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maayank on March 23, 2020 | hide | past | favorite



The recommended dosage of chloroquine for treatment of an active malaria infection is 1000 milligrams per day on the first day, followed by an additional 500 mg 6 to 8 hours later followed by 500 mg per day for three days afterwards. There are slight variations of this regimen recommended by different clinical sites. The point here being that if this man and his wife both became critically ill less than an hour after consuming whatever form of chloroquine they consumed (possibly literal aquarium cleaner with whatever other chemicals it had), it seems probable that they really, truly fucked up their dosage and the form they took it in in their ignorance or panic. Many people take chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine regularly all over the world for different conditions without harm, it's a well established medicine with well established dosage guidelines that rarely cause problems for a majority of users.


They said it was a teaspoon of Chloroquine Phosphate. I can't find what the density of Chloroquine Phosphate is anywhere, but if it were only as dense as water, that would be 5 grams, which is 5x the first day dose for treating Malaria.


Since its therapeutic Index range starts at 4, this would definitely explain why they died if they each had a teaspoon. Very different from somebody buying a package of tablets in a pharmacy, investigating average dosage for other conditions and finding the dosage used in the recent clinical studies against Covid, then taking that much over several days.

Edit: it seems they really did just swallow a teaspoon without even checking dosage or a single other thing... I really wonder that the hell they were thinking.


A relevant data point. I don't think this is a good way to share public health information.

@realdonaldtrump 7:13 AM - 21 Mar 2020

HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains - Thank You! Hopefully they will BOTH (H works better with A, International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents).....

....be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE! @US_FDA @SteveFDA @CDCgov @DHSgov

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/12413672399007785...


Seems completely reasonable to me.

He says "have a real chance". He's not promising they work and stating that he and the FDA are doing everything they can to find treatments.


It seems completely reasonable to you for the president to tweet out unqualified medical advice during a pandemic?


It's not medical advice. It's "hey, these drugs look promising, so the FDA is fast tracking things".

How could anyone construe that as medical advice?

If the president said "hey, the FDA just approved a great new cancer drug", is that medical advice for cancer patients? Of course not.


There was a similar discussion on HN about 1 week ago, where a commenter described making a "lightning strike" trip to Mexico to buy Chloroquine from a less regulated source, so they can dose themself if they get sick.

In a country where people literally can't afford to see a doctor, and the masses are panicked by a disease, when the leader tweets out a couple of drugs that look promising .... yes, I think it's reasonable to assume that some people will take it as medical advice.


People on HN might not, uneducated people easily could. Why do you think pharmaceutical commercials include so many warnings?


"be put in use IMMEDIATELY"


Here's a story where it was put in use immediately and saved the guys life. "Coronavirus Victim, 52, Said Good-Bye To Family, Prepared to Die; Says Hydroxychloroquine Saved His Life" https://www.dailywire.com/news/coronavirus-victim-52-said-go...

It can be a mistake to avoid helpful medication because one idiot kills himself with fish tank cleaner.

It can actually be used immediately at a doctors discretion - it's just not officially recommended yet in the US.


The Daily Wire is Ben Shapiro's right-wing fake news infotainment website. It's overtly political and puts opinion above fact.

The man in the story says he was also given benadryl and a drug he didn't recognize. So please don't pretend that one drug saved the man's life. For all we know, he was going to recover anyway, or one of the other drugs (which he doesn't even know what they are) helped him.


During the press conference it was also repeated multiple times that it wasn’t yet ready and they were only taking about getting it into the research phase, specially getting the FDA to fast track it as a possible treatment for COVID-19 so it can be studied in the US.

Dr Fauci spoke right after Trump first brought up the drug and confirmed it’s something not yet proven as a treatment, except some early studies in France, but something that should be looked into. Trump brought it up a few minutes later, again in the context of the FDA approving it for study.

Regardless, I’m sure it made a lot of doctors and pharmacists cringe hearing any drug brought up. I saw a lot of people afterwards saying Trump was recommending it as a treatment without any context, so in a politically charged sound-bite era there will always be the risk of it being misinterpreted... or people willfully ignoring the context and Guinea-pigging themselves.

One good thing is that it already requires a doctors prescription to buy (same with Canada).


He says it should be put in use immediately. Are we reading the same material? How do you come to the conclusion that this is reasonable?

Sometimes, "reasonable" is a word that people use to verbally dance their way out of indefensible positions. Don't do that.


He's talking about the FDA.


This is what happens when you give bad advice to frightened people.

You know who you are. If you had an excuse before, you sure as hell don't have one any more.

If your intentions are good, you'll stop now, rather than risk the next death being your fault because it was the bad information you put out there that caused it.

If you don't stop, now that the stakes are as clear as they can be, then I hope for your sake that your conscience lets you rest easy, and that that's the only judgment you're ever called to answer. I would hope other people would choose to be kind, once all this is over. But I wouldn't want to bet my freedom or my life on it.

I would hope you'd choose to be kind, too. I would hope the fear of contributing to the death of an innocent, however foolish they may happen to be, would outweigh your investment in the sense of righteous certitude that moves you to do what you're doing. Or, if not that, then whatever else it is that motivates you.

Please don't let me down.


Apparently the man and his wife ingested aquarium grade chloroquine.

http://bannerhealth.mediaroom.com/chloroquinephosphate


It says that it is commonly used in aquariums. I made the same mistake in my comment below.


It was indeed aquarium cleaner they ingested: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/man-dies-wife-in-critical-...


Chloroquine is safe when administered by a doctor. It's also easy to overdose if you don't know what you're doing.

I'd hate to see people spread information about how dangerous Chloroquine is when it may be very useful treatment during this pandemic.


From the page linked in the article: "A man has died and his wife is under critical care after the couple, both in their 60s, ingested chloroquine phosphate, an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks.". Did he literally just consume fish tank cleaner? That seems like a really easy way to mess up dosing.


I agree, it's not clear if the couple consumed the unformulated active pharmaceutical ingredient.

But the fish tank part would be true either way (I don't know!), and was likely included to scare people from doing stupid shit like this.

It's the same reason you can survey people about whether we should ban the corrosive chemical dihydrogen monoxide and you'll get a ton of yes responses. In the absence of sophisticated knowledge I think framing matters!


Yes, they did consume fish tank cleaner: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/man-dies-wife-in-critical-...


yes, that is precisely what happened


I'm curious what your source is? I haven't found anything with more details than the linked article.


There's an NBC News interview. Apparently they literally took aquarium cleaner that they happened to have in the house from keeping koi fish. Didn't bother calculating dosage or anything.


It doesn't say they consumed aquarium cleaner. It says they consumed a chemical, which is used in aquarium cleaners. Like water.


I wasn't able to find a reliable source on short notice, but the ones I found indicate a therapeutic index of around 4-8 for chloroquine. The therapeutic index is the ratio between the dose that is effective and the lethal dose. So in this case if you take 4-8 times the dose that actually works you're in the range where it could kill you.

I'd be really interested in more robust sources on this. But from the bits I've seen so far, this drug doesn't have as much distance between the effective dose and the lethal dose as you'd like for something that people are likely to self-administer now.


The therapeutic index for paracetamol (acetaminophen) is ~10 (or less for people with damaged liver etc)

Be careful with all medicines or drugs - taking more can easily lead to worse outcomes.

Edit: “In a review article on paracetamol toxicity among children, the therapeutic index was 1.7” [Heubi JE, Bien JP. Acetaminophen use in children: more is not better. J Pediatr 1997]


Paracetamol is probably the most dangerous over the counter medicine available, and might not be approved in this way if it were in the process now. This is really the exception, it's the poster child for dangerous, but still widely available medication.


Fortunately unlike Tylneol, Hydroxychloroquine requires a prescription in the US.

In an effort to limit shortages multiple states are already making the criteria for prescription even more limited (anyone who prescribed it for COVID-19 was already making an off-label prescription):

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-ph...

Also of note, the couple took `chloroquine phosphate` not `hydroxychloroquine` which was what the government just fast-tracked and is apparently a 3x more effective treatment than the former. According to Wikipedia, HCQ is used for people sensitive to Chloroquine-phospate:

> Specifically it is used for chloroquine-sensitive malaria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine

We don't yet know if the person in the article was prescribed it or even had any symptoms/prior medical history.


> HCQ is used for people sensitive to Chloroquine-phospate: > Specifically it is used for chloroquine-sensitive malaria

HCQ is used for Malaria that is chloroquine sensitive, not people. Well that’s how I read it.

Looks like it was patented in 2005, which might also help explain why it became more common? But I”m totally guessing that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-Aminoquinoline


> Malaria that is chloroquine sensitive, not people

Yep there's some chloroquine phosphate resistant malaria (Plasmodium) that hydroxychloroquine still works for. It also works for the other non-resistant ones making it a good first option, more here:

https://www.drugs.com/monograph/hydroxychloroquine-sulfate.h...

There's no current patent on either drugs. But as I said, data was showing HCQ was 3x more effective, which was why the new studies are focusing on that...


The lethal dose is about 3-5g in an adult. The amount used for treatment varies. The highest was the Chinese taking 2x500mg per day for coronavirus. They reported no adverse effects but it seems a little close.

