Big Brother and your healthcare

As mentioned, I never saw the politicization of a pandemic or any of its treatments coming. I realize I am a little naïve about things outside of Medicine, but, after being an AIDS doc for most of my career, I just never expected anyone to politicize Covid or any drug used to treat Covid.

The Left’s immediate and inappropriate response to HCQ data stunned (and stuns) me. The Left made conflicting statements about HCQ, saying it, at once, was the Devil’s drug, but that HCQ had to be reserved for lupus pts, whose lives depend upon it. Obviously, HCQ cannot be life saving for lupus pts and deadly for everyone else. It is the former; it certainly is not the latter.

The Left’s incoherent attacks on HCQ, despite two major retractions in the New England Journal and the Lancet, continued unabated. It was like a religious war instead of scientific debate. In fact, there was no debate. I personally offered to debate Dr. F. Perry Wilson, a Yale kidney doctor, who has strong views/opinions against HCQ (weird, why does a kidney doctor have any HCQ opinions, except that HCQ works against lupus kidney disease). I attempted to contact Dr. Wilson directly and via one of Yale’s deans, to no avail. My goal was to have an honest, PBS style debate, not to have a yelling match. But my sincere offer was not accepted.

But as happened in responses to my posts, logic has left the building. People hold simultaneous conflicting opinions and act as if the opinions are compatible. When we can no longer agree on the foundations of logic, then we cannot have a debate, of course.

So, we muttered along, we being my team and those doctors so dedicated to helping people with Covid get better. We have no particular love for HCQ and will switch to a better therapy in a heartbeat, as we did during the HIV epidemic. And we use other therapies now in conjunction with HCQ.

BTW, I haven’t gotten into our efficacy data yet. That’s to come.

We doctors are a fickle bunch. As soon as a better HIV drug was released, we switched our pts to that drug.

Now, Saint Barnabas is looking into removing HCQ as a treatment option for COVID, citing theoretical safety concerns. As far as they have said, there are no actual problems with HCQ’s safety in Covid pts. I am in contact regularly with pharmacists there and none has mentioned any concern about HCQ’s safety. As justification for this new policy, Saint Barnabas noted that the NIH and IDSA guidelines for COVID do not recommend HCQ. That’s true, but that’s true for most therapies we use for Covid. Ironically, doctors, who are anti-HCQ (usually employed by the hospital), will stop HCQ when they can and start other therapies, which are similarly NOT recommended by IDSA, NIH or the WHO. That’s just weird. Doctors have written notes “I recommend stopping HCQ and starting tocilizumab.” This is the same thing as saying, “I recommend stopping a drug which is not recommended by the guidelines for Covid and recommend starting a drug which is not recommended by the guidelines for Covid.” The other drugs all have significant and serious potential adverse effects. Yet, it seems, these doctors and the hospital are only concerned about potential adverse effects of HCQ.

But in 2020 in the USA, you can take hypocritical positions, as long as you are in the “In Crowd”. We doctors in each hospital should get together and discuss the available data for each potential therapeutic. But that doesn’t happen. Instead, the hospital picks on HCQ, while it has said nothing about using other medicines for COVID, even when they are not recommended by any of the guidelines. That inconsistency is mind-blowing. Soon, we will start applauding the success of our 5-year plan.

There is a more than decent chance, that come December 1st, Saint Barnabas won’t allow your physician to prescribe HCQ for Covid. To my knowledge, that will be the first time in Saint Barnabas’ history that they have a restricted an FDA approved drug by disease, meaning this is crossing a new line in hospital interference with the practice of Medicine.

Hopefully, the vaccines will make such a policy moot. But, the odds are that HCQ use for Covid at Saint Barnabas will end very soon. And that’s not just bad for the pts; that’s a really bad precedent.

If you are concerned about Big Brother’s interference in your medical care, then you can reach out to Saint Barnabas. If you’re ok with Big Brother dictating your healthcare, why are you reading this?

https://www.facebook.com/SaintBarnabasMedicalCenter/

Maybe you could simply ask them to look at their outcome data in Covid pts treated with HCQ and compare their outcomes to Covid pts not treated with HCQ.

SMS