THE MAN WHO MAY STOP COVID-19:

Lara Marlowe of the Irish Times had a terrific lead, “We could know within two weeks whether Professor Didier Raoult, the French virologist who heads the Mediterranean infectious and tropical disease institute in Marseille, will go down in history as the man who saved the world from COVID-19, or will be dismissed as an arrogant, misguided scientist who raised false hopes.”

Doctor Raoult was the one who took hydroxycloroquine off the shelf, mixed it with azithromycin (another available drug) and used it to treat 24 French COVID-19 patients.

It worked. 18 of them tested negative after 6 days.

But this is a reminder why we must stop outsourcing our critical drug manufacturing offshore: Yesterday, The Indian government “banned export of anti-malarial drug hydroxycloroquine, with immediate effect to ensure sufficient availability of the medicine in the domestic market. It, however, said the government will allow export of the medicine on humanitarian grounds on case-to-case basis on the Ministry of External Affairs’ recommendation.”