Trump Pushes Hydroxychloroquine...Again
- fionacsweet
- Jul 28, 2020
- 3 min read
I had started to gain hope that Trump had taken on a more serious approach towards the coronavirus outbreak as he started to hold coronavirus briefings again and has now worn a mask twice in public. Unfortunately, this more serious approach did not last and he is once again attempting to discredit Fauci and spread misinformation about the virus.
Trump pushed claims that an anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, is an effective treatment for COVID-19 despite numerous studies that show this drug is not helpful in treatment. The US Food and Drug administration even recently rescinded an order that allowed hydroxychloroquine as an emergency treatment for the virus.
Trump retweeted a series of tweets promoting hydroxychloroquine as an effective treatment after returning from a trip to North Carolina on Monday, including a post from Steve Bannon (a former top White House adviser that accused Fauci of misleading the public over hydroxychloroquine). I personally think the most interesting retweet made by Trump and Donald Trump Jr. was a video of a doctor claiming that she had used the drug on hundreds of patients and they had all recovered successfully. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube began attempting to take down this video on Monday because it spreads misinformation about hydroxychloroquine. Unfortunately, dozens of versions still exist on the platforms and people remain sharing it.
In the video, the doctor, Dr. Stella Immanuel, says "You don’t need masks, there is a cure. You don’t need people to be locked down." She also asked for Fauci and other leading disease experts to test their urine to see if they had been taking hydroxychloroquine. Dr. Immanuel was also among physicians in a group called "America's Frontline Doctors" who made misleading claims about the virus at a news conference Monday in Washington.
After digging a little deeper, I found that many of Dr. Immanuel's claims are rather, um, strange. She has often claimed that cysts and endometriosis are the result of having sex with witches and demons in your dreams, as well as alleging that alien DNA is currently being used in medical treatments. She also believes that our government is not run by people but reptilians and other aliens.
Fauci appeared on "Good Morning America" to respond to Trump's barrage of retweets, simply stating "I go along with the FDA. The overwhelming prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in coronavirus disease." Fauci then said that despite Trump's attempts to discredit him he will press ahead with his job "no matter what" because of the high stakes involved--"I don’t tweet. I don’t even read them, so I don’t really want to go there. I just will continue to do my job no matter what comes out because I think it’s very important. We’re in the middle of a crisis with regard to an epidemic, a pandemic. This is what I do. This is what I’ve been trained for my entire professional life and I’ll continue to do it."
Spreading these claims is very dangerous and only pushes forward the idea that the virus is not serious. Trump sharing that video will only cause more people to refuse wearing a mask in public because a doctor told them that a mask is not needed and hydroxychloroquine will prevent the disease. Without masks, our economy and the people in it cannot get back to normal for a longer period of time (until we have an effective vaccine).
Mood for today after hearing that our president is taking the word of a woman who most likely thinks he is a reptile:
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