The Focus on Vaccines Misses the Mark

You may not like what I have to say but I shall say it none the less: there are early stage intervention options for treating COVID-19 that the government, public health leaders, and corporate interests simply aren’t interested in pursuing.

In the beginning, there was hydroxychloroquine — the infamously maligned cheap anti-viral drug that President Trump touted as a potential game changer in battling COVID-19 during the early days of the outbreak. An incredibly irresponsible media along with politically motivated inept public health leadership chose to use the then promising yet ambiguous use of the drug as a way to ridicule and mock the president, his followers, and any medical professional that dare put the pen to the prescription pad.

That same irresponsible media, 99% of which have no training in science, statistics, or public health, reported on failed clinical trials and studies that supposedly showed hydroxychloroquine was just more of Trump’s lies. Yet during this reporting they failed to state that the trials and studies were all done in late-stage, hospitalized, and usually very ill patients. Meanwhile the consensus among doctors showed that hydroxychloroquine was ONLY EFFECTIVE if used in early stage treatment and/or as prophylaxis. Similarly, the multitude of studies showing hydroxychloroquine having some benefit all clearly stated the the drug must be taken with some combination of zinc and antibiotic (doxycycline).

In other words, the media largely drew a conclusion based on a false narrative and sold it to the American people as a way to dig into Trump.

This is shameful. Aside from lying (either by ignorance or malicious arrogance), the media essentially condemned the front line doctors prescribing the pre-hospitalization cocktail, undermining their years of medical training and expertise in the name of politics.

Imagine spending years of your life and hundreds of thousands of dollars earning the right to save people’s lives only to be told by a recent college graduate “journalist” that you’re a moron for trying a low-cost, low-risk, highly substantiated solution to a public health crisis?

Now, ivermectin is on the chopping block. Though multiple studies have been published showing its promise in both potentially early and late stage COVID-19, there has been little mainstream traction of the drug. Vaccines are here, after all, and it’s much more profitable and divisive to run a million stories on the challenges and logistics of distributing a vaccine than discussing measures that can actually keep people out of the emergency room.

Though ivermectin has not been uttered in a sentence by Trump, it seems as if only Republican politicians are interested in holding hearings and open testimonies of front line doctors who are using the drug with success. Of course, this naturally makes it political — substantially less than if Trump touted its promise, but still divisive.

Again, this is shameful and sad. It’s shameful that front line doctors risking their own lives have had their credibility challenged by journalists and bureaucrats. It’s sad because people are dying.

Finally, there is the issue of at home testing. The FDA could approve, right now, a multitude of non-prescription at home tests that could be immediately deployed to pharmacies, businesses, and online retailers and sold for cheap money. The idea behind mass user based testing is that people can test every day for a few dollars per month and immediately isolate themselves if they are positive.

Instead, agencies and their bureaucratic overlords are asking that we stand in line for hours at a time to get tested and hopefully obtain results in a few days. Many of the tested return to work because they need to earn a living, and there is no current legislation that reimburses employers paying employees to isolate while they wait for results.

The FDA has essentially represented the view point that the American public cannot be trusted to “responsibly” use at home testing.

This, of course, is a bullshit answer. Even if mass at-home testing only resulted in a 10% decrease in hospitalizations, it would mean the difference between having an open or closed ICU for many hospitals.

Perhaps the FDA thinks that at-home mass testing would lead to people thinking a negative test result is a free pass to socialize without masks or distancing. And I would sympathize with that viewpoint if we had a federal government with a spine and some solidarity that offered to pay people’s salaries and extended unemployment benefits while they stayed home.

But we don’t.

And even then, let’s be honest: people who want to socialize are going to do so anyway. The people gave federal and state governments 9 months to come up with mass action plan and we’re still doing more of the same, but now not trusting that Americans can do the right thing.

Instead of accepting this reality, and the reality that there other treatment interventions in COVID-19, our press and agencies have doubled down on the corrosive, cruel, and deadly ideas of lockdowns, isolation, and a vaccine-or-bust mentality.

Whether its ivermectin and zinc or widely available mass testing, the solutions that have been presented by front line workers (and public health experts at universities and institutions around the world) are cheap, low-risk, and easy to implement. But the people in power have instead elected to maximize human suffering until they get their way.

This is America, no matter who you voted for.