By Mary Beth Pfeiffer
It has occurred to us all. Somewhere in this plague-ridden world is a way to manage COVID-19 that works. Somebody must be getting this right.
Indeed, at isolated hospitals and nursing homes, in parts of India and Africa, in countries like Bangladesh and Egypt, and even in a few American doctors’ offices, COVID-19 is quietly and effectively being managed. Fewer patients in those places go to hospitals. Those admitted don’t stay as long. Fewer die, according to preliminary but impressive studies.
The typical American, however, has heard none of this — not heard that COVID can be prevented, not that it can be treated early, not that we can relieve the suffering and, potentially, the long-term damage. They have not heard that there is a drug called ivermectin.
Here’s why they don’t know.
— Politics in the United States has distorted and undermined the treatment debate here and worldwide. Recall the hydroxychloroquine uproar, which tragically made cheap early treatments a right-left, for-against issue. Two Senate hearings were partisan sideshows in which evidence was dismissed as “unverified” and “discredited” even before it was heard.
— The United States, the supposed leader in medical breakthroughs, is reluctant to follow or trust the science and data of far-off countries, where valuable research is emerging. Europe and Canada have mostly followed suit.
— But above all, the U.S. has poured $11.2 billion into vaccine development. An effective early treatment could potentially undercut demand for those vaccines, though we clearly need both.
The bar, therefore, is high for any drug that even hints at a COVID cure. Government calls such contenders unproven; declares reports of their success anecdotal, and throws arbitrary hurdles in their way. Drug companies, meantime, invest only in new and expensive treatments, among them remdesivir, which costs $3,000 (even as it fails many patients).
Put Politics, Bias Aside
I don’t suggest there is a profit-driven conspiracy to let infections fester and people die. For better or worse, this is how things work in a democratic, capitalist culture. A problem presents an opportunity. Business, government, medicine and media respond. But the grave implications of COVID-19 mean these players have acted in outsized and often counterproductive ways.
As a long-time investigative journalist, I have written about ivermectin and, before that, hydroxychloroquine, as cheap, approved drugs that could be treating COVID now. I believe the evidence should be studied in an unbiased way. But mainstream media has upheld an almost universal blackout on anything positive about these safe generics.
This fixed narrative has led YouTube, Twitter and FaceBook to practice a new and insidious form of censorship, under the dictum that emerging studies are fatally flawed and fostered by “fringe” elements. “There’s no evidence ivermectin has been proven a safe or effective treatment against COVID-19,” declared an Associated Press “fact-checking” article. Similar reports regurgitate government pronouncements that journalism, at its best, ought rather question.
Even major medical journals have gone along rather than lead, strongly preferring articles that reinforce the prevailing story. After analyzing 180 studies on hydroxychloroquine, the @CovidAnalysis website concluded: “Studies from North America are 3.8 times more likely to report negative results than studies from the rest of the world combined.” This is not random but choice. The Lancet even published a devastating hydroxychloroquine study only to retract it because of fraudulent data.
