Edit: it seems they really did just swallow a teaspoon without even checking dosage or a single other thing... I really wonder that the hell they were thinking.
@realdonaldtrump 7:13 AM - 21 Mar 2020
HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains - Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents).....
....be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE! @US_FDA @SteveFDA @CDCgov @DHSgov
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/12413672399007785...
He says "have a real chance". He's not promising they work and stating that he and the FDA are doing everything they can to find treatments.
How could anyone construe that as medical advice?
If the president said "hey, the FDA just approved a great new cancer drug", is that medical advice for cancer patients? Of course not.
In a country where people literally can't afford to see a doctor, and the masses are panicked by a disease, when the leader tweets out a couple of drugs that look promising .... yes, I think it's reasonable to assume that some people will take it as medical advice.
It can be a mistake to avoid helpful medication because one idiot kills himself with fish tank cleaner.
It can actually be used immediately at a doctors discretion - it's just not officially recommended yet in the US.
The man in the story says he was also given benadryl and a drug he didn't recognize. So please don't pretend that one drug saved the man's life. For all we know, he was going to recover anyway, or one of the other drugs (which he doesn't even know what they are) helped him.
Dr Fauci spoke right after Trump first brought up the drug and confirmed it’s something not yet proven as a treatment, except some early studies in France, but something that should be looked into. Trump brought it up a few minutes later, again in the context of the FDA approving it for study.
Regardless, I’m sure it made a lot of doctors and pharmacists cringe hearing any drug brought up. I saw a lot of people afterwards saying Trump was recommending it as a treatment without any context, so in a politically charged sound-bite era there will always be the risk of it being misinterpreted... or people willfully ignoring the context and Guinea-pigging themselves.
One good thing is that it already requires a doctors prescription to buy (same with Canada).
Sometimes, "reasonable" is a word that people use to verbally dance their way out of indefensible positions. Don't do that.
You know who you are. If you had an excuse before, you sure as hell don't have one any more.
If your intentions are good, you'll stop now, rather than risk the next death being your fault because it was the bad information you put out there that caused it.
If you don't stop, now that the stakes are as clear as they can be, then I hope for your sake that your conscience lets you rest easy, and that that's the only judgment you're ever called to answer. I would hope other people would choose to be kind, once all this is over. But I wouldn't want to bet my freedom or my life on it.
I would hope you'd choose to be kind, too. I would hope the fear of contributing to the death of an innocent, however foolish they may happen to be, would outweigh your investment in the sense of righteous certitude that moves you to do what you're doing. Or, if not that, then whatever else it is that motivates you.
Please don't let me down.
I'd hate to see people spread information about how dangerous Chloroquine is when it may be very useful treatment during this pandemic.
But the fish tank part would be true either way (I don't know!), and was likely included to scare people from doing stupid shit like this.
It's the same reason you can survey people about whether we should ban the corrosive chemical dihydrogen monoxide and you'll get a ton of yes responses. In the absence of sophisticated knowledge I think framing matters!
I'd be really interested in more robust sources on this. But from the bits I've seen so far, this drug doesn't have as much distance between the effective dose and the lethal dose as you'd like for something that people are likely to self-administer now.
Be careful with all medicines or drugs - taking more can easily lead to worse outcomes.
Edit: “In a review article on paracetamol toxicity among children, the therapeutic index was 1.7” [Heubi JE, Bien JP. Acetaminophen use in children: more is not better. J Pediatr 1997]
In an effort to limit shortages multiple states are already making the criteria for prescription even more limited (anyone who prescribed it for COVID-19 was already making an off-label prescription):
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-ph...
Also of note, the couple took `chloroquine phosphate` not `hydroxychloroquine` which was what the government just fast-tracked and is apparently a 3x more effective treatment than the former. According to Wikipedia, HCQ is used for people sensitive to Chloroquine-phospate:
> Specifically it is used for chloroquine-sensitive malaria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine
We don't yet know if the person in the article was prescribed it or even had any symptoms/prior medical history.
HCQ is used for Malaria that is chloroquine sensitive, not people. Well that’s how I read it.
