COVID-19 vaccines are not as effective in preventing infection and transmission as initially thought. Since we will have to live with COVID-19, it is vital that we stop suppressing the discussion of early treatment options for all patients, regardless of whether they have been vaccinated or not.
The bulwark of opposition to repurposed drugs from public health officials, tech companies, academics, and the media has been astonishing. The shaming and erasing of clinicians who have actually healed patients with therapeutics has significantly damaged the public’s trust in medicine and scientific research.
One of the most striking examples of this was the infamous May 2020 Lancet paper that claimed hydroxychloroquine is dangerous to COVID-19 patients. It was based on faked data, and the journal retracted it, with the Lancet editor later dubbing that paper a “monumental fraud.” There was this past summer’s reporting on ivermectin, with cable news and the CDC itself promoting the notion that it is strictly a veterinary medicine (it is not). It was also claimed that emergency rooms have been overwhelmed with Ivermectin overdose patients (they were not).
Even YouTube, owned by Google, will not allow users to recommend hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin for COVID-19. They likewise prohibit claims that these drugs are effective or safe for treating COVID-19 patients.
In reality, hydroxychloroquine, a 70-year-old drug used for malaria and autoimmune disorders, is safe enough to be taken by pregnant women. One need only review the work of Yale’s Dr. Harvey Risch about the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, and the number of lives it could have saved, to understand the tragic consequences of discrediting it.
In 2015, William C. Campell and Satoshi Omura won the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their discovery of avermectin and its compound ivermectin. It has saved millions worldwide from river blindness and elephantiasis. Since the spring of 2021, COVID-19 cases in India have plummeted in spite of a very low vaccination rate — a phenomenon the Washington Post described in September as a “mystery.” In the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, which has a population of 200 million people, they have made widespread use of ivermectin. COVID-19 cases appear to have been eliminated.
The list of inexpensive repurposed early treatments is not limited to hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. It includes antibiotics, antihistamines, and, notably, antioxidants and vitamins D and C and zinc, which boost the immune system. This is not misinformation.
The latest addition to this list of disfavored therapeutics is monoclonal antibodies. It appears that the government may ration this life-saving treatment as a spur to raising vaccination rates. An anonymous Health and Human Services spokesman told the Washington Post that HHS will decide how much of the treatment different states will receive to “help maintain equitable distribution, both geographically and temporally” on a weekly basis.
A Pfizer scientist secretly recorded by James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas said on tape that monoclonal antibodies were being “pushed to the side” because of “money,” adding that this was “disgusting.”
It would, of course, be useful to be able to compare the breakthrough cases among the vaccinated with reinfection cases among those who have recovered from COVID-19 and have natural immunity. But no one knows the incidence of either type of infection. Rather than focusing so much time and energy on forcing even the naturally immune into submission, and further fraying society at the seams, we should turn our attention to therapeutic solutions for everyone who falls ill.
Recently, there has been some excitement over the Merck antiviral pill. A study with 775 volunteers reportedly showed its use reduced the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization or death by half. But in July 2020, the press and public health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, were almost uniformly dismissive of excellent studies conducted by the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit and the Mount Sinai Health System in New York, which showed a similar reduction in COVID-19 mortality with the use of hydroxychloroquine. Those observational studies included over 2,500 patients and over 6,000 patients, respectively.
It’s time to extend medical honesty beyond the scope of new, patented therapeutics. Those decades-old, safe, off-patent, inexpensive repurposed drugs that help patients should also be embraced.
Dr. Carson, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development from 2017 to 2021, is the founder of the American Cornerstone Institute. C. Boyden Gray has served as White House counsel, U.S. ambassador to the European Union and U.S. special envoy to Europe for Eurasian energy.
