The COVID Advisor

Doctors are free to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID-19, a lawyer representing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in August 2023. “FDA explicitly recognizes that doctors do have the authority to prescribe ivermectin to treat COVID,” Ashley Cheung Honold, a Department of Justice lawyer representing the FDA, said during oral arguments on Aug. 8, 2023 in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. The government is defending the FDA’s repeated exhortations to people to not take ivermectin for COVID-19, including a post that said “Stop it.” The case  was brought  by three doctors who allege the FDA unlawfully interfered with their practice of medicine with the statements. A federal judge  dismissed the case  in 2022, prompting  an appeal . “The fundamental issue in this case is straightforward. After the FDA approves the human drug for sale, does it then have the authority to interfere with how that drug is used within the doctor-patient relationship? The answer is no,”

Rail transit officials in California’s Bay Area have been ordered to pay more than $7 million to transit workers who were fired because they refused to get a COVID-19 vaccine years ago. On Oct. 23, 2024; a federal jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California sided with six former San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) workers who had refused to get the vaccine for religious purposes. BART was ordered to pay the group more than $7.8 million, with each individual receiving between $1.2 million and $1.5 million, the Pacific Justice Institute, which represented the transit workers in the trial, said in a statement on Oct. 24. The institute, a law firm representing the six former employees since 2022, said the eight-person jury deliberated for two days this week before returning the verdict that awarded the employees the compensation. About a week ago, the federal jury also determined that BART had failed to prove that it suffered an undue hardship by denyin

Research has shown that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines reduce bacteria belonging to the Bifidobacteria genus, a common and beneficial gut bacteria. COVID vaccination is also linked to reduced gut biodiversity. Works by gastroenterologist Dr. Sabine Hazan, the CEO of ProgenaBiome, a microbiome genomic research laboratory, found that after COVID-19 vaccination, people's Bifidobacteria levels can fall by as much as  90 percent . Some of her unpublished data found that Bifidobacteria levels are negligible in vaccinated people. Bifidobacteria are among the first microbes to colonize a baby's gastrointestinal tract as he or she passes through the mother's birth canal. They are believed to exert positive health effects on their host. Bifidobacteria interact with the immune system, and their presence is linked with improved immunity against pathogens and cancer. Dr. Hazan's prior works on hospitalized COVID-19 patients  showed that  patients