Posted on 09/18/2021 9:33:18 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s perhaps the most effective way to save your life if you are infected with COVID-19, but probably the least known. It reduces the risk of even being hospitalized by 70% to 85%, though it must be administered early to be effective – within four days of infection. Lives probably are being lost unnecessarily because people don’t know about it.
It’s monoclonal antibody treatment, abbreviated as mAb. To the extent the public has any familiarity with it they, may know it as Regeneron, though that’s actually the name of the company that makes the leading treatment, REGEN-COV2, and there are several other mAbs from other makers.
Health authorities for months back should have been issuing this message constantly: “Immediately after being exposed or you have COVID symptoms, get tested and ask if an antibody treatment is right for you.”
But they didn’t. They still aren’t. At least not in Illinois and most of the nation.
Why not?
No reasonable explanation is evident and a significant number of lives may have been lost because of the failure to inform the public properly. And now, with antibody treatments getting more attention, the treatments must be rationed, adding to the tragedy. At least in part, the explanation is a sad one – politics, and politicized media.
The effectiveness of REGEN and other antibody treatments has been known since at least November when the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for REGEN and another mAb. Earlier tests had found REGEN to be over 70% effective in heading off serious illness and multiple subsequent tests have confirmed it.
“Many of us were talking about this as early as March [2020]" wrote Scott Gottlieb, a former FDA commissioner.
“Regeneron did extraordinary work to secure their own manufacturing, but we needed a concerted industrial effort to get the supply we needed.”
Only over the last month have antibody treatments started to gain more attention. That’s probably because Dr. Anthony Fauci finally – belatedly – spoke up, saying that the treatments can reduce the risk of COVID-19 hospitalization or death by 70% to 85%. That seems to have been a signal to the establishment herd that it was permissible to talk about the treatments positively. The Biden Administration thereafter announced it would be stepping up purchases of the treatments.
But the increased attention has now caused a shortage of the treatments. What was in oversupply only a couple months ago is now being rationed. The Biden Administration just announced restrictions on how much of the treatments may be shipped to each state. From the Washington Post: “Soaring demand for the therapy represents a sharp turn from just two months ago, when monoclonal antibodies were widely available and awareness of them was low. With little promotion by the government, consumers, doctors and states were using just a tiny fraction of the available supply.”
Here in Illinois, health authorities and the media are completely behind the curve. It’s difficult to find even a word that has been said on the subject. The message isn’t being given that you should get tested fast if you think you are infected and see if antibody treatment is available to you.
Intensive care units in some parts of downstate Illinois are now full of COVID patients. How many of those hospitalizations would have been avoided if the victims had been aware of the treatment and acted quickly to get it?
That goes for most of the nation as well. Florida is one of six states among the exceptions. Those six states have been using the treatments aggressively, consuming 70% of the supply in recent weeks. That’s partly due to high, recent infection rates in most of those states, but also because they have seen the value of antibody treatment that other states have ignored, and they’ve told their people about it. That’s especially true of Florida, which I’ll get to.
Why haven’t health authorities and supposed experts been making a life-saving treatment better known?
One benign but irrational answer is that they don’t want to distract from the importance of vaccinations because they view prevention as better than treatment. For example, CNN’s expert, Dr. Leana Wen, said, “It’s totally backwards to say that we should be focused on treatment instead of emphasizing prevention, and the steps that we know work to stop Covid-19 in the first place.” And Dr. Christian Ramers, an infectious-disease specialist, told the Daily Beast. “It’s so much better to prevent a disease than to use an expensive, cumbersome and difficult-to-use therapy,” Ramers submitted. “It does not make any medical sense to lean into monoclonals to the detriment of vaccines. It’s like playing defense with no offense.”
That seems irrational on its face. Preventative vaccines and therapeutics like antibody treatment are not alternatives. Promote vaccines all you want, but when somebody is facing possible death, treat them.
But another explanation at least partially accounts for why mAbs have been shunned: The establishment doesn’t like the politics of who championed antibody therapy, particularly Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a leading, likely, Republican candidate for president.
Since at least November, DeSantis has been encouraging Floridians to seek the treatment if they get infected.
“And the good thing about this is millions of doses are ready to ship as we speak,” he said then.
“Soon as the FDA approves they will then go out within the next 24 hours and we expect our hospitals hopefully to receive these within the next three to six weeks. He later set up clinics specifically for providing the treatment.
Well, we certainly can’t be agreeing with anything he says, as MSM sees things, so the Associated Press led the charge. They did it by trying to implicate two others the left doesn’t like, Ken Griffin and his hedge fund, Citadel. Griffin is a Chicago billionaire who frequently supports Republicans and conservative causes.
So, in a column reprinted almost universally in the national and Illinois media, the AP linked DeSantis’ support for antibody treatments to a Citadel investment in Regeneron and Griffin’s campaign contributions to DeSantis.
It was a smear job, creating the impression that Regeneron’s product is snake oil peddled by DeSantis as a return favor. DeSantis responded appropriately, saying the column was a blatant political attack.
The AP wasn’t alone. A Bloomberg columnist on Twitter mocked DeSantis and the Regeneron product because of what he claimed it costs – $1,250 per dose – though vaccines are free. That’s false. DeSantis made the treatment free.
