How Health Authorities Failed Us And Prolonged The Pandemic

James Doogue

(Warning: long read.)

In March 2020 the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration ATGA, banned physicians from prescribing Hydroxychloroqu ine HCQ for the prevention or treatment of Covid-19. In September 2021 they applied a similar ban to Ivermectin. Both drugs were cheap and readily available, and very safe when used at prescribed or normal dosage rates.

Similar actions were taken in many Western countries and big tech and the mainstream media censored anyone for suggesting HCQ or Ivermectin had any efficacy in preventing or treating Covid-19.

Meanwhile the world's big pharmaceutical companies raced to release treatments which they could charge hundreds or thousands of dollars versus a few cents or dollars for the banned drugs they didn't hold patents for.

It turns out that the new approved and very expensive drugs, are as effective as a placebo and/or more dangerous than the drugs ATGA banned.

It's likely the world would have been far better off, had we used the cheap drugs already available. Lockdowns and border closures would have been unnecessary, and we wouldn't have had to mandate vaccinations. Hundreds of billions of dollars spent in Covid-19 lockdown, and mandate support would have been saved too.

But then big pharma and big tech wouldn't have shared in the pandemic bonanza; big business wouldn't have picked up massive market share from small businesses, and big government couldn't have expand their power base. It's no surprise the globalists at the World Economic Forum, the UN, EU and elsewhere, said the pandemic was a great opportunity for them.

Approval Of New Drugs

In January 2022 the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration ATGA, gave provisional approval of the first oral treatments for COVID-19 in Australia, Lagevrio® (molnupiravir) and Paxlovid® (nirmatrelvir + ritonavir).

The Health Minister announced that the Government had secured access to 300,000 treatment courses of Merck Sharp & Dohme’s (MSD) Lagevrio® and 500,000 courses of Pfizer’s Paxlovid® for supply throughout the course of 2022,
https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-greg-hunt-mp/media/two-anti-viral-covid-19-treatments-approved

Paxlovid cost the U.S. government about $530 per course. Lagevrio cost the U.S. about $700 per course.
https://www.goodrx.com/conditions/covid-19/covid-pill-cost-availability#costs

No doubt Australia paid more than the US, but even using the US figures, the spend is mind boggling for drugs which at least in the case of Merck's Paxlovid performs no better, and potentially worse than a placebo, while Pfizer's offering is little better (if we can believe their trial data given the failings in their vaccine trials), and has significant side effects,

In 2022, in Australian dollars the Australian government spent, at least $408 million on the useless Merck Paxlovid and $323.4 million on the questionable Pfizer, Lagevrio (molnupiravir).

Molnupiravir is sold in Australia under the brand name Lagevrio. Merk claims it disrupts the coronavirus’ ability to copy itself. It was the first COVID-19 antiviral to win government subsidy in Australia.

Failure Of New Covid-19 Drugs

The results of a recently completed large scale trial reveals the complete failure of Merck's much vaunted Covid-19 treatment.

The University of Oxford’s PANORAMIC trial enrolled 25,783 people with COVID-19, half of whom got molnupiravir. After 28 days, 103 people given molnupiravir had died, compared with 96 in the second group who were given a placebo. So Merck's drug might even be worst than no drug treatment at all. https://www.smh.com.au/national/not-having-a-big-impact-covid-drug-fails-to-beat-placebo-in-major-trial-20221010-p5bohc.html

In April Merck predicted it would make $US5 billion to $US5.5 billion selling the drug this financial year. (Pfizer says sales of Paxlovid are projected to reach $33.96 billion this year.)

In an effort to get more people using the Merck drug, the Australian government widened eligibility in July and Merck launched an advertising campaign.

But ATGA, the Health Minister and the phalanx of drug pushers supporting Big Pharma's multi billion dollar Covid-19 jackpot, should not have been surprised by this result.

Dr Kyle Sheldrick – a University of NSW researcher who co-authored a paper earlier this year on molnupiravir’s problems – is critical of the ATGA's approach.

"I did not think it should have been approved before PANORAMIC,” he said "I certainly don’t think it should be now.”

It's a shame he didn't speak up at the time, though we know the mainstream and social media would have probably censored him for doing so at the time.

Due to uncertainties about the clinical trial evidence, molnupiravir remains unapproved by the European Union; France cancelled its order in December.

Initial uncertainties about molnupiravir stemmed from strange results in the original Merck trial that got the drug approved.

Merck’s trial recruited about 1500 patients and gave half the drug.

Early results from the first half of patients tested were so positive – a halving of the chance of death – that the trial was stopped early so everyone could get the apparently life-saving treatment.

But when data from the remaining half of patients in the trial was published a month later, it told a different story. The second group had done far worse than the first. In fact, the data suggested molnupiravir did not improve their outcomes.