Looks like it was patented in 2005, which might also help explain why it became more common? But I”m totally guessing that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-Aminoquinoline
Yep there's some chloroquine phosphate resistant malaria (Plasmodium) that hydroxychloroquine still works for. It also works for the other non-resistant ones making it a good first option, more here:
https://www.drugs.com/monograph/hydroxychloroquine-sulfate.h...
There's no current patent on either drugs. But as I said, data was showing HCQ was 3x more effective, which was why the new studies are focusing on that...
Others I think have used 500mg once per day.
This link has some info http://www.maripoisoncenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/C... Says 20mg/kg toxic, 40mg/kg usually fatal without invervention.
> The therapeutic, toxic and lethal ranges are usually considered to be 0.03 to 15 mg/l, 3.0 to 26 mg/l and 20 to 104 mg/l, respectively. However, nontoxic cases have been reported up to 39 mg/l, suggesting individual tolerance to this agent may be more variable than previously recognised.
For chloroquine, it just says it is "known to be small" (with citation, though I can't see the full PDF to see what "small" means).
1) What was the dose they took?
2) Where did they get it?
3) Was it medical-grade?
4) Did he die from it or just after taking it. Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is in the title.
5) Is this man even real or is it an article designed to scare people against self medication or as a political hit piece?
Chloroquine is a quite common antimalarial drug, and this article just stinks.
Which answers some of your questions, but not all.
For example: "A man has died and his wife is under critical care after the couple, both in their 60s, ingested chloroquine phosphate, an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks. Within thirty minutes of ingestion, the couple experienced immediate effects requiring admittance to a nearby Banner Health hospital."
Fake news, Hoax cures, Shame healers and a world leader whose willing to contribute to the mess.
The world is full of dumb, mean and easily offended people to which "words matter".
Anyone that hears the former and does the latter wins a Darwin award – and no, it's not the speaker's fault.
It is not a "pop a few pills and get better" drug.
Feel like this might be "tourniquet kills trauma victim", not sure though.
Also happening in Nigeria: https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/23/headlines/two_nigeria...
Note that there doesn't appear to be any evidence yet that chloroquine is effective in COVID-19 treatment. So far it has been studied only for other types of coronavirus.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32173110
That's incorrect.
I don't know how these people died from taking chloroquine phosphate, it is quite safe when taken in normal dosages. What they had may have been contaminated (since it seems to be for aquariums!) or they took wildly more than needed. People with rheumatoid arthritis take chloroquine phosphate for years at a time.
It seems like a promising treatment, but in vitro effectiveness often doesn't translate to actual effectiveness.
I'm not saying they shouldn't use it, in an emergency sometimes experimental therapies make sense.
In these times, though, I think rational science is also important. We do not yet have studies of it's effectiveness in treating COVID-19.
Also from your link:
>CONCLUSIONS: There is rationale, pre-clinical evidence of effectiveness and evidence of safety from long-time clinical use for other indications to justify clinical research on chloroquine in patients with COVID-19. However, clinical use should either adhere to the Monitored Emergency Use of Unregistered Interventions (MEURI) framework or be ethically approved as a trial as stated by the World Health Organization. Safety data and data from high-quality clinical trials are urgently needed.
I genuinely think it's valuable (in our post fact world) to be able to tell the difference between the concepts of "evidence to support further study" and evidence of effectiveness in a particular application.
Edit: New thread here at HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22671404
https://epidemio.wiv-isp.be/ID/Documents/Covid19/COVID-19_In...
Seriously? It seems like every few days a new study pops up here.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-020-0156-0.pdf
https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/20...
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04307693
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092485792...
It seemed like there was no shortage of praise for this drug in the media, until president Trump mentioned it and then all the talking heads did a complete 180.
Yeah it has to be in hospital setting
Because chloroquine can increase qtc on ekg
Can lead to cardiac arrest
You have to monitor heart rhythm n do ekg for a few days
[1] https://chemrxiv.org/articles/Repurposing_Therapeutics_for_t...
If chloroquine phosphate were the only thing available and my elderly relatives were in respiratory distress as a result of COVID-19, I might consider recommending it. On the low range of the therapeutic dose, under medical supervision, because even in a healthy person you’re going to see rapid dehydration as a result of the vomiting and diarrhea that will absolutely follow taking it.
