Coronavirus Update: Front line reports on hydroxychloroquine and ventilators, inside FDA, and more.

hi my name is rich Roberts I'm a medical doctor a doctor biophysics and the former president and CEO of a pharmaceutical company this is my fourth current coronavirus youtube video in this video i want to give you information that i've been receiving from multiple doctors nurses and other health care professionals across multiple hospitals in multiple states who are on the frontlines then i want to talk quickly about hydroxychloroquine a quick but very very important update will touch briefly on zinc then i'll tell you what's really going on at fda on the inside and lastly a little example of some fake news first I want to tell you what's going on in the frontlines I'm hearing for many doctors and nurses that they are really quite demoralized they're working long hours they're absolutely overwhelmed with the influx of patients that is not only not letting up but it's accelerating and they're working themselves to exhaustion which by the way is a great physical danger to them because when people lack sleep their ability to defend themselves their immune systems against disease is greatly reduced there is a long tradition and history of medical doctors and nurses putting themselves in harm's way in order to serve their patients and I have to say that this is this generation or way this last couple generations and this you know younger and older physicians and nurses who are just working very bravely through all this at great peril to themselves I've been told that many some nurses that are quite tough people are very very concerned now for their own health their own safety and there have been a lot of doctors and nurses who have been getting sick with coronavirus and some of and some have been dying but they continue to soldier on to serve their patients now some bad news about ventilators when someone needs a ventilator they absolutely need to be on it however when people are sick enough with coronavirus which is many people to go on ventilators what I'm hearing from different hospitals is anywhere from 50% to 80% of the people who are put on ventilators are expiring they're not making it and much to the dismay of the physicians these patients are expiring very very quickly in a matter of days and there's very little that the physicians can do to to slow this so I just want to be clear I'm not saying that going on a ventilator is a danger what I'm saying is if people with coronavirus infection have become so ill that they need a ventilator because they are desaturating their blood meaning meaning the oxygen level and their blood is falling which is that's a whole other scientific discussion how the blood the level of oxygen in the blood there's it's a chemical for chemical reason to say stable stable stable even as the amount of air that someone is getting goes down and down stays stable stable and now all of a sudden it falls off a cliff so when they start desaturating their blood every physician and nurse knows that's a very dangerous situation and with coronavirus when they're getting so sick so quickly that their desaturating their blood and they need meaning that i'm enough oxygen in the blood and they need to be on a ventilator then what this is leading to is the virus spreading in a very malignant way the immune system of the person trying to fight that virus releasing a chemical called cytokines that stimulates all kinds of immune responses and they're also getting therefore multiple organ failure kidney kidneys heart liver and the people are expiring very quickly and this is no doubt a significant reason for the despair although that the physicians and nurses in emergency rooms and in in in hospital inpatient settings in ice to use are right now feeling overwhelmed and very dismal about the situation in fact the social distancing and quarantine measures are working they were definitely reducing the number of people who are calling local physicians you know their primary care physicians or we're health care professionals with symptoms and potentially seeking being admitted to a hospital so I think that the social distancing / quarantine efforts are are now starting to bear fruit and I think the hospitals are going to start to see a reduction in the acceleration of the rate of cases but still there are a lot of sick people there some other things we know that people over the age of 60 especially 70 or 80 are the highest chances of expiring from this from a corona virus and virus infection what we are hearing though is people in their 20s 30s and 40s or many of them are getting deathly sick really sick so even though people in those age groups may most likely will most likely live I survive this disease they're going to be many of them are going to be knocked out their energy levels their abilities to fight off additional infections there they're really going to go through a lot of pain and suffering while they're sick and the recovery period we just don't know about yet but it looks like they're really going to be knocked back quite hard from from being infected with this illness now something interesting that they're finding in hospitals is that there are a number of adults that are coming into the hospital for other reasons broken bones you know whatever whatever the other issue was and upon being x-rayed looking at for something else in their body it's being found that they have infiltrates meaning small areas of pneumonia in their lungs even though they don't have symptoms of chronic virus and the are testing positive for the virus alternatively there are a lot of children who are in similar circumstances young children who going into hospitals again for other issues like you know bones or whatever the issue and they're being tested for coronavirus and there and in one report they're all coming up negative they're all coming up with no coronavirus so there really does seem to be something about either the immune systems or the chemistry of people who are young that that just does that that makes them much much less susceptible to even being a viable host for coronavirus to grow in lastly I want to say that in my the Orthodox Jewish community of Lakewood New Jersey where I live in there are many physicians who are who have now become ill and and some are hospitalized with coronavirus one is at home but he tells me that he can only take about about it if you only speak about a half a sentence at a time you can't get a full breath to even speak one sentence another one is in the hospital needs oxygen and you know we're praying that he he recovers but so far his situation has been worsening another physician pediatrician is at home quite sick he said he's been suffering in tremendous pain and he's not going into the hospital yet he's trying to avoid it if he can but you know we have a lot of physicians here