The coronavirus pandemic is raging again at horrific levels, but the Biden administration is asleep on the job. It has focused plenty of attention, with diminishing returns, on prevention but far too little on treatment.
Fortunately, treatments are available and could become more widespread if only policymakers made them a priority.
This is not an assessment based on some special claim of expertise on coronaviruses or medicine. It is instead the mere application of straightforward logic to well-known facts about this virus and to simple observations about the public’s response to it.
The statistics right now are numbing — and worthy of substantive review before analyzing new policy approaches. In the 31 days prior to this column, 30,064 Americans died from COVID-19. And the pace is picking up: More than 18,000 died in the past two weeks. The seven-day average of hospitalizations is above 96,000, and of intensive-care hospitalizations is more than 25,000. The ICU numbers are at about 90% of the all-time, pre-vaccine peak. Worldwide deaths are averaging more than 10,000 daily. More than 4.5 million people on the globe have died from this thing. In the United States, it has killed almost one of every 500 people.
All this happens even as the percentage of hospitalizations and deaths among the 175 million fully vaccinated U.S. residents remains very low (although the rate of contracting the virus at lesser, but still uncomfortable, levels is rising even among those with inoculation). And children, while still by far more immune than adults, are contracting the disease and being hospitalized by it at rising rates as well.
The awful ripple effects are considerable. In some of the most stricken states, hospital beds and even ambulance services have become unavailable, meaning that people suffering from other ailments are being denied necessary, sometimes life-saving treatment.
Moreover, the ability of viruses to mutate means that as greater numbers of people contract the coronavirus, the chances grow for a mutation that is not blocked by current vaccines. As it is, the vaccines that are about 95% effective at blocking the transmission of earlier variants are only 66% effective at blocking the delta variant (although, again, current vaccines do lessen the severity among the other 34%).
All of which leads — where, exactly? Well, it means this is still a major pandemic, with no obvious end in sight. Meanwhile, with some 90 million U.S. adults having made the choice, as free people, to remain unvaccinated despite months of entreaties to do so, it is obvious that the possibility of rapid, further U.S. spread continues unabated. And as resistant as people are to voluntary vaccinations, they are even more hostile to government mandates. Prevention is tremendously important and officials should continue exhorting us to take precautions, but unless we are to become a police state, which would be anathema, the efficacy of prevention efforts is significantly waning.
This is why officials should put as much energy into making treatments available as they did in making vaccines readily accessible.
Early studies suggest that the coronavirus can cause long-term health difficulties, including organ damage, for some otherwise healthy people. In general, the worse the initial symptoms, the greater the chance for lingering effects. It stands to reason, then, that if treatments can make coronavirus cases milder and of shorter duration, then a number of benefits accrue.
Milder cases mean fewer hospitalizations, opening up hospital beds for others. Milder cases make it less likely for deleterious long-term effects to take root in affected individuals. Cases of shorter duration mean the opportunities for infecting others are lessened. Fewer transmissions mean fewer chances for mutations, including possible vaccine-resistant mutations. And, of course, fewer deaths.
It, therefore, makes no sense for the ordinary doctor’s response to a positive coronavirus test to be: “Well, suffer a few days, wait it out, and hope that, as you are generally healthy, you’ll get over it without needing hospitalization.” Instead, if some treatments are known often to lessen the symptoms and reduce case durations, then every possible effort should be made to start administering the treatment as soon as possible, for as many of the afflicted as possible.
Fortunately, we already know not just of one treatment, remdesivir, that can be effective in improving a semi-significant number of patients, but of another, called monoclonal antibodies, that by almost universal medical agreement can reduce the chances of hospitalization and death from COVID-19. They tend to have very few serious side effects. Anti-mandate conservatives such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky tout the antibodies, as does the medical establishment led by the ubiquitous Dr. Anthony Fauci. The Food and Drug Administration has authorized their use during the pandemic, and the Biden administration wisely has “encouraged” more widespread use while dedicating some $150 million to greater “access” to such treatments in “underserved communities.”
This is a half-decent start but still a pittance compared to the all-out effort, including tens of billions of dollars, to encourage testing and vaccination. The Biden administration is trying to spend an astonishing $3.5 trillion on controversial new social programs, on top of $5.6 trillion already authorized in various coronavirus relief packages, but it has failed to prioritize and aggressively publicize treatments for people who actually contract this contagion.
Just shy of 175 million Americans are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and 39.5 million people have contracted the disease, but fewer than 700,000 have received monoclonal antibody treatment, even though it is easy to administer.
On Sept. 1, there were 210,816 new coronavirus cases in the U.S. There is no good reason why there aren’t 210,816 Americans who know to ask their doctors, indeed, who are eager to ask, if the monoclonal antibody treatments are advisable for their cases. And, more importantly, no good reason why 210,816 doses aren’t readily available for them if the doctors say yes.
