The case of molnupiravir illustrates the corruption of the pandemic response at its very worst
Imagine the following scenario, if you will. Bear with me.
There’s a global pandemic. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, the disease is a novel respiratory virus.
Governments around the world implement a totally new strategy to contain the virus, based on isolation measures that quarantine the healthy as well as the sick. The focus is on preventing not only deaths and serious cases, but reducing or even eliminating transmission.
One of the conditions for the end of these extreme quarantine conditions is that transmission—“new cases”—must fall below a certain threshold indicated by the “R number,” a measure of how contagious a disease is. If the R number increases after quarantine conditions have been lifted, they can and will be reimposed.
The emergence of new variants, including variants that could be significantly more transmissible and also more deadly, is identified and communicated to the public as a major concern. Genetic testing of virus samples is carried out around the world to monitor for the emergence of such variants.
At an early stage, Big Pharma is enlisted to create new treatments against the virus, including vaccines and therapeutics. They are given exemptions from traditional safeguards on vaccine and medicine development because of the “exceptional” circumstances of the pandemic.
Among those therapeutics is a drug that deliberately targets the genome of the novel virus in the bodies of patients, causing the virus to mutate in ways that, the drug manufacturer claims, will cause the virus to become less harmful. Patients’ immune systems will then do the rest if the virus doesn’t mutate itself to death.
The development of this drug is subsidised heavily by the US government, which buys nearly two million doses before the drug has even passed clinical trials.
Experts, including members of the US government’s own health advisory panel, warn that this drug could have unexpected consequences, generating new potentially more harmful variants that could escape the bodies of users and trigger a fresh wave of the disease, setting back the global prevention measures by months or years and harming many hundreds of thousands or even millions of people.
The concerns are dismissed as “hypothetical” by the drug manufacturer. The drug is granted emergency-use authorization.
Millions of doses are sold around the world, especially in Asia. The US government buys millions more doses.
Months later, researchers who have been monitoring the genomes of live strains of the virus notice distinctive patterns that suggest this drug has, in fact, been producing new variants that are then being transmitted “in the wild.”
A detailed scientific study by world experts confirms that this is the case.
Another study suggests the drug is having a “supercharging” effect on the virus in the bodies of patients whose immune systems are already compromised, which could also spawn a harmful new variant.
At the same time, other studies on the drug’s efficacy show that it has “little effect” in reducing the frequency or severity of acute cases. People who take the drug are just as likely to end up in the hospital or die as people who don’t.
Just imagine!
Except, of course, you don’t have to. Everything I’ve just described, all that insanity, happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. The mutator drug is molnupiravir—brand name “Lagevrio”—and its manufacturer is Merck. What’s happened with the drug should be an absolute scandal, but it isn’t—and you can bet it won’t be.
I first wrote about molnupiravir over a year ago for The National Pulse, when a study confirming the drug was creating new variants was released for pre-publication.
It was actually an Indian middle-school teacher called Ryan Hisner who noticed the distinctive pattern in COVID genomes that suddenly started appearing. It was a hobby of his, when he wasn’t marking homework, to scan online databases where COVID genomes were being published.
Thank God for nerds, eh?
Well, it was nerds who came up with the drug in the first place, so maybe we should qualify that gesture of thanks. Thank God for nerds who aren’t committed to unleashing dangerous gene-mutating medical treatments on the world.
Now there’s a second paper that confirms the findings of the first within a clinical setting. In this one, researchers from Australia closely monitored the viral genomes of nine hospital patients with persistent COVID-19 infection. Of the nine, five received molnupiravir treatment and four did not.
Here’s how a press release describes the results.
“Patients treated with the drug rapidly accumulated hundreds of new mutations across the virus genome, including the spike protein targeted by vaccines, even after the treatment had stopped.
“Even 40 days after treatment, mutations continued to develop, raising concerns about the potential transmission of mutated viruses.”
Concerns. Yeah, right.
The drug should never have been approved in the first place, and perhaps it wouldn’t have been in a world where there existed an actual separation between government and big corporations like Merck.
But instead, there’s no separation between government and big corporations. The personnel and interests of the two overlap almost entirely.
FDA board members go on to work for the companies whose drugs they approve. Last year, an investigation by the British Medical Journal showed that two FDA regulators who approved Moderna’s mRNA vaccine then went on to work for Moderna within a matter of months or weeks.
They call this a “revolving-door culture,” but the truth is, these people don’t even pass through a door. They’re in the same big, cushy air-conditioned building.
And don’t forget the politicians and their advisors, who have shares in the drug companies. Don’t forget their interests.
“As the pandemic raged, at least 75 lawmakers bought and sold stock in companies that make COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests,” runs a Business Insider headline from 2021.
“Biden’s inner circle maintains close ties to vaccine makers, disclosures reveal”—that one’s from The Intercept.
Molnupiravir needs to be taken off the market. Now. No matter the cost to Merck, or to the crooked politicians and insiders who bet big on Big Pharma during the pandemic. They’ve made enough of a killing already. Literally.
