Whoopi Goldberg Fumes Over Lack of Access to ‘Miracle Drug’ Remdesivir: ‘Give It to Everybody’ (Video)

“If you’ve got something that cures people in 3 days, why the hell are we going through this?” asks “The View” co-host

Whoopi Goldberg Fumes Over Lack of Access to 'Miracle Drug' Remdesivir: 'Give It to Everybody' (Video)
ABC

Whoopi Goldberg has a question for the American healthcare system: Why can’t everyone who is hospitalized with the coronavirus have access to the “miracle drug” Remdesivir?

“What is really piss-poor about all of this is it makes me think, again, if you’ve got something that cures people in three days, why the hell are we going through this?” Goldberg said on Friday’s episode of “The View.”

“I don’t understand, because we pay taxes,” she continued. “I’m sorry, if you’ve got a miracle drug, give it to everybody so we can get our economy up and running. People can stop fighting about whether they should be putting on a mask. I feel like this is a setup. You’ve got this drug and you don’t want to share it and you’re saying it’s too much money. It’s kooky.”

The drug, which is sold under the brand name Veklury, is an antiviral medication developed by Gilead Sciences that is used to treat COVID-19 patients. President Trump was treated with the drug while he was hospitalized with the virus earlier this year.

Co-host Ana Navarro argued that the reason the drug might not be widely available is because of its side effects.

“When my husband got COVID and got Remdesivir, I asked this question: Why can’t we have outpatient centers like where you go get dialysis, where you go get chemo, where you don’t have to be in the hospital and people can go get this?” she said. “What I was told by doctors is that the side effects of Remdesivir are such that you need to be under constant supervision, admitted in a hospital, so you can see if you have a cardiac secondary effect or your [blood] sugar shoots up. So they can’t give it outpatient, which makes it inaccessible.”

But Goldberg still wasn’t convinced.

“But if you have 5,000 people in a hospital and they’re going to be there until they get well, why not give them this and free up some of those rooms?” she asked.

Co-host Joy Behar butted in by saying, “Because they’re not celebrities, that’s why, Whoopie. Because they’re regular people, not celebrities. That’s how the country is operating right now. It’s not nice.”

“Why can’t they make Remdesivir any more accessible? It’s a legitimate question,” Navarro added.

Goldberg pointed to President Donald Trump’s brief hospitalization with coronavirus back in October, during which his treatment racked up a $100,000 bill footed by taxpayers — many of whom don’t have access to Remdesivir themselves because of the high price point.

“The man that runs the country, he got out in three days,” Goldberg noted.

Watch the clip below.

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