Seems completely reasonable to me.
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.
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.