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Political commentator Kim Iversen this week weighed in on reports that researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are investigating how often and why coronavirus levels rebound in some patients who complete a five-day course of Pfizer’s COVID-19 antiviral pill, Paxlovid.
“Turns out the treatment drug Paxolvid, which is made by Pfizer, has a problem,” Iversen told viewers of Tuesday’s segment of The Hill’s “Rising.”
“Pfizer says its real-world data indicates the relapses occur in fewer than 1 in 3,000 patients, but again, we’ve heard this phrase throughout the pandemic — that something is ‘extremely rare,’ like getting the virus after being vaccinated or having a case of myocarditis … it turns out these events are more common than they first appear,” Iversen said.
Iversen criticized the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its rushed approval of drugs such as Paxlovid while denying the public access to older, often less-expensive treatments.
She also expressed disbelief that COVID-19 vaccines are still required by many institutions despite mounting evidence they are ineffective.
“Believe it or not, people are still being mandated by their employers to get the vaccine, schools are still requiring boosters for college students and yet day after day, more and more fully vaccinated — even quadruple dosed — [people] like Stephen Colbert are falling ill with COVID,” she said.
Iversen claimed Colbert took Paxlovid to treat his symptoms during his first bout with COVID-19.
Colbert first announced he tested positive for COVID-19 on April 21, saying “basically I’m feeling fine — grateful to be vaxxed and boosted.”
On May 9, the four-time vaccinated Colbert responded to an announcement by “The Late Show” about his second bout with COVID-19 with a tweet:
WORST. SEQUEL. EVER. https://t.co/a0rfw32xTH
— Stephen Colbert (@StephenAtHome) May 9, 2022
Then on May 15, he tweeted he was “footloose and Covid free.”
Even Bill Gates, notoriously vaccinated and boosted, had a “breakthrough” case of COVID, which he announced on May 10.
“I’m fortunate to be vaccinated and boosted and have access to testing and great medical care,” he tweeted. It is not known if Gates took Paxlovid.
Iversen pointed to a tweet by Dr. Vinay Prasad, who asked, “Is it possible that Paxlovid rebound might have something to do with mostly vaccinated people taking a medicine that published results exclusively in unvaccinated people?”
Ironically, Iversen said, there are “a lot of unknowns when it comes to the vaccines and the treatment, yet if anyone raised questions [throughout the pandemic] they were shamed by people like Stephen Colbert.”
She pointed out the FDA recently decided not to authorize fluvoxamine as a COVID treatment due to lack of data, but when it came to Paxlovid, they “pushed it out there.”
“Pfizer stands to make $22 billion from [Paxlovid], which is a substantial portion … of its total $102 billion projected revenue for the year,” said The Hill co-host Briahna Joy Gray.
“They never tested it even on vaccinated people, and yet they’ve rolled it out to make all that money without even batting an eyelash,” said Iversen.
Watch the segment here:
