The Foof and Drug Administration appears to be in a generous mood when it comes to offering emergency approvals for nascent COVID treatments, at least thus far. A number of vaccines have been flying through their initial trials at Warp Speed (to borrow a phrase from the White House) and showing a lot of promise. Now we can add another development to the list. The FDA has issued emergency approval for the use of Regeneron’s COVID-19 antibody drug. While not a miracle cure, it’s intended to diminish the symptoms and severity of the disease in patients who experience relatively mild symptoms, stopping them from developing a more severe case and potentially shortening the length of their affliction and minimizing aftereffects. Oh, and it’s also the drug that was given to President Trump during his very short battle with the novel coronavirus. (NY Post)

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has given the green light for emergency use of Regeneron’s COVID-19 antibody drug — the same treatment given to President Trump.

The treatment is aimed at those with mild cases of COVID-19, and not for those hospitalized as a result of the virus, the FDA said.

The treatment works by mimicking the body’s own immune system to prevent the infected from become severely ill.

This is actually the second of this type of drug to gain emergency approval. Eli Lilly & Co. has a similar treatment that was approved a couple of weeks ago.

The approval and success rate seen thus far is the good news. The bad news is that nearly all of the patients currently in treatment won’t be able to get it. Regeneron is saying that they won’t have more than 80,000 doses ready to go by the end of the month. Fortunately, their production should ramp up quickly once they get rolling.

Any discussion of this story wouldn’t be complete without a brief stroll down memory lane for yet another look at how the mainstream media has politicized the pandemic and weaponized their coverage of it against the President. Some of you may be old enough to remember all the way back to the second week of October when President Trump contracted the virus and was given Regeneron’s antibody-drug as part of his treatment. You may also recall the headlines that decision by the President’s doctors generated.

The New York Times immediately bleated about how Trump’s treatment was “a double-edged sword” for Regeneron. They claimed that Trump’s claims of how much the drug had helped him “sowed suspicion about whether the treatment really works.” That’s funny. All of the doctors who prescribed it during testing and the ones who have now approved it for national distribution don’t seem very suspicious.

Politico was quick to focus on comments made by Regeneron’s CEO who confessed that the President was a “case study of one” and his results provided “kind of the weakest evidence that you can get.” Of course, he wasn’t questioning his own product. He was simply pointing out that more exhaustive testing would be required before conclusions could be drawn. You know, I seem to recall being told that journalists shouldn’t be undermining science and sowing doubt or fear among the public when it comes to the pandemic. I guess those rules didn’t apply to Politico.

Barrons simply called Trump’s Regeneron treatment “a tangled ethical mess.” The list goes on. Anything the President said or did in relation to the pandemic, be it the policies he implemented nationally or his own personal experience, had to be attacked, called into question or dismissed in some fashion.

And yet here we are today, barely six weeks later. The drug treatment has received emergency approval and should be helping to tame the pandemic until a proven vaccine is widely available. And Donald Trump wound up personally being part of the initial testing, using his own immune system as one of the guinea pigs. Don’t expect to see him getting any of the credit from the New York Times, however.