Others I think have used 500mg once per day.

This link has some info http://www.maripoisoncenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/C... Says 20mg/kg toxic, 40mg/kg usually fatal without invervention.


For hydroxychloroquine, Wikipedia has the following summary, with citation (and figures confirmed in the abstract):

> The therapeutic, toxic and lethal ranges are usually considered to be 0.03 to 15 mg/l, 3.0 to 26 mg/l and 20 to 104 mg/l, respectively. However, nontoxic cases have been reported up to 39 mg/l, suggesting individual tolerance to this agent may be more variable than previously recognised.

For chloroquine, it just says it is "known to be small" (with citation, though I can't see the full PDF to see what "small" means).


The man and his wife took it in the form of aquarium cleaner. I imagine it's quite hard to translate that form into an actual dose. See http://bannerhealth.mediaroom.com/chloroquinephosphate


The article doesn't have absolutely any details.

1) What was the dose they took?

2) Where did they get it?

3) Was it medical-grade?

4) Did he die from it or just after taking it. Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy is in the title.

5) Is this man even real or is it an article designed to scare people against self medication or as a political hit piece?

Chloroquine is a quite common antimalarial drug, and this article just stinks.


The article links to this: http://bannerhealth.mediaroom.com/chloroquinephosphate

Which answers some of your questions, but not all.

For example: "A man has died and his wife is under critical care after the couple, both in their 60s, ingested chloroquine phosphate, an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks. Within thirty minutes of ingestion, the couple experienced immediate effects requiring admittance to a nearby Banner Health hospital."


Suggest a different article. This is a political article.


Ironic isn't it, that in the information age we all live in, there is precious little reliable and precise information.

Fake news, Hoax cures, Shame healers and a world leader whose willing to contribute to the mess.


People hoarding chloroquine medicines has left many cronic patients (lupus and autoinmune diseases) without their dose, and now they will have to wait up to one month to fix the stock break. another way people is being selfish on this times.


People are not being selfish, people are in panic and irrational. Social media has made the pandemic many times worse than it already is by the spread of misinformation, conflicting information and plain dumb advice.


Yet another example of "words matter", and the potential consequences when leaders do not use careful consideration in their word choices.


If you don't want to: offend, be misinterpreted or misunderstood, never say a word.

The world is full of dumb, mean and easily offended people to which "words matter".


What's your point here?


Saying "this drug might be effective" and saying "you should get your hands on any form of this drug you can find and then self-medicate" are obviously very different things.

Anyone that hears the former and does the latter wins a Darwin award – and no, it's not the speaker's fault.


People will do stupid things no matter what you say.


In this case, Trump's endorsement of a drug clearly mattered.


The paper, mentioned a few days ago on HN, from a hospital in China which successfully treats coronavirus patients on an assembly-line basis, mentioned their use of chloroquine. They use it cautiously on patients under constant care and monitoring. In a clinical setting like that, it's apparently useful.

It is not a "pop a few pills and get better" drug.


Link is blogspam, actual article - http://bannerhealth.mediaroom.com/chloroquinephosphate


Did the chloroquine or COVID kill him? Did he even have COVID?

Feel like this might be "tourniquet kills trauma victim", not sure though.


If anything it should be a wake up for the people (including on this very forum) who keep saying "why not just pop some pills and see what works, what could possibly go wrong?". Well, that's what.


How many people are realistically saying that? Most people are saying, let doctors experiment with what might work and don't stand in their way. Which they already have been doing anyhow with various other drugs. No one (at least not 99.99% of people) are saying go out and buy a drug and pop it to see if it saves you.


[flagged]


Seems like the pharmacist is more liable since they should have given him the proper safe dosage.


The pharmacist at the aquarium supply store?


They consumed a fish tank cleaning chemical, not a pharmaceutical prescription.


A bit more info: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/man-dies-after-in...

Also happening in Nigeria: https://www.democracynow.org/2020/3/23/headlines/two_nigeria...

Note that there doesn't appear to be any evidence yet that chloroquine is effective in COVID-19 treatment. So far it has been studied only for other types of coronavirus.


>Note that there doesn't appear to be any evidence yet that chloroquine is effective in COVID-19 treatment. So far it has been studied only for other types of coronavirus.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32173110

That's incorrect.

I don't know how these people died from taking chloroquine phosphate, it is quite safe when taken in normal dosages. What they had may have been contaminated (since it seems to be for aquariums!) or they took wildly more than needed. People with rheumatoid arthritis take chloroquine phosphate for years at a time.


"In vitro"

It seems like a promising treatment, but in vitro effectiveness often doesn't translate to actual effectiveness.

I'm not saying they shouldn't use it, in an emergency sometimes experimental therapies make sense.

In these times, though, I think rational science is also important. We do not yet have studies of it's effectiveness in treating COVID-19.

Also from your link:

>CONCLUSIONS: There is rationale, pre-clinical evidence of effectiveness and evidence of safety from long-time clinical use for other indications to justify clinical research on chloroquine in patients with COVID-19. However, clinical use should either adhere to the Monitored Emergency Use of Unregistered Interventions (MEURI) framework or be ethically approved as a trial as stated by the World Health Organization. Safety data and data from high-quality clinical trials are urgently needed.

I genuinely think it's valuable (in our post fact world) to be able to tell the difference between the concepts of "evidence to support further study" and evidence of effectiveness in a particular application.

Edit: New thread here at HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22671404


Maybe, but I didn't see a linked paper (I could've missed it).


It is the standard course of treatment in Belgium and other European countries

https://epidemio.wiv-isp.be/ID/Documents/Covid19/COVID-19_In...


>Note that there doesn't appear to be any evidence yet that chloroquine is effective in COVID-19 treatment. So far it has been studied only for other types of coronavirus.

Seriously? It seems like every few days a new study pops up here.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-020-0156-0.pdf

https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/20...

https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04307693

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092485792...

It seemed like there was no shortage of praise for this drug in the media, until president Trump mentioned it and then all the talking heads did a complete 180.


I was (falsely it seems) under the impression that Hydroxychloroquine [0] was being considered as a treatment option instead of regular Chloroquine, which appears to be less safe.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41421-020-0156-0


As per my doctor wife who says :

Yeah it has to be in hospital setting

Because chloroquine can increase qtc on ekg

Can lead to cardiac arrest

You have to monitor heart rhythm n do ekg for a few days



Nassim Nicolas Taleb had a tongue in cheek remark in his book, 'the reason religion was popular in middle ages is because it kept people away from doctors'. this reminds me of that.. not that religion fares much better these days.


When trump was talking chloroquine, were we supposed to take him literally, or seriously? I don't know when I am supposed to do one or the other.


How many people on Plaquenil (hydroxychloroquine) for Lupus or RA die from it?


Is there a story or just dive deeper into related but not story I wanted to go deeper with.


I saw this paper [1] on Twitter today. At number 5 in the list of top-scoring chemicals that disrupt the virus's behaviour (PDF p11) is quercetin, which is apparently found in capers [2] and readily cleared for use as a supplement. While no one should be self-medicating with this sort of thing unless they know exactly what they're doing, it seems to me like this sort of chemical could show promise as a therapeutic treatment prescribed by medical professionals while we wait for a vaccine (I am NOT an expert, assess the reliability of the literature, caveat emptor, etc.).

[1] https://chemrxiv.org/articles/Repurposing_Therapeutics_for_t...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quercetin


These types of drug screens rarely produce good results and you need to take things with a huge grain of salt. People in the field know this.


I’m a member of a forum that’s been talking about chloroquine phosphate as an alternative treatment for at least a couple of weeks now. The general consensus is that the side effects make it absolutely a “last resort” sort of thing.

If chloroquine phosphate were the only thing available and my elderly relatives were in respiratory distress as a result of COVID-19, I might consider recommending it. On the low range of the therapeutic dose, under medical supervision, because even in a healthy person you’re going to see rapid dehydration as a result of the vomiting and diarrhea that will absolutely follow taking it.

Another thing I’d point out - it seems very unlikely to me that someone sought out and obtained chloroquine phosphate in the short time since Trump started tweeting about it. It’s been sold out even online for at least a week. I know a couple of places to buy it, but have no desire to make that bet.


oh well that was my gameplan


The repeated recommendation to use a drug which has not been properly tested by the president of the most powerful nation on this planet seems inappropriate to me.


They didn't take the drug, they took an aquarium cleaner...

http://bannerhealth.mediaroom.com/chloroquinephosphate

>A man has died and his wife is under critical care after the couple, both in their 60s, ingested chloroquine phosphate, an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks. Within thirty minutes of ingestion, the couple experienced immediate effects requiring admittance to a nearby Banner Health hospita


Saying that someone took X when referring to a chemical, and X is just a scary way of describing a use for that chemical, is really just FUD tactics. You know what else you could say that is just as meaningful? So-and-so died because they took an 'aquarium cleaner'... where the reference is to Water, which is also used when cleaning aquariums. Everything is chemicals.


See below, likely other ingredients were involved and like others mention the difficulty of selecting the right dosing from an aquarium product makes it very pertinent to point out the source of what they took. Not FUD, just trying to add more context.


