Special to CosmicTribune.com, September 12, 2024

In the early stages of the Covid pandemic, President Donald Trump and senior adviser Peter Navarro arranged for the donation of 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to America’s strategic drug stockpile.

The Trump administration began securing the HCQ in March 2020, after Trump, on the advice of his medical and scientific advisors, characterized the drug as “very encouraging,” “very powerful,” and a “game-changer.”

Soon after, a full-scale attack on HCQ was launched by federal officials, legacy media, so-called “fact-checkers,” and university professors.

“Many of the attacks contained outright falsehoods about HCQ’s pharmacology and safety or Trump’s endeavor to make HCQ available to eligible patients,” Dr. David Gortler noted in a Sept. 9 analysis for the Brownstone Institute.

Also in March of 2020, the FDA issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for HCQ. But that EUA was withdrawn on June 15, 2020, with the FDA stating the drug was “unlikely to be effective in treating Covid-19 for the [EUA] authorized uses.”

Gortler, a pharmacologist, pharmacist, and research scientist, pointed to hundreds of studies (listed in the bibliography of his analysis) which have been shown “to only rarely report safety concerns during limited duration of HCQ administered for Covid-19. Of those, almost all were minor, and of those, all appeared to resolve upon drug discontinuation.”

During a press conference on March 20, 2020, Trump stated that he proposed to use HCQ for early treatment “at the beginning” of Covid-19 infections (see video below).

“Trump was right to suggest that because today, there is a great deal of evidence that early (or even prophylactic) treatment with HCQ is very effective for Covid-19,” Gortler noted.

During the same March 2020 press conference and standing alongside Trump, Dr. Anthony Fauci stated that “[HCQ] toxicities are rare, and in many respects, reversible.”

Urgent: Support Free Press Foundation

Gortler noted that Fauci changed his mind regarding HCQ following the publication of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine on May 1, 2020 that was later retracted, the FDA’s problematic methodologies in its review on May 19, 2020, and the Lancet’s publication on May 22, 2020, which was also later retracted.

“Despite historical evidence of HCQ being both safe and effective, physicians, politicians, and organizations, taking their lead from incorrect narratives from Fauci, the press, and medical publications, rushed to parrot outrageously incorrect anti-HCQ on top of highly emotional anti-Trump narratives,” Gortler wrote.

Gortler cited the following as just a few of the dozens upon dozens of examples:

• Four months after stating the exact opposite during the March 20, 2020 press conference, on July 29, 2020, Fauci told CNBC that there was “no evidence it was effective.” Fauci also suddenly shifted, adding that HCQ for Covid-19 “didn’t make scientific sense.” Seemingly not critically evaluating or looking beyond (falsified and now retracted) New England Journal and Lancet conclusions.

• Josh Cohen, a Forbes.com PhD senior healthcare columnist (with a background in economics) later headlined an absurdly biased op-ed based on a study out of France stating that Trump’s HCQ proposal could be “Linked To 17,000 Deaths” …except Cohen left out the “could be” part. Forbes’s Tufts- Harvard- and University of Pennsylvania- trained “healthcare analyst” (who also opines on climate change and the Inflation Reduction Act) fully neglected to mention that such a number was fully theorized, conjectural, and that estimation was an extrapolation of a late-stage “compassionate use” scenario where HCQ could have, hypothetically caused an 11% increase in mortality. He also chastised the “unproven, experimental nature of hydroxychloroquine” even though non-experimental and proven positive clinical findings existed prior to his piece being published. Of course, one would never know that by Forbes’ appallingly misleading article title which instead of being an “analysis” seemingly closely paralleling the writings of non-”healthcare analysts” at The Hill and Politico. The original publication upon which Cohen’s (and The Hill’s and Politico’s) article was based, was (in what has become a familiar pattern) retracted at the request of the publishing journal’s editor-in-chief following an investigation of journal subscribers which uncovered major deficiencies in the study’s dataset (and other failings). Despite that, the above (in addition to other) news articles remain live and online, accumulating hits from a public that believes them to be factual and current, still used as a talking point against Trump. Will redactions of these badly outdated op-eds ever take place?

