Covid-19 can be treated-2

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

 

The information relayed to me about the treatment for the Covid-19 disease ushered in a lot of data and discussions that explain why there is a campaign to condition the minds of people around the world that there is no cure for this disease.

The truth is there are drugs that worked in most but not in all. That is always the case – medicine is effective when used on time, with the correct dosage and expertly administered but could fail in others when the conditions are not right.

My readings during these days of isolation were focused on the controversy over hydroxychloroquine, a drug found by many practitioners to be effective against the virus. Others reject it. The literature is very instructive; our readers should do their search on this subject because my discussion can only touch on the basics sufficient to provide an intelligent basis for a conclusion and in relation to other issues.

The numerous articles however explained why despite the availability of the treatment, specifically hydroxychloroquine, hundreds die and panic reigns. This drug, called HCQ for brevity, is available and had been used but it is surrounded by controversies that others rejected it. It has been proven effective in many cases and is used by other countries that have minimized the disease among their people.

Indeed, as Dr. Harvey Risch’s Newsweek July 22 article declares, “The key to defeating COVID-19 already exists. We need to start using it.” So why is our government proscribing it when doctors want to prescribe or continue to use the drug?

As early as March 2020, the United States and other countries had allowed the use of this drug which has been in use for over 60 years on the treatment and suppression of malaria, one of the scourges of mankind since the recorded time. US President Donald Trump even ordered millions of it and the US was ready to distribute it for free not only in the US but in developing countries, including the Philippines. In fact, the information says we have this stock here.

Then an article came out in The Lancet, one of the most respected medical journals in the world. The journal published last March an article with a conclusion: the drug (HCQ) “increases heartbeat irregularities and decreases hospital survival rates.” This claim was “treated as authoritative, and major drug trials were immediately halted – because why treat anyone with an unsafe drug?”

The article was so influential that when it was published, it was cited by the World Health Organization “to halt all trials using hydroxychloroquine that were ongoing in the WHO’s effort to find medicines that could cure COVID 19.”

The Lancet article “was perceived worldwide as the medical research that would finally put an end to all speculation about the efficacy and safety of Hydroxychloroquine. Many nations instantly issued national directives halting the use of Hydroxychloroquine on all Covid-19 patients such as France, Italy and Spain.” The US and the Philippines followed suit, but other countries did not.

The story would have ended there for hydroxychloroquine until The Guardian, a newspaper in Australia broke open the story of a hoax. The newspaper discovered that the Australia hospitals cited in the study to have provided The Lancet authors with data, denied that they gave information to the authors of the study.

The Guardian then wrote the editors of The Lancet and the journal must have been jolted out of their wits about the credibility of their article that they made a “hasty and humiliating retraction of the article.”

In fact, had The Lancet, WHO, and other experts checked the background of one of the authors, they would have known the integrity of a Dr. Sapan Desai of Surgisphere who has a hospital in Africa with 40% of all Covid-19 deaths. He is reported to be facing three malpractice suits. Was The Lancet article a fund-raising project? Or worse?

Sadly, by then the damage has been done and many lives were devastated and lost. But the biggest tragedy was WHO quickly picked up the study and sent “stop testing and usage of HCQ” orders. Clearly WHO did not conduct its own investigation but merely swallowed the conclusions in The Lancet article. Other articles for and against HCQ followed.

We’ll continue tomorrow.