The self-medicating president: a bad case of VIP syndrome
Donald Trump caused an outcry last month when he suggested that coronavirus patients might benefit from being injected with disinfectant, said Peter Bergen on CNN. But those musings look almost “sage” compared to his claim last week that he is taking hydroxychloroquine to protect himself from the virus. His own government has urged people not to take the drug (generally prescribed for conditions such as malaria and rheumatoid arthritis) as a treatment for Covid-19, let alone as a precautionary measure. Research suggests it is ineffective against the disease and can have harmful or even deadly side effects, particularly among vulnerable people. But that doesn’t seem to have deterred Trump. “I’m taking it”, he told reporters, saying he had “heard a lot of good stories” about the drug. “So far, I seem to be OK.”
Who knew that when Trump hailed hydroxychloroquine last month as a “game changer”, the game he had in mind was “Russian roulette”, said Dana Milbank in The Washington Post. Perhaps he could now perform a public service by testing every other unproven remedy for Covid-19. He could take up smoking, since some French scientists believe nicotine fights the virus. Some in India swear by cow urine, while some in the Middle East believe camel urine is a more effective antiviral; “Trump will be able to settle this dispute conclusively”. Remember that Trump is a well-known liar, said Zack Beauchamp on Vox. He may not be taking this drug at all – just seeking to distract the press from his handling of the crisis But either way, he’s setting a poor example.
Alas, too many Americans already think they know better than doctors, said Jennifer Senior in The New York Times. You see it with the “alternative medicine on the Left (Gwyneth, sigh)” and the hawking of bogus supplements by right-wing conspiracists such as Alex Jones. Trump is particularly susceptible to this sort of thinking. He’s not only a “science denier” and a germophobe; he’s also, more importantly, a celebrity. The rich and famous in the US are notorious for pressuring their doctors to administer dubious therapies, with sometimes tragic results (think Elvis and Michael Jackson). There’s even a term for the problem: “VIP Syndrome”. In Trump’s case, this tendency had led to “a statin-taking, extravagantly overweight man demanding a drug that increases the risk of cardiac arrest”.