People ultimately survive pandemics by beating the diseases with their immune systems. Ideally, they also are able to use helpful medical knowledge.

A first line of defense is to strengthen our immune systems.

Sleeping 8 hours or more each night before being exposed to a rhinovirus, compared to sleeping 7 hours or less each night, is known to reduce the chance of developing clinical symptoms by 66% [13]. Taking vitamin D at 5,000 IU daily [14] reduces the chance of developing an acute respiratory-tract infection by 63% [15]. Taking vitamin C reduces the incidence of colds in physically-stressed people [16]. Raising body temperature stimulates innate and adaptive immune responses [17].

A second line of defense is to minimize our net inbreathing of virus [18].

Masks cause people who are infected to be exposed to higher levels of virus and therefore to have to fight harder against viruses, so masks should not be worn. It’s also helpful to spend maximum time outdoors, and to use fans or open windows to maximally exhaust indoor air or supply fresh air.

A third line of defense is to augment our immune systems.

Antivirals are known that interfere with replication or action of all RNA viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, providing decisive help when used early.

The generic hydroxychloroquine is highly effective at admitting zinc into cells, where zinc stops cells from replicating viral RNA to create more virus [19]. The supplement quercetin also admits zinc into cells [20]. To obtain the resulting antiviral action, supplemental zinc is needed by many people, including most older adults [21].

The generic ivermectin reduces viruses’ inhibition of the body’s immune response, allowing the immune system to function more normally and effectively [22]. This separate mechanism of action is potentially complementary to the action above of zinc ionophores plus zinc.

The generics azithromycin and doxycycline, and Avigan favipiravir (which isn’t yet approved by the FDA) each have additional antiviral actions potentially complementary to those of the other antivirals [18].

A fourth line of defense is to reverse or slow the sequelae mechanisms that cause death.

The supplement NAC breaks sulfur-sulfur bonds that clot blood by crosslinking Von Willebrand factor, which is released into the blood when blood-vessel linings break up under SARS-CoV-2 oxidative stress. This added oxidative stress is especially dangerous for people who have existing oxidative stress from conditions like obesity or diabetes. The resulting clotting throughout the blood vessels can kill by directly compromising heart function, by reducing lung absorption of oxygen from air, or by causing strokes [23].

The generic dexamethasone reduces lung inflammation, reducing the risk of death from SARS-CoV-2 by at least 35% [24].

Knowledge of disease mechanisms and of potentially-helpful drugs and supplements already exists as a pandemic starts. In the case of SARS-CoV-2, though, the use of such knowledge has been disrupted by governments, intergovernmental organizations, academics, and media, in several ways.

These organizations have, as always, consumed considerable amounts of money that customers and producers would otherwise have chosen to spend on more efficiency-driven preventive and therapeutic clinical practice and research. Much fruitful activity has therefore gone undone. As always, this lost potential use of existing knowledge and this lost potential development and use of new knowledge go unseen [25].

These organizations have been noticeably quiet about strengthening the immune system, about most means of augmenting the immune system, and about reversing or slowing the sequelae mechanisms that cause death.

And these organizations have generated substantial misleading information.

Shutdowns, masking, and distancing have been drummed into people’s consciousness, despite the fact that each of these approaches is novel and harmful.

Also, incredibly, essentially all of the earliest and largest-scale research on hydroxychloroquine for SARS-CoV-2 has been done too late in the disease process for any antiviral to help significantly, or has excluded zinc supplementation. These errors likely resulted from a typical initial emergency focus on late hospital care, and from a typical choice by research teams to control just one therapeutic substance at a time.

Even if all these errors become well understood, preventives and generics are going to remain at great risk of being knowledge that’s greatly underused and misused in current medical practice.

For one thing, apart from vaccines and advice on lifestyle, current medical practice systemically neglects preventives.

For another thing, the current practice of monopoly governments and intergovernmental organizations is to preferentially fund relatively-basic research and established clinical practice. This produces an ecosystem that protects a giant niche for these organizations’ crony brand-name drug manufacturers.

Brand-name drugs have self-interested, well-funded, mobilized researchers. Generics not only lack sponsors but also directly threaten this crony system.