The Biden administration is focusing on withdrawing lifesaving coronavirus treatment from the American people rather than addressing the problems plaguing his administration — such as inflation and the “disaster” on the southern border — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Tuesday.
DeSantis addressed the decision of U.S. health regulators to revoke emergency use authorization (EUA) for Regeneron and Eli Lilly monoclonal antibody treatments in the country — a decision he said is “wrong,” as thousands of Floridians had their appointments for treatment abruptly canceled.
“You have so many problems with this administration. You look at inflation spiraling out of control, and yet they’re doing things to fuel it. You look at the southern border which has been a total disaster and continues to be to this day,” DeSantis said.
“You look at what’s happening in the gathering storm abroad, whether it’s Russia, China, America’s adversaries. You have huge, huge problems going on. You have infective COVID restrictions and mandates that are being championed in other states that are inhibiting our supply chain and contributing to economic problems,” he said, noting these are all issues that “could be addressed,” yet the administration chooses to “pull the rug out [from] elderly patients, most of whom, almost all of them have been vaccinated and say you don’t have access to this treatment.”
“So we’re going to fight back against this,” he said.
During the press conference, DeSantis claimed the decision to revoke EUA for the treatments was based on a single non-peer reviewed, non-clinical study.
“This is not based on a clinical trial. This is not even peer-reviewed. And so this is something they claim shouldn’t be used, because we have omicron, and what we would say in Florida is we have had people use it, and we’ve had good results,” he said.
Breitbart News reached out to the FDA to confirm whether the decision to revoke EUA for these treatments was, in fact, based on a single, non-peer reviewed study. Breitbart News specifically asked if the decision was based on a “single non-peer reviewed non-clinical study that was actually done by a consultant for a rival company to the other two monoclonal antibody treatments,” asking for the federal health agency to confirm whether DeSantis’s assertion was correct. Instead of providing a direct answer, however, the FDA sent Breitbart two fact sheets provided to healthcare providers. One of the fact sheets for the EUA of Bamlanivimab and Etesevimab states the updates are “based on latest viral surveillance report and additional sequencing data from Phase 3 study PYAB.” Similarly, the fact sheet for REVEN-COV states the updates are also “based on latest viral surveillance.”
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“It’s not 100 percent. We understand that. But you also don’t know when someone goes in whether it’s omicron or still the delta. Yes, still in Florida, it’s going to be mostly omicron at this point, but it’s really a reckless decision to be able to take this option away from patients when we’ve had the sites set up,” he said, noting they had distributed it to different medical groups and hospitals. Because of the emergence and widespread availability of the treatment, Florida saw a “huge decline” in hospitalizations, the governor explained.
DeSantis pointed out that even if the treatments were half or 25 percent as effective against omicron, “that’s better than nothing for people.”
“And I’ve said, anecdotally we’ve had people that have had their symptoms resolved after doing it just in the last month,” he said. “So this is wrong what they’re doing.”
When asked what fighting back against this decision looks like, DeSantis said they plan to expose what this decision actually means for people, as Florida has had patients who received the treatment and had their symptoms resolved in the last month. He also noted that Israel is on its fourth shot, yet continue to see infections rising. That, he suggested, means people should also consider a more holistic approach to the virus.
The Biden administration, he continued, had months to stockpile the treatment, but he suspects that this decision is based, at least in part, on that it did not sufficiently prepare.
“So I think part of it is, I think there’s politics at play, but I think part of it is, I just don’t think they have enough treatments to go around. And I think they realize that, and I think it would look very bad to be able to admit that, so instead they’re saying this is revoked,” he said, noting the administration does not have the same standard for other treatments such as Remdesivir and noted the “vaccines were created for an old variant too.”