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Killing Grandma in Florida (and Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee and Other Red States….)
So, the federal government has a contract to buy and distribute all of Regeneron’s dual monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID. Biden was beginning to look like a fool due to Ron DeSantis’ effective measures to make the treatment widely available, and now has curtailed shipments of Regeneron treatment to Florida and other red states, in effect, attempting to harm the citizens of those states by restricting access to effective treatment for COVID. Biden will ship the medicine to blue states that haven’t been using it aggressively and withhold it from red states that are using it. A supply of 70,000 doses requested by Florida was reduced to about 30,000 doses by Biden. Clearly an effective medication for treating (and preventing) COVID is being used politically by the President to harm his constituents in states that oppose him politically. Medical care is being made available (or unavailable) based on politics. Unity? Not.
And of course, Biden is trying to do exactly what Democrats always accuse Republicans of doing–killing Grandma. Particularly if she votes Republican. Apparently, this is what Biden meant when he said he was going to get those Republican governors out of the way of his policies. Either by damaging them so greatly politically for opposing his policies, or killing their constituents that voted against him. Democrats of course think that Americans are brain dead and don’t realize what’s going on, or they think the media will cover for them and bamboozle Americans on this issue as on all the others.
The Democrat canard that Republicans want to kill Grandma should be buried by this move by Biden, but, alas, the Democrats will always and forever continue with the same preposterous canard when it suits them, regardless of the hypocrisy, cant, lies, obfuscation, etc., etc.
Fortunately Ron DeSantis, playing Road Runner to Biden’s Wile. E. Coyote, found a way around Biden’s order within 24 hours by directly contracting with Glaxo Smith Kline to purchase what appears to be a superior dual monoclonal antibody treatment.
Don’t be surprised if the FDA soon asks for the withdrawal of the Glaxo-Smith Kline product. Or issues an advisory against its use in treating COVID. Or the federal government forces GSK to sell all of its product to the federal government for Biden to dispense according to his political calculations.
Published in Healthcare
Your source for this information?
It’s all over this thing called “the news.”
I only know what I read in the newspapers.
DeSantis has already countered this move by Biden.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2021/09/16/biden-remarks-on-the-economy-n2596003
This is a really, really, really big deal.
If a foreign government attacked our supply chain of a life-saving therapy during a pandemic, that would be an act of war.
Sorry, I’ve been too busy to check in recently. I have gotten excited about fake news stories before and found out later it was for naught. I would not put any of this past the current regime, but I just wanted confirmation.
Yes, this is as big a deal as you say it is. In my book, it qualifies as a crime against humanity. But Biden has been committing a lot of such crimes since taking office. As Lily Tomlin said about cynicism, I try to keep track but it is so hard to keep up. Biden appears to be trying to establish himself as the American Saddam Hussein.
I should note that Hunter (all by himself) makes a good equivalence to Uday and Qusay.
BodyBagBiden is a mean vindictive SOB
Minor correction. Regeneron is not given to prevent COVID. Only to those symptomatic with a proven infection.
There is currently an oral antiviral treatment in clinical studies we are referring patients to. They also can be given Regeneron if felt necessary. So far it’s looking promising.
And again folks our local hospital is running about 8:1 unvaccinated to vaccinated patients requiring admission.
When I was a kid learning about the Iron Curtain, I couldn’t understand why the impoverished USSR was keeping people in when my logic told me that the government should be happy with fewer people to worry about. (You’ll have to forgive my youthful naïveté in believing governments cared about people.) It bugged me for years until I read an article in the old Atlantic Monthly by an immigrant who had “defected.” The Russian pointed out that the old USSR tracked only the young people. They were more than happy to hold the Iron Curtain open for old people to leave.
Then there was that heat wave in Europe in 2003. During that August, France saw 14,000 deaths of elderly people who did not have air-conditioning because they were too poor to afford it. This happened in a socialist country.
The greatest lie perpetrated in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is that disabled people, young and old, fare better under socialism than under capitalism. I took care of a disabled person in socialism-friendly Massachusetts over a couple of decades. Things were always better for her under Republicans. Democrats can’t manage a dime, let alone a dollar.
A cold-blooded ruthless administrative move to throw granny out of Stephen Crane’s open boat would not surprise me in the least. And their followers would go along with it, they would so believe that those administrators had no other choice.
I find this consistent with the few people I know on the left. Up until recently I’ve managed to maintain a few relationships, but I’m afraid the bridges are permanently burned.
One person of my acquaintance (I think) mistakenly included me on an email. She was crowing that LA Sheriffs (with whom she has occasional interactions) now had to get vaxxed to keep their jobs. But she lamented that she would rather them all die.
We are seeing so many breakthrough cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in Massachusetts right now.
I can’t figure out what is going on with the vaccines.
Governor Baker is having a lot of trouble getting the Biden administration to approve the third dose for people. It looks like we might get approval and actual vaccine doses by September 27.
Heard this news yesterday, and I was gobsmacked by how absolutely evil this decision was. Biden is a monster. But the proles have already been brainwashed that DeSantis is the monster, that he’s manipulating case counts and that everyone’s dropping dead in Florida, so I’m not sure how you go about deprogramming them.
