Yale scientist: early treatment could have averted hundreds of thousands of COVID deaths

 

 

   By Reginald Johnson

    A prominent epidemiologist from Yale University believes that a majority of the deaths from COVID-19 in the United States could have been prevented through the use of therapeutic treatments.

   Dr. Harvey Risch, a professor at the Yale School of Public Health, said in an interview with Mark Levin on the FOX News Channel that if the drugs hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin and others had been allowed by the federal government and used at an early stage on COVID patients, “80 or 85 percent” of the fatalities could have been prevented.

  In the interview on Dec. 26, Levin asked Risch if therapeutics had been used to treat COVID patients, “Do you think we could have saved a lot more people?”

   Risch responded, “Absolutely. If the number of deaths that’s been reported of 700,000 Americans is an accurate count, we could have saved 80 or 85%, at least of those, by early and aggressive treatment.”

  In addition to hydroxychorloquine and Ivermectin, Risch said the following drugs were useful in treating the Coronavirus: fluvoxamine, budesonide, colchicine, antibiotics and aspirin.

  The Yale professor, also an MD, is well known in the field of epidemiology. He is the author of more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and currently holds senior positions on the editorial boards of several leading scientific journals.

  Since the pandemic began in early 2020, Risch is one of a small number of medical doctors and epidemiologists who have been questioning the approach of the federal government in dealing with COVID.  That policy has seen top government officials such as National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci push vaccines almost exclusively as the best way of dealing with the outbreak ---- to safeguard people from getting the disease and ultimately to stamp out the scourge. So far, about 63% of all Americans have been fully vaccinated.

   Nonetheless, 700,000 to 800,000 Americans have perished from Covid, with the exact count determined by the data being used. The consensus view of government officials and many in the medical establishment is that that level of fatalities --- about three-quarters of a million people --- would be a lot higher if it were not for the vaccination program.

  

A roadside poster in Bridgeport, CT promoting vaccinations. The federal government has authorized giving the Pfizer vaccine to children 5-11 years old. 

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  Doctors like Risch have been roundly criticized for supporting drugs like hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, neither of which the FDA has authorized for use in treating COVID. Critics have pointed out that with hydroxychloroquine, for instance, studies have shown the drug is not effective and in some cases poses a cardiac risk. 

   Some 20 faculty members at the Yale School of Public Health took Risch to task for his stand in a statement released in the Medium on August 4, 2020, according to the Yale Daily News.

   “As his colleagues, we defend the right of Dr. Risch, a respected cancer epidemiologist, to voice his opinions,” the letter states. “But he is not an expert in infectious disease epidemiology and he has not been swayed by the body of scientific evidence from rigorously conducted clinical trials, which refute the plausibility of his belief and arguments.”

  The college newspaper said that Risch had no comment on the letter.

Other doctors agree with Risch on the use of drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin, but their views for the most part have gotten little play in the mainstream media but instead have been reported only by small websites on the Internet. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have actively censored posts offering alternative views on how to deal with the pandemic.

   In general, doctors and scientists who have offered alternative views on dealing with COVID have been attacked as spreading “misinformation.”  For example, Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the RMna vaccine --- and a critic of the government's vaccine centered approach --- has been banned from Twitter.

 ( Editor's note: When a link to this story was posted on Twitter, it was removed.)

 Dissident doctors maintain that there’s been misinformation spread from the other side, as well, against the value of therapeutics. They note, for instance, two of the studies criticizing the use of hydroxychloroquine and cited widely by critics --- one by the prestigious medical journal Lancet and the other in the New England Journal of Medicine --- were later found to be flawed and their findings retracted. They also say that a number of other studies have found hydroxychloroquine to be beneficial with few side effects, and news of those studies has received little attention.

  In the interview with Levin, Risch reported that “What we know is across the country, I’ve surveyed telemedicine groups and large group practices most recently, and it totaled more than a 150,000 people who have been treated early as outpatients with hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin and other medications, extremely successfully, less than two dozen deaths out of that large number of people who been treated early. So they’re the ones who have the knowledge of how to treat patients. However, the government doesn’t want any of that to be known publicly, so it’s an open secret that I talk about it and others talk about it, but the government denies that it exists and pretends these medications are harmful.”

  On other topics related to the government’s response to the pandemic, the Yale professor said it made no sense to be vaccinating healthy children. The FDA in October authorized giving the Pfizer vaccine to kids aged 5-11.

  “ This is a risk benefit analysis. From what I understand, the adverse events occurring from COVID itself in 5-11 year-olds are so infrequent, that the hazards from the vaccines are likely to be greater than the hazards from the illness,” Risch said.  “So the benefit is against vaccination for almost all that age group except children with chronic conditions like obesity, diabetes, asthma and respiratory diseases. There you have more of an equation to balance.”

   In general, Risch said the whole emphasis by the government during the pandemic has been to sell vaccines.

  “Well you know, the real bottom line and everything that comes out and every decision that is made in every pronouncement from Dr. Fauci and the government, is to sell vaccines. There is nothing that I have heard that ever takes a step back and says, maybe the vaccines are not indicated for such and such person. Everything in every direction has always been to sell vaccines. That includes the suppression of early treatment.”