It was about 40 days ago when the idea of using anti-malarial medications to treat covid-19, the disease caused by the new
coronavirus, first gained traction on social media. It took only a few days for President Trump to embrace the idea that chloroquine or hydryroxychloroquine might be game-changers in treatment of the deadly disease and only a few days more before Trump was actively hyping the medications.
As evidence mounted that the medications bore significant risks — including evidence coming from the government agencies Trump oversees — the president was much slower to respond. On Thursday evening, he insisted that “we’ve had a lot of very good results and we had some results that perhaps aren’t so good” in assessment of the use of the medications. Less than 24 hours later, though, a nail in the coffin for the medications came, as the Food and Drug Administration offered a public warning against their use.
Here’s how Trump’s focus on the medication rose and fell over the past 40 days.
March 16: Tesla CEO Elon Musk
tweets a link to a March 13 paper suggesting that the anti-malarial drug chloroquine might be effective at treating covid-19.
A few hours earlier, the drug gets its first mention on Fox Business Network, with Fox contributor Marc Siegel, a doctor.
“In terms of treatments, remdesivir” — an anti-viral — “looks very promising. I will tell you something you don’t know: the South Koreans have tried chloroquine, that’s for malaria,” Siegel says. “Hydroxychloroquine is something we use for arthritis. Those look very promising."
That evening, Gregory Rigano, one of the authors of the paper Musk linked, appears on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show. He says that hydroxychloroquine can “just get rid of [the virus] completely."
Rigano, though, is an attorney, not a doctor. He'd written the paper with the help of James Todaro, an ophthalmologist and tech investor. It was identified as having been written “in consultation with Stanford University School of Medicine” — but Stanford publicly
denied any link. The document linked by Musk was later removed from Google Docs for violating the company's terms of service.
“We have to be careful, Laura, that we don't assume something works based on an anecdotal report that's not controlled,” he said. “And I refer specifically to hydroxychloroquine. There's a lot of buzz out there on the Internet, on the social media about that. We need to look at it in a scientific way."
March 18: Rigano
appears on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. Ingraham touts the Raoult study.
April 3: Reading from his prepared remarks, Trump talks about ongoing studies.
“We continue to study the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine and other therapies, and the treatment and prevention of the virus,” he says. “And we will keep the American people fully informed on our findings."
Looking up and speaking off the cuff, he continues, “Hydroxychloroquine — I don't know, it's looking like it's having some good results. I hope that — that would be a phenomenal thing."
“We've ordered it in the case that it works,” he adds. “And it's — it could have some pretty big impacts. And we'll see what happens."
The Post later
reports that Trump had a visitor at the White House that same day: Laura Ingraham, who visited with two doctors to promote the use of the drug.
April 6: Trump congratulates a Democratic state legislator from Michigan who attributed her recovery from covid-19 to taking chloroquine at Trump’s suggestion.
Congratulations to State Representative Karen Whitsett of Michigan. So glad you are getting better!
https://t.co/v6z46rUDtg
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)
April 6, 2020
April 7: During the briefing, Trump is asked if side effects are being tracked.
“The side effects are the least of it. You have people dying all over the place,” he replies. “And generally, the side effects are really with the Z-Pak having to do with the heart. The Z-Pak — that's the antibiotic. Not with the hydroxychloroquine."
He again touts the story of the Michigan lawmaker.
That night, he’s a caller on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show. He emphasizes a theory that had spread on social media.
“They're finding that people that — like in the malaria countries, that it doesn't seem that those countries have been hit, because the people take it,” he said. “You have countries that have massive malaria problems and they take the hydroxychloroquine, and they don't seem to be having the problem with the — the virus that all other countries are having."
“Malaria-endemic countries in all WHO regions have reported cases of COVID-19,” the website of the World Health Organization
notes.
By the end of the day on April 7, Fox News and Fox Business have mentioned chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine nearly 1,000 times.
You must have a pretty low opinion of people if you think a cartoon over the spring toilet paper shortage was a "panic meme". I spent the last while meditating, you are still carrying something on yer back.
