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The overreaction to the Coronavirus ( COVID-19) has driven our own government to virtually shut down the entire country along with its economy. While we must be diligent to do what we can, by washing our hands, not going to work when we’re sick, and taking special precautions for senior citizens with health problems, there is no need, speaking only for myself, to shut down the entire United States to deal with it.
(Photo courtesy of Focal Point)
While the search for a vaccine continues, the good news is that a silver bullet may have been found, a cheap generic medication that was developed decades ago (in 1944) to deal with malaria. The drug is Chloroquine phosphate, an old-fashioned anti-malarial drug, which has proven effective against Coronavirus in China and South Korea.
Says ABC, “Laboratory studies show chloroquine is effective at preventing as well as treating the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, a close cousin of COVID-19.”
There are no less than three studies that demonstrate the effectiveness of Chloroquine against the Coronavirus. One is a study conducted by James M. Todaro and Gregory J. Rigano, in association with Stanford University School of Medicine and National Academy of Sciences Researchers.
Here’s what the summary of their study says (emphasis mine):
Recent guidelines from South Korea and China report that Chloroquine is an effective antiviral therapeutic treatment against Coronavirus Disease 2019. Use of Chloroquine (tablets) is showing favorable outcomes in humans infected with Coronavirus including faster time to recovery and shorter hospital stay.
Research from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows that Chloroquine also has strong potential as a prophylactic (preventative) measure against Coronavirus in the lab, while we wait for a vaccine to be developed. Chloroquine is an inexpensive, globally available drug that has been in widespread human use since 1945 against malaria, autoimmune and various other conditions.
The study concludes this way:
“Chloroquine can both prevent and treat malaria. Chloroquine can both prevent and treat coronavirus in primate cells. According to South Korean and China human treatment guidelines, Chloroquine is effective in treating COVID-19. Given Chloroquine’s human safety profile and existence, it can be implemented today in the U.S., Europe and the rest of the world. Medical doctors may be reluctant to prescribe Chloroquine to treat COVID-19 since it is not approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA). The United States of America and other countries should immediately authorize and indemnify medical doctors for prescribing Chloroquine to treat COVID-19. We must explore whether Chloroquine can safely serve as a preventative measure prior to infection of COVID-19 to stop further spread of this highly contagious virus.”
“The United States of America and other countries should immediately authorize and indemnify medical doctors for prescribing Chloroquine to treat COVID-19. We must explore whether Chloroquine can safely serve as a preventative measure prior to infection of COVID-19 to stop further spread of this highly contagious virus.”
Centers for Disease Control
Chloroquine can be prescribed to adults and children of all ages. It can also be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers. The fact that it can be prescribed for patients of all ages means our priority should be to make this available as soon as humanly possible to senior citizens who are the most vulnerable demographic.
Here is the abstract from a study conducted in China:
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) virus is spreading rapidly, and scientists are endeavoring to discover drugs for its efficacious treatment in China. Chloroquine phosphate, an old drug for treatment of malaria, is shown to have apparent efficacy and acceptable safety against COVID-19 associated pneumonia in multicenter clinical trials conducted in China. The drug is recommended to be included in the next version of the Guidelines for the Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Pneumonia Caused by COVID-19 issued by the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China for treatment of COVID-19 infection in larger populations in the future.
And here is an abstract from a study reported in the journal Nature. It’s titled ‘Remdesivir and chloroquine effectively inhibit the recently emerged novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in vitro.’
Chloroquine, a widely-used anti-malarial and autoimmune disease drug, has recently been reported as a potential broad-spectrum antiviral drug. Chloroquine is known to block virus infection by increasing endosomal pH required for virus/cell fusion, as well as interfering with the glycosylation of cellular receptors of SARS-CoV. Our time-of-addition assay demonstrated that chloroquine functioned at both entry, and at post-entry stages of the 2019-nCoV infection in Vero E6 cells… Chloroquine is widely distributed in the whole body, including lung, after oral administration…Chloroquine is a cheap and a safe drug that has been used for more than 70 years and, therefore, it is potentially clinically applicable against the 2019-nCoV.
Well, if the problem is FDA approval for this use, Trump can direct the FDA to accelerate the approval process and get this thing in circulation. And the beauty here is that the drug could be prescribed today, right now. No need to wait. Trump should persuade Congress to immediately authorize doctors to prescribe it, and indemnify them against any lawsuits.
Because Chloroquine is a generic drug, no pharmaceutical companies will have any interest in producing it since they can’t make any money off it. They’ll want to convince us all that the only solution is a vaccine, which hasn’t even been approved yet. By the time we wait for all that to happen, there may be many lives lost and no economy left to save.
The United Kingdom has actually banned the export of Chloroquine, likely because they know it works and they want to have existing supplies in reserve for their own citizens. Britain first and all that.
Medical professionals in both China and South Korea have developed effective treatment measures using Chloroquine for patients with COVID-19, so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.
The drug works. “Studies showed ‘certain curative effect’ with ‘fairly good efficacy’ … patients treated with Chloroquine demonstrated a better drop in fever, improvement of lung CT images, and required a shorter time to recover” than untreated patients. So it can actually cure people who have Coronavirus, end their fevers, and shorten their time in hospital. This can keep our health system from getting overloaded and collapsing under its own weight.
If the drug is preventative as well as curative, you would expect to find the countries that have malaria, and therefore have used Chloroquine for decades, would have lower rates of Coronavirus if this theory is correct. Dr. Roy Spencer plotted the data for 234 countries, comparing total cases of COVID-19 to the incidence of malaria. He was astonished at what he found.
In the top 40 malaria countries, with an average of 212 cases of Malaria per thousand, the rate of COVID-19 is 0.2 cases per thousand. In the 153 countries with no Malaria, the rate is 68.7 cases of Coronavirus per thousand. When Dr. Spencer mapped all this out, the conclusion was unambiguous: “COVID-19 is where Malaria is not.”
Said Dr. Spencer, “In all my years of data analysis I have never seen such a stark and strong relationship: Countries with Malaria basically have no COVID-19 cases.”
This is where Congress could actually do something intelligent by taking some of the billions and billions and billions of dollars they are mindlessly throwing at this problem and targeting it to fund mass production of this medicine. Nobody will mind if they provide a profit margin to Big Pharma in the process if it will save countless lives and pull our economy back from the abyss while we wait for the vaccine.
Since Chloroquine can not only prevent the disease but cure it, we can begin to see immediate effects. We can get past this out-of-control, economy-destroying hysteria, save lives, and get the American economy back on its feet and humming in weeks, not months.
There is no time to lose. President Trump, over to you.
Bryan Fischer is host of the one-hour weekday “Focal Point” program on American Family Radio and may be contacted at bfischer@afa.net
