Seriously, why is Trump pushing hydroxychloroquine as a cure or fix for the Covid virus?
Asked by
chyna (
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August 3rd, 2020
from iPhone
I really want to know what his rationale is. Does anyone know?
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58 Answers
Perhaps he has stock in the manufacturer.
For many things that he does or says, there is no explanation based in logic.
It’s a distraction.
He’s able to get the media hyper-focused and chasing their tails on issues that won’t affect the turnout for his base. We’re likely to see disastrous economic numbers and Trump would rather the media be debating the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine because his base is mostly too dumb to understand the controversy and just feels like “the media is picking on Trump: fake news!” His base would understand bad job numbers however. If you’re Trump, what do you want the conversation to be about?
I agree that it’s a distraction. My gut tells me there is potentially some other manipulation going on there as well, but hard to guess what it is for sure. I think people are very quick to write off a lot of what Trump does as stupidity, but I believe he’s a skillful manipulator. People assume you have to be clever or intelligent to manipulate others, but for people who have been manipulative their entire lives it comes effortlessly and I see a lot of his social “booboos” as exactly that. He thrives in creating chaos and confusion, it has been his approach since day 1.
Because he has all the brains of a fence post!
I assume it’s Henry Ford’s study, but could be he just refuses to backtrack.
The study, which came from Detroit-based Henry Ford Health System and was published July 2 in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, purported that COVID-19 patients who received hydroxychloroquine early in their hospital stays had a better chance of survival.
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However, many experts are arguing that another change of heart on hydroxychloroquine would be detrimental to the FDA’s credibility and the public’s trust in the agency.
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/pharmacy/recent-hydroxychloroquine-study-draws-criticism-from-medical-community.html
I think that @chyna ‘s question is too late.
The real question is this: with Trump pushing to get some vaccine out before election day, how many people will die from an untested and unproven concoction that Trump has rushed to production?
Talk about bad publicity if the FDA approves something that they were forced into by politicians.
Some medical doctors and research studies suggest that this therapy could be useful in this pandemic.
Step 1. Create a distraction and pull attention away from reality.
Step 2. Convince supporters that hydroxychloroquine is a miracle cure that should have prevented a pandemic, but that liberal legislators, governors, and health care providers conspired to prevent people from taking it.
Step 3. Refuse to take any responsibility for the pandemic and, instead, blame those conspiring liberals.
He invested his money in the company that makes it & now he’s losing on his investment!!! He thought that people would be desperate enough to simply accept his word that it was the cure-all for the virus, but that didn’t happen.
Since I’m fairly paranoid about groups like QAnon and other Alt-right groups, I think he does it because they push the idea and their followers, and other people who are manipulated by them who don’t even seem to realize they are manipulated by them, want to believe hydroxychloroquine works. That’s Trump strategy for everything, feed the people who want to believe he’s brilliant and some sort of savior.
There is clearly no reasonable answer to this question. Why does the fool persist with foolishness? My guess is that he has an image to protect. Deviation from that path might tarnish the fool franchise.
I don’t think it’s a reasoned move. He doesn’t have rationales. It’s a desperate grab, one that for the moment looks like it will serve him, and damn the consequences.
I’m content not to understand it because I don’t want to have to think like a person who’d do that. Watch out for the people to whom it makes sense.
Because I am uninformed: wasn’t there just a video of doctors saying it works when people take it right away? The video that got taken down everywhere?
A lot of good reasons listed but I think it because he already jumped on the idea that it would save lives so he could push the nation to open up because there would be little reason to fear mass deaths. So some government leaders thought, great we can open up because we have something that can save lives. As it turned out that it had little effect, and could actually hasten deaths. So Trump has to insist that the doctors are wrong and he is right and blames the medical community for not using it. This way he gets to blame someone else for their deaths like he does everything else. Not my fault. I’m sending them tons of hydroxychloroquine so I’m doing my part! But I am sure what started it was his inflated ego. He never likes to say, sorry, or my fault, or I was wrong. He thinks those words make him weak, but that is how a narcissistic sociopath would think.
I’ll guarantee he had Donnie Jr and Eric set up a bunch of shell corporations to buy stock in anyone that manufactures hydroxychloroquine.
