President Donald Trump is determined to push a drug known as hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for coronavirus even though it has dangrous side effects and has not been scientifically approved for such use.
During nearly every press conference/campaign rally, Trump touts the drug as some kind of miracle cure.
“What do you have to lose?” he asked at one briefing.
Well, you could lose your life or suffer some other effect that does lasting harm. But Trump still shrugged off such dangers.
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“The side effects are the least of it,” Trump claimed. “You’re not gonna die from this pill. I say ‘try it.’ I’m not a doctor.”
Trump touted it again on Monday and doubled down on his claim that people won’t die if they use it.
“I haven’t seen bad!” he said. “I’ve not seen bad. One thing that we do see is that people are not gonna die from it. So if somebody is in trouble, you take it, I think. I would.”
Of course, we all now know that Trump has a financial stake in a company that produces chloroquine pills, which are used to treat malaria and lupus among other autoimmune afflictions. We also know that people have already died because they took chloroquine on Trump’s advice.
And more people will die if the medical community just wantonly starts prescribing the drug to patients. In short, Trump will profit off dead people.
Mayo Clinic cardiologist Dr. Michael Ackerman issued a warning during an interview with NBC News about the dangers of chloroquine.
“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. “That’s inexcusable.”
That side effect has to do with the heart. If patients already have chronic diseases or heart problems, chloroquine can send them into cardiac arrest and they could die.
Not only has the FDA not corroborated Trump’s claims about the drug, but NIH’s Dr. Anthony Fauci also opposes the use of the drug because it has not been put through the proper testing to see if it is effective at treating coronavirus.
Trump and the GOP are all for trying it in their desperation to put an end to this pandemic and their political nightmare. Democrats, however, are more concerned about people’s health and don’t want the medical community to rush to an unproven drug that could cause more harm than good.
“This particular medicine is probably the only medication I know of that has become a Republican or a Democrat medication,” Ackerman said. “That’s just crazy.”
He then cautioned that while Trump is right about the general safety of the drug, Ackerman is exercising and urging caution.
“Yes, these medications overall are really, really safe, so in that sense the president is right,” he said. “But really safe in a population sense doesn’t mean that drug is going to be safe enough for the particular patient I’m about to treat.”
Patients who need chloroquine to treat their autoimmune ailments could also suffer and die if they don’t have access to it because it’s being hoarded or bought out by the federal government.
Trump’s desperation and greed are already getting people killed, and more people will die if the proper steps are not taken to see how this drug treats coronavirus. We simply need to know more, and we should not be sacrificing some people’s lives to save others or to profit.
Featured image via screen capture
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