Today’s update begins with the news that Youtube was, once again, censoring another video in which medical doctors were expressing their opinion that hydroxychloroquine could help treat COVID-19.
Fortunately, it was reinstated. However, the repercussions of media misrepresentations are serious.
YouTube on Wednesday reinstated a video it has previously censored in which several medical doctors suggested that the drug hydroxychloroquine might be useful in treating coronavirus, with the company reportedly claiming at the time of censorship that the presentation was “dangerous.”The video report, presented by Sharyl Attkisson at Full Measure News, examined the possible benefits of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 and the possible financial interest some parties have in downplaying the drug and promoting a separate treatment called remdesivir.One of the doctors interviewed in the video, William O’Neill, tells Attkisson, also a Just the News contributor, that there is “some value” to hydroxychloroquine and “it has to be tested.”O’Neill, a cardiologist in Detroit, has prescribed the drug to multiple patients and “saw improvement in all of them,” Attkisson reported.At the Henry Ford Health System, where O’Neill works, officials are working with hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir. The doctor said the media campaign against the drug, which began around the time President Trump first started touting it, has left patients “scared to use the drug without any scientifically valid concern.”
The video is here:
Sharyl Atkisson’s Full Measure video is highly informative, including the interview with Dr. Steven Hatfill, who is a biomedical scientist who worked on Ebola and studies pandemic responses and medicine. Hatfill indicates that the campaign against the treatment may have resulted in needless death.
Sharyl: You think lives were lost because it wasn’t used?Dr. Hatfill: Yes, lives were lost.He took hydroxychloroquine years ago for malaria and recently, again, to test to prevent coronavirus.Sharyl: A preventive would mean, if it were to work, that the fear that this comes back before there’s a working vaccine, the fear that we have another shutdown …Dr. Hatfill: a return to work … early detection, return to work. Would I give it as a prophylaxis to everybody? No. But for fit, healthy, critical workers going back to work or high risk populations; chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, ex-smokers, diabetics, obesity …Sharyl: Might work for them?Dr. Hatfill: It might work for them.
And while the American press continues its campaign against hydroxychloroquine, the British are buying the medication in bulk.
Hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug being taken by Donald Trump as an unproven protection against coronavirus, is being bought in bulk by the UK in case it does turn out to be an effective Covid-19 treatment.Ministers are seeking 16m tablets in packets of up to 100 as part of a £35m contract put out to tender on Friday.The drug is being tested by government scientists, health officials said. They are securing additional supplies so it can be distributed among the population if required.The contract, which was uploaded to a government website on 15 May, is an “open opportunity” for pharmaceutical suppliers to supply more than 33m tablets of various drugs between June and next January.
In addition to the models being a spectacular fail, it turns out that the virus does not easily spread via surfaces, as originally reported.
For those of you still wiping down groceries and other packages amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, breathe a sigh of relief: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now says the novel virus “does not spread easily” from “touching surfaces or objects” — but experts warn that doesn’t mean it’s no longer necessary to take “practical and realistic” precautions in stopping the spread of COVID-19.Though it’s not exactly clear when, the federal health agency appears to have recently changed its guidelines from early March that simply said it “may be possible” to spread the virus from contaminated surfaces. The CDC now includes “surfaces or objects” under a section that details ways in which the coronavirus does not readily transmit.
Another model needs to be adjusted.
A key coronavirus model has revised its death projection for the United States slightly downward, now forecasting that 143,360 people will die by August 4.That’s about 3,700 fewer deaths than the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IMHE) model foresaw when last updated about a week ago.The news comes as the coronavirus death toll in the United States has passed another somber milestone. More than 90,000 people now have died, and more than 1.5 million people have been infected, according to Johns Hopkins University data.The shift in the model’s fatalities forecast is small, but it marks a departure from recent increases in the model’s death projections, which have been largely based on increases in mobility across the country and the easing of social distancing measures.
David Marcus, The Federalist’s New York correspondent, pleads to open up New York.
Sometimes, a good rant is all a writer can offer. Bear with me.Last Friday morning, some 3,500 New Yorkers lined up at a Catholic church in Queens to receive free food hours before it even opened, according to the New York Police Department. Catholic Charities has reported a 200 percent increase in demand over the past month and a half.By prolonging the coronavirus shutdown long after its core mission was accomplished, Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have plunged tens of thousands of New Yorkers into poverty.It needs to end. Now.In mid-March, we were told we have to endure a lockdown to ensure that hospitals didn’t get overrun. We did. The hospitals were not overwhelmed. We turned the Javits Center into a hospital. We didn’t need it. We brought in a giant Navy ship to treat New Yorkers. We didn’t need it.We were told we were moments away from running out of ventilators. We weren’t, and now the United States has built so many, we are giving them away to other countries.
Based on all the new data, as well as the model failures, his entreaty should apply to the rest of the nation.
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