Steve Sisolak, the leftist governor of Nevada, decided to play doctor by banning the use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, two drugs that are being used elsewhere to treat COVID-19. 

"While these drugs serve necessary medical purposes, this regulation protects the Nevadans who need them and prevents unnecessary hoarding," Sisolak wrote on Twitter.

Unnecessary hoarding?  The hoarding thing is a smokescreen; his real reason was to slap at President Trump, who touted these medications as showing promise and even mistakenly said they had been approved for use by the FDA.  That's his real reason for the limit on the unproven drug, which goes against the "right to try" and the current national mobilization effort to get everyone well by suspending burdensome regulations in the medical community to encourage experimentation and swift solutions.  What Nevada needs, see, is more administrative-state regulation, which is showing all signs of going badly for him.

According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, here was Sisolak's originally stated reason, which has a clear reference to President Trump:

Sisolak announced an emergency regulation prohibiting the drugs' use in a statement that said there was "no consensus among COVID-19 experts or Nevada's own medical health advisory team" that the medications  were an effective treatment for the virus.

Tellingly, this semi-prohibition comes right on the heels of the death of an Arizona man who tried to self-medicate, fatally taking a fish tank cleaning additive with a similar name, and killing himself as well as sickening his wife.  She has since blamed President Trump. 

Sen. Ted Cruz could tell what Sisolak's ban was really about — Getting Trump — and he said something.  According to the Reno Gazette-Journal:

On Wednesday, Cruz wrote on Twitter: "During this crisis, we should listen to the science & the medical professionals," Cruz tweeted on Wednesday. "The opposite approach: the Governor of Nevada, practicing medicine w/o a license — trying to score political points against Trump — & prohibiting NV doctors from prescribing medicines to treat COVID19."

Sisolak hollers about "no consensus" as reason for his move, but now looks like Sisolak has decided the consensus, limiting the availability of the drug on the market as bad stuff, and never mind that portion of the medical community that thinks it does work. 

Sisolak has since clarified that he hasn't totally banned the use of the drug — he's allowing it for hospital use, which is for COVID-19 patients at death's door.  It's sad stuff because the drug reportedly shows the most promise in early-stage COVID-19 patients.  But Sisolak's the doctor now, so late-stage can have his exception.

Where he really gets into the playing doctor thing, though, is by permitting it for prescription by doctors for outpatient use, but only with only a 30-day supply.

What happens to the guy who needs a 40-day supply to get well?  People are different, and one-size-fits-all works badly in medicine.

With the drug banned for the forty-day guy, he's going to be looking into the black market, or, in a worst-case scenario, under the kitchen sink, for what he needs.  So is the uncertain guy who forgot to pay his big Obamacare insurance premium.  So is the slightly sick guy who can't get an appointment because the doctors are too busy with more urgent cases.  The whole thing interferes with doctors' ability to practice medicine and patients' "right to try."  Too bad if you're sick — no hydroxychloroquine for you! 

All of them — and anyone else who thinks he might get sick — have in fact just been incentivized by the Nevada governor's stupid micromanaging move to...hoard up. 

It's ironic, because Sisolak couldn't do anything better to incentivize hoarding than to initiate bans and conditions and prohibitions.  In his current "hoarding" justification, he now admits that the drug has some promising medical applications for COVID-19, just as Trump says, as well as for treatment of lupus and malaria, so now he's limiting availability to help non-COVID-19 patients, he says.  A normal person in normal market would ramp up production to accommodate everyone who wants it.  This guy likes the "divide it up and ration it out" model instead — a feature, not a bug, of socialized medicine.

If you wanted to encourage hoarding, there probably isn't a better way to do it than to cut off access.  Just ask any surge of travelers after an entry ban is introduced, or a pot stash house owner in the face of some new prohibition, gun- and ammo-buyers after gun- and ammo-buying limits are introduced, or a stock market participant after the switch breakers are introduced.  Prohibitions are precisely what encourage hoarding.  Ramping up production to accompany higher demand is what ends the impulse for hoarding.

It's nothing but Democrat administrative-state mentality at work here — first, the slap at Trump, and second, the move to crush the wreckers and hoarders — all coming at a time when the private sector is stepping up production of necessary things in a pandemic, the innovators are going gangbusters  with new solutions, doctors are experimenting in uncertainty as never before and the regulators in Washington are getting out of the way in a bid to hasten solutions.

What Nevada needs, he seems to be saying, is more bureaucrats, more enforcers, and more regulations, because there's just too much freedom and in a pandemic, people are escaping "all proper control."  He's moving against the Zeitgeist, led by President Trump. Expect a lot more self-justification and backtracking from him, he's not making himself popular.

Image credit: Pxhere, public domain.