Your quoted source "A man has died and his wife is under critical care after the couple, both in their 60s, ingested chloroquine phosphate, an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks." doesn't actually say these particular people used a fish tank product as their source of chloroquine phosphate.

This comment is harshly worded but explains the subtly well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22670152


Apparently chloroquine phosphate is the right drug and it's a synonym for chloroquine the drug. https://www.webmd.com/drugs/2/drug-8633/chloroquine-oral/det...

Also all the wikipedia references are about chloroquine phosphate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloroquine#References

Looks like they did take the right drug, but OD'd or something.


Looks like the aquarium version is likely not the same as the pharmaceutical one...

>Keep in mind if you decide to use the tablets, there are some inactive ingredients, which you may have to deal with, e.g., Camauba Wax, Colloidal Silicon Dioxide, Dibasic Calcium Phosphate, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Magnesium Stearate, Microcrystalline Cellulose, Polyethylene Glycol, Polysorbate 80, Pregelatinized Starch, Sodium Starch Glycolate, Stearic Acid, and Titanium Dioxide. And as mentioned earlier in this chapter there are occasions where some medicines are not in their pure form (100% pure), i.e., mixed with a substance called a 'carrier,' which should be noted on its label.

https://www.nano-reef.com/forums/topic/406204-chloroquine-ph...


It's a salt rather than a synonym.

Drugs often come as a salt made from some active ingredient (here, chloroquine) and a counterion (phosphate). This often makes the active ingredient more soluble than the charged active ingredient alone.


Aquarium cleaner likely contains more than just this one particular chemical, plus water. They may also have had comorbidities.


To be more accurate the French study was for hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) not just chloroquine phosphate which this couple apparently took...


chloroquine phosphate might be one of many compounds of a cleaning product for aquariums. One other very common part of cleaning products, and extremely toxic, is chlorine. Was this specific cleaning product intended to be used when the fish are still in the tank?

Its things like this which is the reason why Sweden has almost banned every cleaning product that has the word alcohol as one of its ingredient, and those that still have it usually must have something that cause vomiting if ingested. People poison themselves (which is I think the more technical correct term than overdosing), and if people will look at something like a cleaning product and think "I will drink this" then there is not much options available.


> if people will look at something like a cleaning product and think "I will drink this" then there is not much options available.

Last year I watched as a homeless man squirted hand sanitizer into a cup then drink it. Before a woman yelled at him and started calling 911. He disappeared pretty quickly after that, so not sure what ever happened to him.

Fun fact: The hand sanitizer stand he used was one of the ones installed around public areas in Toronto after the last SARS outbreak.


Hand sanitizer with alcohol is one such product that does not exist in Swedish stores. There is gels and other similar products that evaporate but they do not actually include any alcohol.

I remember many years ago that there was a campaign to inform the public of this fact as people still continued for a while to ingest those products under the idea that they still had alcohol in them. Many products also had for a while big lables that said "No alcohol". As far as I know the regulation has been quite a success.


That's interesting, Sweden is more aggressive with this sort of thing. That'd be a controversial move even here in Canada.

The CDC recommends using alcohol sanitizer over non-alcohol ones:

> Many studies have found that sanitizers with an alcohol concentration between 60–95% are more effective at killing germs than those with a lower alcohol concentration or non-alcohol-based hand sanitizers. Hand sanitizers without 60-95% alcohol 1) may not work equally well for many types of germs; and 2) merely reduce the growth of germs rather than kill them outright.

https://www.propublica.org/article/coronavirus-hand-sanitize...

A friend who lived in Sweden told me the stores there shut down early and it was hard to find a place to buy alcohol (the Swedish state-run liquor store closes at 3pm on Saturday and is completely closed on Sunday). So if your flight arrives late to the city you might miss out.

Culture plays a big role in getting support for this sort of thing... Ontario used to be more like Sweden but recently expanded the hours of our state-run liquor store (until 11pm) and let grocery stores sell beer/cider.


There's an important detail missing: the dose.

I gather that the therapeutic dose is on the order of 500 mg/day. So did they eat 10x that, 100x that, or what?


Given it's a bulk cleaning product, they'd need some damn finely calibrated scales to measure out anything more precise than "a pinch". Which clearly isn't good when 3x the clinical dose will land you in hospital.


I just bought an electronic scale with 10 mg accuracy for $30, so hey.


[flagged]


We've banned this account for posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN.

Please don't create accounts to do that with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


I'm inclined to argue about the title "most powerful nation on this planet". It's a nice tagline, but the metrics for which it applies are narrowing rapidly.

But still, let this be a lesson to those who would follow bad leaders to their own demise; or rather, let it be a lesson to their offspring who watch them follow the bad leaders.

I suspect humanity follows cycles of enlightenment, complacency, and self-destruction (or irrelevance, which is equally damning depending on the individual). We appear to be between stage 2 and 3 at this point.


> I suspect humanity follows cycles of enlightenment, complacency, and self-destruction

This theory would agree (and it makes sense to me): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...


> I'm inclined to argue about the title "most powerful nation on this planet".

Richest underdeveloped country? Most powerful failed state?


We can debate the originally proposed title, but failed state? Come on.


> But still, let this be a lesson to those who would follow bad leaders to their own demise; or rather, let it be a lesson to their offspring who watch them follow the bad leaders.

a.k.a 90% of the population. At such point, you're just complaining about human stupidity, instead of any specific group. And our children will be just as stupid as us, but their leader will say dumb things about other issues instead of chloroquine.


I'm not entirely sure that's true. Or maybe it's a case of "we've traded the old bugs for a set of new bugs".

Anecdotally I can identify two of the four living generations of my family having observed and corrected _obvious_ failures of their elder generation. What's perhaps harder to recognize is the new bad traits that get introduced.

To be fair, though, each generation has increasingly different circumstances than the previous one. The human circumstance seems to be varying more with each generation as of the industrial age.

Ideally we would collect and review all the previous lessons learned. But we tend to get fascinated by new shiny things (or Netflix series), so we aren't evolving optimally...


It's been tested for years (decades? it's generic) as an anti-malaria drug. Any drug can be overdosed.


It hasn’t been tested against Covid-19. Recommending (or even vaguely hinting) that people just try random drugs that the FDA has approved for other uses is not a strategy with no downside.


There's two reasons to test drugs. (1) To know it's effective. (2) To know it's (reasonably) safe. Chloroquine has passed (2), which is relevant for this article.


Maybe Chloroquine hasn't been tested, but Hydroxychloroquine+azithomycin was tested in a tiny 36 person trial in France, and I believe that's what Trump is basing his "hunch" on. He heard and thought he understood some small snippet of information.


Prescription drug = a pharmaceutical drug that legally requires a medical prescription to be dispensed.

Personal responsibility = the idea that human beings choose, instigate, or otherwise cause their own actions.

Stupidity = behavior that shows a lack of good sense or judgment.


It's been confirmed effective against SARS CoV in vitro [1]. Before you say it, yes, I know treatments in vitro do not always work in vivo.

Reports from China, South Korea and France have suggested efficacy in humans against COVID-19.

1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15351731


Actually they rarely translate.

Chloroquine is a particularly funny example because they have already tried it as an antiviral drug several times without any efficacy.


Can you point to evidence that in vitro efficacy rarely translates to in vivo?

I've seen the one situation of chloroquine showing promise in vitro against SARS CoV but no others. Is there literature on others?


That's an oversimplification.

The amount for an overdose is only around 3X a regular dose (2g vs 600mg) In contrast, most drugs for which you overdose need to be at much higher dosage multiples compared to the prescribed dose.


There are plenty of drugs with a narrow therapeutic index (NTIs or NTIDs), some of which are available over the counter. Some extremely popular ones: lithium, valproic acid, acetaminophen, almost all anticoagulants (warfarin/heparin), almost all of the -mycin antibiotics (and a lot of other antibiotics), all of the tricylic antidepressants.

See this paper for a very interesting discussion of the topic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4412688/


Lithium, valproic acid, anticoagulants and -mycin antibiotics (topical excluded) and all anti-depressants are not available OTC in the US.

Acetaminophen has a therapeutic index of close to 8, much better than chloroquine.


I am not really sure why you think I was listing only OTC drugs. Chloroquine does require a prescription in the US, so comparison with other prescription drugs seems entirely reasonable to me.

Two points on the topic of OTC drugs in the US:

1. Unfortunately you can buy Lithium as a supplement in the US. I have seen bottles of it for sale on Amazon.

2. Having seen enough accidental (not to mention intentional) overdoses from Acetaminophen, I wouldn't be so fast to act like the therapeutic index is wide enough to be treated as "safe". Anything with a narrow therapeutic window needs to be weighed carefully before use. I hope your take away from my comment wasn't that I think chloroquine is "safe": merely that there are a lot of drugs with narrow windows, and there are trade-offs associated with their use. I included that paper because it discusses this very explicitly.


I missed the "some of which are OTC". My mistake.

You are correct that there is a "gray market" for some compounds. The FDA won't come after you for selling lithium carbonate as long as you're not touting it as a medicine. I assume that if it became widespread enough and people got injured, those products would be pulled off the market pretty quickly.