Another thing I’d point out - it seems very unlikely to me that someone sought out and obtained chloroquine phosphate in the short time since Trump started tweeting about it. It’s been sold out even online for at least a week. I know a couple of places to buy it, but have no desire to make that bet.
http://bannerhealth.mediaroom.com/chloroquinephosphate
>A man has died and his wife is under critical care after the couple, both in their 60s, ingested chloroquine phosphate, an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks. Within thirty minutes of ingestion, the couple experienced immediate effects requiring admittance to a nearby Banner Health hospita
This comment is harshly worded but explains the subtly well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22670152
Also all the wikipedia references are about chloroquine phosphate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloroquine#References
Looks like they did take the right drug, but OD'd or something.
>Keep in mind if you decide to use the tablets, there are some inactive ingredients, which you may have to deal with, e.g., Camauba Wax, Colloidal Silicon Dioxide, Dibasic Calcium Phosphate, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Magnesium Stearate, Microcrystalline Cellulose, Polyethylene Glycol, Polysorbate 80, Pregelatinized Starch, Sodium Starch Glycolate, Stearic Acid, and Titanium Dioxide. And as mentioned earlier in this chapter there are occasions where some medicines are not in their pure form (100% pure), i.e., mixed with a substance called a 'carrier,' which should be noted on its label.
https://www.nano-reef.com/forums/topic/406204-chloroquine-ph...
Drugs often come as a salt made from some active ingredient (here, chloroquine) and a counterion (phosphate). This often makes the active ingredient more soluble than the charged active ingredient alone.
Its things like this which is the reason why Sweden has almost banned every cleaning product that has the word alcohol as one of its ingredient, and those that still have it usually must have something that cause vomiting if ingested. People poison themselves (which is I think the more technical correct term than overdosing), and if people will look at something like a cleaning product and think "I will drink this" then there is not much options available.
Last year I watched as a homeless man squirted hand sanitizer into a cup then drink it. Before a woman yelled at him and started calling 911. He disappeared pretty quickly after that, so not sure what ever happened to him.
Fun fact: The hand sanitizer stand he used was one of the ones installed around public areas in Toronto after the last SARS outbreak.
I remember many years ago that there was a campaign to inform the public of this fact as people still continued for a while to ingest those products under the idea that they still had alcohol in them. Many products also had for a while big lables that said "No alcohol". As far as I know the regulation has been quite a success.
The CDC recommends using alcohol sanitizer over non-alcohol ones:
> Many studies have found that sanitizers with an alcohol concentration between 60–95% are more effective at killing germs than those with a lower alcohol concentration or non-alcohol-based hand sanitizers. Hand sanitizers without 60-95% alcohol 1) may not work equally well for many types of germs; and 2) merely reduce the growth of germs rather than kill them outright.
https://www.propublica.org/article/coronavirus-hand-sanitize...
A friend who lived in Sweden told me the stores there shut down early and it was hard to find a place to buy alcohol (the Swedish state-run liquor store closes at 3pm on Saturday and is completely closed on Sunday). So if your flight arrives late to the city you might miss out.
Culture plays a big role in getting support for this sort of thing... Ontario used to be more like Sweden but recently expanded the hours of our state-run liquor store (until 11pm) and let grocery stores sell beer/cider.
I gather that the therapeutic dose is on the order of 500 mg/day. So did they eat 10x that, 100x that, or what?
But still, let this be a lesson to those who would follow bad leaders to their own demise; or rather, let it be a lesson to their offspring who watch them follow the bad leaders.
I suspect humanity follows cycles of enlightenment, complacency, and self-destruction (or irrelevance, which is equally damning depending on the individual). We appear to be between stage 2 and 3 at this point.
This theory would agree (and it makes sense to me): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
Richest underdeveloped country? Most powerful failed state?
a.k.a 90% of the population. At such point, you're just complaining about human stupidity, instead of any specific group. And our children will be just as stupid as us, but their leader will say dumb things about other issues instead of chloroquine.
Anecdotally I can identify two of the four living generations of my family having observed and corrected _obvious_ failures of their elder generation. What's perhaps harder to recognize is the new bad traits that get introduced.
To be fair, though, each generation has increasingly different circumstances than the previous one. The human circumstance seems to be varying more with each generation as of the industrial age.
