Referring to the Lancet Surgisphere study during a May 27 CNN interview, Dr. Fauci stated on CNN about hydroxychloroquine, “The scientific data is really quite evident now about the lack of efficacy.”101 And even after the scandal lay exposed and the journals retracted their articles, Dr. Fauci let his lie stand. Instead of launching an investigation of this momentous and enormously consequential fraud by the world’s two leading medical journals and publicly apologizing, Dr. Fauci and the medical establishment simply ignored the wrongful conduct and persevered in their plan to deny global populations access to lifesaving HCQ.
The historic journal retractions went practically unnoticed in the slavish, scientifically illiterate mainstream press, which persisted in fortifying the COVID propaganda. Headlines continued to blame HCQ for the deaths instead of the deliberately treacherous researchers who gave sick, elderly, and compromised patients toxic drug dosages. And most remarkable of all, the FDA made no effort to change the recommendation it made against HCQ. Other countries persisted in demonizing the lifesaving drug.
Once the FDA approves a prescription medication, federal laws allow any US physician to prescribe the duly approved drug for any reason. Twenty-one percent of all prescriptions written by American doctors, exercising their medical judgment, are for off-label uses.102
Even after the FDA withdrew its Emergency Use Authorization and posted the fraudulent warning on its website,103 many front-line doctors across the country continued to prescribe and report strong benefits with appropriate doses of HCQ. In response, Dr. Fauci took even more unprecedented steps to derail doctors from prescribing HCQ.
In March, while people were dying at the rate of 10,000 patients a week, Dr. Fauci declared that hydroxychloroquine should only be used as part of a clinical trial.104 For the first time in American history, a government official was overruling the medical judgment of thousands of treating physicians, and ordering doctors to stop practicing medicine as they saw fit. Boldly and relentlessly, Dr. Fauci kept declaring that “The Overwhelming Evidence of Properly Conducted Randomized Clinical Trials Indicate No Therapeutic Efficacy of Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).”105 Dr. Fauci failed to disclose that NONE of the trials he had used as the basis for that pronouncement involved medication given in the first five to seven days after onset of symptoms. Instead, all of those randomized controlled trials targeted patients who were already sick enough to be hospitalized.
People wanting to be treated in that first critical week of illness and avoid being hospitalized were basically out of luck as Dr. Fauci moved to foreclose patients from receiving the lifesaving remedy during the treatment window when science and previous experience showed it to be effective.
On July 2, following the humiliating journal retractions, Detroit’s Henry Ford Health System published a peer-reviewed study showing that hydroxychloroquine significantly cut death rates even in mid-to-late COVID cases, and without any heartrelated side effects.106 Fauci leapt to the barricades to rescue his vaccine enterprise. On July 30, he testified before Congress that the Michigan results were “flawed.”107
The FDA revocation of the EUA and Dr. Fauci’s withering response to the Michigan trial provided cover for 33 governors whose states moved to restrict prescribing or dispensing of HCQ.108
In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo drove up record death counts by ordering that physicians prescribe HCQ only for hospitalized patients.109 In Nevada, Governor Steven Sisolak prohibited both prescribing and dispensing chloroquine drugs for COVID-19.110 State medical licensing boards threatened to bring “unprofessional conduct” charges against non-complying doctors (a threat to their license) and to “sanction” doctors if they prescribed the drug.111 Most pharmacists were afraid to dispense HCQ, and on June 15, state pharmacy boards in Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, and Rhode Island began refusing orders from physicians and retailers.112 Hospitals commanded doctors to cease treating their patients with HCQ beginning June 15, 2020.113 The NIAID halted a clinical trial of the drug in outpatients, in June 2020, only a month after it started, having enrolled only 20 of the planned 2,000 enrollees.114 The FDA blocked access to the millions of doses of HCQ and CQ that Sanofi and other drug makers had donated to the Strategic National Stockpile (with appropriate tax benefits).115 Sanofi announced it would no longer supply the drug for use treating COVID. Dr. Fauci and his HHS cronies decreed that the medication rot in warehouses while Americans unnecessarily sickened and died from COVID-19.
On June 17, the WHO—for which Mr. Gates is the largest funder after the US, and over which Mr. Gates and Dr. Fauci exercise tight control—called for the halt of HCQ trials in hundreds of hospitals across the world.116 WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ordered nations to stop using HCQ and CQ. Portugal, France, Italy, and Belgium banned HCQ for COVID-19 treatment.117
Foreign Experiences
In compliance with the WHO recommendation, Switzerland banned the use of HCQ; however, about 2 weeks into the ban, Switzerland’s death rates tripled, for about 15 days, until Switzerland reintroduced HCQ. COVID deaths then fell back to their baseline.118 Switzerland’s “natural experiment” had provided yet another potent argument for HCQ.
Similarly, Panamanian physician and government advisor Sanchez Cardenas notes that when Panama banned HCQ, deaths shot up, until the government relented, at which point deaths dropped back to baseline.119
Seven months into the pandemic, nations that widely used HCQ and made it readily available to their citizens demonstrated overwhelming evidence that HCQ was obliterating COVID-19.
A June 2, 2020 court filing supporting the use of HCQ for COVID included an Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS) comparison of national death rates among countries with varying policies governing access to HCQ. Many countries with underdeveloped health care systems were using HCQ early and achieving far lower mortalities than in the United States, where HHS and the FDA impede access to HCQ.120 AAPS General Counsel Andrew Schlafly observed that “Citizens of the Philippines, Poland, Israel, and Turkey all have greater access to HCQ than American citizens do,” and they have superior morbidity outcomes. He added, “In Venezuela, HCQ is available over the counter without a prescription, while in the United States, pharmacists are prevented from filling prescriptions for HCQ.”121
Other foreign studies support strong claims for HCQ. A study by Nova demonstrated that nations using HCQ have death rates 80 percent lower than those that banned it.122
A meta-review of 58 peer-reviewed observational studies by physician researchers in Spain, Italy, France, and Saudi Arabia found that hydroxychloroquine dramatically reduced mortality from COVID, while additional articles by doctors in Turkey, Canada, and the US found that HCQ’s cardiac toxicity is negligible. (See c19study.com for a compilation of 99 (58 peer-reviewed) studies of the chloroquine drugs in COVID-19.)123