who are falling victim to this virus the last very interesting report I want to give you from a family practitioner general internist who's who treats the public outside of a hospital setting is that the most is is that is that even more common than symptoms of corona virus infection are patients who are contacting him with anxiety anxiety induced reactions because they're scared they have corona virus and he's actually giving out more Kulik or benzodiazepines drugs to reduce anxiety valium lorazepam there's a clonazepam there's a whole has probably dozens of them but he's trying to treat the anxiety in patients even more than he has to take us seriously ill patients to deal with them and what his advice is that if you if you don't have a fever don't worry about it if you don't have a dry cough don't worry about it and in terms of shortness of breath there are people get anxiety oh I can't breathe I can't breathe he said if you can walk across the room without losing your breath if you can do normal activities without gasping for air then he says you're not having shortness of breath and as I discussed in a previous video if someone develops a loss of a sense of taste or smell that is that can be caused by any virus but it is generally rare to see and it's happening in a large number a large percentage of coronavirus cases but for those who are not having difficulty in with their breathing interfering with their ability to do just regular activities small chores then it might be just need to calm down just calm down a little if you don't have if you don't have a fever and you're able to do things around the house then this really is almost certainly not coronavirus and if it is you'll be you'll get a fever and you'll be able to just see a doctor later now hydroxychloroquine I did an entire video on this I talked about how correlation does not prove causality I really want to tell you that I Troxy chloroquine is enabling people who are really sick with coronavirus - to quickly get better get up and get out of bed and get out of the hospital unfortunately that's not the experience that we're hearing now this is not information that is scientifically definitive one way or another but I can tell you that when I'm hearing across the board from multiple hospitals in multiple states is hydroxy they don't believe hydroxychloroquine is actually changing the course of people's illnesses there's the people that are excuse the expression this used commonly in among physicians if someone's crashing and burning hydroxychloroquine is not bringing them back and the fact that many people get better their symptoms improve and they get better and they leave the hospital or they never have to go into the hospital in the first place and their fever goes or it goes away well guess what bad happens taking nothing we know that right we know that under the age of 60 according to the numbers we have which admittedly most of them were originally from China and then they look worse in Italy but you generally people under the age of 60 99% are getting better with no treatment whatsoever which by the way is the reason why someone should be very cautious when some doctor claims like all of my patients are getting better I'm giving them you know I directly chloroquine and zip through my said well wait a second almost everybody gets better anyway unless they're over the age of 60 and especially over the age of 70 or 80 or or forget the age if they have other medical disorders such as diabetes or high blood pressure or respiratory diseases chronic respiratory diseases like COPD or history of heart attack or other cardiovascular disease most get better anyway but I am disappointed to tell you that so far the physicians who've been on the front lines are telling me they're not seeing any miraculous turnarounds that they can attribute hydroxychloroquine now let's think about zinc that was the subject of another one in my previous YouTube videos I personally I'm taking zinc 15 to 30 milligrams a day I get it in a multi mineral formula but you'll find if you have a multiple vitamin with minerals look on the label almost certainly if it is minerals that will have zinc in there make sure you look at the servings it'll tell you what how much zinc you get per serving but you have to look at how many tablets or capsules are in a serving sometimes it's one capsule or tablet sometimes it's six so you need to know how many tablets or capsules you need to get to take to get a full 15 milligrams or 30 milligrams of zinc once again I don't give out any medical advice talk to your medical perfect medical professionals but personally I'm taking fifteen to thirty milligrams of zinc every day well at work I don't know there's an old fundamental adage in medicine which is doctor do no harm and I don't think there's anybody who's going to tell you that by taking you know the fifteen to thirty milligrams of zinc especially with the other vitamins and minerals that are generally in these formulations I don't think he's anybody's gonna tell you that that that's harmful whether it's helpful we don't know but yeah I'm taking it now I want to talk about the FDA as I've told people previously I was the president and CEO of a pharmaceutical company for 24 years I dealt extensively with FDA at all levels many different departments many many many different issues and I still have contacts that allow me to get a view inside of FDA and that's what I've that's what I've accessed for this video let me first tell you FDA has not approved hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus and the idea that FDA would approve hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus makes no sense it makes no sense it makes no difference so told you previously medical doctors can can prescribe any drug for any ailment that they want to it doesn't matter whether or not that drug is FDA approved for that ailment or not and that that is a perfectly normal part of the practice of medicine also President Trump did not and vice-president pence did not approve hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus it would be the FDA that would have to do it and and there's any company that's going to even apply for that application for for the lack of financial motivation to do so what FDA did do is that there they have there are national stockpiles of certain drugs that the government accumulates in case is a crisis in the country where those stockpiles are needed so FDA has authorized the release of hydroxychloroquine from the stockpile both for studies that are going on for coronavirus or doctors that want to prescribe it for coronavirus so the drug will be there but also for other foot approved uses and ongoing uses by patients who need this medication and has been cleared off the shelves such as for rheumatoid arthritis and lupus and of course for the small number of of malaria