TUCSON, Ariz., Sept. 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Based on his experiences in a front-row seat during the Trump Administration, virologist and disaster response expert Steven Hatfill, M.D., calls for government accountability for the COVID-19 death rate and economic destruction, writing in the fall issue of issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.
“Americans’ lives have been tragically disrupted and permanently altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Government needs to be held accountable for what went wrong and for the decisions that financially ruined millions of individuals and businesses, crippled the US economy, facilitated the preventable death of more than 600,000 of our citizens, and destroyed confidence in our medical research institutions as well as in government.”
The U.S. has had a validated National Pandemic Response Plan since 2000, and it was updated in 2017. The existence of a of a new coronavirus was known as early as 2015. This virus, SHCO14-CoV, was analogous to the 2003 SARS virus, and was capable of jumping directly from bats to humans. Yet the alarming level of pandemic unpreparedness did not improve. “Most urgently, the U.S. had become dependent on China for the active pharmaceutical ingredients needed to manufacture critical pharmaceuticals. Also, most personal protective equipment was largely manufactured in China,” Dr. Hatfill writes.
The U.S. COVID-19 Task Force was formed on Jan 29, 2020. By mid-February, South Korea was using chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to help control its outbreak, and favorable evidence was accumulating. Although directed by their superiors to establish an Expanded Access Investigational New Drug (IND) authorization for HCQ, two U.S. government officials instead got an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), which had the effect of restricting use to hospitalized patients, in whom success was far less likely than early in the course of the disease, Dr. Hatfill states.
Within four weeks, the single act of admitted insubordinate action, combined with the actions of the mainstream media, served to trigger destruction of the core foundation of the National Pandemic Plan, which was based on early outpatient antiviral drug treatment until a safe effective vaccine could be developed, Dr. Hatfill states. The promised vaccine was the only officially approved method aside from lockdowns. But an EUA could not have been obtained for vaccine candidates if an effective treatment had been recognized.
Dr. Hatfill calls for investigation of the factors leading to the suppression of HCQ use and of political influences and conflicts of interest within the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons is published by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), a national organization representing physicians in all specialties since 1943.
Contact: Jane M. Orient, M.D., (520) 323-3110, janeorientmd@gmail.com
