If you’ve watched the hearings with expert Dr. Bright, the whistleblower from BARDA, who claims that he tried to warn the trump administration in January and was ignored, you’ve seen wingnut after wingnut Congressman blather on endlessly about Hydroxychloroquine. They are still pushing this as a Miracle Cure Holy Grail and suggesting it’s being suppressed by the Democrats. Or something.
It’s just twisted at this point. If we need any more proof that Trump is the Dear Leader of a very powerful cult of personality, this is it. I’m just surprised they aren’t all ostentatiously drinking bleach on camera at this point.
Anyway, here’s a new piece from HuffPost about the origins of this snake oil bullshit:
President Donald Trump’s obsession with the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus may have started in part because of a self-described philosopher in China who is a fan of white nationalists, tweets anti-Semitic rhetoric and calls chloroquine “a Nazi drug that is here to teach a lesson to leftists about bias.”
Weeks before Trump first promoted the drug, a Twitter conversation about hydroxychloroquine between “philosopher” Adrian Bye and two cryptocurrency investors set off a chain of events that would bring the unproven drug to the attention of Elon Musk, Fox News pundits and Trump.
Trump has touted hydroxychloroquine as potentially “one of the biggest game-changers in the history of medicine” and repeatedly promoted its use on the coronavirus. He has asked about it both in public and privately, until recently mentioning it on a nearly daily basis, and the Trump administration has allegedly pressured health officials to distribute it despite their concerns about its safety. The drug’s bizarre path to Trump’s embrace highlights a dangerous information pipeline from questionable sources in right-wing media to the president.
On March 11, cryptocurrency investors Gregory Rigano and James Todaro mused about coronavirus treatments and potential death tolls on Twitter to their then-small number of followers. Bye, who says he has been living in the Wudang Mountains in central China for the past few years and formerly interviewed tech “thought leaders” for his startup, responded to one of Todaro’s tweets about the virus.
“Chloroquine will keep most people out of hospital. The US hasn’t learned about that yet,” Bye replied to Todaro.
The three briefly discussed medical studies and a YouTube video about chloroquine’s use. As Politico has reported, Rigano asked Bye for more information about chloroquine and data on its uses before telling Todaro and Bye on March 12 that he would be “publishing a report tomorrow [with an] eminent scientist, peer reviewed.”
“thank u james and adrian. next level humans,” Rigano tweeted.
On March 13, Rigano and Todaro touted chloroquine in a self-published, non-peer-reviewed Google doc falsely claiming to be affiliated with Stanford University School of Medicine, the National Academy of Sciences and the University of Alabama, Birmingham School of Medicine. (All three institutions told HuffPost that they had no connection to the document, and Google later removed it from its platform for violating its terms of service.) The paper largely cited a French study that scientists and the publisher of the journal it appeared in have subsequently criticized for its shaky methodology.
Bye complained to Todaro and Rigano on Twitter that their paper didn’t acknowledge him, saying, “I told you both about Chloroquine, and you didn’t even bother to mention me.” He also expressed his hesitation about the paper’s findings. Rigano replied minutes later that he wanted Bye’s permission to include him but “time was of the essence,” telling Bye to send him his email address. The Google doc was updated to include an acknowledgment of Bye.
The Google doc, with its grand claims and the help of its false affiliation with Stanford and other institutions, quickly went viral and was tweeted out to millions by prominent venture capitalists and Tesla CEO Musk ― none of whom appeared to vet its methods or sources. Fox News and other right-wing media jumped on the paper and touted the drug as a potential quick fix for the virus. Fox News host and informal Trump adviser Tucker Carlson had Rigano on his prime-time show, with Rigano falsely identified as an adviser to Stanford and claiming “what we’re here to announce is the second cure to a virus of all time.” Rigano made a similar appearance on right-wing radio host Glenn Beck’s program and with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who then privately met with Trump in early April to promote the drug.
The day after Rigano appeared on Carlson’s show, Trump mentioned the drug during a briefing for the first time and in the following days heavily promoted it. He called himself a “big fan” and heralded it as a potential “game-changer,” though Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, cautioned against the anecdotal evidence surrounding the drug.
There’s more at the link. These people are nuts.
Here’s more on the French scientist who ran the first bogus study on the drug that helped make Drs Ingraham and Hannity become full-time proselytisers for the drug. He’s a real piece of work.
Half of America has reverted to medievalism. Or maybe they were always this way and we just didn’t know it. Either way, it’s a very, very bad sign.