@SergeantQueen one of the doctors (you can buy white smocks) claims COVID-19 is cause by having sex in your dreams at night with demons and alien DNA !
I kid you not !!!
There was anecdotal evidence that it helped and it seems as if there is some medical backing as well. At least the medical community seems split on the issue. It didn’t help when Surgisphere created data to say it was horrible and got all testing stopped. I think the corollary of this question also applies: why are people so against using the drug?
Because there is no medical evidence that it works on Covid 19.
And because it depletes or jeopardizes the supply for people who rely on it for treating other serious conditions—lupus, for example.
@seawulf575 This is posted by the FDA itself. Even they say there is absolutely no proof that it benefits patients at all. Doesn’t even help people recover quickly. Misinformation is dangerous. There was a story I recently read about a woman who took her daughter to a Covid party and figured if she gave her daughter Hydroxochloriquine that she would be okay. The 19 year old died. This is why misinformation is dangerous. Bye the way. She wasn’t blaming Trump or thought that the medicine didn’t work. Not that the drug didn’t work, but it didn’t work for her daughter because God was just calling her home. She’s a Trumper. Must never point the finger at that charlatan.
The one study where it helped was where it was given with steroids. Steroids are known to help. So there being some Hydroxochloriquine in there is totally irrelevant.
And Hydroxochloriquine was the first thing Trump clung too and he just can’t admit he was wrong.
Oh that study was the Henry Ford one Knowitall linked to. Here is what I am talking about..
“Experts are drawing attention to the fact that the study was not randomized. A closer look reveals patients who received hydroxychloroquine were also more likely to get steroids, which improves a patient’s chances for recovery, the experts said.”
Correction, the child was 17
@Pandora Misinformation is, indeed, dangerous. However, there was something in that FDA report that I’m not sure you recognized. On May 6th, they reviewed the available clinical trials, etc to determine its safety and effectiveness. Unfortunately, the only apparent clinical trials that had been done up to that point were performed by a company called Surgisphere. Using the data collected by this company, the New England Journal of Medicine and the medical journal Lancet published reports saying that Hydroxychloroquine was not only not effective, but was also potentially lethal when used to treat Covid-19 patients. At that point, all clinical trials into this chemical were stopped. There was no reason to continue. But then, someone dug a little deeper. Surgisphere is not a reputable company. Sapan Desai, the CEO, is named in 3 medical malpractice lawsuits. The company only consists of about 10 people, one of which is a Sci-fi author and another that is a porn star. They claimed to have real-time data from hundreds of hospitals around the world and that data for their study involved 96,000 patients. But they refused to actually give details. Their website has a “get in touch” link that hospitals can use to join their data gathering. When you click that link, you get sent to a page about cryptocurrency. Not sure how hospitals are supposed to help out when they can’t actually get in touch with the company. In the end, Lancet and the NEJM both printed retractions and apologies for their reports on hydroxychloroquine. This was in June. Meanwhile, as I said, all clinical trials across the globe had been stopped. So the FDA report you provided appears to also be relying on the same data that suckered the two medical journals.
As for the woman that dosed her child, I think the phrase you are looking for is “you can’t fix stupid”. Why you would think about medicating yourself or your child with something that is not OTC is beyond me. You could overdose, you could have side effects that are not fully understood and for which you have no contingencies. There are tons of reasons this isn’t a good thing and not just for this drug. But really, we aren’t talking about people going to the corner store and buying this stuff OTC. We are talking about treatment by a medical professional.
@seawulf575 I saw Fauci being grilled by republican congressmen who pointed to tests that say different and Fauci said that the test he was relying on were tests that were double-blind studies. I don’t remember the words he used because this was a few days ago but he essentially was saying that the tests that showed that Hydroclorquine worked were not done the proper way nor were they done with control subjects nor did they have enough subjects.
Now as for misinformation killing people and they being responsible for their own horrible mistakes. Yes, she is a murder. But if you put a weapon in the hands of a fool than what do you expect to happen. Trump said he was taking hydrocloquine as a preventative and that it had amazing results for those who caught COVID. He should know by now that he has lots of quacks who listen to him and believe his every word. He should own the damage he has done. And maybe she did overdose the child, or maybe the COVID is what killed her and the meds really did absolutely nothing for her like Fauci claims. I trust Fauci has the connections with the proper people whom he has known for years and can trust their studies.
