While Joe Biden was promising to “shut down the virus,” he didn’t bother to order enough treatments to prevent severe disease.
This according to a new report from The New York Times, which spoke to “health officials, hospitals, doctors and patients” who are “scrambl[ing] for pills and infusions.”
Biden waited until the fall to order GlaxoSmithKline antibody treatments, months after the treatment was approved in May. At that point, the supply Biden could order was limited because other countries ordered the treatment first. Meanwhile, Biden has faced allegations of playing partisan politics with blocked or limited shipments of therapeutics to GOP-led states like Texas and Florida.
As detailed by The New York Times, the impacts of Biden’s failures are wide ranging and deeply felt:
- Dr. Natasha Bagdasarian, Michigan’s chief medical executive: “There is simply not enough to meet the needs of everyone who is going to have Covid in the upcoming weeks and be at risk of severe complications. I don’t think there is a way to make sure it gets to all the right people right now.”
- Dr. Christian Ramers, an infectious disease specialist at Family Health Centers of San Diego: “It makes me nauseous going home at night because it makes me feel like I’m deciding, with this limited resource, who should get it.”
- Patrick Creighton, a 48-year-old sports radio host in Katy, Texas needed to call 19 pharmacies to find one with Paxlovid in stock: “It should be easily obtainable for everybody.”
- Erin McCreary, an infectious diseases pharmacist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center: “It is devastating to tell these patients, ‘Sorry, we can’t do anything for you, we have to save this drug only for our most severely immunocompromised.’”
- Louis Shantzek, a 72 year old with diabetes and a heart condition who couldn’t get treatment because he was vaccinated: “It’s like being told, ‘You’re doing everything you’re supposed to do, but yet we’re not going to help you.’”
- Dr. Shireesha Dhanireddy, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Washington, said they only have 60 courses of Paxlovid for tens of thousands of patients.
- Dr. Kelly Gebo, an infectious diseases and epidemiology specialist at Johns Hopkins University: “It’s demoralizing as health care workers when we can’t deliver optimal care when we have limited resources.”
Because of Biden’s delay, relief looks to be months away, and now even Biden is reportedly retreating from his promise to “shut down the virus.”
It’s worth asking, how did Biden ever expect to “shut down the virus” without ordering enough tests or ordering enough treatments?
