On March 17, 2021, Emory's non-profit drug development company DRIVE announced its discovery of a new antiviral drug, called molnupiravir (formerly EIDD-2801), which can be administered to outpatients in pill form, and which

appears safe and reduces SARS-CoV-2 to undetectable levels in COVID-19 patients after five days of administration, according to data from a Phase II clinical trial in the United States[.] ... Although remdesivir and antiviral monoclonal antibodies have received Emergency Use Authorizations from the FDA, they must be given intravenously or by injection. In addition, drugs like molnupiravir could flexibly tackle SARS-CoV-2 variants, which have emerged as a concern in recent months.

Additionally, "EIDD-2801 has broad spectrum activity against a number of diseases of public health concern, including influenza, SARS-CoV-1, MERS, chikungunya, Ebola and equine encephalitis."

Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Merck are involved with the licensing, testing, and manufacturing of this drug.  Merck recently announced a non-exclusive licensing agreement with five generic Indian drug companies to manufacture and distribute it in India.

When it comes to COVID therapeutics, whether they be older, repurposed drugs or hot-off-the-press wonder drugs, the watchword (or phrase) seems to be curb your enthusiasm!

HCQ (hydroxychloroquine) suffered the ignoble misfortune of having been endorsed by Donald Trump, AKA Orange Man Bad.

The FDA, who back in March said "people should not use ivermectin to attempt to treat or prevent Covid-19," was recently contradicted by a peer-reviewed study that found that ivermectin effectively treats and prevents COVID.

Will the government fast-track molnupiravir (the marketing guys need to rename this pronto) under emergency authorization, and will the media and establishment trumpet the drug and make it a household name?

When it comes to COVID vaccines, there's no doubt that their mantra can be characterized as damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!  And the vaccine mania is only accelerating.

By the end of April, nearly 100 colleges and universities had decided to require students to be vaccinated for COVID, and the list is growing daily.  This, despite legitimate concerns about the vaccines' effects on women's menstrual cycles and fertility.

Moderna and Pfizer are blazing ahead with vaccine trials for children as young as six months.  A two-year-old girl recently died after being injected with the second Pfizer shot (she had been hospitalized since after the first shot and was unfortunately given the second shot while she was still suffering).

Johns Hopkins released a 71-page document that describes a future where A.I. robots and drones deliver what they're calling self-spreading vaccines:

Self-spreading vaccines are genetically engineered to move through populations like communicable diseases, but rather than causing disease, they confer protection. The vision is that a small number of individuals in a target population could be vaccinated, and the vaccine strain would then circulate in the population much like a pathogenic virus, resulting in rapid, widespread immunity.

The report claims that "[b]acteria can be genetically engineered to produce antigens in a human host, acting as a vaccine, which triggers immunity to pathogens of concern," presumably to be administered by pills or, for that matter, food or fruit drinks.  Molecular 3D printers could conceivably crank out spike proteins that could be deployed with aerosols.

A minority of doctors and scientists have issued cautions about unknown but possible long-term adverse effects of these vaccines, such as dementia, mad cow disease, and antibody dependent enhancement (ADE): "The ADE of virus infection is a phenomenon in which virus-specific antibodies enhance the entry of virus, and in some cases the replication of virus[.]"

The effects of deploying those technologies as proposed by Johns Hopkins would be irreversible.  Based on recent history, there is little reason to believe that they would be deployed only after their safety had been decidedly proven over time.  The contrast between how the media, medical establishment, and government regard vaccines versus cures is a red flag that factors other than purely the best interests of the public are at work.

It's been said before that we are (at some level) our own first responders, and we must resist the rah-rah peer pressure to conform and not to make our own judgments, be they right or wrong.

Image: Ben Harvey via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

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