My comments of the TI for acetaminophen was more that it was larger than that for chloroquine. No drug is "safe", but some are safer than others.


People taking warfarin literally have serum levels measured frequently. Typically lithium and valproate too.

TCAs barely used any longer.

Acetaminophen doesn’t belong in this conversation with the other drugs.


Acetaminophen doesn’t belong in this conversation with the other drugs.

I don't see why not? It's a good example where the max therapeutic dose (4000mg/day) is within 2X of the toxic dose range (7500mg-10000mg/day). And even the max therapeutic dose can be toxic to the liver.

And it's exceptionally easy to accidentally overdose if you don't read product labels, since you could be taking multiple products that contain it.


Almost no one should be taking 4g of acetaminophen a day. That’s definitely going to be toxic given enough time.

It doesn’t belong in convo with other drugs because it requires far less monitoring. It’s also not taken chronically like the other drugs. Or shouldn’t be, at least.


Maybe they shouldn't, but isn't that kind of the whole problem with overdose? People take a higher dose than they should?

Acetaminophen overdose is the leading cause for calls to Poison Control Centers (>100,000/year) and accounts for more than 56,000 emergency room visits, 2,600 hospitalizations, and an estimated 458 deaths due to acute liver failure each year.Data from the U.S. Acute Liver Failure Study Group registry of more than 700 patients with acute liver failure across the United States implicates acetaminophen poisoning in nearly 50% of all acute liver failure in this country. Available in many single or combination products, acetaminophen produces more than 1 billion US dollars in annual sales for Tylenol products alone. It is heavily marketed for its safety compared to nonsteroidal analgesics. By enabling self-diagnosis and treatment of minor aches and pains, its benefits are said by the Food and Drug Administration to outweigh its risks. It still must be asked: Is this amount of injury and death really acceptable for an over-the-counter pain reliever?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15239078


I have lost track of the point of this conversation.

If you think acetaminophen is qualitatively the same as warfarin or lithium, you need to go to med school.


4g of acetaminophen is what you'd take if you followed the directions of an adult taking 2 regular strength tablets every 4 hours for 24 hours (3.9g to be exact).


I understand that.

That said, any physician who sees a patient taking 4g of acetaminophen a day chronically is going to tell them to reduce their dosage, switch to another drug, or stop.

It’s not safe in the long run.


Acetaminophen is also easy to overdose and has been recommended as a fever reducer for Coronavirus.


Who is recommending acetaminophen for coronavirus fever reduction? Provide a source.


UK National Health Service, for one: https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/paracetamol-for-adults/

> NHS coronavirus advice

> There is currently no strong evidence that ibuprofen can make coronavirus (COVID-19) worse.

> But until we have more information, take paracetamol to treat the symptoms of coronavirus, unless your doctor has told you paracetamol is not suitable for you.

> If you are already taking ibuprofen or another non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) on the advice of a doctor, do not stop taking it without checking first.

> Updated: 17 March 2020

Over-the-counter use of paracetamol (aka acetaminophen) for fever reduction is entirely standard medical advice, not specific to coronavirus at all.


WHO: https://news.yahoo.com/avoid-taking-ibuprofen-covid-19-sympt...

> Asked about the study, WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters in Geneva the UN health agency's experts were "looking into this to give further guidance."

> "In the meantime, we recommend using rather paracetamol, and do not use ibuprofen as a self-medication. That's important," he said.

Paracetamol = acetaminophen: https://www.drugs.com/paracetamol.html


https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/self-isol...

> To help yourself stay well while you're at home [...] take paracetamol to help ease your symptoms

Strictly speaking it's on the self-isolation if symptomatic or living with someone who does page, and not necessarily aimed directly at confirmed cases, but you also get the same advice at the end of the NHS online advice service if you present with (mild) COVID-19 symptoms:

> How to look after your symptoms at home[:...] take paracetamol



The World Heath Organization: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/coron...

At one point it was the only drug they recommended for fever reduction, but they retracted their statement about avoiding ibuprofen


At least one public health official i. France: https://www.twitter.com/olivierveran/status/1238776545398923...



Well, that got answered.



I'm fairly libertarian so I'm going to say, that's fine. As long as the correct / max dosage is noted on the label/instruction sheet (don't know about US, but in Slovenia, pretty much every drug, even common ones like Aspirin, come with detailed instructions), I don't really see the need to excuse people from being responsible adults (with possible exception for opioids and other addiction-prone drugs).


most drugs for which you overdose need to be at much higher dosage multiples compared to the prescribed dose

Perhaps for over the counter medication. This statement is false when we consider drugs requiring a prescription especially those used mainly in acute care or hospital situation. There are all sorts of medications in that class for which a double dose will straight up kill you.

In discussing such situations we often use terms like "patient safety" and "medical malpractice".

The arguments for against this drug seem center around the person recommending it, not its actual efficacy.


Actually there is extremely weak to none evidence for its efficacy in COVID. One terrible French clinical trial.


However nobody should be self-prescribing. The toxic dose is irrelevant because you shouldn’t be taking this drug without a doctor’s supervision. Lithium, a treatment for bipolar disorder is also very toxic and required blood level monitoring but it isn’t being criticized for having the therapeutic dose being so close to the toxic dose. But Trump hasn’t talked about Lithium, so thus nobody cares to complain about it.


This one is just particularly easy to overdose on.


Personal responsibility = the idea that human beings choose, instigate, or otherwise cause their own actions.

Stupidity = behavior that shows a lack of good sense or judgment.


was it an overdose that killed this poor guy or another interaction?


90 years. By millions of people. Also for arthritis and Lupus.


We all made fun of South Africa's Thabo Mbeki when he recommended beetroot, garlic and other herbs to combat HIV. Turns out, we have no reason. It did happen here, on primetime TV.


Faulty generalization = the fallacy of examining just one or very few examples or studying a single case, and generalizing that to be representative of the whole class of objects or phenomena.


it's prescription only. no one told them to self-medicate.


The FDA approved emergency expanded access for inhaled nitric oxide a couple days ago, which has the same mechanism of action as garlic and beet root. There is actually a plausible mechanism of action there, and a bunch of in vitro research.


For treatment of HIV?

Other poster is apparently talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_denialism_in_South_Af...


> For treatment of HIV?

For any virus. I didn't say it was safe or effective, I said there is a plausible mechanism of action.


You got that wrong. Nitric oxide is a vasodilator, it relaxes smooth muscles in the blood vessels and lungs to increase blood and air flow. It has nothing to do with fighting coronavirus or any other kind of virus, it's supportive treatment so that the patient doesn't suffocate.


> It has nothing to do with fighting coronavirus or any other kind of virus, it's supportive treatment so that the patient doesn't suffocate.

"Nitric Oxide Inhibits the Replication Cycle of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus"

https://jvi.asm.org/content/79/3/1966

...


Nitric oxide ion in cell is not the same as nitrous oxide gas, typically used for sedation, not taking NO itself.

Enhancing NO signaling in cells is hard. The best initial bet there would be using certain class of beta-blockers. (Ones typically used for black patients.) But please do not take unproven drugs with known side effects.

The paper is talking about S-nitroso-N-acetylpenicillamine in vitro. This compound is not something anyone wants to actually take.


This is insane. Garlic and beet root are not used medically for any disease at all, let alone COVID.

NO evidence is pretty weak for COVID. Even if it was true, we’d give NO or other related compounds and certainly not unregulated dietary supplements.


> Garlic and beet root are not used medically for any disease at all

Garlic is literally one of the most widely used medical treatments in the entire world. It's used medically by 0.8% of all US adults, according to the NIH.

https://nccih.nih.gov/research/statistics/NHIS/2012/natural-...

It's use was advocated for my Hippocrates. You know, the "father of medicine" guy.

https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/131/3/951S/4687053


I can’t tell if this is a troll or not.

It is listed below echinacea and cranberry pills (two supplements with substantial evidence for NON-efficacy) on the National Institute for Complementary and Alternative Medicine’s ranking of SUPPLEMENTS taken in the US. If it was real effective medicine, it wouldn’t be considered an “alternative” medicine (a polite phrase for horseshit).

Do you realize how ridiculous that is as evidence for anything? The fact that misguided people buy it in supplement form does not mean it is a treatment for anything, let alone COVID. People also buy lots of Diet Coke.

And then to top it off you reference Hippocrates (literally thousands of years ago). Did you know most Med schools don’t even take the Hippocratic oath any longer? Do you believe that doctors should treat people by keeping the 4 humors in balance?

Completely ridiculous


If people use something medically then they use it medically, end of story. You don't get to say that something isn't used medically just because it might not be effective or prescribed by doctors or whatever.

Knowing what people are using medically is critically important, regardless of whether you think they should be using it or not.


Sorry but just no.

It is not a "medical" treatment unless it treats, prevents, or otherwise modifies some actual disease or state of health.

I agree it is important to know what ridiculous, non-evidence-based dietary supplements people are taking.

Regardless, you can't get out of your extremely irresponsible claims by arguing about semantics.

Please stop giving anyone your incompetent and potentially harmful medical advice. Luckily most people with COVID won't try to treat it with garlic supplements alone because they aren't stupid, but you have to realize that in panic-inducing times like this people might actually take your advice and you could end up with blood on your hands.