Combined, the full trial suggested molnupiravir did not cut the risk of death. Yet ATGA still gave provisional approval for the drug, and the Australian government went out and bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the drug.

You might say that uncertain times require a certain amount of risk taking in an effort to save lives. But not only did our health experts have the warning of the first dodgy drug trial results which would have been thrown out of a proper peer review system, but they had been super critical of other potentially life saving drugs which weren't going to earn Big Pharma and their friends hundreds of billions of dollars.

Cheap, Safe, Available Drugs Banned

Remember ATGA literally banned doctors from prescribing two other alternative oral medications, in Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin for the prevention or treatment of Covid-19. See here, https://www.tga.gov.au/news/safety-alerts/new-restrictions-prescribing-hydroxychloroquine-covid-19 and here, https://www.tga.gov.au/news/media-releases/new-restrictions-prescribing-ivermectin-covid-19

This is despite the decades of safe use of these drugs for a wide range of illnesses and with a low risk of mild side effects when used at PRESCRIBED levels.

Hydroxychloroquine was approved for medical use in the United States in 1955.[2] It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.

Ivermectin was discovered in 1975. William Campbell and Satoshi ÅŒmura won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for its discovery and applications. It is also on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines.

Our Big Pharma shills in Australia and many others around the world claimed there was no evidence either of these drugs were effective against Covid-19. But this wasn't true.

Hydroxychloroquine And Covid-19

Just four weeks after SARS-CoV-2 had been formerly identified and long before most were even aware of a brewing pandemic, a research team from China had already submitted a study to Nature showing "Hydroxychloroquine can efficiently inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro.” Four weeks later, a study in France was ready and registered, and by the 18th of March 2020, they had results that looked very promising. Led by Professor Didier Raoult, they showed that as time went on, Covid-19 patients taking a hydroxychloroquine therapy were recovering significantly faster. By October 2020 there was a meta analysis of 115 studies showing HCQ was effective when used early in the treatment of Covid-19. https://web.archive.org/web/20201020225605/https://hcqmeta.com/

Despite the desperate attempts to discredit the potential therapeutic benefit of Hydroxychloroquine to treat Covid-19, positive results in the field lead to big pharma agreeing to an industry funded trial of HCQ for hospitalised patients. This was done by the RECOVERY team funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, and Big Pharma, and supported by the WHO and scientists who were already working on developing new treatments against which the cheap and readily available HCQ would compete.

The trial was commenced with families desperate to save their loved ones signing indemnity forms to get them in the trial. But the patients in the trial started dying at a much faster rate than patients not receiving HCQ. The trial was quickly suspended, and that RECOVERY trial has since been used to claim that using HCQ to treat Covid-19 is not only ineffective, but dangerous.

What wasn't widely reported was that the RECOVERY trial prescribed patients with a known toxic dose of HCQ which was not being used by doctors in the field. This was raised in the New England Journal of Medicine in February and March 2021. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2035374

In this trial, patients received a higher dose of hydroxychloroquine (4 g cumulated over the first 3 days) than that administered in the trial conducted by Lagier et al.2 (600 mg per day). In other words, the RECOVERY trial was using 2.22 times or 220% of the generally recommended treatment dose.

The experts raising the concern went in to state the dose used in the trial '...may therefore be useless or even deleterious because of the anti-interferon action of hydroxychloroquine,5 which may result in a more severe form of Covid-19.'

They concluded, the dose levels used in the RECOVERY trial 'arouses concern because it may have been a disease-aggravating factor negating the therapeutic effect.'

There were plenty of other criticisms of the dosage. David Jayne, professor of clinical autoimmunity at Cambridge University said, "Hydroxychloroquine overdose is associated with cardiovascular, neurological, and other toxicities, occurring with doses over 1500 mg, and higher doses are associated with fatality.” He is concerned that hydroxychloroquine toxicity may have contributed to the adverse outcomes and that conclusions based on these results may be unreliable.

The response from the RECOVERY team was simply that the dose was chosen by 'modelling'. How many other things get blamed on modelling when real world results would prove more useful?

Ivermectin And Covid-19

The story with Ivermectin is as tangled as that of HCQ. In fact right now the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is currently suing the US Food and Drug Administration, FDA for misleading the public about Ivermectin. https://www.clarkcountytoday.com/news/national-organization-of-physicians-supports-lawsuit-against-fda-for-interfering-with-the-treatment-of-patients-with-covid-19/

The AAPS say the FDA published multiple statements and sent letters to influential organizations to falsely disparage ivermectin, implying that it was not approved for treating Covid-19. Many, including courts and state medical boards, were misled by the FDA into thinking that its lack of approval for this treatment meant that ivermectin should not be used to treat Covid-19.

