Just in case you still thought there was any medical science behind the U.S. government’s response to the COVID pandemic, Joe Biden’s decision to extinguish the emergency use
authorizations (EUAs) for Eli Lilly’s bamlanivimab-etesevimab (administered together) and Regeneron’s REGEN-COV (casirivimab and imdevimab) monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID should disabuse you of that quaint notion.
As a result of the new rules, health care practitioners in Florida, site of the nation’s most advanced monoclonal antibody treatment program, are no longer authorized to administer these monoclonal antibody treatments to patients, effective immediately yesterday. Further, all state-supported monoclonal antibody sites are now closed due to the abrupt change from the FDA.
How abrupt and political was the FDA decision?
Early this year, Florida’s principled limited government constitutional conservative Governor Ron DeSantis said he had to fight to get more doses of the monoclonal antibody treatments. As a result, The Sunshine State has recently received a new supply of 15,000 doses of now useless Regeneron from the federal government.
Following the FDA ruling, Florida health authorities said they had been forced to close all of its treatment centers and cancel thousands of appointments.
Governor DeSantis has now released a statement demanding the Biden administration reverse the decision.
"There are real-world implications to Biden's medical authoritarianism – Americans' access to treatments is now subject to the whims of a failing president," DeSantis said in the statement.
“Florida disagrees with the decision that blocks access to any available treatments in the absence of clinical evidence. To date, such clinical evidence has not been provided by the United States Food and Drug Administration,” the release said.
"Without a shred of clinical data to support this action, Biden has forced trained medical professionals to choose between treating their patients or breaking the law," DeSantis said. "This indefensible edict takes treatment out of the hands of medical professionals and will cost some Americans their lives."
“We're going to fight back against this because this is just wrong,” DeSantis said Tuesday at a news conference in Crawfordville, about 20 miles from the Capitol in Tallahassee. “This is not the way you know that you help people.”
Responding to questions about the effectiveness of the monoclonal antibody treatment against the “omicron variant” DeSantis said, "The federal government had stopped sending both Regeneron and the Eli Lilly monoclonal. It was based off of some preliminary study saying that it might not be as effective on omicron.”
During a media availability the governor and surgeon general talked about how it is still unclear how effective this treatment is against omicron, but they don't think the federal government should limit the supply.
Florida Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez also weighed-in saying in a statement reported by the UK’s Daily Mail, “Rather than giving Americans the option for various COVID treatments, the FDA and the Biden Administration issued their royal decree, taking away the very thing that is proven to reduce hospitalizations and save lives.”
“Monoclonal antibody treatments like Regeneron have had a positive impact for thousands of Floridians,” she added.
“For the CDC and FDA, which have been consistently inconsistent throughout the entire pandemic, to restrict treatment does nothing but put individuals at risk.”
Some critics accused the FDA of trying to restrict treatment options to coerce people into getting vaccinated.
“This is all about the Biden and his admin taking away a treatment that helps to try to force people into getting the Vaccine,” tweeted Twitter user @Buffalo97269241.
“The Federal Government has failed to adequately provide the United States with adequate outpatient treatment options for COVID-19,” Florida's state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo wrote in statement sent Monday night. “Now, they are scrambling to cover up a failure to deliver on a promise to ‘shut down the virus.'”
In closing-off the use of the two most available monoclonal antibody treatments, at the same time it has done everything possible to prohibit the use of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine against COVID, Biden has, in effect, made it impossible to treat patients who have contracted COVID. The only remaining alternatives are waiting to die on a ventilator or very scarce drugs available only through the Biden administration’s death panels.
COVID 19
Wuhan virus
Joe Biden administration
vaccine mandates
mask mandates
COVID lockdowns
emergency use authorizations (EUAs)
Regeneron’s REGEN-COV
monoclonal antibody treatments
FDA ruling
Gov. Ron DeSantis
Eli Lilly monoclonal
Florida Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo