It’s insane, but Trump has a drug just for you
Of course, something like this would never happen. But let’s imagine for a moment that there’s a viral pandemic sweeping the country. More than 1.5 million Americans have caught the disease, and over 95,000 have died from it. You’re worried, for yourself and your family. You’re curious about an antimalarial drug you’ve heard about on the news called hydroxychloroquine, so you check it out.
Here’s what the Food and Drug Administration said April 24: “Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have not been shown to be safe and effective for treating or preventing COVID-19.” The FDA goes on: “Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine can cause abnormal heart rhythms such as QT interval prolongation and a dangerously rapid heart rate called ventricular tachycardia.” Finally, they caution doctors against prescribing either drug “outside of the hospital setting or a clinical trial due to risk of heart rhythm problems.”
Whoa! That doesn’t sound promising, so you check further. Here’s what doctors researching the drug for the Veterans Affairs reported: “In the study of
368 patients, 97 patients who took hydroxychloroquine had a 27.8 percent death rate. The 158 patients who did not take the drug had an 11.4 percent death rate.” It’s a small study, but in that target population those who took hydroxychloroquine were 21⁄ times more likely
2 to die than those who did not.
Uh-oh. You dig a little deeper. A recent University of Albany study of 1,438 patients with coronavirus at 25 hospitals in the New York City area found that patients who took hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin were more than twice as likely to suffer cardiac arrest during the course of the program. And a study by the New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center, which assessed 1,376 coronavirus patients, did not find any improved outcome from hydroxychloroquine.
OK, that’s it. Forget about it. Given that information, only a fool would rush to take hydroxychloroquine and then brag about doing so. But one fool did — and, sadly, he happens to be president of the United States.
Last week, a day after revealing he’d been taking what he’s called a “miracle drug” for some 10 days, Donald Trump announced he’d stop taking hydroxychloroquine “in another day or two.” But the damage is done.
Of course, that assumes you believe Trump was taking the drug in the first place, which is by no means certain. As MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and others pointed out, you can’t believe anything else Donald Trump has said about the pandemic — it’s no biggie; we’ve tested more people than any other country; a vaccine’s just around the corner — so why believe he’s taking hydroxychloroquine?
If he were, Trump offered two lame excuses for doing so. One: doctor’s orders, as “proof” of which he released a letter from White House doctor Sean Conley. There’s only one problem: Conley’s letter does not say he prescribed hydroxychloroquine. It says: “After numerous discussions he and I had regarding the evidence for and against the use of hydroxychloroquine, we concluded the potential benefits from treatment outweighed the relative risks.” Translation: “Trump told me he was going to take the drug, so I wrote this phony letter” — for which Conley should lose his license.
Second excuse: Trump insists it was his “personal choice.” That’s true, but that’s no excuse. Is it asking too much to expect the president, or any leader, to show better judgment for the personal choices he or she makes? Yes, taking an unproven drug was his choice, but it was a dumb choice and a dangerous one. At least, he no longer suggests drinking bleach. But who knows how many Americans will die because they blindly follow Trump’s example and start taking hydroxychloroquine? Please, do not. As Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto warned viewers: “I cannot stress enough. This will kill you.”
Two years ago, in their book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” 27 psychiatrists warned that Trump was mentally unfit to serve as president. Today, watching his bizarre and erratic behavior dealing with the coronavirus, their warning’s more urgent than ever.
As New York Times conservative columnist Bret Stephens observed: “In the 1990’s, our political problems revolved around presidential infidelity. Now they revolve around presidential insanity.”