Ideally we would collect and review all the previous lessons learned. But we tend to get fascinated by new shiny things (or Netflix series), so we aren't evolving optimally...
Personal responsibility = the idea that human beings choose, instigate, or otherwise cause their own actions.
Stupidity = behavior that shows a lack of good sense or judgment.
Reports from China, South Korea and France have suggested efficacy in humans against COVID-19.
Chloroquine is a particularly funny example because they have already tried it as an antiviral drug several times without any efficacy.
I've seen the one situation of chloroquine showing promise in vitro against SARS CoV but no others. Is there literature on others?
The amount for an overdose is only around 3X a regular dose (2g vs 600mg) In contrast, most drugs for which you overdose need to be at much higher dosage multiples compared to the prescribed dose.
See this paper for a very interesting discussion of the topic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4412688/
Acetaminophen has a therapeutic index of close to 8, much better than chloroquine.
Two points on the topic of OTC drugs in the US:
1. Unfortunately you can buy Lithium as a supplement in the US. I have seen bottles of it for sale on Amazon.
2. Having seen enough accidental (not to mention intentional) overdoses from Acetaminophen, I wouldn't be so fast to act like the therapeutic index is wide enough to be treated as "safe". Anything with a narrow therapeutic window needs to be weighed carefully before use. I hope your take away from my comment wasn't that I think chloroquine is "safe": merely that there are a lot of drugs with narrow windows, and there are trade-offs associated with their use. I included that paper because it discusses this very explicitly.
TCAs barely used any longer.
Acetaminophen doesn’t belong in this conversation with the other drugs.
I don't see why not? It's a good example where the max therapeutic dose (4000mg/day) is within 2X of the toxic dose range (7500mg-10000mg/day). And even the max therapeutic dose can be toxic to the liver.
And it's exceptionally easy to accidentally overdose if you don't read product labels, since you could be taking multiple products that contain it.
> NHS coronavirus advice
> There is currently no strong evidence that ibuprofen can make coronavirus (COVID-19) worse.
> But until we have more information, take paracetamol to treat the symptoms of coronavirus, unless your doctor has told you paracetamol is not suitable for you.
> If you are already taking ibuprofen or another non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) on the advice of a doctor, do not stop taking it without checking first.
> Updated: 17 March 2020
Over-the-counter use of paracetamol (aka acetaminophen) for fever reduction is entirely standard medical advice, not specific to coronavirus at all.
> Asked about the study, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva the UN health agency's experts were "looking into this to give further guidance."
> "In the meantime, we recommend using rather paracetamol, and do not use ibuprofen as a self-medication. That's important," he said.
Paracetamol = acetaminophen: https://www.drugs.com/paracetamol.html
> To help yourself stay well while you're at home [...] take paracetamol to help ease your symptoms
Strictly speaking it's on the self-isolation if symptomatic or living with someone who does page, and not necessarily aimed directly at confirmed cases, but you also get the same advice at the end of the NHS online advice service if you present with (mild) COVID-19 symptoms:
> How to look after your symptoms at home[:...] take paracetamol
At one point it was the only drug they recommended for fever reduction, but they retracted their statement about avoiding ibuprofen
https://www.livescience.com/ibuprofen-coronavirus-symptoms.h...
Perhaps for over the counter medication. This statement is false when we consider drugs requiring a prescription especially those used mainly in acute care or hospital situation. There are all sorts of medications in that class for which a double dose will straight up kill you.
In discussing such situations we often use terms like "patient safety" and "medical malpractice".
The arguments for against this drug seem center around the person recommending it, not its actual efficacy.
Stupidity = behavior that shows a lack of good sense or judgment.
Other poster is apparently talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism_in_South_Af...
For any virus. I didn't say it was safe or effective, I said there is a plausible mechanism of action.
"Nitric Oxide Inhibits the Replication Cycle of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus"
https://jvi.asm.org/content/79/3/1966
...
NO evidence is pretty weak for COVID. Even if it was true, we’d give NO or other related compounds and certainly not unregulated dietary supplements.
Garlic is literally one of the most widely used medical treatments in the entire world. It's used medically by 0.8% of all US adults, according to the NIH.
https://nccih.nih.gov/research/statistics/NHIS/2012/natural-...
