Media Attacks Trump for ‘Very Good News’
David A. Keene
By
David A. Keene
March 23, 2020
226
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National Institutes of Health via Wikimedia Commons

President Donald Trump’s media and partisan critics were quick to pile on when the President suggested at a press conference last Thursday that an inexpensive and widely available drug – first approved for the treatment of Malaria and some forms of arthritis in 1949 – might prove useful in treating those infected by the C****av***s or, as we are now supposed to call it, C****-**. In doing so they were quick to point out that his own experts, Dr. Anthony F***i and FDA Commissioner Stephan Hahn seemed to disagree with him.

But did they? When asked by a Fox News reporter if the drug, chloroquine, could prevent one from infection, F***i responded bluntly. “The answer is no,“ he said, “And the evidence … is anecdotal evidence, so as the commissioner of FDA and the President mentioned yesterday, we’re trying to strike a balance between making something with a potential of an effect to the American people available, at the same time we do it under the auspices of a protocol that would give us information to determine if it’s truly safe and truly effective, but the information that you’re referring to specifically is anecdotal; it was not done in a controlled clinical trial, so you really can’t make any.”

The media and Trump’s critics, excited by the possibility they could claim the President wrongly cited F***i. But the President never claimed either 1) that he could be sure the drug would work and 2) certainly didn’t claim it would work as a v*****e. What he did say was that other nations are prescribing it for those who have contracted the v***s because it seems to shorten their hospital stays and ameliorate the worst symptoms. If that’s true, making it widely available could potentially lessen the expected over-crowding of existing medical facilities, keep some who contract the v***s out of the hospital and hasten their recovery. That would be, as the President suggested, “very good news.”

But the New York Times, among others, used F***i’s comments to attack Trump in a series of news reports. One headline “Trump’s Embrace of Unproven Drugs to Treat C****av***s Defies Science.” This in spite of the fact that numerous countries that are dispensing the drug now are reporting precisely the reports that the president referred to in his remarks. Those countries include China, Australia, Norway, Britain, South Korea and Belgium.

What F***i and Hahn were saying was that this country insists on long and expensive testing before any drug is made available to the public or allowed to be prescribed for what are known as “off label” uses. Thus, while other countries can move forward with a promising treatment that has been proven safe for other uses, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – while promising to speed things up or, as the President is demanding, “cut the red tape,” – may well continue to insist on extensive testing and new trials before approving its use to alleviate the suffering of infected American. Typically such tests cost millions and can take months or years to complete which is why treatment for other conditions available elsewhere are often denied to Americans.

Sometimes these requirements make sense … and sometimes they do not. This is one of those times. If the p******c is a global p******c then Americans should have access to the same treatment available elsewhere … The New York Times and the Food and Drug Administration’s bureaucrats notwithstanding.



What’s with F***i and his morbid reluctance to allow us to Try – that HydroxyChloroquine and pak to make up the cocktail is working 100% as has been said.
Why would Daniel Dae Kim (of Hawaii Five O) who came down with the W***n V***s one day and lambasted Trump for not allowing him to Try the drug, did get the cocktail and the day after his tirade against Trump he was praising HCQ b/c he is on the road to recovery?
What Daniel has done is make F***i out to be a fraud which the man probably isn’t after all but he is putting up an obstruction and that is unacceptable – I mean just how far does he think he’s supposed to go to show allegiance to Obama and not American Citizens who’re represented by Trump anyway ! – His Trump Derangement Syndrome has no place.
There’s something weird about F***i, of course he’s an Obama holdover but REALLY it’s time for him to put MEDICINE first or else get off the platform and let Dr. Birx in to lead that team who is also an Obama holdover but has been putting her medicine for America First.

Nowhere did Trump say the drug coctail was a cure. What he said was that it might shorten the infectious period. It is pathetic that they intentionally distorted his comments but not surprising. The origin of this technique is in the Soviet Union Disinformation agenda>

F***i's bureaucratic obstructionism is extraordinarily frustrating and, unlike its characterization by the NY Times, chloroquine is one of the most approved drugs on the planet; I was taking chloroquine for malaria when I was based in Saudi Arabia in the early 90's. Its success is not truly anecdotal except in the technical sense that there have been no clinical trials for its use with C****-**. In addition to truly anecdotal reports from patients and patients families, there have been dozens of reports from overseas doctors and hospitals who have been using chloroquine quite successfully. Hopefully Trump will strongarm F***i and the FDA into authorizing the use of chloroquine for patients hospitalized for C****-** before I am gasping my last breath and being denied it.

Its easy to say he should have known better but how many people are chemically literate? I am a retired HS physics and chemistry teacher and only about 25% of the students in the school where I taught took chemistry. To many people, chloroquine and chloroquine phosph**e is a meaningless difference. How many chemically illiterate people appreciate the distinction between table salt, Sodium Chloride, and the deadly poisons Sodium or Chlorine? Would anyone blame Trump for saying he puts Sodium Chloride on many of the things he eats and then someone sprinkled Sodium on his steak, ate it and then died? Probably not.