As you would expect, the press had another reason for dismissing the value of antibody treatments – Trump. He credited Regeneron’s product for helping with his recovery when he was infected. But that was because Regeneron’s CEO was a member of Trump’s golf club, said the Daily Mail. And Trump owned shares of Regeneron and Gilead, another mAb maker, so that must explain his claim, as USA Today would have you believe. “No, Regeneron did not cure Donald Trump of COVID,” The New Republic flatly told us in a headline, as if they had any idea.
The facts on antibody treatment have now overrun that political hype. Still today, however, the public remains mostly unaware of the efficacy and availability of the treatment, except in a few states like Florida. Although treatments are now being rationed, they are available to people in high risk groups everywhere.
Too bad the federal government didn’t ramp up its purchases of the product earlier.
Too bad every state didn’t promote it as heavily as Florida did.
Too bad states like Illinois still aren’t talking about it.
Too bad governors in states like Illinois aren’t saying what DeSantis is now saying, which is that he will “fight like hell” to get what he can of the available treatments now being rationed.
Too bad because we will never know how many lives might have been saved.
A friend got the monoclonal antibodies after being sick for two weeks. He felt better the same day and great the next. Now Biden has restricted our state’s access to the medicine.
“Vaccine” sellers lose money, that’s why.
Because the government has been loathe to do anything that puts the push for vaccines in jeopardy.
If there was a quick treatment for after you get COVID-19, then why need the vaccine that doesn't prevent you from getting COVID-19 anyway?
Just skip the vaccine and take the monoclonal antibodies if you get COVID-19.
It seems as if the government's agenda wasn't to stop people from dying from COVID-19, or they would be aggressively pushing monoclonal antibodies.
Instead, they are pushing the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and withholding monoclonal antibodies from states with Republican governors as political punishment, inevitably leading to more COVID-19 hospitalizations and death.
-PJ
RE: A friend got the monoclonal antibodies after being sick for two weeks. He felt better the same day and great the next
Which is EXACTLY the same experience that President Trump had at Walter Reed. He checked in to the hospital on Friday, got his Regeneron infusion, and left on the Monday of the following week. Remember, he was 74 years old then !! Astonishing for a man his age !!
They aren’t being promoted because they work very well. If people aren’t sick then there’s no fear the elites can leverage to control us—no population control.
No money in it for Big Pharma and the corrupt politicians who receive campaign contributions and kickbacks from them.
When Government gets entangled with Science you get fake science. The Soviet Union embraced the fake science of Lysenkoism with disastrous results. We are seeing the same thing with Covid and Climate change. It is like fighting witchcraft.
The whole thing is highly politicized. It’s almost like it was planned; responses that go outside the planned timeline are suppressed, while the planned responses are supported and promoted by many parts of the government and pharmaceutical industry. It’s pretty easy to tell which are which.
RE: No money in it for Big Pharma
Aren’t Regeneron and Ely Lilly big pharma?
I mean in 2020, Regeneron had annual revenue of close to $2.5 Billion while Moderna had a mere $800 Million.
BUT — in 2021, following the EUA of their Covid vaccine, Moderna revenue for the quarter ending June 30, 2021 was $4.354B, a 6398.51% increase year-over-year.
While Regeneron’s Second quarter 2021 revenues increased 163% to $5.14 billion versus second quarter 2020 including $2.76 billion attributable to REGEN-COV.
Clearly it isn’t all about how big a pharma is. There’s got to be other factors involved ( e.g. who in the decision making body have financial stakes in the vaccines ).
Anything that doesn’t increase our dependence on the government will be slammed 24 seven by the main stream media celebrities Instagram or’s etc. etc.
It doesn’t make the big pharma companies billions.
RE: It doesn’t make the big pharma companies billions.
See my comments in Post #10 above.
Faucsenkoism...
That’s why it’s being restricted by the Biden administration. The fellow who got the antibodies here was told he was the only non-vaccinated person they treated all day. He was their last patient of the day.
Looks like it needs to be administered early.
https://www.regeneron.com/downloads/treatment-covid19-eua-fact-sheet-for-patient.pdf
Scroll down to...
“WHAT IS REGEN-COV (casirivimab and imdevimab)?
REGEN-COV is an investigational medicine used in adults and adolescents (12 years of age and older who weigh at least 88 pounds (40 kg)) who are at high risk for severe COVID-19, including hospitalization or death for:
• treatment of mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19
• post-exposure prevention of COVID-19 in persons who are:
o not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (Individuals are considered to be fully vaccinated 2 weeks after their second vaccine dose in a 2-dose series [such as the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines], or 2 weeks after a single-dose vaccine [such as Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen vaccine]), or,
o are not expected to build up enough of an immune response to the complete COVID-19 vaccination (for example, someone with immunocompromising conditions, including someone who is taking immunosuppressive medications),
and
have been exposed to someone who is infected with SARS-CoV-2. Close contact with someone who is infected with SARS-CoV-2 is defined as being within 6 feet for a total of 15 minutes or more, providing care at home to someone who is sick, having direct physical contact with the person (hugging or kissing, for example), sharing eating or drinking utensils, or being exposed to respiratory droplets from an infected person (sneezing or coughing, for example). For additional details, go to
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/if-you-aresick/quarantine.html, or
someone who is at high risk of being exposed to someone who is infected with SARS-CoV-2 because of occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 infection in other individuals in the same institutional setting (for example, as nursing homes, prisons,).”
No need optó try and get complicated with the answer.
Does Blackrock or Vanguard have controlling shares in the companies that make the stuff?
If they don’t, then that’s why they aren’t promoted.
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