> you can't get out of your extremely irresponsible claims by arguing about semantics. Please stop giving anyone your incompetent and potentially harmful medical advice.

How does saying "there is a plausible mechanism of" qualify as either irresponsible or medical advice?

> you have to realize that in panic-inducing times like this people might actually take your advice and you could end up with blood on your hands.

What advice? I literally haven't offered any advice.


Are you or are you not intimating that people should take fucking garlic supplements for COVID?

You have claimed 1) there is plausible evidence for garlic (no) 2) garlic is a widely used medicine (no)

On the basis of those claims it is quite easy to see how you are suggesting people take garlic. Classic motte-and-bailey argument strategy.

Convenient that you also dropped discussion of “beet root”


Reference does not say it's of any use. However it is organic so it must be good.


Post a link because I right now I have no reason to believe you.


He probably means this: https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/fda-expands-access-to-...

But that has nothing to do with HIV, neither do garlic and beetroot have anything to do with nitric oxide.


> neither do garlic and beetroot have anything to do with nitric oxide.

"Potent activation of nitric oxide synthase by garlic: a basis for its therapeutic applications."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7555034

...


Validated at least by reference, which he has given. Upvoted. We need more than this such as references to it or disclaimers for it, niether of which I can find. That is not to detract from the existence of the paper which he referenced.

Whether nitric oxide has much to do with health is anothre question. I believe one of the reasons viagra works is due to nitric oxide, so perhaps it's we should be viagring instead.


Mind you the important part is where it's enhanced, and by how much.

And we're taking purified alicin at nearly toxic doses. In vitro. Yes, garlic can kill. And it was described to be active in vascular tissue not lungs.

Now Viagra is an interesting bet, but it also does not reach lungs or non-vascular cells.


I posted links to one of the in vitro studies here, and in the comments I posted the press release for the FDA approval:

https://www.reddit.com/r/covid19stack


Your information is wrong and misleading. It’s irresponsible for you to post stuff like this.


This goes to "COVID-19 Stack: Research and discussion on supplements and medications relating to COVID-19!

No mate, post a precise link. This one goes nowhere and I still don't believe you.


This is ridiculous. There has been studies and papers being written and released for MONTHS from all over the world. We’ve known about chloroquine since January.

This INSISTENCE people keep having on politicizing this is infuriating and it’s going to get people killed. Stop doing this. Now is not the time for political point gathering.


I don't see how this is political or harmful. It's a valid criticism of the president based purely on his own actions and their obvious consequences with no mention of party.


The main reason chloroquine is getting criticism is because Trump mentioned. This is utterly insane.


There is NOT good RCT evidence for the efficacy of chloroquine for COVID —— Medical Professional

Stop acting like there is. It’s insane at this point. It might work, but frankly it’s unlikely given the history of chloroquine’s failures as an antiviral.


There is...both in vitro and in vivo.

The pushback on chloroquine is completely insane. It's a 90 year old, well-understood drug used safely by millions with mild side effects.


Sorry, this is just not true.

The in-vitro results for chloroquine as an antiviral have been positive for many viruses, but it has never worked out in RCTs.

Claiming there is good evidence from in-vivo studies is scientifically illiterate. Please post links to well-done RCTs if you believe they exist.

There is a reason the WHO is running a 5-arm clinical trial for COVID.

Edit: Your response to me literally says “In-Vitro” in the title.

Edit 2: “There is absolutely evidence” ... But no links. No, sorry, you are still just wrong.


There is absolutely evidence of effectiveness against COVID-19 in humans from China, South Korea & France.


Please let me and the CDC know of these well-conducted trials of chloroquine for COVID.

I take it you are not familiar with epidemiology, clinical evaluation of drug efficacy, or medical statistics. That’s fine! No one is saying you need to be. But you shouldn’t be extremely confident of your conclusions when experts are telling you that you’re wrong.

The French chloroquine+azithromycin trial was terrible and no one in the medical world believes it. There’s a reason no respectable journal would publish it. SIX of the people in the C+A arm died and were removed from the analysis, which is absurd. The outcome was viral titers, which were different for different arms. Just maddening.


One died.

I am not extremely confident in what is not even a conclusion. I am simply shocked at the pushback and resistance to a promising treatment with minimal downsides.

Medecine appears to be the only profession in the world that only accepts one form of evidence. That is what is maddening.


I agree. Nitpicking: I think only 1 person in the treatment group died. It is not clear that the 3 that were transferred to the ICU finally died. (And 1 just left the hospital and 1 had too much nausea with the drugs, I hope that at least they are fine.)


You are exactly right. I was remembering wrong.


Okay well you're going to have to tell the FDA, the CDC, the WHO and many other equivalent organizations all over the world that.


They are doing clinical trials for it in COVID, so those will reveal its efficacy.

The FDA, CDC, and WHO’s position is the same as mine.


Who are you arguing with that you thinks we shouldn't be doing clinical trials? Why do you think these things are "insane"?


In case you have been reading a different post, there are innumerable people who are totally confident chloroquine works for COVID-19 and that sufficient evidence already exists. Such as you, a few posts higher in this chain.

That view is “insane”, or at least strongly misinformed and medically/scientifically illiterate.

In fact, there is no strong evidence that supports this and substantial prior evidence that contradicts it.

Unfortunately, this belief leads to bad outcomes, such as people literally dying, as is the case here.


I know you've got a point, but I genuinely can't tell which side you're having a go at.


Does it have to be one or the other?


> it’s going to get people killed

Like the man that the article is about?


Yes, exactly like the man in the article. People are trying to make this into some political, partisan fight, which causes people’s trust in experts to be eroded. There’s a whole story about this called the boy who cried wolf.


The President's whole brand is that he knows more than the experts. I'm listening to him right now, live, saying 'the doctors re telling us we have to shut down the whole world, they want to shut it down for years, but you can't let the cure be worse than the problem.'

He's talking complete nonsense about quarantine and how bad it is to close the stock exchange while saying the quarantine is a bigger problem than the virus because he's created so many jobs and that it'll cause 'tremendous death.'

¯\(°_o)/¯


I’m a died-in-the-wool liberal, and I think he’s right about that.

We aren’t rationally weighing costs and benefits right now. We really should be talking more about what we’re doing to the economy, and if there are better ways to move forward.


Hard to understand your point. It seems quite obvious to me that you can't shut down the world economy for any length of time without introducing enormous amounts of collateral damage (i.e. deaths).

What is nonsense about that?


The experts in China, South Korea and Taiwan have proven that you can get the disease under control with testing, contract tracing and serious quarantine methods. The alternative is collapsing the healthcare system because available hospital beds are full of coronavirus patients - coronavirus isn't the flu, 20 % of patients are hospitalized for three weeks. We are observing that in Italy and New York State.

The President needs to stop talking generalities.


They also haven't shut down their economies, which was the point I was making. The actions you describe are not mutually exclusive to a more nuanced approach to reduced economic activity. That is, something other than economic suicide.


They were able to take a more nuanced and targeted approach because they got their testing infrastructure in place very quickly and made tests widely available. That way, they were able to quickly figure out who had the virus and needed to be quarantined.

The USA, in stark contrast, had a gutted CDC (thanks to the hard work of the GOP to shrink the government), an abolished White House Pandemic Response office (used to be part of the national security group), and a President who first ignored and then downplayed repeated warnings from his own country's Intelligence Community because he thought it was a "hoax".

That is why the time for "nuanced" approaches is past, and drastic actions are needed. You can check this website for some sobering charts: https://covidactnow.org/

Regarding the economy, tell me this: do you seriously think our economy can handle millions of deaths within the span of several months?


> The USA, in stark contrast, had a gutted CDC (thanks to the hard work of the GOP to shrink the government), an abolished White House Pandemic Response office (used to be part of the national security group), and a President who first ignored and then downplayed repeated warnings from his own country's Intelligence Community because he thought it was a "hoax".

The CDC budget has not been gutted (https://mises.org/wire/cdcs-budget-larger-now-under-obama). Perhaps you meant that he proposed reductions. Sure, but that didn't happen so you can't use a reduced budget as the cause for anything.

The Pandemic Response Office was consolidated as part of the restructuring of the NSC. The office might have been eliminated but the function was not. (https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/465320-reducin...)

And as for your "hoax" comment. You are just parroting false accounts of what the President said. His reference to a "hoax" was to the particular types of criticisms being made by the Democrats not to the virus. It is obvious on its face that he hasn't thought it was a hoax since he has continued to make executive decisions that would make no sense if he thought it was a hoax (e.g. banning travel from China in mid January)

Unfortunately, you have been suckered into believing lots of things that just aren't true. The press continues to embarrass itself during this crisis.

> Regarding the economy, tell me this: do you seriously think our economy can handle millions of deaths within the span of several months?

Well it is a bit of a false choice you are forcing on me, but it is quite possible that a destroyed world economy could lead to more deaths than could be caused by the virus alone. As bad as things are, they could get a whole lot worse.


I think you understand my point just fine.


President talks about the preliminary reports that HCQ is working for treating COVID-19 around the world. It might be a good treatment here.

People freak out. "Preliminary doesn't mean proven!"

