Mark Sumner,
Daily Kos Staff
Donald
Trump began pressing the case for hydroxychloroquine during his very
first appearance at what’s since become the daily campaign rally replacement.
Since then, Trump has declared that he had a “hunch” about the effectiveness of
the treatment over and over. And over.
Meanwhile, he’s been quick to shove
actual experts, like Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute
of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, away from the microphone to keep them
from responding to questions about the anti-malaria medication.
Fox News
has backed up Trump’s claims by repeatedly trumpeting the supposed benefits
of hydroxychloroquine—a drug in which Trump has a personal financial interest.
In addition to
his shilling for profit during multiple hours networks are inexplicably
allotting him on a daily basis, Trump has frequently tweeted praise for
the drug, calling it “one of the biggest game changers in the history of
medicine.”
On
Tuesday, a study in The New England Journal of Medicine showed
that COVID-19 patients given Trump’s wonder drug were actually more likely to die than patients given
standard care.
Even so, Fox and other dead-enders continued to claim
that those researchers simply weren’t doing it right.
Now the NIH has come out with a recommendation on
Trump’s full magic cocktail. And the answer is—Trump’s cure is genuinely worse
than the disease.
Hydroxychloroquine is
frequently used in treatment against rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. It is also
effective, in very low doses, against the single-celled plasmodium that causes
malaria.
Azithromycin is an antibiotic, effective against a number of
bacteria. Both are valuable drugs. Both have serious side effects when taken in
high doses.
Pairing the two together is especially problematic as heart
problems are on the list of side effects for both drugs.
And
that’s exactly what NPR reports: researchers using Trump’s
hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin cocktail found a strong association with
increased heart problems.
This same result has been seen with the combination,
and with hydroxychloroquine alone, by researchers in multiple countries,
as well as at the largest random trial in the United States.
These trials have
been suspended early, because the drugs Trump was pushing have turned out to
increase the danger to a degree that further trials are not recommended.
On
April 5, Trump may have hit maximum hucksterism for this drug
which puts money in his own pocket.
"What do you have to lose?” Trump
said to the nation. “And a lot of people are saying that when … and are taking
it … if you're a doctor, a nurse, a first responder, a medical person
going into hospitals, they say taking it before the fact is good. But what do
you have to lose? They say, 'Take it.' I'm not looking at it one way or the
other, but we want to get out of this. If it does work, it would be a shame if
we didn't do it early. But we have some very good signs. So that's
hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin."
That’s
Trump pushing this combination not just on people who were already ill and
desperate, but on people who were not even infected. In fact, this is just one
of several instances in which Trump suggested that hydroxychloroquine
wouldn’t just cure, but prevent, COVID-19.
The
answer to “what have you got to lose” is now extraordinarily clear. The
National Institutes of Health panel hasn’t just taken a neutral on
the hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin combination.
It’s not saying that
there’s a lack of evidence, or that more tests are needed, or that we just
don’t know. It is explicitly stating that this drug combination should
not be given.
With
this publication on April 20, Trump has to have known that this evidence was
working through the pipeline. Fauci and others have to have warned him that the
evidence of hydroxychloroquine having any positive effect was lacking, and
the evidence that the drug Trump was recommending was itself causing deaths was
absolute.
But Trump was still speaking and tweeting support for hydroxychloroquine
and azithromycin on April 18.
Don’t
be surprised if he continues to do so. Because science, and deaths of
Americans, are nothing to Trump. His hunch is … you really need to buy
what he’s selling.