowing, “We will hold you accountable.”

Majd Ramlawi was among those who received the text. He’s a barista at a coffee shop outside the mosque compound, an area peppered with security cameras. “It’s like the government is in your bag,” Ramlawi told the AP. “When you move, the government is with you with this phone.” AP reported:

“The Shin Bet’s domestic use of the technology has generated an uproar over privacy and civil liberties within Israel, as well as questions about its accuracy. The Ministry of Communications, which oversees Israel’s telecommunications companies, refused a request seeking further details submitted for the AP by the Movement for Freedom of Information, a nonprofit that frequently works with media organizations.

Gil Gan-Mor, an attorney with the nonprofit Association for Civil Rights in Israel, estimates that hundreds of Arabs in Jerusalem received the threatening message during the unrest and said the mass text message blast was unprecedented. ‘You cannot just say to people, ‘We are watching you … and we will get revenge,’ he said. ‘You cannot use this tool to frighten people. If you have something against someone, you can put them on trial.’”

The AP obtained documents via the Freedom of Information Act, revealing that countries around the globe are engaging in mass surveillance of their citizens.

• Mexico — In the Mexico City suburb Huixquilucan, a surveillance tool was implemented during the pandemic that transmits location, live video and audio of emergency callers to authorities. The technology was said to be necessary for public safety.

• Pakistan — The country used military spyware and intelligence services to create an app that identified people infected with COVID-19 as well as those nearby. The Radius Alert function was criticized for privacy violations and leaving users vulnerable to tracking and cyberattacks.

• South Africa — Authorities used technology developed to track wildlife poachers for pandemic contract tracing. Movement restrictions were enforced and “smart policing” technologies, including facial recognition and automatic license plate scanners, were implemented in certain cities.

• Indonesia — The Health Ministry’s eHAC app collected passport numbers, government IDs and COVID-19 testing status from users as a requirement for travel to or within Indonesia. Data from 1.3 million people on the app was left exposed to potential fraud on an open server.

• Singapore — Data collected by Singapore’s Trace Together COVID-19 app is available to law enforcement to investigate certain crimes designated serious offenses.

In India, meanwhile, facial recognition technologies were used to enforce mask mandates, with police taking pictures of people not wearing the masks, or wearing them incorrectly. Such technologies have been rapidly expanded since the pandemic, and now a patrolling officer can randomly scan a person’s face in public and use an app to check for any past criminal activity. According to the AP:

“[Hyderabad] Police Commissioner C.V. Anand said the city has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years on patrol vehicles, CCTV cameras, facial recognition and geo-tracking applications and several hundred facial recognition cameras, among other technologies powered by algorithms or machine learning. 

Inside Hyderabad’s Command and Control Center, officers showed an AP reporter how they run CCTV camera footage through facial recognition software that scans images against a database of offenders … Officers decide who they deem suspicious, stoking fears among privacy advocates, some Muslims and members of Hyderabad’s lower-caste communities.”

Apps in Australia were also implemented to collect data and notify people if they were in the vicinity of someone who tested positive for COVID-19. But the data was later collected by intelligence agencies. At the local level, citizens used a check-in app that would notify them if a COVID-19 outbreak occurred in their area. But law enforcement used the data for criminal investigations and contact tracing.

There is fear that the technologies will become a measure for widespread social control, in which health data, housing information, financial profiles and more are used to create a comprehensive profile of each individual on earth.

“Surveillance today is being posed as a technological panacea to large social problems in India, which has brought us very close to China,” Apar Gupta, executive director of the New Delhi-based Internet Freedom Foundation, told AP. “There is no law. There are no safeguards. And this is general purpose deployment of mass surveillance.”

In 2020, the U.S. gave $24.9 million to data analytics software company Palantir Technologies to support the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ COVID-19 response. AP reported:

“Documents obtained by the immigrant rights group Just Futures Law under the Freedom of Information Act and shared with the AP showed that federal officials contemplated how to share data that went far beyond COVID-19. The possibilities included integrating ‘identifiable patient data,’ such as mental health, substance use and behavioral health information from group homes, shelters, jails, detox facilities and schools.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also purchased cellphone location data in 2021. The “mobility insights” data revealed the daily locations of at least 20 million cellphones, courtesy of “device IDs” provided by data broker Cuebiq. The ID can link information to individual cellphones and could be used to assess the effects of lockdowns and business closures, among many other more nefarious uses.

