Death isn’t a subject anyone wants to talk about, and the Oregon Health Authority is no exception. When it comes to COVID-19, they do not graph deaths but still the Governor uses deaths to spread the fear of COVID-19 with the implication that death is lurking for all of us.

On March 25, 2020, the Oregon Board of Pharmacy adopted temporary rules in response to the Governor’s Executive Order restricting the use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as treatment for COVID-19 in anticipation of a shortage even though FDA declared no shortage on March 28. It took until July 14, 2020, for the Board to repeal the temporary rule. There was never a real question of safety in taking these drugs, and 6,000 doctors surveyed said hydroxychloroquine as the most effective therapy for COVID-19.

So, for what reason was it withheld from Oregonians to treat COVID-19? Dr. John Powell is a board-certified family physician who works at Evergreen Family Medicine as director for Urgent Care and Hospitalist services. He writes an open letter to Governor Kate Brown encouraging her to ease social distancing restrictions and relax the ban on “non-essential medical services.” At the heart of his request is that “it is becoming clear to many of us who follow epidemiological data and global research about this virus that the severity of COVID-19 related illness does not warrant the current Oregon public health measures…. Rising numbers of COVID-19 cases illustrate that what we are doing is not working. Data demonstrating falling infection fatality rates, emergency department visits and hospitalizations due to COVID-19 coupled with age severity differentials demand a more targeted and sustainable public health approach… Let us start by structuring the pandemic around our lives and not our lives around COVID-19.” With reports of near-death patients recovering with proper treatment of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, why is the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) continuing to report several deaths per day since July 14?

It’s hard to determine how prevalent COVID-19 really is. Today, OHA website charts 19,162 positive tests and 20,225 cases, so there are 1,063 that were probably diagnosed before testing began. What is more confusing is the 4,065 recovered cases. That leaves 16,160 still active positive COVID-19 cases. Even if you subtract an average of 300 new cases per day for the past 20 days plus 15 per day hospitalize, there shouldn’t be more than 6,300 active cases.

OHA documents the duration for recovery is an average of 20 days for non-hospitalized symptomatic cases and hospitalized cases is an average of 26 days. They also show a few people active clear out to 94 days. If this chart says anything it’s that physicians aren’t being proactive with treatment options.

Oregon has had a sympathetic heart for the terminally ill. In 1997, Oregon legislature passed the Death With Dignity Act allowing terminally ill Oregonians to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of a lethal dose of medication prescribed by a physician. Then in 2015, Oregon enacted the “Right to Try” law (HB 2300) allowing doctors to prescribe experimental medications and treatments to terminally ill patients. Its intent is that dying patients no longer have to lobby for an exemption from the Food and Drug Administration in order to try medications that are still being tested waiting for FDA approval.

So, what are the number of deaths and why so many lingering cases? The numbers for those dying jumps after age 60 with white people having the highest death rate at 2.8% and Asians a close second at 2.5%, versus Blacks and Indians at 1.3%. All the talk about helping people of color because they are the hardest hit by COVID-19 is not support by the numbers. Even the total case numbers are 40.7% of white affected versus 3.6% and 2.4% for Blacks and Native-Americans.

Is Oregon embracing laws allowing doctors more freedom to treat in dire situations? As an Oregonian, the numbers are bothering, and more than the numbers, are people getting the best treatment available?


--Donna Bleiler

Post Date: 2020-08-06 20:47:04