Man self-medicates with HCQ and dies.

President's fault??


Yes, I think so. People grew up to trust institutions, and for decades they had good reason to (at least in the subjects of public health and safety). Who's to blame when after decades -- no, centuries -- we elect a leader who makes false claims that are counter to medical science -- and potentially hazardous, if followed, to the public health? The victim, or the authority?

I know which party I blame.


The man who died drank aquarium cleaner. It is a huge stretch to blame that on Trump.




He drank aquarium cleaner because the President of the United States told him it would cure the virus. Not a stretch at all.


Trump told people to take it without a prescription?


President shouldn't talk about things he clearly doesn't understand. Compare this to how Obama used to measure every single word he said.


All presidents talk about stuff they don't understand.


Like this?

“I like this stuff. I really get it. [...] People are really surprised I understand this stuff. Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability.”

“Anybody who wants a test will get a test, that’s the bottom line. [...] The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right? This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good.”


Perhaps so, but some things are more important to delegate to experts than others. There's little harm in misstating the speed of light; another to suggest that a potentially hazardous drug that can be found OTC can be used to cure a virus when it cannot - and especially without dosage information.


Doesn't mean he is wrong though, the transcript is mentioned below.


Would have the man consumed the chloroquine if not for Trump broadcasting it? I'm willing to entertain both yes or no to this question, but I'm going to guess the gentlemen didn't know based off the scientific literature, but rather, the daily press briefings. And that differentiation does matter.


According to the wife of the deceased, they took it after hearing from the "President and his buddies" that it was safe and "pretty much a cure"

"We saw Trump on TV -- every channel -- & all of his buddies and that this was safe," she said. "Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure." https://twitter.com/HeidiNBC/status/1242238268277755905

NBC: "Did you at any point hear that the FDA had not approved of it for coronavirus purposes or--?"

AZ Woman: "Yeah. But you know they kept saying that it was approved for other things...Trump kept saying it was basically pretty much a cure." https://twitter.com/VaughnHillyard/status/124225471769609420...


Yes panic and react. Yes, you are in the correct state of mind for crisis response. Yes.

/sarcasm


So this isn’t a helpful tone. You are politicizing this, the FDA doesn’t just trust poorly done studies and common sense, this is why we didn’t approve Thalidomide when it was widely considered safe.

Additionally you are responding to an article about people who took the drug to treat Covid-19. Peoples lives are at stake on both sides, a politician with no medical training should know better than to run his mouth about something he knows nothing about.


> Additionally you are responding to an article about people who took the drug to treat Covid-19.

No, they did not. They took an aquarium cleaning chemical with a similar name.



The FDA also makes mistakes.

For example they total stuffed it up with their handling of Oxycontin:

https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2018/07/13/purdue-...


I am an extremely pro-self-medication (implying every literate person should have basic medical education knowing how does their body function and how to maintain it optimally) and anti-scheduling person yet hell yeah I agree - people whom many people believe in, especially the officials like the freakin president should quadruple-check before saying anything what can be risky. Billions of people listen to him, a huge portion of them is not particularly bright, he should take that in account. Ideally it should be illegal for an official to say anything that is not scientifically correct.


True thing. Also people who I like like Elon Musk spoke about it

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1239650597906898947?s=20

On one side his voice should be heard, it may give people hope and help to move stuff

On the other side, some people who don't know what balance is, might use it in the wrong way.


A responsible man would have advocated for clinical trials, the only way to know if any drug actually does what it's supposed to do. There are dozens of drugs, experimental and repurposed, that show activity against SARS - remember there was that epidemic in 2002, and since then people looked at the virus, knowing it was going to be back.

But Elon Musk is not a responsible man. He is Mr Foot-in-Mouth on Twitter many times over.


I can't understand why he's tweeting this as if the CDC and doctors and so on aren't already considering those drugs as a treatment option. Many of the responses to the tweet have a tin-foil-hat kinda feel to them. Who exactly do they think is suppressing usage of these drugs? And why?


There was a lot of resistance until Elon & Trump mentioned it.

The negative reaction to the French study has been pretty intense.


How are these people getting their hands on prescription drugs? Someone touting X prescription drug as a potential cure for something doesn't mean we should all go out and take it. I mean, PrEP is a treatment to prevent the AIDS virus from spreading, but it's not like someone being happy about that means you should somehow illegally procure and take a prescription drug.

The double standards here are shocking.


I am fairly sure that chloroquine is available without prescription in many African countries, so one-time visitors may have kept a stash of anti-malarials bought during a trip. It is (or used to be) available over the counter in the UK, too.


> How are these people getting their hands on prescription drugs?

The people in this story didn't get their hands on prescription drugs, they found an aquarium chemical with a similar name.


Are you arguing that the chloroquine they took, as chloroquine phosphate, is different from the chloroquine that's used to treat malaria?

That's more than "a similar name". It's the same name.

From what I've read, both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are used to treat inflammation.

So is it chloroquine vs hydroxychloroquine that you're referring to?


I would also suppose that aquarium grade chloroquine doesn't go through the same dosage assurance process. This is why it's dangerous to dose yourself using chemicals that are pharmacologic. Unless you're taking medication designed and verified to be used by humans at the given dose, you don't actually know if the concentration written on the box is actually what you're taking. These aquarium chemicals are likely unregulated or regulated much more loosely, so that the margin of error may easily kill a person, but not a fish.-

They may also contain non-active ingredients that are not harmful to fish but kill humans. Who knows?

In other words, don't take aquarium chemicals and think they're medication.


Truth.


I'm not qualified to comment on what differences exist between chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, I'm pointing out that aquarium cleaner tablets are not medicine. Even if the names are the same, you have no idea what a tablet like that is cut with.


That's an excellent point. However, it seems that people treating their fish with it are also looking for >95% pure chloroquine.[0]

But still, fish aren't people. So using anything except pharmaceutical grade is dangerous.

0) https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/chloroquine-phosphate.1923...


Bestow whatever personal praise you want on Elon Musk based on power, charisma, whatever...

As one of the most famous people in the world, with his own agendas, and no medical qualifications... it is extremely irresponsible for Musk to make any sort of public comments about anything medical in nature. No matter what he says, a significant number of people will take it to heart and ignore medical advice, science, and their own common sense.


Even if this were approved for use, do you honestly think ODs won't happen? One of the most common drug deaths is from Tylenol.


Reading down the comments on this thread, there is a big question. How did this person acquire the drug? It seems to be a controlled substance, ie a prescription drug for malaria, so what happened? Did they also happen to be diagnosed for malaria?

In times like this we should advocate for more information and getting facts out.


Reading the details, it seems like the person in question used chloroquine that was acquired in form of an aquarium cleaner. Definitely not something meant to be consumed by humans.


That raises many more questions, like what other horrible toxic chemicals a aquarium cleaner product has. Drain cleaners are infamous known for being used in suicide, and recall it being mentioned on medical shows as one of the most nasty thing someone can put into their body.


Do you have an exact quote from the president where he recommends that the public obtain and self medicate with chloroquine? Or have you significantly altered his statements for your own political agenda?


> Now, a drug called chloroquine — and some people would add to it “hydroxy-.” Hydroxychloroquine. So chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine. Now, this is a common malaria drug. It is also a drug used for strong arthritis. If somebody has pretty serious arthritis, also uses this in a somewhat different form. But it is known as a malaria drug, and it’s been around for a long time and it’s very powerful. But the nice part is, it’s been around for a long time, so we know that if it — if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.

> When you go with a brand-new drug, you don’t know that that’s going to happen. You have to see and you have to go — long test. But this has been used in different forms — very powerful drug — in different forms. And it’s shown very encouraging — very, very encouraging early results. And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that’s where the FDA has been so great. They — they’ve gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. And they did it — they took it down from many, many months to immediate. So we’re going to be able to make that drug available by prescription or states.

> I spoke with Governor Cuomo about it at great length last night, and he wants to be right on — on the — he wants to be first on line. And so I think that’s a tremendous — there’s tremendous promise, based on the results and other tests. There’s tremendous promise. And normally the FDA would take a long time to approve something like that, and it’s — it was approved very, very quickly and it’s now approved, by prescription. Individual states will handle it. They can handle it. Doctors will handle it. And I think it’s going to be — I think it’s going to be great.

> Then we’re quickly studying this drug, and while we’re continuing to study it — but the studying is going to be also done in — as it’s given out to large groups of people, perhaps in New York and other places. We’ll study it there.

From his March 19 statement: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres.... In total, he mentioned the drug by name 11 times during that statement (according to Ctrl+f).


I'm reading "This drug is gonna be great." I'm not reading "take this drug without your doctor's orders".


And do you think that is what every other person is reading?


Clearly not, judging by how my votes are doing. But I think their emotions are getting in the way, leading them to see things that aren't there.


I'm not sure how it is across all of the US, but when I was in NY, I was certainly surprised to see advertisements for prescription drugs on TV. These always embed "ask your doctor about X".

That's just completely unheard of in Australia. You cannot advertise prescription drugs to consumers, period.

Maybe Americans are just more likely to self-diagnose and self-medicate in general? Or visit the doctor with an agenda for a drug, and see the doctor's prescription as mere paperwork?