As Scott-Railton with Citizen Lab told AP, “What COVID did was accelerate state use of these tools and that data and normalize it, so it fit a narrative about there being a public benefit. Now the question is, are we going to be capable of having a reckoning around the use of this data, or is this the new normal?”

Measures toward authoritarian control and mass surveillance have been increasing worldwide, and in the U.S. Silicon Valley and the national security state are now fused, according to one of my favorite independent journalists, Whitney Webb.

The decades-long wars against domestic dissidence have always involved technology like databases, and now it’s progressing to technology like facial recognition apps and widespread use of cameras.

The Chinese government has given billions to the video surveillance company Hikvision, for instance, whose cameras have spread throughout the globe. Their low costs, courtesy of Chinese subsidizing, allowed them to outpace their competition, but concerns have risen that they’re ushering in a police state and may act as a “backdoor to Beijing.”

The company is a heavyweight in the industry, capable of producing 260,000 cameras daily, which works out to two for every three people born each day.

In Britain, 6 million cameras are in use — most of them provided by Hikvision — while the company’s presence has also increased, increasing from 70 U.K. staff members in 2018 to 128 in 2021. Among Hikvision’s technologies widely used in Britain were heat detection cameras brought on to detect COVID-19 symptoms in 2020.

Worldwide, millions of Hikvision’s cameras are in use, concentrating in major cities, including more than 750,000 devices in the U.S.

Hikvision also has a U.S. subsidiary called EZVIZ, which is based in California and calls itself a “global smart home security brand” that creates a “safe, convenient and smart life for users through its intelligent devices, advanced AI technologies and cloud services.”

Many people have embraced the convenience of “smart” devices in their homes and wearable devices, but there are dangers in intertwining mass surveillance systems with daily living, whether they’re made by Hikvision or another company. The solution to opting out of the madness, and protecting your personal privacy and liberties as much as possible, is to not voluntarily give up your control.

They’re counting on you taking your cellphone with you everywhere, and adopting other forms of digital control, like vaccine passports, smart devices and central bank digital currencies. When given the choice to opt in to the latest privacy-sapping technology, don’t.

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• The notion that the COVID shots are a form of gene therapy is so risky for Big Pharma’s bottom line, they’re going to great lengths to make sure people don’t think of them that way

• The Associated Press published a “fact check” in which they argued that COVID shots are not gene therapy because they do not alter your genes

• The AP misled readers by focusing on just one part of the FDA’s definition of a gene therapy — the part about modifying expression of a gene. But the full definition also includes the words “or to alter the biological properties of living cells,” which is precisely what the COVID shots do

• When the mRNA shots were rolled out in 2021, they did not meet the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s definition of a vaccine. They only met the FDA’s definition of a gene therapy

• The only reason COVID shots meet the CDC’s definition of a vaccine now is because they changed the definition to prevent “COVID-19 deniers” from saying that “COVID-19 vaccines are not vaccines per CDC’s own definition”

While the COVID-19 shots are referred to as “vaccines,” they do not meet the classical definition of a vaccine. Health authorities actually had to change the definition to accommodate the COVID shots and shut down the argument that, as experimental gene therapies, they may be riskier than traditional vaccines.

Meanwhile, based on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s definition of “gene therapy” they’re clearly gene therapies, and both Moderna and BioNTech acknowledge this. Despite that, the notion that the COVID shots are a form of gene therapy is so risky for Big Pharma’s bottom line,

they’re going to great lengths to make sure people don’t think of them that way.

Most recently, The Associated Press (AP) tried to debunk the idea that COVID shots are gene therapy, but as you’ll see, they’re either lying to protect the industry, or have gotten so inept they don’t know how to do investigative journalism anymore. Either way, it doesn’t reflect well on their credibility.

