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(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took a break yesterday from getting his ass kicked in court to threaten yet more pointless litigation. This time he’s going to take on the Food and Drug Administration for withdrawing the emergency use authorization for two monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID-19.

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“Because data show these treatments are highly unlikely to be active against the omicron variant, which is circulating at a very high frequency throughout the United States, these treatments are not authorized for use in any U.S. states, territories, and jurisdictions at this time,” Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, Director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research said Tuesday. “In the future, if patients in certain geographic regions are likely to be infected or exposed to a variant that is susceptible to these treatments, then use of these treatments may be authorized in these regions.”

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In plain English, the drugs are not effective against the omicron variant, and 99.9 percent of infections in the country are now omicron.

Or as DeSantis put it:

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Without a shred of clinical data to support this action, Biden has forced trained medical professionals to choose between treating their patients or breaking the law. This indefensible edict takes treatment out of the hands of medical professionals and will cost some Americans their lives. There are real-world implications to Biden’s medical authoritarianism – Americans’ access to treatments is now subject to the whims of a failing president.

mEdIcAl aUtHoRiTaRiAnIsM

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Last week DeSantis suggested without a shred of evidence that vaccines, which are effective against omicron, might cause infertility. But now he won’t even take Regeneron and Eli Lilly’s word for it that their products are not effective at treating the predominant variant.

Meanwhile DeSantis’s controversial (read: batshit crazy) Press Secretary Christina Pushaw is flooding the zone with nonsense, including retweeting rightwing troll Mike Cernovich saying, “The FDA is trying to make it so that people in Florida die of Covid. They’ll kill people to harm Republicans. Steel yourselves for the evil that is being unleashed.”

Monoclonal antibodies don’t work against omicron but a piece of cloth totally does 🤓 Biden Administration Science™️!

— Christina Pushaw 🐊 (@ChristinaPushaw) January 26, 2022

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While downplaying the advantages of vaccines and refusing to say if he himself has received the booster, DeSantis spent the better part of the year flogging antibody treatments, going so far as to open infusion centers in stadiums, even as he threatened to revoke funding for schools which sought to keep kids in masks to prevent transmission of coronavirus.

Naturally the governor vowed to “fight back” against the Biden administration’s ban on pumping his constituents full of expensive, ineffective drugs. Asked by a reporter on Monday if he intends to sue, DeSantis responded, “We’re going to look. We’re going to see what you can do.”

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Harvard Law School, class of 2005, doin’ the Crimson proud.

DeSantis Touts Covid Treatments After FDA Says They Don’t Work [Bloomberg]

Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Topics

COVID-19, Government, Ron DeSantis