Trump pills

In mid-March, a cryptocurrency investor, a law school graduate and a self-described philosopher found each other on Twitter. They discussed their hopes that a little-known drug called hydroxychloroquine could help contain the accelerating coronavirus outbreak.

Two days later, two of them published a paper about the drug’s potential on Google Docs, falsely claiming the imprimatur of two major universities and the National Academy of Sciences.

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All three institutions, as well as Thomas Broker, a third researcher listed as a coauthor, subsequently said they were not involved in the paper and had no knowledge of its existence before it was published.

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Still, the early association of these institutions gave the paper the prestige it needed to go mainstream, landing [the authors] on entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Twitter feed, then on Fox News.

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Within days, the paper scored one of its authors a spot on on both Laura Ingraham’s and Tucker Carlson’s Fox News shows. The day after Carlson’s show, Trump made his first mention of hydroxychloroquine from the White House podium.

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At the White House the next day, Trump announced the FDA had approved the “promising” drug for immediate use — a pronouncement that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, had to walk back, clarifying that it had been approved only for clinical trials.

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Three weeks later, the president of the United States said he himself may take the drug and encouraged others to do the same.

“What do you have to lose?” Trump asked on Saturday. “I’ll say it again: What do you have to lose? Take it.”

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Now, Trump is vowing to distribute millions of doses of the drug to people through the country’s strategic national stockpile, even though there’s no conclusive research that the drug works for coronavirus.

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The Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drug for that purpose, and initial small studies from China and France had defects that make it impossible to draw firm conclusions.

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A small early study out of France suggested benefits, but experts have since questioned that research, saying the lead researcher has a dubious history with manipulating data and noting that the researcher chose who would get the drug, skewing the results.

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More recently, a Chinese study suggested no effect from the pills.

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Meanwhile, Trump’s promotional monologues have led to shortages for people who rely on hydroxychloroquine for other conditions, including rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

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An upstate New York doctor in a Hasidic Jewish community claimed he cured hundreds of coronavirus patients with the drug. “Hawaii Five-0” and “Lost” star Daniel Dae Kim claimed hydroxychloroquine was his “secret weapon” in his fight against the coronavirus.

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The sudden, intense interest in the drug has had downsides. A man died after ingesting a drug normally given to fish in the belief that one of its ingredients, chloroquine phosphate, was the drug that Trump had touted. It’s also led to a shortage of the drug for lupus and arthritis patients who take the medicine regularly.

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But that hasn’t stopped a segment of Trump’s supporters from loudly trumpeting the drug’s potential. Some have started calling the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, another commonly available drug, “Trump Pills.” Twitter has deleted tweets from Trump allies like Giuliani, Ingraham and conservative campus organizer Charlie Kirk for touting the drug as a “promising cure,” citing the lack of scientific evidence backing it.

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Through official channels, the FDA and New York state have dramatically ramped up trials for hydroxychloroquine, ordering millions of doses of the drug and conducting wide-scale clinical trials. The FDA also authorized emergency use of the drug for coronavirus patients — a move that makes it easier to use the drug but is not an endorsement of the drug’s effectiveness in fighting the illness.

  Politico

We will never hear the end of it if they find some combination using chloroquine that works to cure or even mitigate the effects of the virus.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.