It's use was advocated for my Hippocrates. You know, the "father of medicine" guy.
It is listed below echinacea and cranberry pills (two supplements with substantial evidence for NON-efficacy) on the National Institute for Complementary and Alternative Medicine’s ranking of SUPPLEMENTS taken in the US. If it was real effective medicine, it wouldn’t be considered an “alternative” medicine (a polite phrase for horseshit).
Do you realize how ridiculous that is as evidence for anything? The fact that misguided people buy it in supplement form does not mean it is a treatment for anything, let alone COVID. People also buy lots of Diet Coke.
And then to top it off you reference Hippocrates (literally thousands of years ago). Did you know most Med schools don’t even take the Hippocratic oath any longer? Do you believe that doctors should treat people by keeping the 4 humors in balance?
Completely ridiculous
But that has nothing to do with HIV, neither do garlic and beetroot have anything to do with nitric oxide.
"Potent activation of nitric oxide synthase by garlic: a basis for its therapeutic applications."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7555034
...
No mate, post a precise link. This one goes nowhere and I still don't believe you.
This INSISTENCE people keep having on politicizing this is infuriating and it’s going to get people killed. Stop doing this. Now is not the time for political point gathering.
Stop acting like there is. It’s insane at this point. It might work, but frankly it’s unlikely given the history of chloroquine’s failures as an antiviral.
The pushback on chloroquine is completely insane. It's a 90 year old, well-understood drug used safely by millions with mild side effects.
The in-vitro results for chloroquine as an antiviral have been positive for many viruses, but it has never worked out in RCTs.
Claiming there is good evidence from in-vivo studies is scientifically illiterate. Please post links to well-done RCTs if you believe they exist.
There is a reason the WHO is running a 5-arm clinical trial for COVID.
Edit: Your response to me literally says “In-Vitro” in the title.
Edit 2: “There is absolutely evidence” ... But no links. No, sorry, you are still just wrong.
I take it you are not familiar with epidemiology, clinical evaluation of drug efficacy, or medical statistics. That’s fine! No one is saying you need to be. But you shouldn’t be extremely confident of your conclusions when experts are telling you that you’re wrong.
The French chloroquine+azithromycin trial was terrible and no one in the medical world believes it. There’s a reason no respectable journal would publish it. SIX of the people in the C+A arm died and were removed from the analysis, which is absurd. The outcome was viral titers, which were different for different arms. Just maddening.
The FDA, CDC, and WHO’s position is the same as mine.
Like the man that the article is about?
He's talking complete nonsense about quarantine and how bad it is to close the stock exchange while saying the quarantine is a bigger problem than the virus because he's created so many jobs and that it'll cause 'tremendous death.'
¯\(°_o)/¯
We aren’t rationally weighing costs and benefits right now. We really should be talking more about what we’re doing to the economy, and if there are better ways to move forward.
What is nonsense about that?
The President needs to stop talking generalities.
People freak out. "Preliminary doesn't mean proven!"
Man self-medicates with HCQ and dies.
President's fault??
I know which party I blame.
“I like this stuff. I really get it. [...] People are really surprised I understand this stuff. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”
“Anybody who wants a test will get a test, that’s the bottom line. [...] The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right? This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good.”
"We saw Trump on TV -- every channel -- & all of his buddies and that this was safe," she said. "Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure." https://twitter.com/HeidiNBC/status/1242238268277755905
NBC: "Did you at any point hear that the FDA had not approved of it for coronavirus purposes or--?"
AZ Woman: "Yeah. But you know they kept saying that it was approved for other things...Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure." https://twitter.com/VaughnHillyard/status/124225471769609420...
/sarcasm
Additionally you are responding to an article about people who took the drug to treat Covid-19. Peoples lives are at stake on both sides, a politician with no medical training should know better than to run his mouth about something he knows nothing about.
No, they did not. They took an aquarium cleaning chemical with a similar name.
For example they total stuffed it up with their handling of Oxycontin:
https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2018/07/13/purdue-...
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1239650597906898947?s=20
On one side his voice should be heard, it may give people hope and help to move stuff
On the other side, some people who don't know what balance is, might use it in the wrong way.