It's easy to find a trial which has determined Ivermectin to be ineffective in treating Covid-19, but those trials are testing the use of Ivermectin in isolation to treat Covid-19. Most frontline practitioners who have claimed Ivermectin is useful in treating Covid-19 emphasise that it must be used early after onset, and it must be used as part of an overall treatment regime.

Many other studies promote Ivermectin as an effective prophylaxis preventing the onset of the disease, or it's seriousness. An excellent summary of the studies on this, which shows significant support for use of Ivermectin can be accessed here, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35694631/

This confirms that the results of studies using ivermectin to treat Covid-19 are inconsistent, and I would agree because practitioners are not using ivermectin within the constraints of a successful regimen. Perhaps they'd all do well to follow the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) treatment protocols designed by expert practitioners treating Covid-19 patients. https://covid19criticalcare.com/treatment-protocols/

FLCCC's founding physicians are highly published and world-renowned thought leaders, with deep knowledge and expertise to diagnose and treat COVID-related symptoms. They have no financial connections to Big Pharma and have been recommending Ivermectin as part of their treatment protocols from early on in the pandemic, adjusting the protocol as results dictated.

One of the largest studies of Ivermectin, 'The use of Ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19: Panacea or enigma?', published in September 2022 seems to show conclusive data that used as a prophylaxis, Ivermectin reduces the onset and seriousness of Covid-19.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35694631/

Dispelling safety concerns about Ivermectin, which is available without prescription in most countries, it is claimed Ivermectin is currently used by about 28% of the world's population, and its adoption is presently about 44% of countries.

The largest single study of Ivermectin as a prophylaxis was done in Brazil and the results reported recently.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35070575/

The study was implemented in Itajaí, a southern city in Brazil in the state of Santa Catarina. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of regular ivermectin use on subsequent COVID-19 infection and mortality rates.

The study was done between July 2020 and December 2020 when the more deadly strains of Covid-19 were prevalent. Ivermectin was taken for two consecutive days every 15 days at a dose of 0.2 mg/kg/day.

A total of 159,561 subjects were included in the analysis: 113,845 (71.3%) regular ivermectin users and 45,716 (23.3%) non-users.

Ivermectin users achieved a 44% reduction in infection rate, a 67% reduction in hospitalisations and a 79% reduction in mortality rate.

Risk Off Approved Drugs

Pfizer's Paxlovid achieved better trial results compared to Merk's molnupiravir. But given our health authorities banned HCQ and Ivermectin claiming they were unsafe, why were they so quick to approve these drugs? In terms of known side effects, contraindications and potential toxicity and deadliness, Paxlovid is far more dangerous than either Ivermectin or HCQ.

Common Paxlovid side effects include, changes in taste, diarrhea, high blood pressure and muscle aches. Paxlovid can be hard on both the liver and kidneys. It’s possible this medication could damage these organs, especially if you already have issues with them.

Animal studies suggest that molnupiravir may harm unborn babies or cause a miscarriage!

There’s also concern that molnupiravir may affect sperm. Experts are unsure if this could affect a future pregnancy.

It’s recommended for males who are sexually active with a person who can get pregnant to use condoms while taking molnupiravir. They should also continue using condoms for at least 3 months after their last dose.

Molnupiravir also shouldn’t be taken by people under 18 years old. This is because the medication may affect bone and cartilage development in younger people.

Paxlovid interacts with many medications. Some interactions make Paxlovid less effective, and others make it too plentiful in your body. The list is extensive and includes medications that myself and a huge percentage of people my age take including blood pressure and cholesterol medications. So most of the over 60's would be consigned to taking the Merk drug molnupiravir which may be more deadly than taking no drug at all!

Total Failure By Health Authorities - There Must Be Accountability

One can't come to any other conclusion, we were totally failed by our health authorities. When you consider how quickly the new, expensive Covid-19 drugs were approved, despite questionable efficacy, and with significant adverse dangers, it makes absolutely no sense that they banned potentially useful drugs, which represented little danger to patients, and in the absence of an alternative treatment.

Of course the standard explanation of this irrationality iss that they wanted to use the leverage of no alternative treatment, and the threat of ongoing lockdowns and restrictions, to force people to get vaccinated. Coercion of individuals to have any medical treatment they do not want, is a breach of the UN Charter of Human Rights. But apparently it's OK to tell people unless they get vaccinated, life won't be worth living.

Forcing people to get vaccinated was never about keeping people safe, had that been the priority, our government would have happily allowed the use of HCQ and Ivermectin.

There have been absolutely no reports of overdoses and adverse reactions in jurisdictions and countries where both drugs were readily available. So there's no safety argument for the bans.

The failure has been at a massive cost in lives, economically and socially. This is why there must be a wide ranging investigation into the pandemic response to hold those who failed us to account.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 08:41 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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