That alone should have disqualified him from ever running for office again. Now, he should be held liable for millions of dollars from families whose loved ones followed his advice:
Nearly 17,000 people may have died after taking hydroxycholoroquine during the first wave of Covid-19, according to a study by French researchers.
The anti-malaria drug was prescribed to some patients hospitalized with Covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic, “despite the absence of evidence documenting its clinical benefits,” the researchers point out in their paper, published in the February issue of Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy.
Now, researchers have estimated that some 16,990 people in six countries — France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the U.S. — may have died as a result.
That figure stems from a study published in the Nature scientific journal in 2021 which reported an 11 percent increase in the mortality rate, linked to its prescription against Covid-19, because of the potential adverse effects like heart rhythm disorders, and its use instead of other effective treatments.
Researchers from universities in Lyon, France, and Québec, Canada, used that figure to analyze hospitalization data for Covid in each of the six countries, exposure to hydroxychloroquine and the increase in the relative risk of death linked to the drug.
In fact, they say the figure may be far higher given the study only concerns six countries from March to July 2020, when the drug was prescribed much more widely.
Hydroxychloroquine gained prominence partly due to French virologist Didier Raoult who had headed the Méditerranée Infection Foundation hospital, but was later removed amid growing controversy.
It was also considered something of a “miracle cure” by the then-U.S. President Donald Trump, who said: “What do you have to lose? Take it.”
They had a lot to lose, obviously. How any politician, much less the president of the United States, could be so arrogant as to push untried snake oil on people during a deadly pandemic is beyond me. He was desperate to get the whole thing over with so he could go campaign for re-election but he was in so far over his head he literally didn’t know what to do. He only knows how to brag and attack his enemies. Something like this, which required serious leadership was way beyond his capabilities.
I guess nobody wants to remember what happened during those dark days. But I wish they would at least remember what Donald Trump did when he was confronted with his first serious national crisis. No president has ever done worse. Just imagine if it was a serious national security threat. It makes you shudder just to think about it.
Trump personally exhorted people to take an unproven cure that made people mistrust the medical advice they were getting — and it killed some of them. Is there any other president who has done something so despicably irresponsible for purely selfish reasons?