malaria cases in the country or people who would be traveling to malaria infested areas now what I've been told is that there has been a lot of political pressure on FDA to improve hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus but as I told you previously about career employees versus political employer employees for the political appointees in regulatory agencies there's no way that the long term career employees of the FDA are going to approve this without there being a fully vetted a double-blind placebo-controlled study I did I do want to say that I am very much looking forward to not only data coming in from physicians and hospitals during their own maybe informal studies from all around the country but especially when there really is or are some double-blind placebo-controlled randomized studies coming in because there really is a real a real significant chance that hydroxychloroquine simply doesn't work even though it makes the theoretical sense this alone be one in a long line of thousands of theoretically sensible the cures or treatments that when actually studied in patients doesn't work and just as a quick aside I want you to understand something linus pauling is one of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century he's the one who discovered electronegativities that were really responsible for the periodic table if you know the periodic table we out work atoms are organized on that he won at the one maybe two at least one maybe two novel nobel prizes and then in his elder elderly years senior years he he went you tried to get into medicine and he's the one who came up with the idea that vitamin C helps to treat colds and and boost up the immune system and his ideas I attended a lecture by him a part in person once he said he had to do with vitamin C is the precursor for this chemical reaction which makes this he also thought it would help to stop cancer he was wrong the clinical studies on vitamin C show that it doesn't help to to prevent infections but the reason why he and other people in physics and chemistry and there's other hard sciences the reason why many of them fail when they try to extrapolate their reasoning processes into medicine is because they don't understand the complexity of medicine in other words if you do a experiment in physics you have a ball it goes down the slide the ball is slide is a certain height a certain amount of resistance goes off this slide gravity is constant you can predict where it will fall all the way up to experiments with particle accelerators and and they collide in there making circular tracks in cloud chambers to measure their their mass and energies these are single-factor experiments what they don't understand is that biological systems human beings animals even bacteria oh and like it would take are composed of an enormous amount of molecules that are arranged in an enormous amount of different ways of which we only have knowledge of a tiny fraction of them for example the number of a prep of proteins the number of types of proteins that exist in the cells in human cells are probably in the range of over 10,000 and yet understanding the structure the detailed molecular structure of them we're probably in the range of a couple dozen that we understand as a matter of fact my doctorate thesis I worked on the on the structure of the molecule that's responsible that sits in the membrane of cells of mammals I did both human and and rabbit that is responsive a rat rabbit and rat that's responsible for the electrical signals that occur whenever somebody thinks or when somebody does anything when any muscle contracts it's called the sodium channel my entire research just did a tiny piece of research into the Toba structure of that one protein so biological systems are so much more complex than just a simple do this chemical reaction and that's what will happen as I told you about zinc you think oh you put more zinc outside in the body you know increase ink in the cells to some degree but for the most part zinc can't get in the cells and then once it does get in the cells there are proteins in the cells that bind the zinc up and don't let it float around freely to try to suppress replication of coronavirus or other mRNA or mRNA viruses so so you just can't assume that simple straight one plus one equals two doesn't work when there's not just one or two other things thousands of other things interfering from all kinds of different directions with that calculation so I anxiously await the results of double-blind double-blind placebo-controlled studies or nitrox chloroquine because it's it's not clear that it works lastly I want to leave you with a message of what's that message that I sent to my family in late January and it goes as follows and the reason for my telling you this is because I want you to understand that you have to be very careful about what you hear out there just be very careful about messages that people want to feed to you about this and true about you about anything else from late January if any of if any one of you has not been following the corona virus threat then please watch the ABC News video that I'll post below it ends with a statement that the flu is a bigger threat that's what government health authorities are saying it concerns me that the government is trying to stop panic of course flu is worse right now because coronavirus just started it seems to me that the number of cases are doubling every day or two there are no drugs for corona virus like time of flu for the flu the report says that clinical trials for vaccine could start in three months they're not telling you that they're not Disney they're not telling you that the earliest that a vaccine can be proven to work and be scaled up for production is a year and well before that time the entire world could be infected since it is contagious during the during the during the incubation period of ten to fourteen days I don't see how to stop it unless everyone wears masks and goggles I don't know what will happen but it's a real threat so I just want to say to you is if people people you know be careful about believing what you're told especially from illegitimate sources but even with with the national news they only know what they're being fed get your information from many sources try to integrate it but I can tell you this for sure social distancing and Quarantine is working it's helping to reduce the number of new cases but I do firmly believe that virtually everyone eventually will get infected with this virus and until we find whether it's addressed chloroquine or one of the antiviral drugs that are in being too intestinal and there are many other big tests and lesson until we find that one of these drugs works we really are going to have a real challenge to deal with here and just not going away anytime soon please stay safe and stay healthy thank you