• Yale University’s Department of Epidemiology’s Dean, Dr. Stan Vermund quoted a line, admonishing against the use of HCQ for Covid-19 on July 29, 2020 stating “[HCQ] showed no benefit for decreasing the likelihood of death or speeding recovery.” His widely-cited letter remains online, prominently showing up in internet search results to this very day. Dr. Vermund was chastising HCQ research published by Dr. Harvey Risch, a distinguished epidemiologist and Yale colleague, while failing to directly link Dr. Risch’s publication and also not specifically listing any fault with Dr. Risch’s research methodology. At the time, well-conducted studies contradicted Dr. Vermund’s quote and sentiment against HCQ, with dozens upon dozens more studies since released, but no updated or revised letter from Dr. Vermund addressing those favorable data.

• The WHO stated that HCQ “has no meaningful effect on deaths or hospitalizations” and “made a strong recommendation against the use of hydroxychloroquine” and that they “…do not consider this drug worthwhile.”

Gortler noted that “clinicians like myself who advocated for any alternate treatments such as ivermectin or HCQ were mocked online by non-medically- and non-scientifically trained ‘trusted journalists’ and ‘fact-checkers’ as being part of a ‘right-wing conspiracy.’ ”

Anyone [WorldTribune.com being one of them] “who didn’t demure to the Covid-19 mRNA or other Big Pharma Covid-19 treatments and narratives were banned, fired, and blasted as ‘anti-science’ around the world and into the reaches of the stratosphere via the Internet. And if that wasn’t outrageous enough, it didn’t end there,” Gortler wrote.

“Physicians and pharmacists lost their jobs, their reputations, practices, insurance, finances, licensure, and careers were destroyed. That’s because in many cases, even after losing their jobs, state medical and/or pharmacy boards with broad and vague authority plus seemingly limitless taxpayer-funded budgets initiated legal proceedings against their licensure, cherry-picking the persecution of their ‘off-label’ Covid-19 treatments (including ivermectin and HCQ) when other ‘off-label’ treatments for non-Covid-19 diagnoses were a near-ubiquitous component of almost every medical and pharmacy practice. On top of that, America’s press and ‘fact-checkers’ singled out and sought to embarrass providers through online articles.”

Starting in May 2024, Americans learned through a Republican House Judiciary report and Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter that Facebook, YouTube and Amazon, that a great deal of Covid-19 narrative, punishment, and censorship was directly coordinated by the Biden-Harris administration via direct legal threats.

“Appallingly,” Gortler noted, “it was America’s White House that forced private companies to censor objective facts on now-proven to be effective repurposed treatments (including HCQ) while simultaneously advocating for and/or mandating the use of novel, expensive Big Pharma treatments, and the press were just tools to advance and reinforce the White House’s censorship.”

Gortler continued:

Trump’s donated HCQ for pre-exposure prophylaxis, early exposure, or early treatment (in eligible individuals), would have worked better than Paxlovid and could have also been used to prevent the numerous strains of Covid-19 from the beginning.

And the tens of billions of dollars wasted on Paxlovid and other Big Pharma boondoggles were chicken scratch relative to the entire cost of the pandemic.

It’s been estimated that the Covid-19 pandemic has cost Americans at least $16 trillion according to Harvard economic researchers, $18 trillion according to Heritage Foundation scholars, with other estimates being even higher from the Institute for Progress. It’s hard to imagine how much even $1trillion is, but here is one example relative to seconds or days. Relative to automobiles, using Harvard’s lowest estimate of $16 trillion, that amount of money could have instead bought a new $30,000 Toyota Camry SE for every single American citizen (man, woman and child of any age) in America with over $5 trillion left over. Instead, Americans are not only not getting a new Toyota Camry SE, but are instead losing the cars they do have, losing their homes, and are otherwise being crushed by high inflation on just about everything they need, including food, gasoline, baby formula, and electricity.

It is no exaggeration to state that Trump’s HCQ proposal could have prevented much of the negative financial, social, and psychiatric ramifications of Covid-19 – not to mention morbidity and mortality. According to the meta-analysis of the studies in the bibliography below, HCQ would have been effective and could have potentially avoided the vast majority of its $16 trillion expenditure.

“The bottom line,’ Gortler concluded, “is: President Trump was correct to secure a donation of, and advocate for the use of HCQ for eligible individuals. The most recent cumulative positive findings associated with HCQ are undeniable evidence that Americans would have been better off had HCQ been implemented and used in eligible populations.”

  In retrospect, was President Trump right? Could hydroxychloroquine have been a ‘game-changer’?