Is the FDA trying to save lives? Or cost lives?
It’s a serious question. Back in December Biden’s HHS stopped all shipments of Regeneron, an effective Covid treatment, for nearly two weeks based on a CDC model that said the Delta variant had disappeared. That model was wildly wrong, and many people likely needed up hospitalized or dead because they were denied access to treatment.
Yesterday the Biden administration blocked Regeneron again, this time taking the further step of the FDA suspending the product’s authorization, so it cannot lawfully be used even in places that already have inventory. Florida and other states were forced to close their clinics. They used the same rationale – CDC models say there is no more Delta.
But Illinois sequencing data still shows 20 percent Delta. Could CDC be wrong again? Of course
Illinois is not making a peep about Biden cutting off lifesaving medicine. But Florida is livid.
Would be great if @US_FDA gave us a heads up that they would shut down the use of a treatment without providing any clinical evidence, or any time to adjust operations… or any replacements. @POTUS used the DPA to make masks, but not treatments.
Way to go, everybody. pic.twitter.com/gZMRBaTMxW
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) January 25, 2022
Bottom line: we trust doctors to make treatment decisions, not Biden admin bureaucrats who got this exact issue catastrophically wrong a month ago.
Meanwhile, Glaxo’s monoclonal product, which works against Omicron in vitro, continues to be shipped, but supplies are limited because the Biden administration did not place an order until 6 months after the product was authorized in May. Supplies were short because Glaxo found it nearly impossible to compete will 100% taxpayer funded purchases and therefore didn’t scale production until recently.
All of this goes to show that government purchasing and distribution of medicine is a disaster.
If the four companies making monoclonal products were competing through normal commercial channels there would be no shortages, more innovation, downward price pressure – and no ugly incidents of apparent political/racial rationing.
We are starting to wonder whether Americans would be healthier today if the government had never intervened at all.