Why are most wealthy hospitals paying 0 federal taxes this year? Most absolutely refuse to schedule appts for Americans seeking care, even cancer Tx, unless they financially qualify. My oped--Congress should condition the tax benefit on true charity care👇🏽
statnews.com/2024/04/14/non… Congress should pull a hospital's tax-exempt status if it:
▪️Sues poor patients to garnish wages
▪️Is non-compliant w/ Price Transparency Reg
▪️Price gouges patients
▪️Refuses ppl who don't financially qualify
▪️Uses predatory lending
▪️Won't send itemized bills in plain English

Listening now to FDA deliberate on mRNA vaccines for kids 6-23 months old, I'm very concerned they are using very little primary data in that age group. Instead they are extrapolating, assuming data from older people apply to 6-month-old babies. What they call "immunobridging" /4 Table 73:
“Vaccine effectiveness in participants ages 6-23 mo. was inferred through immunobridging to the young adult data in Study P301 using the co-primary endpoints of GMC ratio and difference in SRRs at 28 days post-Dose 2 (Day 57).”

This violates basic scientific principles

Is this following the science?? FDA will authorize 4th doses this week by bypassing the typical voting process of their external experts. FDA will then convene them after the authoriz to "discuss". It's like a judge issuing a verdict and then having lawyers make their arguments. There is zero clinical data that a 4th dose reduces hospitalization risk. There isn't even any evidence that a 3rd dose reduces hospitalization risk in young people.

After a year of urging the CDC to increase the interval btw the first 2 mRNA doses (to lower complications & increase durability), the CDC finally did it--changed their rec, acknowledging the longer spacing "may reduce the risk for severe side effects" 1/4 thehill.com/homenews/admin… Ever wonder why a quarter of America was knocked down/in bed for a day after their 2nd dose? The interval was too short.

As several of us argued from the start, no vaccine has multiple doses given that close together. But the FDA and CDC were too rigid to listen.

2/4

With Omicron, therapeutics are once again missing from the Covid conversation. Molnupiravir & Paxlovid both block virus replication and thus work across variant strains. Fluvoxamine acts on a common inflammatory pathways so would logically work with omicron infections as well.

https://twitter.com/drklausner/status/1464766637542834176

I'm constantly amazed at how little awareness and coverage there has been on fluvoxamine, which is available now. It's not a medication with mixed results/controversy. A 2nd RCT reported a 91% reduction in Covid deaths. It can also be used in combination with new antivirals.

Based on the data: We should not be giving healthy kids a 2nd vax dose at a 3wk interval, esp boys where 1/7K get myocarditis and 1/136 of them died, i.e. from the vax itself(NEJM study). Vax deaths could approximate Covid deaths in boys 5-11 w/no comorbid wsj.com/articles/shoul… CDC: 94 Covid deaths/2yrs (incl when Tx was crude & Covid rates higher) out of 28M kids5-11. Nearly all likely had a comorb (extrap from our prior study, adolesc hosp study/known under-coding of obesity, word on the ground). CDC still won't tell us # child deaths in healthy kids.

With every new Covid death I hear about, including the great Colin Powell, I'm increasingly frustrated by the fact that Molnupiravir is not offered under compassionate use. The drug cut Covid deaths to zero in the phase 3 trial of high-risk patients. wsj.com/articles/fda-c… The clinical benefit to high-risk patients was so dramatic, that they had to stop the study early.

MP is a powerful Covid drug and should be offered to dying patients right now on a COMPASSIONATE USE BASIS just as monoclonal antibodies & convalescent plasma were given on a compassion use basis before their EUAs were issued, as I explain in today's @WSJ wsj.com/articles/fda-c… In terms of survival benefit, Molnupiravir blows Regeneron's therapy out of the water. In fact, no one who got Molnupiravir died and the treatment effect was so profound that they had to stop the trial early. Now let's cut the red tape and save lives.

Fining doctors & nurses $200 if they have a unvaccinated spouse or partner at home??

This is backfiring, hardening people against vax.

It's also violation of HIPAA privacy law--if not the letter of the law, certainly the spirit of the law.

1/5

mol.im/a/10053045 It's also dividing our country at a time when we need to come together.

Vax rates are way down since gen public mandates were announced. Many on the fence are hardened by the over-reach. Many also have natural immunity.

An angry & punitive approach is not helping right now.

Public health officials changing their position on natural immunity, after so much hostility toward the idea, would go a long way in rebuilding the public trust, as I explain in today's @washingtonpost
washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/0… The 'natural immunity is unreliable' hypothesis was wrong. It should be abandoned. The latest study shows it's 27X more effective than vax immunity against symptomatic Covid. That's not a subtle signal in the data. Cherry-picking science is disingenuous.

The 'natural immunity is unreliable' theory has done a lot of damage. It's OK to have a wrong hypothesis but public health leaders have pushed their theory way too long after data became overwhelmingly clear,yet remarkably clinging to their outdated theory c-span.org/video/?512225-… The natural immunity is unreliable hypothesis was the opposite hypothesis many of us had last year given the observational data of doctors & nurses consistently saying "We are rarely seeing re-infections and when they occur they are not severe" Clinical wisdom that was dismissed.

I really hope Biden recognizes natural immunity tomorrow in his Covid announcements. Israeli study found it is 27x more effective than vaccines in preventing symptomatic infections. reuters.com/world/us/biden… Public health officials seem afraid to acknowledge natural imm because they fear it will lead some to choose getting the infection over getting vax.

But we can encourage non-immune Americans to get vaccinated AND be honest & transparent with the data on nat imm at the same time.

U.S. cases dropping like a rock! ⬇️42% in 11 days (wkday numb-not wkend reporting bias). Yet govt doctors cont negativity, issuing stern warnings, pushing bad policy & dangling variant fears. ZERO of the hundreds of variants to date worldw have evaded vax ability to prevent death If I didn’t know better I would have thought I was listening to a congressional hearing last Spring. We need to turn our attention to the parts of the world that need help right now.

If the FDA starts halting meds with a 1 in 7M risk of death, there would be no antibiotics.

This is not botox, this is a life-saving vaccine.

Pause it in the group where compl were clustered &inform the rest of the public-Let them decide.

My oped today: thehill.com/opinion/health… We are still vaccine supply constrained & some regions of the country are still at war with Covid. If supply>>demand then the FDA actions would of had less impact.

Ironically, a (pre-scheduled) NYT headline calling for vaccine mandates was published on the day of the J&J news.