The newly installed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had one big request for agency employees at an all-hands meeting in March: Don’t talk to the press without permission.
FRESNO, Calif. — On a Tuesday afternoon in April, among tables of vegetables, clothes and telephone chargers at Fresno’s biggest outdoor flea market were prescription drugs being sold as treatments for Covid.
Vendors sold $25 injections of the steroid dexamethasone, several kinds of antibiotics and the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine — the malaria drugs pushed by President Donald J. Trump last year — make regular appearances at the market as well, as do sham herbal supplements.