Wait, sorry I think I misread you. Do I think every other person is reading that the president is asking people to take things without doctor's orders? Sort of, perhaps I'm being unfair. However, it seems rather directly to be the interpretation of the person who posted it, because they are replying to a request for an example of the president recommending "that the public obtain and self medicate with chloroquine".


Do you suppose people who take prescription drugs without a doctor's supervision are letting emotions get in the way, or do you think they're acting rationally? And do you suppose it's possible their emotions are influenced by the glittering generalities they heard, even though your emotions are not so influenced?


Sure, and perhaps there's a reasonable argument to be made there vis a vis the president's comments here (though I still think it's overblown). But from my read, some people are implying* that the president _literally_ recommended that people obtain this thing without a doctor's advice. And that's what I'm replying to. I don't think it's irrelevant, it's rather divorced from reality.

* Or maybe I misunderstood them. I could always be the one reading into things.


Yes but he has to remember people


"We're going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. And that's where the FDA has been so great. They've gone through the approval process - it's been approved."


He said something to the effect of "chloroquine shows promise. The FDA has approved for it to be prescribed." The first statement is debatable (for now), while the second is completely false. (full quote below)

Can we agree that it's not great to be giving out incomplete or incorrect information on such a prominent stage?

"It's shown very encouraging -- very, very encouraging early results...Normally the FDA would take a long time to approve something like that, and it's -- it was approved very, very quickly and it's now approved, by prescription."

However, the FDA after the briefing issued a statement saying it had not approved the drug for use against Covid-19 and is still studying its effectiveness against the disease.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/23/africa/chloroquine-trump-nige...


Trump is very bad at communicating. However, as I understood what Trump was trying to say is that the drug has already passed clinical tests by the FDA which shows it is not massively risky to take, for any reason, within proper limits. So it is FDA approved, just not for COVID-19 uses. (That is, without adding "for COVID-19", the statement "The FDA has approved it to be prescribed" is literally true.) He is contrasting this to some other drug that could potentially be used to help COVID-19 patients but has not had the same testing. This is a huge deal, because it allows the FDA to move quicker in evaluating the potential use of the drug in COVID-19 situations.



He said doctors can administer it under new FDA guidance.

He didn't say "drink an additive commonly used at aquariums to clean fish tanks."

http://bannerhealth.mediaroom.com/chloroquinephosphate

I don't see why every story needs to be about him.


But the nice part is, it’s been around for a long time, so we know that if it — if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.

Surely you've noticed that some folk take the President's public statements at face value.


The FDA has not approved it for COVID-19.


Not sure if that's relevant.

Once a drug is approved by the FDA for one disease, it can be used off-label for other purposes.


It absolutely is relevant. A layperson will hear "chloroquine works on Covid-19. The FDA's approved it. The President himself said so."

Like I could go and say "The FDA has approved Rogaine." It's true, but it's a useless statement in the context of Covid-19.


Iodine is approved for treating exposure to radiation. That doesn't mean it's OK to start drinking from a bottle of industrial-use iodine that isn't made for human consumption.


Likely much safer than taking aquarium cleaner, presuming correct dosage. These things tend to be chemically pure.


This story is clearly related to Trump and would not have happened without his statements.

Just because he didn't say anything 100% explicitly the cause it and may have been misinterpreted is honestly besides the point. When you are given the power of the presidency, you should either treat your public words with care of just quit forever for all our sakes.

This is just how having power _works_. It's a two-way street, and the idealistic American Way.

EDIT: Anyone care to explain the downvotes? This is my opinion on those gifted with power in all situations. It goes for companies as well. If you're the CEO, VPE, whatever. There should be checks to balance that gifted power. One check is a higher standard of public speaking due to your newfound influence.


Simple. You make a clear connection between Trump saying hydroxychloroquine has promise and they're fast-tracking FDA approval to...man consumes fish tank additive. Trump was not even the only high profile person touting it. Elon Musk, too, touts the drug. It's not even clear this man had COVID-19. How much of his actions were driven by the escalating irrational fear on news reports? How much was driven by some random internet forum somewhere making such a suggestion? What was the mental state of the man in question? Why didn't this man seek medical advice before consuming fish tank chemicals? There's a ton about just this one story to unpack, but of course it's been sensationalized as a political hit job.


And as we know, the exact wording of Trump's statements is of critical importance to how his supporters interpret them.


A quick skim of the article does not show any quote stating you should self medicate. There are quotes misrepresenting which stage of approval it is in.


Verbatim quote from the President: "if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody."

Edit: Yes, I realize what he probably meant. I know how meds work. I still think he should have chosen his wording more carefully.


I.e. even if the drug is ineffective, at least we know it doesn't have fatal side effects, because it has already been used widely and approved for malaria treatment after going through safety trials a long while ago. This is in contrast to experimental drugs, which don't just have questionable efficacy, but also unknown safety.

It goes without saying that like all prescription drugs which have been proven safe, chloroquine should only be taken when prescribed by a doctor, at the recommended dosage. Obviously if you self-medicate with any safe prescription drug, you risk harming yourself by overdosing.


It doesn't really go without saying. Otherwise pharmaceutical advertising wouldn't need copious safety warnings in every single commercial.

I don't think it's a good idea to take the President's happy talk at face value, but then I also didn't think it was ever a good idea to spend money on Trump University, or donating to Trump charities; on the other hand, enough people did that the matters ended up in court and the two branded entities mentioned above were both found to be liable for misinforming their customers/donors.

There are a lot of stupid folk among the public, and it is to them that scam artists like Jim Bakker or Alex Jones market quack cures. There's an appetite for quack cures because they seem affordable relative to the often-inaccessible costs of basic medical treatment, because we don't have a universal public health system in the USA. The sad fact is that people sell snake oil because there are fat profits to be made by doing so, even though most of us recognize such products as little better than placebos at best or dangerous at worst.

This is why we have product regulation, credentialing and so on; it's hard for people to personally assess the quality of every product or service and there are unscrupulous people who are willing to exploit that difficulty.


I realize that's probably what he (or realistically, whoever told him that) meant, but that's not at all what he said.

He's talking to a broad, panicked audience and anyone doing so ought to choose their words carefully. Something like "Great news is that we've already had safety data for this stuff, so we're going straight to efficacy trials!" would convey plenty of optimism without encouraging yahoos to do dumb things.


|it has already been used widely and approved for malaria treatment after going through safety trials a long while ago

This doesn't mean it's safe to take, it just means that taking it as prescribed is believed to lead to better outcomes than trying to survive Malaria without taking it.

There's any number of things that chemotherapy or radiation might help with, but unless it is terminal cancer, chances are you are better off without those treatments.

In medical terms, 'safe' is almost always relative. Tylenol is 'safe', and yet it kills many people every year.


Advil is one of the safest drugs to take, but you can still kill yourself with it.


And yet, my bottle doesn't say "Go crazy! This stuff is really safe!"

Instead, it says: "Do not take more than your recommended dose. An Advil overdose can damage your stomach or intestines. Use only the smallest amount of medication needed to get relief from your pain, swelling, or fever."


Yeah, which only establishes that the baseline understanding the common person has when taking drugs is to take the recommended dose. And nowhere was Trump saying "go crazy".


Alternately, that (legally-mandated?) warning is there because a non-negligable portion of the population needs regular reminders that more isn't always better.


Yeah, but you have to be a whole new level of stupid to search for a drug not sourced from a pharmacy or sold in the medical section of the grocery store and take an unregulated amount without any medical oversight.

People come up with crazy, brain dead ideas all the time. There are flat earthers for crying out loud.


It's too bad people don't realize you should take medical advice from medical professionals instead of politicians.


This quote does not literally say or imply one should self medicate. This quote in context appears to misrepresent the lethal dosage of the medication.


Sure, but can't you see how some people, especially panicked ones, could take a glib comment about safety far too literally?


This news story is about a man consuming fish tank additive: https://aquariumstoredepot.com/products/chloroquine-phosphat...

I'm not sure the difference between this and the dosages and chemical makeup of the actual drug being touted by Trump but I imagine anyone with a lick of sense would avoid consuming chemicals designed for fish tanks.


It's the phosphate salt vs. the sulphate one used in the human medicine (Plaquenil).

Both counterions get used in medicines, but it's tough to say in general if it matters: sometimes it makes a difference, other times it's just whatever's easier/cheaper to make.


The article says Trump instructed the FDA to clinically trial it, and describes the conditions under which a doctor can currently prescribe it. What exactly are you claiming is irresponsible about this?


That link has absolutely nothing to do with whether Trump "recommends that the public obtain and self medicate with chloroquine"


Here’s one example of him advising that it might be useful: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fauci-throws-cold-water-trum...

And yeah, his language is imprecise enough that you could pick it apart and find a reasonable motivation behind it if you looked hard enough. But even a really charitable reading can only upgrade his remarks from “flagrantly dangerous” to “unnecessary and not very helpful”, and we should expect more from the president than that.


I was wondering the same. It's really hard to quote Trump because of the way he talks, but I looked up a transcript of the press conference in question: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-pres...