AP, at the end of December 2022, published a “fact check” titled “No, COVID-19 Vaccines Aren’t Gene Therapy,” in which they argued:

“The COVID-19 vaccines do not change a person’s genes, as gene therapy does … The shots from Pfizer and Moderna use messenger RNA, or mRNA, to instruct the body to create a protein from the coronavirus. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, meanwhile, uses a modified adenovirus to trigger an immune response …

In recent days, social media posts have shared a claim that the vaccines are ‘gene therapy’ — which involves modifying a person’s genes to treat or cure a disease, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.”

The FDA defined gene therapy in July 2018 and has not changed it since. Per the FDA’s website as of this writing:

“Human gene therapy seeks to modify or manipulate the expression of a gene or to alter the biological properties of living cells for therapeutic use. Gene therapy is a technique that modifies a person’s genes to treat or cure disease …”

Here’s where AP went wrong. They only used ONE part of the FDA’s definition of a gene therapy — the part about modifying expression of a gene — in its debunking attempt. But the full definition also includes the words “or to alter the biological properties of living cells,” which is precisely what the COVID shots do.

The mRNA in the COVID jab are molecules that contain genetic instructions for making various proteins. mRNA COVID shots deliver synthetic mRNA with a genetic code that instructs your cells to produce a modified form of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

In other words, they “alter the biological properties of living cells for therapeutic use.” Whether they modify your DNA is irrelevant. Note the word “or” in the FDA’s definition. It means it can be one OR the other. They don’t have to alter gene expression in order to still qualify as gene therapy, at least not per the FDA’s definition.

Moderna’s November 2018 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registration statement

also confirms that its mRNA injections are defined as gene therapy, clearly stating that “mRNA is considered a gene therapy product by the FDA.”

“[In] the United States, and in the European Union, mRNA therapies have been classified as gene therapy medicinal products …” ~ BioNTech SEC Registration

The September 2019 SEC filing for BioNTech (its mRNA technology is used in the Pfizer vaccine) is equally clear, stating on page 21:

“… in the United States, and in the European Union, mRNA therapies have been classified as gene therapy medicinal products …”

So, in the U.S. and Europe, mRNA therapies, as a group, are classified as “gene therapy medicinal products.”

There’s simply no way around this. Yet to this day, mainstream media tries to “debunk” the reality of the COVID jab.

In 2018, Moderna acknowledged that mRNA technology was of a “novel and unprecedented nature,”

yet for the past three years, we’ve been told that it’s just a newer, faster way to make vaccines.

The fact of the matter is that when the mRNA shots were rolled out in early 2021, they didn’t meet the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s definition of a vaccine. They only met the FDA’s definition of a gene therapy. And the only reason they meet the CDC’s definition of a vaccine now is because the CDC changed their definition.

All the way up until the end of October 2021, the CDC defined a vaccine as “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.” Immunity, in turn, was defined as “Protection from an infectious disease,” meaning that “If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected.”

The new definition

of “vaccine” is: “A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.” So, a “vaccine” went from being something that produces protective immunity, to simply stimulating an immune response. The key words “to produce immunity” were eliminated from the equation.

This makes the COVID shots fit the description, as they do not make you immune against COVID-19 and weren’t designed to prevent infection in the first place.

Internal CDC correspondence

obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests also conclusively prove the reason for the change was simply to shut down arguments by “right-wing COVID-19 pandemic deniers” that “COVID-19 vaccines are not vaccines per CDC’s own definition.”

The FDA’s guidance for the human gene therapy products industry,

published in January 2020, also classified mRNA injections as gene therapy. Importantly, in this document the FDA stressed that gene therapy products that carry microRNA or cytokines can have “unknown pleotropic effects, including altered expression of host (human) genes that could result in unpredictable and undesirable outcomes.”

While the COVID jab certainly produces undesirable outcomes, negative consequences were not unpredicted. Early on, a number of scientists who had looked into the shots’ mechanisms of action warned about the possibility of severe adverse outcomes, including impairment of the immune system, neurological dysfunction and cancer. Today, a wide array of data and statistics prove those early concerns were valid.

