Senate witness says New York Times report calling him fringe practitioner nearly kept him from testifying about uncommon coronavirus treatments

Appili Therapeutics CEO Armand Balboni says by video conference to a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee at a hearing on early outpatient treatment for coronavirus patients that he was a simple drug development physician and scientist with all humility and as a military fellow at the FDA during the Ebola crisis looking at broad spectrum antivirals including favipiravir and remdesivir none were further along then in getting those drugs approved because of a very fragmented nature in treating those illnesses, he never thought he would have to say it but as a lifelong Democrat with a situation to the New York Times he was quite dismayed and almost did not participate seeing reports he was participating as a fringe member of an anti vaxxer group which cannot be further from the truth, reading further down in the newspaper that over 200,000 new coronavirus cases were presented the day before the United States, he confronted with the motto that accompanied him in 17 years as a physician and U.S. Army scientist, one team, one fight, mission first.