STOP BLOCKING NEW COVID TREATMENTS

FOUR years ago, influenza infected 41 million Americans in a matter of months. Imagine if we did mass testing for flu and graphed daily cases. In fact, most winters, 10 to 25 percent of the US population gets infected with a respiratory pathogen, like RSV, rhinovirus, influenza and four other known coronaviruses that have circulated seasonally for centuries (COVID is the fifth seasonal coronavirus).

Testing is an important tool in protecting vulnerable people, but it is nearly impossible to contain a highly transmissible respiratory infection seeded throughout a population. We cannot outrun this lion. It’s time we bring attention to early treatment. We have lifesaving medications that public-health officials never talk about.

Fluvoxamine, a commonly available medication, reduced COVID deaths by 91 percent in a randomized controlled trial conducted with impeccable methodology and recently published in The Lancet. This study affirms another trial on the drug published last spring in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The drug is safe, has a plausible mechanism of action, costs $10 and has no contrary studies that might challenge the breathtaking results published. Yet I’ve never heard our public-health officials mention fluvoxamine.

Instead, our leaders are pushing boosters for young, healthy people and masking 2-year-olds despite the documented harm. These responses lack supporting data and come in stark contrast to the federal government’s delinquency in authorizing drugs proven to dramatically save the lives of COVID patients. Merck and Pfizer’s antiviral pills designed to work against all variants are awaiting Food and Drug Administration action.

Merck’s lifesaving drug molnupiravir received an up-vote from the FDA’s external experts three weeks ago, yet the agency hasn’t authorized it. Pfizer’s Paxlovid drug cut COVID deaths to zero (compared with 10 deaths in the control group), yet in the five weeks the FDA hasn’t even scheduled an advisory meeting to review it. Do functionaries not want to change their holiday plans?

I can’t understand what kind of human being sits on the application of a lifesaving drug like Paxlovid — again, a safe drug that cut COVID deaths to zero — as 1,300 Americans die each day. It’s medical malpractice.

The Biden administration should immediately talk about fluvoxamine and demand that the FDA provide an up or down authorization or non-authorization of molnupiravir and Paxlovid within 24 hours.

We also need straight talk on Omicron. Now 73 percent of new US COVID infections are from Omicron, a strain resulting in more mild illness. A University of Hong Kong study found that Omicron is one-tenth as infective in lung cells compared with Delta. That explains why Omicron patients report far fewer cough and fever symptoms and far fewer people develop severe illness. Instead, the vast majority of Omicron-infected people get common-cold symptoms.

The fear headline is that Omicron partially evades antibody immunity. That’s true; so did Delta. But, also like Delta, Omicron does not escape existing T-cell immunity, according to a new Johns Hopkins study, which is consistent with mounting population data. Cases from the epicenter in Gauteng, South Africa, are plunging, down 44 percent Monday from the prior day. Per South African Health Minister Dr. Joe Phaahla, only 1.7 percent of COVID cases were hospitalized the second week of the Omicron-dominant wave, compared with 19 percent the same week of the Delta wave.

Laboratory data, epidemiological data and bedside observations all show Omicron is a milder variant. This is how pandemics end: A virus mutates down and becomes endemic as population immunity increases.

Imagine if I as your physician told you during a routine check-up that you are likely going to get a common cold this winter. You wouldn’t flinch. You probably wouldn’t go into social isolation or pre-emptively cancel your livelihood.

We should not downplay or ignore respiratory pathogens, but never before have we seen this level of medical and governmental paternalism to enact restrictions to make sure low-risk people have their risk of a mild infection reduced against their will.

The 20 to 30 million American adults who haven’t had COVID (and lack natural immunity) and opt not to be vaccinated have done so at their own individual risk. That’s a poor health decision, putting themselves at risk of Delta, which is still sending approximately 7,000 of them to US hospitals each day.

Why are we closing society and destroying the economy for 300 million Americans who are at risk only of a mild common-cold illness?

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