^Not only does Fauci have the connections to these people and these studies, he has the intelligence to interpret the data with his science background.
@Pandora I looked up yhe words Fauci used for another question and he said the go.d standard was randomized double blind placebo studies and these are not.
@Pandora Just a couple things you said that I’m going to call out for discussion. Like @janbb I don’t remember Fauci saying he was relying on double-blind studies, like they had been done. That brings up the next thought. If there were double-blind studies that had been done that definitively showed Hydroxychloroquine was not useful and was dangerous, then why hasn’t the FDA or the CDC actually published them?
Another thing you mentioned that I’m going to ask for a citation on was that Trump knows there are lots of quacks who listen to him and believe his every word. I think that sounds like basic crap rhetoric from the left that sounds really bad about Trump or anyone that might support him and requires absolutely zero evidence to be passed off as fact. Except I’m going to see something more substantial before I will give you that. Who are these Doctors? And if they actually operate to that standard, why do they still have licenses?
@seawulf575 and @janbb This is waht Fauci said. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said again on Friday that no randomized placebo-controlled trial has shown that hydroxychloroquine works as a Covid-19 treatment.
Asked during a House subcommittee hearing about a study by a team of researchers at the Henry Ford Health System that claimed to show that hydroxychloroquine saved lives, Fauci said that study was “flawed.”
“The Henry Ford hospital study that was published was a non-controlled retrospective cohort study that was confounded by a number of issues, including the fact that many of the people who were receiving hydroxychloroquine were also receiving corticosteroids, which we know from another study gives a clear benefit in reducing deaths with advanced disease. So that study is a flawed study, and I think anyone who examines it carefully, is that it is not a randomized placebo-controlled trial,” Fauci explained.
When Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Republican from Missouri, replied that the Henry Ford study was peer-reviewed, Fauci countered by saying, “It doesn’t matter. You can peer review something that’s a bad study, but the fact is, it is not a randomized placebo-controlled trial.”
“The point that I think is important, because we all want to keep an open mind: Any and all of the randomized placebo-controlled trials – which is the gold standard of determining if something is effective – none of them had shown any efficacy for hydroxychloroquine,” Fauci said.
Fauci added that when he sees a randomized placebo-controlled trial that shows efficacy for the treatment, “I would be the first one to admit it and to promote it.”
“I just have to go with the data. I don’t have any horse in the game one way or the other. I just look at the data,” he said. (I did state that I didn’t remember his exact words but here is an accurate account}
@Pandora. I was agreeing with what you said not disagreeing. I’m not sure what wulfie thought I meant. I am a Fauci-Ist. I thought that was clear
@janbb I thought so at first but then I thought perhaps I’m missing something after reading what seawulf wrote.
Hydroxychloroquine is a generic drug, not a brand name.
It is the reason why third-wold countries, such as in sub-Sahara Africa. have fewer than 1% of the death rate of the U.S. per thousand—and why Israel, South Korea, China, and France recovered rather quickly.
To my knowledge, no one said anything bad about this drug, which is generic, inexpensive, and widely available throughout the world, until Trump said something positive about it.
Back in February, I helped with the hurricane clean-up efforts in Nashville, and took hydrooxychloriquine as a preventive, although my regular doctor said I did not need to take it unless I was getting sick. At that time, doctors were discouraged from hoarding this drug since it was in short supply in the U.S.
I took the drug for 14 days before going to Nashville. We were also told (by Faucci) at that time not to wear masks but to reserve them for medical professionals, so I did not wear a mask or gloves, only used occasional hand sanitizer and washed my hands periodically to avoid cross-contamination. I was around covid-infected persons all the time and never caught it.
It is the interests of major pharmaceutical companies to make high profits off other (newer, albeit untried) drugs that has kept generic, common, sixty-year-old drugs one cannot profit from, banned in the U.S.
@Yellowdog How do you know you were around covid infected people? There wasn’t a lot of testing being done back when people weren’t wearing masks. The caseload wasn’t very bad in Nashville initially.