For example, a risk-benefit analysis

looking at the impact of booster mandates for university students concluded that between 22,000 and 30,000 previously uninfected adults (aged 18 to 29) must be boosted to prevent one COVID-19 hospitalization.

Meanwhile, for each hospitalization prevented, the jab will cause 18 to 98 serious adverse events, including 1.7 to 3 “booster-associated myocarditis cases in males, and 1,373 to 3,234 cases of grade ≥3 reactogenicity which interferes with daily activities.” According to the authors, mandating a third COVID shot for university students will result in “a net expected harm.”

The authors also stress that “Given the high prevalence of post-infection immunity, this risk-benefit profile is even less favorable.” They go on to state that “University booster mandates are unethical because:”

“1) no formal risk-benefit assessment exists for this age group;

2) vaccine mandates may result in a net expected harm to individual young people;

3) mandates are not proportionate: expected harms are not outweighed by public health benefits given the modest and transient effectiveness of vaccines against transmission;

4) U.S. mandates violate the reciprocity principle because rare serious vaccine-related harms will not be reliably compensated due to gaps in current vaccine injury schemes; and

5) mandates create wider social harms. We consider counter-arguments such as a desire for socialization and safety and show that such arguments lack scientific and/or ethical support.”

A small observational study

led by neurology researchers at the National Institutes of Health brought equally bad news, as they found “a variety of neuropathic symptoms” occurring within three to four weeks of COVID injection:

“We studied 23 patients (92% female; median age 40 years) reporting new neuropathic symptoms beginning within 1 month after SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. 100% reported sensory symptoms comprising severe face and/or limb paresthesias, and 61% had orthostasis, heat intolerance and palpitations …

Together, 52% (12/23) of patients had objective evidence of small-fiber peripheral neuropathy … This observational study suggests that a variety of neuropathic symptoms may manifest after SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations and in some patients might be an immune-mediated process.”

Isn’t it curious that the FDA, CDC, NIH and mainstream media refuse to admit there are risks, even though the NIH’s own research shows it? In all likelihood, the FDA’s and CDC’s data collection on the shots also reveal there are significant problems, as both agencies are stonewalling attempts to get key safety analyses released. As reported by The Epoch Times back in the summer of 2022:

“According to operating procedures laid out by the agency and its partner in January 2021

and February 2022, the FDA would perform data mining ‘at least biweekly’ to identify adverse events ‘reported more frequently than expected following vaccination with COVID-19 vaccines.’ The agency would perform the mining on data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

In a recent response, the FDA records office told The Epoch Times that it would not provide any of the analyses, even in redacted form. The agency cited an exemption to the Freedom of Information Act that lets the government withhold inter-agency and intra-agency memorandums and letters ‘that would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency.’

The agency also pointed to the Code of Federal Regulations, which says that ‘all communications within the Executive Branch of the Federal government which are in written form or which are subsequently reduced to writing may be withheld from public disclosure except that factual information which is reasonably segregable …’

It’s not clear why the FDA could not produce copies of the analyses with non-factual information redacted.”

According to the VAERS standard operating procedures cited above, the CDC is also required to perform data mining analyses using Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR) data mining. PRR

measures how common an adverse event is for a specific drug compared to all the other drugs in the database.

When The Epoch Times asked the CDC to release its results, it too refused. According to The Epoch Times,

the CDC “has also twice provided false information when responding to questions.” First, they claimed that no PRR analyses were done and that data mining was outside their purview.

Some time later, they admitted the agency did perform PRRs starting in February 2021, only to later backtrack, saying they only started doing PRRs in March 2022. The Epoch Times cites several papers in which the FDA and/or CDC claim their data mining efforts have come up empty handed.

But if that’s true, why the reluctance to release the data? Don’t they want us to be reassured that these shots are as safe as they claim them to be? Why sit on exculpatory evidence? Unless, of course, the data proves the FDA and CDC are lying.

