Doctors in the US and abroad are successfully treating early-phase Covid-19 patients with pharmaceuticals previously approved for other medical uses.
by Richard Schulman
There is no good reason — other than progressive politics — that so much of the US economy remains locked down and that so many patients are dying from a disease that treatments exist for. Doctors claim a 100% success rate for several drugs provided they are able to treat Covid-19 patients in the early phases of the disease. There are also a number of approved treatments that reduce hospitalization time and mortality for those who weren’t able to receive early treatment.
Covid-19 mainly kills the elderly and adults who already have serious ailments. That leaves all pre-adolescent school children and most of the working population free to return to work if they haven’t already done so, as long as basic safety precautions are implemented by both employer and employees at the workplace and in traveling to work and back.
The recent increase in cases is mainly caused by increased testing. While deaths have been increasing in some states recently, they would be falling everywhere if progressive media hadn’t been suppressing news of the treatments that work.
The progressives who dominate the Democratic Party want to keep the economy locked down to insure that the prosperous economy that prevailed before the pandemic doesn’t return before November and possibly re-elect Donald Trump. Progressive elites would rather Americans die, run out of money, be evicted, riot, or commit suicide than learn that effective medicines are available and that Covid-19 isn’t quite the terror it’s being portrayed as.
Hydroxychloroquine
Contrary to the press, one of the drugs that works is the anti-malarial medicine hydroxychloroquine (HCQ, brand name Plaquenil). Earlier this week, a group of doctors, America’s Frontline Doctors, held a videotaped press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court. They explained their successful experience curing hundreds of early-detection Covid-19 cases by administering HCQ.
HCQ is similarly praised in a Newsweek op ed (July 23, 2020) by Harvey A. Risch, MD, PhD, and professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health. Dr. Risch’s op ed is titled “The Key to Defeating COVID-19 Already Exists. We Need to Start Using It.” We recommend the reading of the op ed in its entirety. Excerpts follow:
I…am fighting for a treatment that the data fully support but which, for reasons having nothing to do with a correct understanding of the science, has been pushed to the sidelines. As a result, tens of thousands of patients with COVID-19 are dying unnecessarily….
I am referring, of course, to the medication hydroxychloroquine. When this inexpensive oral medication is given very early in the course of illness, before the virus has had time to multiply beyond control, it has [been] shown to be highly effective, especially when given in combination with the antibiotics azithromycin or doxycycline and the nutritional supplement zinc….
Physicians who have been using these medications in the face of widespread skepticism have been truly heroic. They have done what the science shows is best for their patients, often at great personal risk. I myself know of two doctors who have saved the lives of hundreds of patients with these medications, but are now fighting state medical boards to save their licenses and reputations. The cases against them are completely without scientific merit.
Dr. Risch’s op ed was in print before the progressive mob could mobilize to stop it. But the mob did come out in full force against a group of doctors called America’s Frontline Doctors (AFD). The video of its press conference went viral on Facebook, which rushed to remove it. Google, YouTube, and Twitter followed suit. So did AFD’s internet service provider, which took down its web site altogether. Fortunately, the AFD doctors had a sponsor in the Tea Party Patriots, where the video may now be seen.
Hydroxychloroquine has the misfortune, it seems, of having been spoken of favorably by President Trump. From that nanosecond on, every progressive media outlet rushed to prove its political correctness by trumpeting negative studies that have no bearing on what the front-line doctors were finding. Studies that the progressive medical journals Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine rushed into print were so sloppy, the ensuing criticism forced their retraction.
The remaining progressive-promoted studies have been claiming that HCQ is not useful when given in hospitals to the already seriously ill. That may well be. But what bearing does that have on the experience of doctors with very high rates of recovery when giving the drug to patients who have just contracted the disease?
Other references to beneficial results from HCQ may be found here.
Budesonide
Richard Bartlett, MD, a doctor resident in West Texas, has faced similar resistance and progressive press blackout or opprobrium for his advocacy of the inhaled corticosteroid budesonide (brand name Pulmicort). This is occurring despite the fact that trials are underway throughout the world for both that drug and other corticosteroids. Like HCQ, budesonide is widely available, has many years of medical use behind it, and is even safe for children. It is widely used for lung relief by asthmatics.
Dr. Bartlett’s half hour interview at a Dallas t.v. station is still, as of this writing, available on YouTube. (We guess it might remain there until President Trump puts in a good word for it, in which case it will become verboten and disappear.)
An unhelpful FDA
Federal health agencies (CDC, NIH, FDA) have been a mixed blessing during the pandemic — not just in wildly inaccurate fatality predictions, excessive lockdown recommendations, providing Covid-19 tests that didn’t work, initially preventing others from developing their own tests, doing flip-flops on mask use, and wrongly condemning hydroxychloroquine — they also blocked the testing of other potential treatments of Covid-19. In mid-March, The Wall Street Journal reported:
The White House considered issuing an executive order greatly expanding the use of investigational drugs against the new coronavirus, but met with objections from Food and Drug Administration scientists who warned it could pose unneeded risks to patients, according to a senior government official.
The idea to expand testing of drugs and other medical therapies was strongly opposed by the FDA’s senior scientists this week, the official said, and represented the most notable conflict between the FDA and the White House in recent memory….
The draft order to expand testing was entitled Executive Order to Save Lives.
It would have allowed any drug molecule or cell therapy with evidence of safety to begin Phase 1 testing for patients infected with the Covid-19 coronavirus disease.
The order would have allowed such research to proceed if it has a scientific review and endorsement by a panel consisting of a scientist, a hospital administrator, a doctor and a person with regulatory-affairs expertise who has present-day dealings with the FDA.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-sought-to-expand-virus-drug-tests-over-fda-objections-11584545251?mod=article_inline
The more progressives and Democrats become the party of censorship, suppression of scientific inquiry, and the banning of life-saving medicines — the domestic party of Xi Jinping — the better the argument for undecided voters, whatever their displeasure with President Trump and the Republicans, to return them rather than the Democrats to public office in November.
Hat tip: Nicomachus. Correction 8/3/2020: “cure” (street usage) replaced by “treatment” (medical).
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