We in the United States applaud your efforts to free Canadians from government overreach including the draconian Canadian government policies regarding vaccines which are not based on science and are damaging Canadians. As a physician I would like to tell you about another colossal blunder by the Canadian government which has undoubtedly caused much unnecessary suffering and many deaths.
On August 08/6 Dr. Edward Mills at McMaster University announced the results of the TOGETHER trial in 1497 unvaccinated patients with early COVID. Fluvoxamine, a generic antidepressant, lowered admissions 32% and mortality 91% in those who finished the trial. Dr. Mills stopped the trial because it was unethical to continue in the face of such benefit. The probability of superiority to placebo was 99%. The study was published in The Lancet Global Health 10/27. “It’s a very large treatment effect, one that has ‘nt been observed for any drug yet,” Dr. Mills told CTV News back in October when the study was published. Incredibly some Canadian “experts”, like in the U.S., say their confidence in the data is too low to recommend it to patients. The same ridiculous stance in the US was taken to task by the Wall Street Journal 12/28. Just how much data does it take to try a a cheap, safe drug on a sick patient when you have nothing else?
12/20 Ontario announced that they were listing fluvoxamine as a possible treatment for COVID. No one else in Canada has followed suit and few patients are receiving this safe, generic drug, $1 a day for 15 days with powerful data from Canada. Entrepreneur Steve Kirsch who funded the trial says almost no one treated with fluvoxamine gets long COVID which normally affects 20-40%. One can make a case that for that reason alone all Canadians with COVID should have been offered treatment.
To this day few Canadians have received any treatment when they get COVID prior to hospitalization. All Canadians should have been offered fluvoxamine since August when the more serious delta variant dominated. This failure has led to much needless suffering and death.
The ridiculous Canadian vaccine mandates which you are opposing include vaccinating the 50% of the country who were previously infected and have arguably better immunity than those vaccinated. Those with prior infection have little if anything to gain and risk the considerable vaccine side effects. With recent reports that insurance companies saw a 40% increase in all-cause mortality in 2021 and the US Department of Defense data suggesting huge increases in many medical problems in 2021, one can’t blame the unvaccinated for thinking COVID is less dangerous to them than the vaccines.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has done even less than Canada with fluvoxamine and has been sitting on an emergency use authorization for fluvoxamine since 12/21. If fluvoxamine were a branded drug company product it would have received immediate emergency use authorization quickly as happened with molnupiravir whose data wasn’t quite as good as fluvoxamine and in fact, appears to have significant safety consideration—the drug is produced by Merck.
It appears that for the most part the Canadian government does whatever the US does, ignoring the fact that every decision made by US governmental health care agencies is for the benefit of drug companies. Is Mr. Trudeau afraid of embarrassing the US by doing something smart while the US blunders its way through the pandemic?
How about Mr. Trudeau doing something smart for Canadians by offering all of them fluvoxamine for COVID if they get sick. It would keep a lot of people out of the hospital.
Michael B. Goodkin MD, FACC