While I cannot prove it, I suspect Operation Warp Speed — devised in the spring of 2020 by a dozen top officials from then-President Trump’s health and defense departments to expedite the development of a COVID 19 vaccine

— may have been intended to normalize the approval of gene therapy drugs without the proper testing.

Before the COVID shots were given emergency use authorization, no mRNA gene therapy had ever made it to market, despite more than 20 years’ worth of research and development. That tells you something about how difficult it is to get these products right, to make sure they work and are safe.

With the FDA’s implementation of a “Future Framework” scheme in June 2022 to speed up the delivery of COVID boosters,

the regulatory obstacles for gene therapies, especially the stringent safety requirements, were brushed aside. Now, the FDA can and will authorize reformulated COVID shots without human trials.

The FDA basically rewrote the rules on the fly, deciding that mRNA gene therapies are equivalent to conventional influenza vaccines and can be updated and released without testing.

The idea is that the safety of the mRNA COVID shots has already been proven by the original shots, which they claim have harmed or killed no one. Hence, safety is a given, and the effectiveness of reformulated boosters can be assessed simply by checking the antibody levels in a few mice, which is what Pfizer and Moderna did.

In reality, however, millions of people around the world have been harmed and killed by the original shots, the human trials for those shots were riddled with fraud, antibody levels tell us nothing about the jab’s ability to protect against infection, and the two technologies (conventional flu vaccines and mRNA gene therapy) have no common ground.

I have no doubt this “Future Framework” will also, over time, be widened to include other vaccines and drugs that drug makers may want to tinker with. Already, there are mRNA shots in the pipeline against herpes, malaria, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), sickle cell disease, HIV, Epstein-Barr and cancer,

and vaccine makers have received fast-track approval designation for at least some of these shots.

Eventually, this fast-tracking trend may even lower standards for drug trials in general, which historically have required at least 10 years of multiphase testing.

The dangers of this trend really cannot be overstated — especially when we’re talking about gene-based products.

So, to circle back to where we started, hopefully you can now see how the AP and other media are misleading you in their “fact checks” by focusing on just one aspect of the FDA’s gene therapy definition (the DNA-altering part), while ignoring the fact that COVID shots DO meet the complete definition, and ARE classified as gene therapy, as acknowledged by BioNTech and Moderna in their SEC filings.

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Disclaimer: The entire contents of this website are based upon the opinions of Dr. Mercola, unless otherwise noted. Individual articles are based upon the opinions of the respective author, who retains copyright as marked.

The information on this website is not intended to replace a one-on-one relationship with a qualified health care professional and is not intended as medical advice. It is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from the research and experience of Dr. Mercola and his community. Dr. Mercola encourages you to make your own health care decisions based upon your research and in partnership with a qualified health care professional. The subscription fee being requested is for access to the articles and information posted on this site, and is not being paid for any individual medical advice.

• Zinc prevents viral replication inside your cells, but is poorly absorbed. Zinc ionophores (zinc transport molecules) such as quercetin, epigallocatechin-gallate (EGCG) and the drug hydroxychloroquine facilitate zinc uptake

• A combination of zinc with a zinc ionophore was in 2010 shown to inhibit SARS coronavirus in vitro. In cell culture, it also blocked viral replication within minutes

• Zinc deficiency impairs immune function

• Preliminary research found COVID-19 patients with plasma zinc levels below 50 mcg/dl at admission had a 2.3 times greater risk of in-hospital death than those with a zinc level of 50 mcg/dl or higher

• Other research found COVID-19 patients were more likely to be deficient in zinc than healthy controls. Zinc deficient patients also had worse outcomes and higher rates of death. While 70.4% of zinc deficient patients developed complications, only 30% of those with sufficient levels developed complications

Your immune system is your first line of defense against all disease, especially infectious disease, and there are many different ways to boost your immune system and improve its function. One nutrient that plays a very important role in your immune system’s ability to ward off viral infections is zinc.

Zinc gluconate,

zinc acetate

and zinc sulphate

have all been shown to reduce the severity and duration of viral infections such as the common cold. Zinc also appears to be the key ingredient in treatment protocols using hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).

