Thought of the Day - August 17 2021 - The Non-Treatment of COVID

We have talked about COVID treatment a number of times over the past year. I am still amazed at how little, besides basic critical care, we do for COVID patients here in Canada ( Thought of the Day - January 26 - Therapeutics ). For example, BC's CDC antiviral treatment recommendations column is still a list of things not to give people - unchanged since the removal of the marginally effective and very expensive Remdesivir six months ago.

In contrast, a number of antivirals are being widely used around the world ( Thought of the Day - June 23 2021 - India Does the Right Thing ). Last week a headline was recycled by the National Post "Inexpensive Drug Could Be Best COVID Treatment, Trial Finds" talking about Fluvoxamine (Luvox), which was first studied in Canada by McGill University at the end of last year. Yet, here we are more than six months later (three months longer than the McGill trial period) still speculating on its merits.

There are also a number of advanced COVID treatment guides published around the world. These included antiviral/anti-inflammatory cocktails. Here, for example, is a treatment guide published in the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine (JIC) months ago:

COVID has been the most studied disease in the world over the last eighteen months, with hundreds of millions of potential patient case studies. Each time I revisit this topic I am stunned by the lack of conclusive studies, coupled with the amount of discord between medical bodies across the world in the treatment of COVID. And don't get me started on the lack of leadership in this field by the WHO.

Sorry to say, each time the only conclusion I can come to is, the development of COVID therapeutics and treatments, in reality, has little to do with science.

Cheers

Cliff