He’s actively trying to kill people:
President Donald Trump has repeatedly touted the potential benefits of hydroxychloroquine, which has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat malaria, lupus and other autoimmune ailments but hasn’t yet been proven effective and safe in treating the coronavirus.
“What do you have to lose?” Trump asked Saturday at the White House when pressed by reporters about hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness. And while he’s suggested that patients consult with their physicians about the treatment, he’s also said the drug can “help them, but it’s not going to hurt them.”
On Tuesday, when asked about the drug’s potential side effects, he downplayed them. “The side effects are the least of it,” said Trump. “You’re not gonna die from this pill,” he said. “I say ‘try it’” he said, noting “I’m not a doctor” and to get a physician’s approval.
But the president’s reassurance is raising concerns among experts about the dangers the drug poses to some.
After observing the debate over hydroxychloroquine on TV news and in social media, Dr. Michael Ackerman, a genetic cardiologist who is director of the Mayo Clinic’s Windland Smith Rice Genetic Heart Rhythm Clinic, took the unusual step in late March of issuing guidance for physicians.
“What disturbed me the most was when I was seeing not political officials say these medications are safe but seeing on the news cardiologists and infectious disease specialists say” hydroxychloroquine “is completely safe without even mentioning this rare side effect,” Ackerman said in an interview.
“That’s inexcusable,” he added.
Ackerman and his Mayo Clinic colleagues created a cardiac algorithm, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, to help physicians more safely prescribe hydroxychloroquine by identifying patients at greatest risk for drug-induced sudden cardiac death.
While hydroxychloroquine is likely to be safe for 90 percent of the population, Ackerman said, it could pose serious and potentially lethal risks to a small number of those susceptible to heart conditions, especially those with other chronic medical problems already on multiple medications.
In fact, a small recent study showed that up to 11 percent of coronavirus patients on hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are in the so-called “red zone” for potential cardiac side effects.
“They’ve entered the danger zone,” Ackerman said. “That is not just my hunch that patients are going to be reacting to this drug — but they are reacting to this drug.”
To tout this drug as Trump and his henchmen (and doctors!) are doing, without any proven benefit, saying “you have nothing to lose” when more than 10% of people who get it could die of cardiac complications because of it, is criminal.
I hope Fox News has set aside a huge pile of money to pay out lawsuit settlements because they are going to need it. Trump will skate, ofcourse. He always does. But I hope there are ads this fall featuring the families of people who died in this pandemic holding him responsible for the deaths. Unlike the trumped up Benghazi crusade the GOP waged against Hillary Clinton, this one is real. His inaction and lies have killed people.