But Elon Musk is not a responsible man. He is Mr Foot-in-Mouth on Twitter many times over.
The negative reaction to the French study has been pretty intense.
The double standards here are shocking.
The people in this story didn't get their hands on prescription drugs, they found an aquarium chemical with a similar name.
That's more than "a similar name". It's the same name.
From what I've read, both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are used to treat inflammation.
So is it chloroquine vs hydroxychloroquine that you're referring to?
They may also contain non-active ingredients that are not harmful to fish but kill humans. Who knows?
In other words, don't take aquarium chemicals and think they're medication.
As one of the most famous people in the world, with his own agendas, and no medical qualifications... it is extremely irresponsible for Musk to make any sort of public comments about anything medical in nature. No matter what he says, a significant number of people will take it to heart and ignore medical advice, science, and their own common sense.
In times like this we should advocate for more information and getting facts out.
> When you go with a brand-new drug, you don’t know that that’s going to happen. You have to see and you have to go — long test. But this has been used in different forms — very powerful drug — in different forms. And it’s shown very encouraging — very, very encouraging early results. And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They — they’ve gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. And they did it — they took it down from many, many months to immediate. So we’re going to be able to make that drug available by prescription or states.
> I spoke with Governor Cuomo about it at great length last night, and he wants to be right on — on the — he wants to be first on line. And so I think that’s a tremendous — there’s tremendous promise, based on the results and other tests. There’s tremendous promise. And normally the FDA would take a long time to approve something like that, and it’s — it was approved very, very quickly and it’s now approved, by prescription. Individual states will handle it. They can handle it. Doctors will handle it. And I think it’s going to be — I think it’s going to be great.
> Then we’re quickly studying this drug, and while we’re continuing to study it — but the studying is going to be also done in — as it’s given out to large groups of people, perhaps in New York and other places. We’ll study it there.
From his March 19 statement: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres.... In total, he mentioned the drug by name 11 times during that statement (according to Ctrl+f).
Can we agree that it's not great to be giving out incomplete or incorrect information on such a prominent stage?
"It's shown very encouraging -- very, very encouraging early results...Normally the FDA would take a long time to approve something like that, and it's -- it was approved very, very quickly and it's now approved, by prescription."
However, the FDA after the briefing issued a statement saying it had not approved the drug for use against Covid-19 and is still studying its effectiveness against the disease.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/africa/chloroquine-trump-nige...
He didn't say "drink an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks."
http://bannerhealth.mediaroom.com/chloroquinephosphate
I don't see why every story needs to be about him.
Surely you've noticed that some folk take the President's public statements at face value.
Just because he didn't say anything 100% explicitly the cause it and may have been misinterpreted is honestly besides the point. When you are given the power of the presidency, you should either treat your public words with care of just quit forever for all our sakes.
This is just how having power _works_. It's a two-way street, and the idealistic American Way.
EDIT: Anyone care to explain the downvotes? This is my opinion on those gifted with power in all situations. It goes for companies as well. If you're the CEO, VPE, whatever. There should be checks to balance that gifted power. One check is a higher standard of public speaking due to your newfound influence.
Edit: Yes, I realize what he probably meant. I know how meds work. I still think he should have chosen his wording more carefully.
And yeah, his language is imprecise enough that you could pick it apart and find a reasonable motivation behind it if you looked hard enough. But even a really charitable reading can only upgrade his remarks from “flagrantly dangerous” to “unnecessary and not very helpful”, and we should expect more from the president than that.
The quote (heavily pruned, but you can look it up in the link to verify I didn't change the meaning) is:
> Now, a drug called chloroquine ... is a common malaria drug. It is also a drug used for strong arthritis... in a somewhat different form ... But the nice part is, it’s been around for a long time, ... it’s not going to kill anybody.
> When you go with a brand-new drug, you don’t know that that’s going to happen. ... But this has been used in different forms — very powerful drug ... And it’s shown very encouraging — very, very encouraging early results. And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. [The FDA has] gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. ... So we’re going to be able to make that drug available by prescription or states.
There is more, and it's similar in tone. So I don't think he said "Please go take the following drug without advice from your doctor" but he did say that it was powerful, safe, and already approved by the FDA. So I think it's fair to say that he was incautious in talking about a potentially dangerous, experimental treatment.
