Golden State Today

At last week's Novel Coronavirus Southwestern Intergovernmental Committee hearing, Dr. George Fareed said that, since the beginning of the pandemic, the fact that COVID-19 is easily able to evade herd immunity and create unexpected consequences has been largely ignored by authorities.

Fareed testified at the November 2020 U.S. Senate 'Early Outpatient Treatment: An Essential Part of a COVID-19 Solution' hearing in Washington, D.C. at the U.S. Capitol. 

“There were variants coming out that were less aggressive, but now I'm afraid to say that there are some variants that are very aggressive and we're seeing the suffering occurring again,” he said at the hearing. “I hope it doesn't expand from where it is now.”

The Harvard-educated hospitalist was among the doctors who addressed the committee during its May 25 and May 26 hearings in Phoenix, Arizona. The two-day event, cochaired by state Rep. Steve Montenegro (R- Litchfield Park) and state Sen. Janae Shamp (R-Surprise), was organized to investigate Arizona's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Senate data found that in 2020, the state of Arizona recorded 75,700 total deaths. Twenty-five percent of those deaths were from heart disease, 16.7% from cancer and 11.1% from COVID-19. In 2021, of 81,482 total deaths, 24% were from heart disease, 15.7% from cancer and 15.6% from COVID-19.

“There's an evolution now of viruses that are highly infectious and more aggressive, and so we should not still be seeing a continuation of the pandemic at this time, and we should not be seeing patients with terrible COVID-19 pneumonia on ventilators, which I'm seeing in my hospital," Fareed told the committee and its audience.

Fareed is based in Imperial Valley, California, which became an epicenter of COVID-19 in 2020. He co-developed the COVID-19 Treatment Protocol, along with Dr. Brian Tyson, which includes medicines such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine.  

According to media reports, more than 140 million Americans were infected with COVID-19 and some 7 million died worldwide.

"The informed consent forms the family or patient were asked to sign made it sound like you were killing the patient if you wanted to give them hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin," Fareed said. "It's a tipping point for me when you bring up herd immunity. It's a lovely concept. It's what we do have for the original Wuhan COVID-19 and we have it now for those who got omicron, too, but it's just not going to work as we go forward."

Fareed blamed the trend on authorities not encouraging medical communities to attack the virus at its beginning stages so that vulnerable people do not wind up hospitalized.

“I see patients coming in with vaccine injuries,” he added. “Some died, unfortunately, post-vaccine. These types of mutable viruses, COVID-19 in particular, just love to be facing an antibody so they can mutate and come up with unexpected changes that make them more infectious. I never expected, three years after the start of the pandemic, to see patients on ventilators again.”