Best bet is Joe Biden will give in to ‘Hydroxy Effect’

There is as yet no known, easily accessible cure for COVID-19.

Over the past year, lots of old and new drugs and supplements have shown at least some anecdotal value in ameliorating the effects of early-stage COVID-19. Clinical physicians treating patients in hospitals often disagree with the research scientists conducting trials on the efficacy of all these treatments.

Yet only hydroxychloroquine has prompted furious partisan debate. Why?

Probably because Donald Trump endorsed its usage months ago. Almost immediately, the media, the university and government medical community and the progressive political opposition declared hydroxychloroquine useless and dangerous.

Trump’s presidential endorsement was apparent proof of rank quackery. Yet a few recent second-look studies, especially abroad, suggest that hydroxychloroquine can in fact offer help.

This Hydroxy Effect — hysterical disavowal of anything Trump has endorsed — is dangerous.

Trump was reviled for his early condemnation of China’s role in the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump alleged that Chinese officials knew for months about SARS- CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, before letting on about the dangers.

No matter. Anything Trump said had to be resisted.

Now we learn from the media that the virus had spread much earlier than China had admitted.

Before 2016, the consensus on China was that it was destined to take over the world.

The conventional wisdom ignored Chinese violations of commercial trade norms and theft of technology and intellectual property. It largely dismissed the complaints of human rights activists.

Now, pushback against Chinese imperialism, authoritarianism and global bullying is a bipartisan consensus — as long as Trump is not cited as the voice-in-the-wilderness stimulus for such a reset.

This Pavlovian Hydroxy Effect poses a challenge to President- elect Joe Biden.

Logic dictates that Biden would not scrap the framework of an effective containment policy of expansionist China. Pacific nations such as Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan appreciated Trump’s efforts to corral China. Logic suggests Biden would appreciate inheriting a more stable Middle East. The emerging alliances seem tailormade to allow Biden to take credit for still more Arab nations recognizing Israel.

Logic dictates that Biden would recapture the lost Democratic working class by mouthing Trump economic agendas without mentioning Trump’s creation of them. Fair trade, border security, deregulation, tax incentives and unprecedented gas and oil production all created near-record middle- class wage growth — a formerly Democratic staple issue. Biden has two choices. One, he can appropriate many of the Trump successes. He can rebrand them as his own and quibble over particulars.

Do that and Biden would likely see a huge post- COVID-19 economic recovery, a stable Middle East, a world united against China’s commercial abuses and human rights travesties, beefedup U.S. defenses and a refreshed NATO.

Or two, Biden can suffer the Hydroxy Effect. Anything Trump was for, Biden and the left will be automatically against. That would mean a decision to allow unchecked immigration. Freeze construction of, or even tear down, the border wall. Lift tariffs on China. Let NATO members pay as little as they like. Ban or cut back on fracking. Rejoin the Iran nuclear deal. Rejoin the Paris climate agreement. Polarize Israel and its new Arab allies. Fast-track the Green New Deal. Raise taxes skyhigh. Let the Rust Belt rust. Allow Big Tech to do as it pleases.

Adopting the Hydroxy Effect and junking anything with a Trump fingerprint on it will please the hard left Biden base. Rejecting it will benefit the country.

Of the two choices, I’d bet on Biden giving in to the Hydroxy Effect.