The reason for this is because HCQ is a zinc ionophore (zinc transport molecule),

meaning it’s a drug that improves your cells’ uptake of zinc. Once inside your cells, zinc prevents viral replication.

This is also why zinc and zinc ionophores need to be taken very early in the illness, or as a prophylactic.

The problem is that zinc is largely insoluble and cannot easily enter through the fatty wall of your cells. Getting all the way into the cell is crucial, as this is where the viral replication occurs. This is why zinc ionophores are so important.

Aside from hydroxychloroquine, other natural, and safer, zinc ionophores include quercetin and epigallocatechin-gallate (EGCG). If given early, zinc along with a zinc ionophore should, at least theoretically, help lower the viral load and prevent the immune system from becoming overloaded.

Zinc is crucial for healthy immune function

— like vitamin D, it actually helps regulate your immune function

— and a combination of zinc with a zinc ionophore was in 2010 shown to inhibit SARS coronavirus in vitro. In cell culture, it also blocked viral replication within minutes.

Importantly, zinc deficiency has been shown to impair immune function.

As noted in a 2013 paper on zinc deficiency:

“Zinc is a second messenger of immune cells, and intracellular free zinc in these cells participate in signaling events. Zinc … is very effective in decreasing the incidence of infection in the elderly. Zinc not only modulates cell-mediated immunity but is also an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent.”

Similarly, the September 2020 paper in Medical Hypotheses, “Does Zinc Supplementation Enhance the Clinical Efficacy of Chloroquine / Hydroxychloroquine to Win Todays Battle Against COVID-19?” points out that:

“Besides direct antiviral effects, CQ/HCQ [chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine] specifically target extracellular zinc to intracellular lysosomes where it interferes with RNA-dependent RNA polymerase activity and coronavirus replication.

As zinc deficiency frequently occurs in elderly patients and in those with cardiovascular disease, chronic pulmonary disease, or diabetes, we hypothesize that CQ/HCQ plus zinc supplementation may be more effective in reducing COVID-19 morbidity and mortality than CQ or HCQ in monotherapy. Therefore, CQ/HCQ in combination with zinc should be considered as additional study arm for COVID-19 clinical trials.”

Preliminary data also suggest people with low zinc levels are more likely to die from COVID-19 than those with higher levels. The research

was presented at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Disease (ESCMID) Conference on Coronavirus Disease,

held online September 23 through September 25, 2020, and posted

on the preprint server medRxiv October 11, 2020.

“Each unit increase of plasma zinc at admission to hospital was associated with a 7% reduced risk of in-hospital mortality. Having a plasma zinc level lower than 50 mcg/dl at admission was associated with a 2.3 times increased risk of in-hospital death compared with those patients with a plasma zinc level of 50 mcg/dl or higher.”

In the video above, Dr. John Campbell reviews this and other zinc research. As noted by the authors of this study,

“Zinc balances immune responses and also has a proven direct antiviral action against some viruses.” As mentioned, zinc’s primary antiviral action is to impair viral replication inside the cell.

To evaluate the importance of plasma zinc levels on COVID-19 outcomes, the researchers did a retrospective analysis of 249 COVID-19 patients admitted to a hospital in Barcelona, Spain, between Mach 15 and April 30, 2020, for whom fasting plasma zinc levels were recorded. The average patient age was 63.

Patients who had low zinc levels upon admission were found to have higher levels of inflammation during the course of their illness, and they were also more likely to die from complications related to COVID-19. As reported by Medical Xpress:

“Mean baseline zinc levels among the 249 patients were 61 mcg/dl. Among those who died, the zinc levels at baseline were significantly lower at 43 mcg/dl vs 63.1 mcg/dl in survivors.

Higher zinc levels were associated with lower maximum levels of interleukin-6 (proteins that indicate systemic inflammation) during the period of active infection.

After adjusting by age, sex, severity and receiving hydroxychloroquine, statistical analysis showed each unit increase of plasma zinc at admission to hospital was associated with a 7% reduced risk of in-hospital mortality.

Having a plasma zinc level lower than 50 mcg/dl at admission was associated with a 2.3 times increased risk of in-hospital death compared with those patients with a plasma zinc level of 50 mcg/dl or higher.”