Methinks this is about making sure more people in red states die, and then they can blame those deaths on red state governors.
If DeSantis was bold, he would have malaria treatments (HCQ) and dewormer treatments (ivermectin) made available over-the-counter in Florida;)
Correction to the minor correction. Regeneron is approved as a preventive for those in high risk susceptible groups (immunosuppressed) with known exposure to COVID, BEFORE actually acquiring COVID. It is approved as a preventive. Similar to the ancient practice of giving gamma globulin shots to those exposed to Hepatitis A before they developed the disease.
I don’t claim to know anything, but isn’t there an obvious defense to this charge that Biden is trying to physically hurt political enemies? Which is: if the demand for this treatment is ramping up in other areas of the country, and supplies are currently insufficient to meet that demand, why should FL, AL, etc.. get to hoard them? Is there a fed government role in some apportioned distribution of life-saving treatments in this kind of situation? I’m not saying I agree with that necessarily, because if FL and AL had a better or wiser plan to deal with the pandemic, then maybe they should reap the benefit of that. I haven’t considered in thoroughly. My point is that, for the rest of the country, Biden acting to more evenly distribute the doses will seem very fair. It will not appear to them that he’s trying to kill people in red states. In fact, that argument, if it becomes the outrage of the week that everyone talks about, will be met with eye-rolls by most people, and will be giving Biden a w because he’ll be able to crow about how he was just trying to make sure the doses are fairly distributed, and the right looks unhinged (again).
Biden is down. There’s no reason to help him. DeSantis should just brag about being able to do an end-run around the problem and procure additional treatments for his state and leave it at that. Keep the focus on his good governance.
I’m not following the situation closely, but I’ve heard nothing about insufficient supplies in any state. As in, a demand not being met.
Here in California I haven’t heard a word about anyone using/prescribing the treatment. So maybe I watched too much MASH, but this sounds to me that some of the treatments will be shipped to states that don’t use it, and will gather dust on a shelf.
I’ve heard that the Biden administration was so uninterested in the monoclonal antibody treatment, that they just failed to continue production. So supplies are low, thanks to the Biden administration, and now he’s going to distribute it “for equity” rather than to places that need it.
I remember the tone of voice pSaki used when she chastised a reporter for asking, Why withhold the mAb? She explained there’s only so much and we are going to share it evenly, with the tone of a mother chastising a child for wanting more broccoli even though he’s the only child who likes it.
It was quick but it sounded like the reporter stipulated that supply was not an issue, and pSaki did not dispute it, but simply said that they were sharing everything equally, without explaining what “equally” meant. By state population? By case numbers? By vaccinated population? What.
Apparently it will be determined by hospitalization and case rates, according to a Wash Post article I saw. So it won’t be equal. Just a quick google search will get all kinds of articles about the increased demand over the last month or so.
Again, this is one of those things – the argument that Biden is trying to punish the red states- that’s really easy for ordinary independent voters to dispel. For those who are not already inclined to believe Biden is seriously evil (and most voters aren’t), this argument will look ridiculous. And without serious evidence, like a leaked recording of him saying something like, “Hey, let’s find a way to kill republicans,” this won’t convince them he’s evil, either.
Check out Psaki’s response here:
She says there’s no reduction in supply, they just want to distribute the treatment “equitably.” Not “send it where there are more cases.” But “send as much to Oklahoma as we do to Florida.”
The amount of justifying in that thread is unseemly.
She’s not very clear in that clip, but nothing she says there contradicts the other news reports that people are going to find online (if they bother), many of which have nothing really to do with Psaki’s comments. I haven’t seen anyone talking about a reduction in supply, but an increase in demand. Also, equitably doesn’t necessarily mean equally, and she doesn’t say they’re going to send as much to Oklahoma as Florida. She mentions, instead, not wanting to send a greater “percentage” to one state over another. She doesn’t specify what she means by “percentages” but she could easily be referring to a distribution tied to hospitalization and case rates, as other reports state. I don’t think she’s doing a great job explaining it, but her words aren’t the policy, and so that’s more a communication problem than a problem with how people will ultimately view that policy.
So again, I don’t think this is the kind of argument likely to make any headway with the average swing voter. Not without a lot more evidence.
It’s great for feeding the base outrage machine, I guess, which is always hungry, and maybe ginning up some dollars, but not for much else.
So do you go around to other people correcting when news reports call Republicans grandma killers, or are we the only ones subjected to your non-partisan ruminations?
This is speculation, I take it. pSkai never said.
Speculation, again. This isn’t the promised transparency. Here words, clearly begin with implication that each state will get the same percentage of the available vaccine. If there is some other mathematical or ethical construct, she’s not saying.
And we shouldn’t have to rely on Press reports and cogitations and entrail readings (sorry for the hyperbole) of what pSaki is thinking or trying to communicate. This is a recorded event. No Press interpretation should be necessary to understand how the mAb will be distributed.
This is clearly deliberate obfuscation. And if I recall correctly she immediately changed the subject and called on someone else. Very disingenuous. Nearly opaque.