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/new/doc%2012/Pre...
Look, I've been highly critical of Trump's handling of the crisis but you can't really pin this particular incident on him.
We can have no civil society without these oaths being taken seriously, and holding people accountable for breaking them. It does not matter if they are CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, senators, representatives, or presidents. We are lost if they are treated as mere scraps of paper or words people say as blasé ritual.
From a pharmaceutical company, this would be patently illegal advertising since it's mentioning an off-label use of a drug. From a politician with zero medical knowledge, it's vastly irresponsible given the size of audience who listens to him and trusts him.
Obviously, self medicating a prescription drug is irresponsible. None of what the president says changes that. He said the FDA approved it. Independent of the truth value of that statement, it would still be approved of as a prescription drug.
So everything below him explicitly telling everyone to obtain and consume chloroquine doesn't count, right? He's the goddamn president. I expect his words to be very carefully weighted.
By now we know that's not the reality the US lives in.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/trump-u...
https://epidemio.wiv-isp.be/ID/Documents/Covid19/COVID-19_In...
But now we have the president of the United States recommending you to make your own drug cocktail during a global pandemic. If someone had written that in the script it would've been thrown out as too unreal.
most powerful nation on this planet
Also, this wasn't even somebody taking too much of a prescribed drug. The man who died drank aquarium cleaner.
Two people having a bad reaction suggests highly improper usage.
Do you dislike it mainly because Trump mentioned it?
Possibly the least presidential president we've had in awhile.
The President can make that decision, it is part of his powers as President. He isn't prohibited from doing that. Perhaps you don't think something in particular should have been released. If so make that case, but just complaining about this in general is illogical.
> fighting with his intelligence agencies
You mean the intelligence agencies that have worked very hard to delegitimize his presidency, mislead the FISA court and so on? Those agencies have a lot to answer for and shouldn't be treated as infallible.
> suppressing the press
Really? The press seems quite free to say whatever they want under Trump. It just seems silly to say that Trump is limiting the press.
And the drug does show promise. Trump could cure cancer and people will be mad about it. If Obama had mentioned this drug people would react completely differently. During H1N1, 4000 Americans died from that; it isn’t like Obama had a stellar track record in quelling a pandemic either.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/03/22/new-yo...
https://www.insidernj.com/press-release/top-doctors-join-pen...
All of this concern that this treatment is “unproven” — well of course it is, this is all happening very fast, but to immediately oppose this drug because Trump is just political nonsense. It seems almost as if people want it to take years to find a solution to this thing. This constant anti-Trump vitriol is getting tired and old. People are dying right now, yet we are going to quibble on a drug that is showing promise just because Trump suggested it?
https://veltnews.com/no-deaths-at-lennox-hill-hospital-from-...
This is hardly what I call a recommendation.
The point was to give the American people some hope that we are on the right track to finding something that helps.
"Florida man with coronavirus says drug touted by Trump saved his life"
https://nypost.com/2020/03/22/florida-man-with-coronavirus-s...
> Chloroquine is very toxic in overdosage; overdosage is extremely hazardous and difficult to treat. Urgent advice from the National Poisons Information Service is essential. Life-threatening features include arrhythmias (which can have a very rapid onset) and convulsions (which can be intractable).
Self-medicating can easily lead to overdosing, especially when using a drug with a low therapeutic index like chloroquine.
What has age got to do with it? Aspirin is decades old and still kills people. You need to stick to the recommended dosage and only take non-OTC drugs on the advice of a doctor.
I’ve criticized Trump plenty during this outbreak, and I’m worried that he and others are over promising chloroquine’s potential. But blaming this death on him is tenuous. He didn’t tell people to go take it recklessly
Just stop.
He never did that. Someone above posted a link to his actual tweet. That is a ridiculous conclusion to draw.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/12413672399007785...
He called it "very very promising", claimed it would become immediately available all over (it won't), and has been talking it up for multiple days at multiple events on national television as a treatment for a rapidly spreading disease. His own experts are contracting him in an attempt to tamp down what a moron in a hurry can correctly guess is going to happen.
If you wish to hang your word on the fact that he never explicitly called for self-medication, well, it is your reputation.