Another paper

reviewed by Campbell was published in the November 2020 issue of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases. Here, they found that people admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 related symptoms were more likely to be deficient in zinc than healthy controls. The median zinc level among hospitalized COVID-19 patients was 74.5 mcg/dl, compared to 105.8 mcg/dl in the control group. As reported by the authors:

“Amongst the COVID-19 patients, 27 (57.4%) were found to be zinc deficient. These patients were found to have higher rates of complications, acute respiratory distress syndrome (18.5% vs 0%), corticosteroid therapy, prolonged hospital stay, and increased mortality (18.5% vs 0%). The odds ratio (OR) of developing complications was 5.54 for zinc deficient COVID-19 patients.”

Importantly, while 70.4% of zinc deficient patients developed complications, only 30% of those with sufficient levels developed complications. As noted by Campbell, here we see that healthy controls had far higher zinc levels than patients with milder illness in the Spanish study.

The hospitalized patients also had higher levels on average. This raises the question as to whether the Spanish cutoff level of 50 mcg/dl might be too low still. He points out that “normal” levels of zinc are between 72 mcg/dl and 144 mcg/dl. This seems to support the findings of the Spanish study, seeing how all of the patients were on the low side.

Among the most effective treatment protocols for COVID-19 is the MATH+ Protocol,

developed by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group

(FLCCC).

In the interview above, Dr. Paul Marik explains how the COVID-19 critical care protocol grew out of his sepsis treatment (a core ingredient of which is vitamin C), as he and other doctors noticed there were many similarities between sepsis and severe COVID-19 infection, in particular the out-of-control inflammatory cascade.

There are also distinct differences between the two conditions, and to address those, Marik and nine other physicians founded the FLCCC and began developing a modified protocol specifically for COVID-19.

Zinc is one of the central components of this protocol. As of its July 2020 update, the protocol also includes the use of quercetin to facilitate zinc uptake. There are now MATH+ protocols

for prophylaxis, mild symptoms that can be treated at home, and a full clinical in-hospital critical care protocol.

The group has issued several updates since April 2020, so be sure to download the latest versions from the Eastern Virginia Medical School COVID Care for Clinicians site.

As mentioned, quercetin

and EGCG are natural zinc ionophores that can do the same job as HCQ. According to a study

published in 2014, many of the biological actions of quercetin and EGCG actually appear to be related to their ability to increase cellular zinc uptake. As explained by the authors:

“Labile zinc, a tiny fraction of total intracellular zinc that is loosely bound to proteins and easily interchangeable, modulates the activity of numerous signaling and metabolic pathways. Dietary plant polyphenols such as the flavonoids quercetin (QCT) and epigallocatechin-gallate act as antioxidants and as signaling molecules.

Remarkably, the activities of numerous enzymes that are targeted by polyphenols are dependent on zinc. We have previously shown that these polyphenols chelate zinc cations and hypothesized that these flavonoids might be also acting as zinc ionophores, transporting zinc cations through the plasma membrane.

To prove this hypothesis, herein, we have demonstrated the capacity of QCT and epigallocatechin-gallate to rapidly increase labile zinc in mouse hepatocarcinoma Hepa 1-6 cells as well as, for the first time, in liposomes … The ionophore activity of dietary polyphenols may underlay the raising of labile zinc levels triggered in cells by polyphenols and thus many of their biological actions.”

Aside from increasing zinc uptake, both quercetin and EGCG also inhibit 3CL protease

— an enzyme used by SARS coronaviruses to infect healthy cells.

As explained in a 2020 paper

in Nature, 3CL protease “is essential for processing the polyproteins that are translated from the viral RNA.”

And, according to another 2020 study,

the ability of quercetin, EGCG and certain other flavonoids to inhibit SARS coronaviruses “is presumed to be directly linked to suppress the activity of SARS-CoV 3CLpro in some cases.”

