A Shabbat Vision Thread

1) #Hydroxychloroquine is the new #RedPill.

We are living in a battle of narratives. My patients ask me to comment from my medical perspective about what our future looks like in this battle with #COVID19. I tell them I see two possible futures.

2) One future looks like what we have now. We are frightened, keeping physically distant, wearing masks, avoiding crowds, not going to movies or restaurants. The economy has soured. Unemployment is rampant. The only people working are those deemed essential or those...

3)...who can work remotely from the safety of their home. In this future, leaders say salvation will come in the form of a vaccine, but until the vaccine arrives, much has been lost. Businesses go bankrupt. There is uncertainty as to how much immunity the vaccine will...

4)...really confer, but viewing vaccines as the solution to viral infections becomes the norm rather than the exception. We are increasingly encouraged to shelter in place when yet a new virus shows up on the scene. We all become practiced at moving indoors. Restaurants, movies,

5)..are slow to reopen as the threat never seems to fully resolve. Who can build a business with so much uncertainty in the future? People make more money from unemployment benefits that they choose not to go back to work. We are told that, in order to rectify this situation,..

6)...more people need to be vaccinated until we can be certain there is sufficient herd immunity. We are never quite certain enough and always fearful.

The bleak future envisioned above is the direction we have been going. @realDonaldTrump gave us the opportunity to envision..

7)...a different way forward. What if we follow his lead and each have a conversation with our doctor and ask whether we can take #hydroxychloroquine and #zinc? What if enough evidence comes out to suggest it confers sufficient protection? What kind of protection could it....

8) ..possibly confer. We know that zinc disrupts viral replication and #hydroxychloroquine works as a zinc ionophore, facilitating movement of zinc into cells. By taking those pills and exposing ourselves to the virus, we keep its replication sufficiently low so as to give our...

9)...immune systems time to develop an antibody response. That response would be at least as robust as any that one could obtain from a vaccine. Maybe we get a little sick, but the chance the virus would become life-threatening is much lower. What if we could get an entire....

10)...region to try what @realDonaldTrump did and get the population to have those conversations with their physicians and start taking #hydroxychroloquine and #zinc? Maybe that region could open up again and people could go back to all the activities they were doing before...

11)...like go back to restaurants and movie theatres and concerts. Those who can’t or don’t want to take the medication can still stay inside to better protect themselves. Quickly, the community that does this experiment will develop herd immunity. Those people can be tested...

12)...for the presence of antibodies, and if the antibodies are found, they can stop taking #hydroxychloroquine. Eventually, most of the community will have developed herd immunity and even those who couldn’t take #HCQ become safer because the chance of being infected becomes...

13)...much more remote. Maybe those people want to get a vaccine, just for safe measure, but it would be a minority of the population of that region who would require it.

We have gotten so accustomed to thinking that the only possible response to #COVID19 is the one we’ve done.

14) @realDonaldTrump did us a great service by modeling for us a different way forward out of this #COVID19 pandemic. We are all actively watching what happens in Florida and Georgia with what they’ve done. Why not set up a region where we can try the experiment that #POTUS45...