By Michael D. Shaw, Aug 30, 2020 @ HealthNewsDigest
Back in April, we reported on a few early analyses of the situation, including the astonishing findings
of Professor Yitzhak Ben Israel of Tel Aviv University who plotted the rates of
new coronavirus infections of the U.S., U.K., Sweden, Italy, Israel,
Switzerland, France, Germany, and Spain. As it happens, irrespective of
whether the country quarantined like Israel, or went about business as usual
like Sweden, coronavirus peaked and subsided in exactly the same way.
Somewhat later
in the game, the drug hydroxychloroquine, which had been touted since virtually
the beginning of the pandemic by a variety of doctors—along with President
Trump—was then mercilessly attacked. In a blatant political move, the FDA
revoked its
Emergency Use Authorization for Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).
While some critics blamed Big Pharma for attempting to suppress the use of an
inexpensive generic drug, in the hopes of hitting the jackpot with the
antiviral Remdesivir or a vaccine, an alternative explanation can be
proffered. I leave it to you to judge which one is more sinister.
There are five phases of
clinical trials, which apply to the FDA drug approval process. In
most cases, four of these phases—Phases 0 through III—are required before a
drug is released to be used by the general public. HCQ was approved
decades ago, albeit for indications other than treating COVID-19. But,
there had been reasons to believe that it might prove effective against
COVID-19, so it was employed by doctors “off-label.”
And, the FDA revocation will not affect such use.
The trials
described are always randomized double-blind experiments, whereby neither the
researcher nor the subjects know which patient received the active drug or the
placebo. And, this has long been considered the gold standard.
However, given a moment’s thought, this “gold standard” does not always exist
in real life. Consider that if a patient suffers either side effects or
notices a targeted therapeutic effect, he will often conclude that he is on the
drug.
One suspects
that Anthony Fauci’s insistence of a randomized clinical trial on HCQ for
COVID-19 stems back to his early career, and the disastrous saga of
supposed AIDS drug AZT, in which the trials were rushed and even unblinded,
thus releasing a toxic and likely ineffectual drug on the public. Not that AZT and HCQ are even remotely comparable.
Bear in mind
that there is a long and sordid history of drugs being taken off the market
after going through allegedly rigorous clinical trials. Ref 1 Ref 2 It is most
perplexing that the establishment still stubbornly insists on promoting this
system as the be-all and end-all, when it most assuredly is not.
Meanwhile,
eminent Yale epidemiologist Harvey A. Risch, MD, PhD has argued passionately
in favor of HCQ, only to be rebuked by critics who attack his sources, and prop
up questionable studies of their own. Such actions of establishment
fanboys against a maverick are nothing new. Just ask Ignaz Semmelweis.
Finally, take a
look at this new study from the
National Bureau Of Economic Research. The paper’s major conclusion is
that nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPI)-–such as lockdowns, closures, travel
restrictions, stay-home orders, event bans, quarantines, curfews, and mask
mandates—do not seem to affect virus transmission rates overall. A big
argument in favor of this is that such policies have varied in their timing and
implementation across countries and states, but the trends in outcomes do not.
As you see,
this runs contrary to the revealed wisdom foisted on Americans—and the rest of
the world. The existing literature has concluded that NPI policy and
social distancing have been essential to reducing the spread of COVID-19 and
the number of deaths due to this deadly pandemic. The authors make a
strong case proving otherwise.
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