Politicizing the Pandemic

Here’s some interesting news from the coronavirus treatment front.

First, from Gateway Pundit (via Maggie’s Farm).Dr. Stephen Smith attested to the value of a treatment regimen including the anti-malarial drug  hydroxychloroquine with an antibiotic on the Laura Ingraham show:

[No] person has received five days or more of the hydroxychoroquine-azithro combination has been intubated.  The chance of that occurring by chance according to my sons Elan and Hunter who did some stats for me are .000 something.  It’s ridiculously low. It’s ridiculously low however you look at it. We were looking at selection bias in this situation.  But I cannot think of a reason why. If all else is equal why people that received 5 days or more or even four days or more of this hydroxychloroquine-azithro regimen wouldn’t get intubated… It’s a game-changer.    An absolute game-changer. I think this data goes to really support the French data… Laura, I think this is the beginning of the end of the pandemic.

These results are nearly identical to those reported from Marseilles, France, on this blog.

And then, a poll of physicians around the world suggested the same, via the New York Post:

An international poll of thousands of doctors rated the Trump-touted anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as the best treatment for the novel coronavirus.

Of the 6,227 physicians surveyed in 30 countries, 37 percent rated hydroxychloroquine as the “most effective therapy” for combating the potentially deadly illness, according to the results released Thursday.

The survey, conducted by the global health care polling company Sermo, also found that 23 percent of medical professionals had prescribed the drug in the US — far less than other countries.

“Outside the US, hydroxychloroquine was equally used for diagnosed patients with mild to severe symptoms whereas in the US it was most commonly used for high risk diagnosed patients,” the survey found.

The medicine was most widely used in Spain, where 72 percent of physicians said they had prescribed it.

You would think that physicians in New York State would be embracing this treatment. You would be wrong. They might want to do so, but Governor Andrew Cuomo, he of the soaring poll numbers for his handling the crisis, has banned it from New York. Dr. Mehmet Oz called on Cuomo yesterday to lift the ban:

Dr. Mehmet Oz urged New York Governor [Andrew] Cuomo to lift restrictions placed on anti-malaria drugs that have been raised as a possible solution to combat the coronavirus.

Last week, ... Cuomo issued an executive order barring doctors in New York from prescribing chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine to COVID-19 patients in state-approved clinical trials. The pair of drugs has previously been advertised by President Donald Trump as a promising method to help infected patients recover.

Let’s see. For Democrats the mere fact that President Trump touted the possible efficacy of this drug is sufficient reason to ban it. Doesn’t this tell us far more than we want to know about their willingness to politicize everything, even the pandemic?