As far as Africa, Africa was one of the last continents to start getting covid.
Sources PLEASE @Yellowdog
“To my knowledge, no one said anything bad about this drug, which is generic, inexpensive, and widely available throughout the world, until Trump said something positive about it” That’ sounds like your hero baseless and vague. . . .
Mr Trump has investment in Sanofi, a manufacturer of hydroxychloroquine.
Again,hydroxychloroquine has been a generic drug for over fifty years. Many pharmaceutical companies manufacture it and no one profits. Its cheaper than many over-the-counter meds, but does require a prescription, and is prescribed for Covid along with Zinc—which is also prescribed.
If you are looking for a good conspiracy theory, what you can’t make up is the fact that Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and Linked-In suspended the accounts of everyone who shared or re-tweeted a video of doctors who have used the drug effectively in hundreds of cases.
The State of Ohio actually banned the drug, but then lifted the ban after the said video was released. Its pretty bizarre when an FDA-approved drug that has been in common use for over half a century can get you completely banned from all social media
@KNOWITALL that is a scary report you linked. It’s sad you have to show the bias rating of the source, though.
@Yellowdog Aspirin is generic what does generic have to do with a cup of tea or pot full of beans ??
It doesn’t work ! + It will cause heart disease at higher doses.
@Tropical_Willie Yes, at higher doses it can cause all sorts of problems. But let’s relate that to your idea of aspirin. Aspirin can impact the stomach lining and result in ulcers forming. It can eat holes in your stomach. In higher doses for an extended time, it can result in mental confusion, dehydration, fever, low blood pressure, and in some cases even result in fluids accumulating in the lungs. In REALLY high doses in a relatively short period of time, you can get nausea, ringing in the ears and fast breathing. Symptoms can progress to fever, seizures, mental confusion, muscle abnormalities, kidney failure and even respiratory failure.
I guess we should outlaw aspirin, right? I mean after all in higher doses look at all the damage it can do!!!
OTC eye drops can kill you, too, if used against directions.
If drugs are used in accordance with directions and not in large amounts at a time, AND used for their intended purpose, they should be safe to take.
On a side note: Keith Whitley, country singer, was so addicted to alcohol that even when his loved ones tried to keep it away from him, he drank after shave for the alcohol. He sadly died of alcoholism.
@seawulf575 I feel like it’s a better use of my valuable time to get it all out front with source and bias rating, so I don’t have to play 20 questions for five hours a day about nonsense.
I’m apparently missing something, so what the heck, I’ll bite. What is tagging the source as “skews left” supposed to prove?
@Soubresaut We’ve had endless arguments here when facts and sources aren’t accepted unless they lean left.
I would argue there’s more to it than that, but fine.
Do you find either the original source or the source you linked to be credible?
@Soubresaut If you don’t believe my statement, why would you ask me another question?
You don’t get to insult me then expect me to want to talk to you. Two days in a row now, I’m keeping score.
Oh, that’s not what I meant when I wrote that, but I see how you read it now. Bad wording.
I meant, I would argue there’s more to people disbelieving sources unless they “lean left” than the fact alone that those sources lean left. (E.g., NPR is generally considered to lean slightly left on the whole, but it’s also very high in reporting accuracy—and it’s the accuracy which gives it its credibility, not its political leaning).
@Soubresaut I see, thanks. It’s just another glitch in the matrix that is fluther. Facts aren’t facts until you prove them, and then when you prove them, your proof is questioned. It just depends on how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. I don’t have much patience for that partisan nonsense, so as I stated above, I try to use left or centrist sources as much as possible to reduce ‘arguing’ time.
@KNOWITALL—I don’t have much patience for it, either, haha, so I try to look at the sources themselves rather than a political rating. I’m much more interested in accuracy and credibility than I am a source’s perceived political leaning.
Which brings me back to my credibility question—do you find either source credible yourself? (“Either source” meaning both the source you linked, and the source it cites). I don’t find either very credible, for different reasons.
I’m just now seeing @JLeslie ‘s response.to me. Sorry.
