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DeSantis finds workaround to Biden’s antibody rationing, but warns it’s only temporary

  President Joe Biden will likely not be pleased to learn that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has discovered a temporary workaround to his admini...

 President Joe Biden will likely not be pleased to learn that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has discovered a temporary workaround to his administration’s attempts to squash Florida’s successful coronavirus treatment measures.

After months of trashing DeSantis for promoting Regeneron’s monoclonal-antibody treatment, last week Democrats and their media allies abruptly performed a 180 and began accusing him of hoarding the treatment.

In response, the Biden administration announced it’d be taking control of the nation’s monoclonal antibody supply and distributing the supply as it sees fit.

In other words, it appeared the administration cut the supply of monoclonal antibodies going to the Republican-led states that’d been using the treatment and began redistributing it to blue states.

At the time of the announcement, the Florida governor made it clear he intended to “fight like hell” to prevent his constituents from being denied the treatment they need.

His actions this week appear to show that he’d meant it. On Thursday, the governor announced that his administration has obtained more monoclonal antibodies, but from a different supplier.

During a press conference in Tampa, he revealed that his administration has secured a shipment of 3,000 doses of monoclonal antibodies from GlaxoSmithKline, not Regeneron.

He said the shipment was necessary because the Biden administration has cut his state’s supply of Regeneron’s treatment from 40,000 doses per week to just 18,000.

Watch the full presser below:

“We should be doing everything we can to get patients monoclonal antibody treatments, not cutting allocations of treatment like the Biden Administration has done,” the governor added in a written statement.

“Despite the cuts by the federal government, we want any Floridians that could benefit from this treatment to have access to it. Florida is going to leave no stone unturned when finding treatment for our state, and we are encouraged to have secured a shipment of monoclonal antibody treatments from GlaxoSmithKline,” he continued.

But he also admitted that the additional doses aren’t enough, and ultimately, the Biden administration must restore the state’s supply for the well-being of Floridians.

To prove his point, he invited several Floridians who’ve benefited from the treatment to share their stories at Thursday’s presser.

“I’m 64 years old and I have suffered three heart attacks. So having COVID-19 is not what you want to hear when you’ve suffered three heart attacks and you’ve already got a breathing problem. I always thought COVID maybe wasn’t real, but it’s real. It hurts your body… It makes a grown man want to cry,” one of the Floridians, Jeff Randall, said.

“Within a day or two [after receiving the monoclonal antibody treatment], I felt great, everything was fine. The day after I got the treatment, my 93-year-old mother said, ‘I have chills. I’m cold. I have a headache, a slight fever.’ We didn’t waste any time. My wife took my mother to [the monoclonal site], she got the Regeneron, and the next day — it’s a miracle — she is completely healed. She’s walking around with her little walker and getting along just fine,” he added.

As of Saturday, the Biden administration hadn’t reversed its order, despite complaints from critics that there’s no legitimate reason for the treatments to be redistributed. For one, there’s reportedly no shortage of monoclonal antibody treatment.

Second, the antibodies reduce the risk of hospitalization by 70 percent for high-risk unvaccinated people, according to University of Alabama at Birmingham professor Dr. Turner Overton.

“Monoclonal antibodies are supplemental antibodies that can be administered early in the course of infection — the first 10 days after symptoms commence — to rapidly bind and kill the COVID virus. This infusion can be lifesaving if given in the first 10 days of symptoms,” she told the university’s news portal, UAB News, last month.

This means the vaccinated don’t really need monoclonal antibodies, and this is relevant because the most vaccinated states are blue states.

This isn’t to say that Florida is one of the nation’s most unvaccinated states. It’s not even close. According to Becker’s Hospital Review, it’s the 21st most vaccinated state with 56.48 percent of the population vaccinated.

However, it boasts more elderly people than 49 other states, according to the Population Reference Bureau. And because the elderly are especially susceptible to hospitalization and death from COVID, they clearly need the treatment the most.

The Biden administration’s seemingly purposeful decision to ignore all this evidence strongly suggests that its redistribution scheme is nothing more than some sort of cynical political stunt, according to critics.

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