One can hope that upcoming investigations into the COVID pandemic in the the US House of Representatives, and in the State of Florida, will examine how financial concerns distorted US Government responses to the COVID pandemic.
Consider where the US put its resources during the pandemic:
1) Remdesivir: This extremely expensive, highly toxic drug ($3200 per treatment course) was pushed very hard by Anthony Fauci despite very mixed evidence on whether it actually saved any lives. In this regard, it bears an uncanny resemblance to AZT, another extremely expensive, highly toxic drug of questionable effectiveness that Fauci pushed on AIDS patients in the 1980's. The US Government bought 500,000 courses of remdesivir at a cost of 1.6 billion dollars.
2) Mechanical Ventilation: Here's another extremely expensive medical treatment with a less-than-stellar track record at saving lives. Mechanical ventilation added an average of $52,000 to the cost of COVID treatment.
3) mRNA Vaccines: These expensive, highly experimental treatments were rushed into use after inadequate testing. The US Government has bought 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, at a cost of 10 billion dollars. In the spirit of fair play, the US Government also purchased 500 million doses of the Moderna mRNA vaccine, at a cost of 7.6 billion dollars.
4) Molnupiravir: This expensive new antiviral ($712 per treatment course) is arguably less effective than ivermectin ($5 per treatment course) but was heavily pushed by the US Government, which bought 1.3 million courses at a cost of 2.2 billion dollars.
5) Paxlovid: This expensive new antiviral ($530 per treatment course) is also arguably less effective than ivermectin. It has the significant drawback that COVID often returns after a Paxlovid treatment finishes. That hasn't stopped the US Government from spending 12 billion dollars on it.
Do you notice a pattern here?
That pattern is even more striking if we consider where the US Government did not put its energy.
In the Spring of 2020, it was clear that vaccines were several months months away. Any Government which cared at all about the health of it's citizenry would have invested considerable effort into trialling safe existing drugs that could be repurposed as COVID treatments, particularly those drugs which had shown previous success as antivirals.
Ivermectin, HCQ and Fluvoxamine have all shown excellent results as early treatments for COVID. All three drugs are cheap, and have excellent safety profiles. If the US Government had bothered to do extensive clinical trials in the Spring of 2020, they could have determined their effectiveness very early - early enough to save hundreds of thousands of lives in the months before vaccines became available.
Instead, the US Government demonized anyone who was trying to find early treatments - sometimes threatening the licenses of doctors working hard to save the lives of their patients. Ivermectin was slandered as a dangerous 'horse de-wormer.'
Early on in the pandemic, a very strong inverse relationship was found between levels of vitamin D in a patient's blood and the severity of their COVID symptoms. Much of the North American population is vitamin D deficient, and suffers a range of health problems as a result of that deficiency. Given those two facts, I would have thought any rational government would have actively promoted vitamin D supplements during the pandemic. The US and Canadian Governments did not.
Zinc has long been known to have antiviral properties. Again, much of the population is deficient in zinc. What would have been the downside of promoting zinc supplements?
Not long ago, I reported on a Brazilian study which indicated that the prophylactic use of ivermectin can reduce the death rate from COVID by 92%.
Stated differently, the death rate from COVID in a population taking prophylactic ivermectin would have been significantly less than the death rate from seasonal influenza. If the US Government had done early clinical trials of prophylactic ivermectin, by mid-2020 we would have so reduced the COVID death rate we could have gone back to normal life, treating COVID like a seasonal flu.
How do we explain an American Government which had an immense attraction to expensive and experimental treatments, and an almost hysterical aversion to cheap and safe medications?
I'm hoping the upcoming hearings will shed light on that question.
Here's my short list of suspects:
1) That EUA rule: A condition of granting an Emergency Use Authorization for the mRNA vaccines was that no other effective treatment was available. If Ivermectin, HCQ or Fluconazol had been shown to be effective in large American clinical trials, the mRNA vaccines would not have been given EUA's. They would have been required to go through the normal approval process for vaccines - typically several years.
2) The Revolving Door: It's clear that if you serve big Pharma's needs while you're working at the CDC or the FDA, there will be a lucrative job waiting for you in big Pharma whenever you want it. At the other end, there's a disconcerting number of current and former big Pharma staff on the various Government Boards that approve new drugs.
3) Royalties: Though the US Government has worked very hard to conceal the details of such royalty programs, what's clear is that various government bureaucrats are receiving royalties for medications they helped get approved. Talk about a conflict of interest!
4) Limits on Research: Because Big Pharma pays for most of the medical and medication research done in North America, Universities are very reluctant to do any research which might make big Pharma unhappy.
5) Bought media: Pfizer and Moderna both spend an immense amount of money on media advertising. Mainstream media is reluctant to bite the hand that feeds them.
6) Bought politicians: Big Pharma is extremely generous in its support of American politicians - at least those politicians who remember to return the favour!
It will be fascinating to see what the two review processes discover. It will also be interesting to see what they are NOT willing to look at!
P.S: Did you know there was vaccine equivalent available for use in clinical trials as early as February of 2020? No-one wanted to explore its potential because there was no money in it. That tells you a great deal amount the state of the health bureaucracies in North America! More on that story next week.
P.P.S.: Today we have a new British study indicating that Molnupiravir does not reduce the death rate or the hospitalization rate in high-risk patients. Oops!
Great work, thank you Bruce!