The case of a Virginia woman could be watched very closely as a barometer of the use of therapeutics for COVID-19.
Kathleen Davies has been hospitalized and on a ventilator for more than a month after falling ill to the coronavirus in October. When it appeared the hospital’s treatment regimen failed, her son Christopher, a radiology technician at the facility, urged doctors to treat her with Ivermectin.
The hospital refused. It also refused the 63-year-old Davies’ personal doctor to treat her because she did not have privileges at the hospital.
So last week Christopher Davies took the hospital to court. And a judge agreed with him, ordering the hospital to provide Ivermectin.
According to the Fauquier Times, Circuit Court Judge James Fisher held Fauquier Hospital in contempt of court for “needlessly interposing requirements that stand in the way of the patient’s desired physician administering investigational drugs as part of the Health Care Decisions Act and the federal and state Right to Try Acts.”
The federal Right to Try Act, by the way, allows patients to seek novel, unauthorized, or even exotic treatments if all else fails. It was enacted by former President Donald Trump.
“No good reason or good cause was given, other than convenience, for the need of a formal ‘attending physician’ when there are at least three physicians involved in the patient’s care,” Fisher’s ruling continued. “The relief herein can be accomplished without requiring anyone serving in the role of ‘attending physician.’”
Fisher also ordered that the hospital be fined $10,000 a day for its refusal to comply.
On Monday night, hours after Fisher heard arguments in the case, the hospital allowed Davies’ doctor into the facility and administered her Ivermectin. The paper reported that she got a second dose on Tuesday.
The line from Dr. Anthony Fauci and other federal scientists, the national media, and liberals, in general, is that Ivermectin is voodoo medicine – even though high-profile people, such as podcaster and comedian Joe Rogan and Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, had acknowledged being treated with the drug and fully recovering n short order.
Critics denounce it, at best, as ineffective or unproven, or at worst, a “horse dewormer.”
While Ivermectin may have originally been created to treat livestock, it has been adapted to human use and has won the Nobel Prize for medicine in successfully treating people in sub-Saharan Africa for diseases – not including COVID-19.
Accordingly, patients across the country have sued for the treatment when hospitals and doctors have denied it on the grounds cited by liberals. In most cases, judges have refused to take the position that Judge Fisher did in Davies’ case.
As the liberal website FiveThirtyEight.com claimed in September in offering an overview of this issue, “These incidents mark a new era of the pandemic: As hospitals struggle under the weight of new COVID-19 cases, they are also being forced to fight this new battle spurred by an avalanche of fear and online misinformation. The infodemic has officially arrived in the ICU.”
Setting aside such snark, the issue raises a question: Why are healthcare providers reluctant, even refusing. to provide the drug to patients, even when patients agree to surrender claims of potential legal liability while touting the liberal line, although everything else they have tried has failed?
The Fauquier Times points out why hospitals and doctors look both condescending and petty in these instances – even when federal law presumably gives Americans the right to seek whatever treatment they want as Judge Fisher acknowledged.
Christopher Davies insisted to the Times that he doesn’t know if Ivermectin will help his mom. Yet all he wanted, he said, was an opportunity to try a medical Hail Mary.
“It’s a matter of life and death. She’s on her deathbed,” he said. “Any kind of negative repercussions [from Ivermectin] are null and void.”
We will follow this story and update the condition of Kathleen Davies.
Editors Note: Talk to your doctor or clinic about your health and the latest information on the COVID-19 vaccine.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Free Press.
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