An American Hero Continues To Languish In Prison
Dr. Steven Hatfill
On 3 February 2020, I was called into the White House to serve as an outside medical and scientific expert for the President’s Trade Advisor, Dr. Peter Navarro PhD, in the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy (OTMP). There I had a front row seat to the disastrous, incompetent, US COVID-19 pandemic response promulgated by our national health agencies.
In February 2020, amidst the ambivalence of the senior health leadership and the rapidly developing chaos, Peter Navarro developed an ingenious stop-gap strategy to rapidly acquire N-95 respirators, disinfectants, and other protective equipment until domestic production could catch up. Enclosed-head powered respirators, actually mandatory for the safety of intensive care hospital personnel, were swiftly manufactured to safeguard the nurses and doctors at the institutions that would actually follow the correctly-mandated OSHA Health Worker Safety Guidelines. His actions helped to save hundreds of health care workers. His next actions would save hundreds of thousands of Americans.
By early March 2020, international researchers were demonstrating that the drug Chloroquine had a marked efficacy and safety in the early treatment of lethal COVID-19. South Korea had discovered that a related drug called Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was even better at preventing hospital admissions if given early in infection. Outpatient drug treatment was the solution to reduce pandemic progression and some 51 other countries would use HCQ to successfully control their portion of the pandemic. Yet the de-facto leader of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Dr. Anthony Fauci, M.D., ignored the data on HCQ and constantly dismissed its accumulating success as being only anecdotal information.
Although a PhD economist, Dr. Navarro understood statistics and he quickly grasped the role for HCQ. Finally, having had enough of Fauci’s continuing ambivalence on the drug, Navarro had flung a stack of research papers across the table at him in the White House Situation Room, saying “this is science - not anecdotal information.” Unrelenting he secured permission to acquire and stockpile 62-million doses of Chloroquine and HCQ before India shut off their exports of these medications for use on their own vast populations.
Thus began a war between doctors with Dr. Robert Kadlec, M.D., at the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Navarro, favoring early drug treatment and a conflict-of-interest-ridden FDA, a clueless mainstream media, and Dr. Anthony Fauci who continued to ignored HCQ as a safe, early outpatient drug treatment for COVID-19. Fighting back at Navarro’s actions and under Fauci’s watchful eyes, the FDA authorized clinical HCQ studies bur specified these should only be conducted on late-stage hospitalized patients where no drug was going to show much efficacy.
Within a few weeks, HCQ was announced as being ineffective for COVID-19 treatment and it was falsely accused of causing heart damage and sudden deaths. On June 15, 2020, the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for HCQ was withdrawn by the FDA. By his own admission, Dr. Robert Kadlec at HHS/ASPR now abandoned his support and ran from the fight for early-use of the drug, leaving Dr. Navarro and his small office to continue the struggle alone.
By early August 2020, overwhelming evidence of early-use HCQ became available showing a major 47 to 66% decreased mortality in thousands of hospitalized patients given HCQ immediately upon their admission. Dr. Navarro now scheduled a teleconference with Dr. Fauci to rationally discuss early-use HCQ .1, 2, 3 Held in the ornate “War Room” of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Dr. Navarro’s chair was at the end of a long conference table. Not trusting Dr. Fauci, I sat well to the side of the flat screen camera so it hopefully looked like Peter was alone. When the Zoom video conference began, the display was overcrowded with members of the supposedly independent COVID-19 Treatment Panel that Fauci had helped create.
It was a David and Goliath moment. The meeting started out cordially as Fauci tried to defend the FDA’s actions on why it refused to reinstate the EUA for HCQ. Incredibly, Fauci had no actual early-use studies to present, citing only five grossly flawed research papers, all involving late-stage patients. One of these papers actually showed a positive effect for HCQ and later had to be rewritten, and a one paper had not even been peer-reviewed, which meant it represented nothing.
Dr. Fauci was trying to pass these late-treatment studies off to Peter as proof that early-use HCQ did not work. It was a complete clown show and I said nothing during the proceedings until Fauci finally crossed the line by stating that every drug certified by the FDA was the result of a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT).
At that moment, I simply had enough. I spoke out loudly and shifted over to face the camera saying, “What a load of nonsense. That is complete and utter rubbish.” I looked at Dr. Roy Gulick, M.D., on the flat screen display and asked, “You are telling me that every drug on the market has gone through an RCT? With a straight face, Gulick answered “Yes that is the case.” I again angrily replied “That is complete and utter nonsense.”
Fauci and his group were lying to Dr. Navarro. For years now, serious scientists understood that RCT studies had major limitations when assessing infectious disease drugs because they could easily downplay a drug’s actual effectiveness. This was the reason why only 14% of the Infectious Diseases Society of America Treatment Guidelines are based on RCT studies. 4, 5
Fauci was not only lying to us, but he was grossly violating the FDA’s own 2019 “Guidelines for Real World Evidence.” I was angry and getting more furious every second. Peter quickly brought some calm to the situation as he wound the meeting down. However, before the adjournment, he left Fauci and his conflict-of-interest-ridden COVID-19 treatment group a verbal note for the future, stating essentially that [“if Fauci was wrong about the early use of HCQ, then he was going to be personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans.”] The conference ended and we returned to the office.