I was working with the hurricane clean-up efforts in Nashville with Samaritan’s Purse and was helping with a clinic there. It was about a week before the field hospital was set up in Central Park, New York, NY. Some brave souls were daring enough to go to Italy with the Corona relief efforts,
Hydroxychloroquine and zithromax for covid was fairly standard all over the world. Israel, South Korea, France and lots of third world countries, had pretty much eliminated their pandemic with it. We were a little short on it here, and doctors were saying not to take it unless you were already showing signs. Heart issues were already being hyped in the media, but my doctor said that, and some eye disorder, were possible after long term usage but for Covid, Malaria, etc etc the standard prescription was only 14 days.
All this changed when Donald Trump said something positive about it. This drug that was FDA approved and common for over 50 years was all of the sudden banned in many places—doctors had to sue their states to even prescribe it.
@Soubresaut I’m eternally skeptical of most things, especially charitable organizations, to be fair.
When you look at other things they’ve supported, such as Save The Children (fraud in 2017), it would be difficult for me to NOT be skeptical of both, which I am.
By June, news anchors were calling Hydroxychloriqune “A controversial; and potentially deadly drug favored by extreme right wing conspiracy theorists”
When I was in journalism school, you could get fired as a professional for making that kind of statement over doctors’ opinions and diagnosis. Just look at the facts, however—thousands of doctors have used it to treat Covid successfully. As an anti-Malaria drug and for Lupus, it has been around for over fifty years. Most of the nations who used it early recovered early and only had about one percent of the deaths per thousand.
I don’t think it works for everyone in all cases based on what little I do actually know, but there is nothing rational about the demonization of a standard-use FDA-approved anti-Malarial drug.
@KNOWITALL I didn’t even know about the Save The Children fraud, to be honest. I spent some time looking of Clive Palmer, and there’s a lot of news coming out of Australia right now (where he’s an apparently prominent businessman) about how he’s trying to push the Australian government to promote hydroxychloroquine as a treatment (perhaps even cure) for Covid-19, and he’s simultaneously engaging in a legal battle with an Australian state because he doesn’t like that they’ve maintained a “hard” border to protect themselves from coronavirus. He seems like he has some very vested interests in presenting hydroxychloroquine in as positive a light as possible (and no medical background or other relevant credentials for this topic.)
The “Health Impact News” site looks pretty close to pseudoscience to me. If you go to their “About Us” page, it paints them as fairly anti-science (they are, among other things, ardently against vaccines). It does not make them seem like a reputable source for medical news…. and that the Palmer Foundation site is promoting this story as evidence in their favor, it makes them seem all that much less credible as well.
@Yellowdog Honestly, I’ve heard scientists saying it helps reduce the severity of Covid in some patients, but unfortunately it was not a cure. So I’ll agree with you as I don’t know any better, and don’t believe half of what I read or hear right now. There are only so many hours of the day to fact-check. This is a great time to have a curious and OCD brain, I’m in a state of perpetual skepticism, and only in my 40’s. Haha!
@Soubresaut I’m assuming you aren’t anywhere in the middle of the states or south then, it was huge news here. My area specifically educates millions of missionaries, so yeah, people were very angry.
I’ll be honest, and this may sound horrible to anyone but GenX’ers in the US, but I have a distrustful nature against fat, white, rich people-specifically in the US. I was raised that being rich means you’re selfish, as so many people in the world need help, you should give it away once you’re financially secure. So yes, I’ll agree that this particular source is not one I’d personally trot out if I was a Democrat or skewed left.
@Yellowdog—there is a difference between certain doctors sparingly using a drug in specific circumstances, and public figures irresponsibly touting it as a widespread treatment or cure. When it became politicized, the nature of the public discourse around it necessarily changed.
Doctors, meanwhile, have continued to base their medical opinions of hydroxychloroquine on data, not politics.
@Yellowdog: There were no covid positive cases in NYC in February. The first was March 1. The field hospital in Central Park was not until around April (if I have to guess), or later.
True—I am off an entire month. The hurricanes didn’t even hit Nashville until March 3rd, and I was at the very last of the clean-up efforts. If I can, I will dredge up my old Fluther posts because I commented on it the second week I was there. All this happened in late March, not late Feb.
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