Niacin (vitamin B3) and selenium also improve the absorption and bioavailability of zinc. For example, a study

published in 1991 demonstrated that when young women were on a vitamin B6-deficient diet, their serum zinc declined, suggesting B6 deficiency affected zinc metabolism such that “absorbed zinc was not available for utilization.”

A more in-depth exploration and explanation of both niacin and selenium’s relationship to zinc is provided in the 2008 paper, “Zinc, Metallothioneins and Longevity: Interrelationships With Niacin and Selenium.”

Support for the use of quercetin against COVID-19 has also been reported by the Green Stars Project.

Using the supercomputer SUMMIT, Oak Ridge National Lab researchers looked for molecules capable of inhibiting the COVID-19 spike protein from interacting with human cells. Quercetin is fifth on that list.

Quercetin is also a potent antiviral in general. As detailed in “Quercetin Lowers Your Risk for Viral Illnesses,” mechanisms of action that can make it useful against COVID-19 include:

• Inhibiting virus’ ability to infect cells

• Inhibiting replication of already infected cells

• Reducing infected cells’ resistance to treatment with antiviral medication

• Inhibiting lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) production in macrophages.

  TNF-α is a cytokine involved in systemic inflammation, secreted by activated macrophages, a type of immune cell that digests foreign substances, microbes and other harmful or damaged components

• Inhibiting release of proinflammatory cytokines and histamine by modulating calcium influx into the cell

• Stabilizing mast cells

• Regulating the basic functional properties of immune cells

• Down-regulating or suppressing inflammatory pathways and functions

When it comes to zinc supplementation, more is not necessarily better. In fact, it can frequently backfire is you do not also maintain a healthy zinc-to-copper ratio. As explained by Chris Masterjohn, who has a Ph.D. in nutritional sciences,

in an article

and series of Twitter posts:

“In one study, 300mg/day of zinc as two divided doses of 150 mg zinc sulfate decreased important markers of immune function, such as the ability of immune cells known as polymorphonuclear leukocytes to migrate toward and consume bacteria.

The most concerning effect in the context of COVID-19 is that it lowered the lymphocyte stimulation index 3 fold. This is a measure of the ability of T cells to increase their numbers in response to a perceived threat. The reason this is so concerning in the context of COVID-19 is that poor outcomes are associated with low lymphocytes …

The negative effect on lymphocyte proliferation found with 300 mg/day and the apparent safety in this regard of 150 mg/d suggests that the potential for hurting the immune system may begin somewhere between 150-300 mg/d …

It is quite possible that the harmful effect of 300 mg/d zinc on the lymphocyte stimulation index is mediated mostly or completely by induction of copper deficiency …

The negative effect of zinc on copper status has been shown with as little as 60 mg/d zinc. This intake lowers the activity of superoxide dismutase, an enzyme important to antioxidant defense and immune function that depends both on zinc and copper …

A study done with relatively low intakes of zinc suggested that acceptable ratios of zinc to copper range from 2:1 to 15:1 in favor of zinc. Copper appears safe to consume up to a maximum of 10 mg/d.

Notably, the maximum amount of zinc one could consume while staying in the acceptable range of zinc-to-copper ratios and also staying within the upper limit for copper is 150 mg/d.”

Another factor to keep in mind is that certain additives can inhibit zinc absorption, which is the complete opposite of what you’re looking for. For instance, research has shown citric acid, glycine, mannitol and sorbitol can reduce zinc absorption,

so zinc lozenges containing these ingredients may be less useful.

That said, the recommended dietary allowance for zinc in the U.S is 11 mg for adult men and 8 mg for adult women, with slightly higher doses recommended for pregnant and breastfeeding women.

As a prophylactic against COVID-19 and other viral infections, Masterjohn recommends taking 7 mg to 15 mg of zinc four times a day, ideally on an empty stomach, or with a phytate-free food. He also recommends getting at least 1 mg of copper from food and supplements for every 15 mg of zinc you take.

Last but not least, remember there are many food sources of zinc, so a supplement may not be necessary. I eat about three-quarters of a pound of ground bison or lamb a day, which provides 20 mg of zinc. I personally don’t take any zinc supplement other than what I get from my food.

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