The sad fact is that by November 2020 an impartial data review left no doubt that Fauci was indeed wrong and that yes, he absolutely bears a major degree of responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of treatment-preventable deaths that have occurred from COVID-19. 6 Dr. Fauci is also significantly responsible for the continuing expansion of the pandemic, the prolonged ineffective lockdowns which caused catastrophic economic damage to the US, the unnecessary prolonged school closures, and the forced reliance on a toxic and ineffective drug called Remdesivir for in-hospital anti-viral treatment.
In reality, Dr. Fauci did not have a clue how to manage a pandemic. He would neither admit this nor step aside. His incompetent actions with HCQ paved the way for the Biden Administration’s dangerous, forced mass-vaccination campaign using experimental mRNA “pseudo-vaccines” that never prevented infection, and have crippled hundreds of thousands of Americans. While it is understood that the number of mRNA vaccine-caused deaths is extremely large, the precise data continues to remain hidden. Tragically, we will not know for a few more years if the unwarranted CDC/FDA-directed mRNA mass “vaccination” of pregnant women has passed on serious side to the next generation in the form of increased rates of autism, teenage schizophrenia, or brain prion disease.7
Where is Dr. Fauci now?
Following the scandal of his funding of a Chinese Military-affiliated virus laboratory and his inaccurate denial of coronavirus gain-of-function experiments, Dr. Fauci left government service under a cloud. His self-aggrandizing 480-page book “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service“ will be published shortly. It is reported that Fauci sold his memoir for just under $5 million. Crown Publishing, a Penguin Random House imprint, reports this figure is inaccurate, but has never provided an alternate amount.
Where Is Peter Navarro?
Dr. Peter Navarro is a national hero who stood at the plate when his country needed him the most. It is estimated that as many as 20 million Americans without contraindications, have successfully taken early-use HCQ for COVID-19, to prevent their possible hospitalization and even death. This is in addition to the unknown number of health care workers and patients still living because of Navarro’s skill at the rapid acquisition of N-95 masks, ventilators, and literally millions of other response items acquired and distributed directly to US hospitals in urgent need during the early pandemic.
While Fauci glorifies himself and rolls in large money from a book deal, the sad fact is that Dr. Navarro is currently in a Federal Penitentiary under the misdemeanor charge of Contempt of Congress. This charge is for claiming Executive Privilege and refusing to testify to yet another biased Democratic House Committee on yet another baseless charge against President Trump. Navarro is the only non-felony inmate in the entire penitentiary.
This is how the Democrats treat a national hero in their unrelenting “law-fare” quest for power. It is an unmitigated outrage that should instill a sense of anger every American.
References:
1. Arshad, S., Wang, D. D., O'Neill , W., et al. Treatment with Hydroxychloroquine, Azithromycin, and Combination in Patients Hospitalized with COVID-19. Int J Infect Dis. 2020 Aug: 97:396-403. doi: 10.1016/j.ijid.2020.06.099. Epub 2020 Jul 2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32623082/
2. Mikami, T., Miyashita, H., Yamada, T. et al. Risk Factors for Mortality in Patients with COVID-19 in New York City. J Gen Intern Med (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-020-05983-z
3. M. de Novales, F.J.; Ramírez-Olivencia, G.; Estébanez, M.; de Dios et al., Early Hydroxychloroquine Is Associated with an Increase Survival of COVID-19 Patients: An Observational Study.(doi:10.20944/preprints202005.0057.v1). https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202005.0057/v2
4. Lee, D.H., Vielemeyer, O., Analysis of Overall Level of Evidence Behind Infectious Diseases Society of America Practice Guidelines. Arch Intern Med. 2011;171(1):18-22. January 10, 2011 doi:10.1001/archinternmed. 2010. 482 Lee, Analysis of Overall Level of Evidence Behind Infectious Diseases Society of America Practice Guidelines | Guidelines | JAMA Internal Medicine | JAMA Network
6. Prodromos C, Rumschlag T. Hydroxychloroquine is effective, and consistently so when provided early, for COVID-19: a systematic review. New Microbes New Infect. 2020 Nov;38:100776. doi: 10.1016/j.nmni.2020.100776. Epub 2020 Oct 5. PMID: 33042552; PMCID: PMC7534595. Hydroxychloroquine is effective, and consistently so when provided early, for COVID-19: a systematic review - PubMed (nih.gov)
7. Rong, Z., Mai, H., Kapoor, S., et.al., SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Accumulation in the Skull-Meninges-Brain Axis: Potential Implications for Long-Term Neurological Complications post-COVID-19.BioRxiv. April 05, 2023. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.04.04.535604
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.04.04.535604v1.full.pdf
Dr. Hatfill, thank you for the article and for remembering Peter Navarro. Too many people are silent. Peter's imprisonment is unjustified.
The party who claims to want to save Democracy is the one who is jailing political dissidents. Navarro will go down in history as a martyr and a patriot.