No different than what happened to toilet paper.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/11/distributed-denial-of-hcq-to-covid-19-victims/Distributed Denial of HCQ to COVID-19 VictimsLeo Goldstein / May 11, 2020
Summary
On March 19, at a White House briefing, President Trump “touted” chloroquine (hydroxychloroquine is chloroquine metabolite) for possible use against COVID-19. The very next day, a media operation was launched to deny this treatment to the public. Several fake news outlets published articles, saying things like this (NYT, March 20):
Trump’s Embrace of Unproven Drugs to Treat Coronavirus Defies Science
Doctors and patients also worry that the president’s rosy outlook for the treatments will exacerbate shortages of old malaria drugs relied on by patients with lupus and other debilitating conditions.
Referring to this as a media operation is appropriate because multiple outlets repeated the same false talking points. At that time
The use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 already had scientific support, although not to the level required for FDA approval of a new drug; but HCQ was already approved.
The fact that hospitals had already been increasing their supply of HCQ and CQ before President’s briefing was an additional indication that medical professionals believed in the drugs’ usefulness against COVID-19.
There were no shortages of HCQ or CQ for lupus & RA patients at that time.
Multiple pharma companies announced an increase in HCQ manufacturing and substantial donations of HCQ.
Even without these increases,
the HCQ amounts required for COVID-19 patients were too small to impact the supply for other users.
This false alarm had all the behavioral characteristics of the Democrat-Socialist operatives:
pitting groups of citizens against each other, sowing fear and division, and hoping that the conflict would damage President Trump.
In this case, they incited lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients against current and future COVID-19 victims. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Microsoft support the fake new media financially, send web traffic to them, and endorse them to some extent. Amplified by Big Tech,
the announcement of HCQ shortage caused a vicious spiral: panic buying by lupus patients, which led to actual shortages, which amplified the panic buying and so on. Then the blame was directed at COVID-19 patients and their physicians prescribing HCQ for them.
Consequences of the anti-HCQ Media Operation
The situation was aggravated by actions of some state governments, which started restricting access to HCQ for COVID-19 victims. The Governor of New York outright denied HCQ to COVID-19 victims, except for inpatient treatment and clinical studies. Physicians felt pressured to postpone HCQ treatment for COVID-19 patients. Instead of beginning HCQ treatment as early as possible, they postponed its use the late stages of the disease.
Late treatment with HCQ was frequently used as compassionate care for the most desperate causes. Delaware’s HCQ policy illustrates this thinking in late March: “This drug is used in very limited instances for very critically ill patients with COVID-19, in a clinical setting.” This led to statistics in which use of HCQ was correlated with worse outcomes. Bad actors exploited the correlation-as-causation fallacy to advocate against HCQ.
Apparently, in the early April the medical establishment in
the North East (inclusive of NY, NJ, MA, CT, PA, MD, and DC) decided against the use of HCQ as a COVID-19 treatment. Coincidentally or not, this area became the main COVID-19 death cluster, responsible for more than 60% of the US COVID-19 deaths.Why shortages were not caused by COVID-19 use
The HCQ shortages were not and could not be caused by the drug’s demand as a COVID-19 treatment. HCQ is a prescription drug taken regularly by 1.5-2 million people, at approximately the same doses used for COVID-19. The majority of those taking the drug are lupus patients (there are 1.5M lupus patients in the US, and most of them are on HCQ), followed by rheumatoid arthritis patients (there are 1.3M RA patients). HCQ is manufactured by dozens of companies in the US and abroad in standard 200 mg HCQ sulphate tablets.
An estimated 20-30 million HCQ tablets are purchased weekly.
An HCQ-based treatment course for COVID-19 is 5-7 days and requires only 10-15 tablets. On March 21, there were only
24,000 people who had tested positive for COVID-19. Most of them did not need HCQ and could not find a doctor who would prescribe it, anyway.
Even if a quarter of them bought 15 tablets each, that would only amount to 90,000 tablets – a drop in the ocean of HCQ supplies. Even if we multiply that number by ten – to include those who were not tested, hypochondriacs, and people who would need it within a couple of weeks – it is still less than one million. Double that number to incorporate lack of knowledge about treatment time and some people using smaller HCQ dosage for prophylaxis, and it is still less than two million tablets, or only about 10% of a regular weekly’s supply. Such increase in demand was easily covered by pharma companies’ existing stock. Additionally, pharma companies were ramping up their manufacturing and announcing donations of tens of millions of tablets. Clearly, purchase of HCQ for COVID-19 treatment likely had no impact at all. All the shortages were caused by the operation using Internet and social media to create achieve results in the physical world. It was the first distributed denial of a life-saving drug in the history.
Stockpiling was the actual cause of shortagesBecause HCQ is safe, it is frequently prescribed for 90 days. Because it is cheap, insurance companies may allow patients to refill the whole 90-day supply at one time. Many lupus patients do not adhere to their regimen (see below) and thus often have unfulfilled prescriptions. Due to the fear sowed by the media, some of these patients rushed to fill their long term HCQ prescriptions, even though they had plenty of unused tablets at home. If we estimate only 5% out of the 1.5 million lupus patients filled their 30 or 90-day prescriptions, it created a sudden demand for 9 million tablets – enough to cause shortages in the distribution channels. Even so, it seems that HCQ supply from manufacturers was not interrupted at any time. Some manufacturers always had HCQ for sale, although not in all packaging options. Following data is from the ASHP page, tracking HCQ shortages.
March 19, March 24: HCQ tablets are available from Concordia, Sandoz, Zydus; Prasco (current customers), Amneal (“on allocation”). Teva promises availability in late March. April 16: HCQ tablets are available from Concordia, Mylan; Amneal (“on allocation”), Sandoz (current customers and through HHS), Zidus (current customers), and Prasco (limited supply)."
much more
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/11/distributed-denial-of-hcq-to-covid-19-victims/