The quote (heavily pruned, but you can look it up in the link to verify I didn't change the meaning) is:

> Now, a drug called chloroquine ... is a common malaria drug. It is also a drug used for strong arthritis... in a somewhat different form ... But the nice part is, it’s been around for a long time, ... it’s not going to kill anybody.

> When you go with a brand-new drug, you don’t know that that’s going to happen. ... But this has been used in different forms — very powerful drug ... And it’s shown very encouraging — very, very encouraging early results. And we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately. [The FDA has] gone through the approval process; it’s been approved. ... So we’re going to be able to make that drug available by prescription or states.

There is more, and it's similar in tone. So I don't think he said "Please go take the following drug without advice from your doctor" but he did say that it was powerful, safe, and already approved by the FDA. So I think it's fair to say that he was incautious in talking about a potentially dangerous, experimental treatment.


It really sucks that people are downvoting your cogent and fact-based response.


I thought so too, but when someone gets involved in divisive topics online, they get what they get.


Do you have an exact quote from Henry II where he asks someone to murder Thomas Becket?


or an exact quote when George bush said there were WMDs in Iraq?


"The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons." (October 7, 2002).

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/new/doc%2012/Pre...


by the standards of the trump defenders he literally needed to say "there are WMDs in Iraq"



He said that it has had very encouraging early results, and we know it won't kill anyone because it has already been in use, and that they will work with the FDA to make it available. All of this is accurate. It doesn't mean people should be self-medicating, anymore than they should be self-medicating for malaria treatment.

Look, I've been highly critical of Trump's handling of the crisis but you can't really pin this particular incident on him.


This is a smear tactic to silence the rational and logical criticism of near constant mendacity by a public official. The actual political agenda here is the smear tactic itself, that tries to stop holding such public officials accountable to their prior statements, as if they have taken no oath of office that binds them to a fiduciary duty to protect others.

We can have no civil society without these oaths being taken seriously, and holding people accountable for breaking them. It does not matter if they are CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, senators, representatives, or presidents. We are lost if they are treated as mere scraps of paper or words people say as blasé ritual.


Exact quote regarding a drug not approved by the FDA for treatment of the disease: "We’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately." And: "It may work, it may not work. I feel good about it. That’s all it is. Just a feeling."

From a pharmaceutical company, this would be patently illegal advertising since it's mentioning an off-label use of a drug. From a politician with zero medical knowledge, it's vastly irresponsible given the size of audience who listens to him and trusts him.


The FDA has approved it as a prescription drug. You shouldn't use a prescription drug unless you have a doctor telling you to. A doctor would know to look for the side effects and contraindications of quinine (of which there are many).

Obviously, self medicating a prescription drug is irresponsible. None of what the president says changes that. He said the FDA approved it. Independent of the truth value of that statement, it would still be approved of as a prescription drug.


The FDA has not approved it as a prescription drug for Covid-19. It's approved for malaria.


That's not really relevant. A physician can lawfully prescribe it today for COVID-19 despite not being FDA approved for that indication because it's approved for other indications. This is called off-label use. What FDA approval for treating COVID-19 would mean is that the drug could be marketed for such use. In a pandemic, I don't think that's a major consideration.


It absolutely is relevant. A layperson will hear "chloroquine works on Covid-19. The FDA's approved it. The President himself said so."


Luckily a lay person cannot get medical grade chloroquine. They can purchase a chemical to use in aquariums, but that is not medication. Those chemicals are not regulated, and may contain all sorts of other compounds that could kill humans, or have an incorrect amount of chloroquine.

Sorry, no matter what the president says, self-medicating is nuts.


> self-medicating is nuts.

Agreed.

> no matter what the president says,

That doesn't mean giving prominent authority figures a pass on outright falsehoods. He said the FDA approved chloroquine to be prescribed for Covid-19. The FDA said they had not done that.


> That doesn't mean giving prominent authority figures a pass on outright falsehoods. He said the FDA approved chloroquine to be prescribed for Covid-19. The FDA said they had not done that.

It doesn't matter, because chloroquine is already FDA approved to treat COVID 19. Let me explain: chloroquine is an FDA approved drug for malaria, which means doctors can prescribe it for whatever they want. It has been approved as a legal prescription drug and doctors can prescribe anything for any reason whatsoever.

That does not mean it's now okay to take it without a prescription.


It’s obviously nuts to take medical advice from Donald Trump. However, some people will do it, which makes it irresponsible to give such advice, even obliquely.


He didn't give medical advice. He was talking about what the FDA and what hospitals could do. There wasn't oblique advice in the slightest.


> He was talking about what the FDA and what hospitals could do

And even that information was wrong. That's the point I'm trying to make.


Thankfully Trump didn't say to take it. He said doctors can prescribe it. Doctors know what dosage is safe (and there is a safe dosage, since quinines are sold at the grocery store all the time), and what contraindications there may be for certain dosages. Your aquarium cleaner box does not.


https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/12421203910547579... https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/12413672399007785...

So everything below him explicitly telling everyone to obtain and consume chloroquine doesn't count, right? He's the goddamn president. I expect his words to be very carefully weighted.


Let me help you a bit: s/I expect his words to be carefully weighted/I expect a person in his position to use carefully considered words/

By now we know that's not the reality the US lives in.


Where have you been hiding since 2016, that you expect Trump's words to be very carefully weighted?


You're blaming Trump for the peanut gallery on Twitter?


I think if you want to criticize somebody for saying something, they should have at least actually said it.


Please don't make inflammatory comments in lieu of simple Internet searches.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/trump-u...


It is also the recommended treatment in some European countries

https://epidemio.wiv-isp.be/ID/Documents/Covid19/COVID-19_In...


In the movie Contagion (2011) there's an influencer promoting an untested medicine during a global pandemic. It was quite scary and upsetting and all too real.

But now we have the president of the United States recommending you to make your own drug cocktail during a global pandemic. If someone had written that in the script it would've been thrown out as too unreal.


  most powerful nation on this planet
That was true once. I doubt it’s true today.


I think it's a stretch to pin this particular death on Trump. He never suggested or advised people self-medicate prescription drugs. This was just a scared uneducated couple that made a terrible mistake.


Agreed.

Also, this wasn't even somebody taking too much of a prescribed drug. The man who died drank aquarium cleaner.


It's a prescription drug (unless you're ingesting the aquarium cleaner). No one is recommending self-medication.

Two people having a bad reaction suggests highly improper usage.

Do you dislike it mainly because Trump mentioned it?


Just one in a long line of completely inappropriate and norm breaking things he's done as President. Releasing classified info, false claims on Hurricane Dorian, fighting with his intelligence agencies, vaccine hoaxes, suppressing the press. Just go down the list.

Possibly the least presidential president we've had in awhile.


> Releasing classified info

The President can make that decision, it is part of his powers as President. He isn't prohibited from doing that. Perhaps you don't think something in particular should have been released. If so make that case, but just complaining about this in general is illogical.

> fighting with his intelligence agencies

You mean the intelligence agencies that have worked very hard to delegitimize his presidency, mislead the FISA court and so on? Those agencies have a lot to answer for and shouldn't be treated as infallible.

> suppressing the press

Really? The press seems quite free to say whatever they want under Trump. It just seems silly to say that Trump is limiting the press.


When did Trump recommend that people self-medicate chloroquine? Even the CNN article trying to pin this on him only quoted him as saying that he was working with the FDA to make it available via prescription for this treatment.


You're surely aware that Trump regularly declares himself more knowledgeable than the experts and derides his critics as 'fake news' or 'never trumpers' etc. etc. It's not a stretch to think that more credulous folk might take his tweets literally in defiance of common sense, given the media ecosystem dedicated to promoting his 24-7.


Trump didn’t come up with or popularize the idea for this treatment. All he’s done is instruct the FDA to trial it, and stated exactly when a doctor can prescribe it. This is nothing more than any of the other doctors or health officials who think the treatment has potential have done. There is no possible way that any of his comments could be construed as advice to illegally acquire and self-medicate with a drug you know nothing about. All of his comments have been about have been about having the drug properly approved for use by qualified doctors. Which given the circumstances seems like exactly the sort of response you would want from the executive.


Now now, there are multiple quotations on this thread showing that not to be true.


There is not a single one showing this not to be true, trump has:

* Instructed the FDA to perform a clinical trial

* Said the FDA has approved it for treatment of Coronavirus in “compassionate use” circumstances

* Said he thinks it will be effective

* Said he can’t be sure how it will turn out

All of his quotes on the topic can be put into one of those categories. The first two are simply statements of fact, the second two are statements of opinion (and presented as such), opinions that are shared by many doctors and medical officials (including the ones who initially suggested and popularized this idea).

Trump has made absolutely no statements at all saying:

* This will certainly work out

* It’s a good idea to self medicate

So, if there’s so many quotes proving you to be correct, I’m sure you could provide one. Instead of just making an unfounded and unsubstantiated claim that you’re correct.


Trump has made absolutely no statements at all saying:

This will certainly work out*

"But the nice part is, it’s been around for a long time, so we know that if it — if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody."

Full quote in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22669656

Look, I know you want to nuance your way out of this, but it's not gonna fly because remarks like the above are taken at face value by foolish people and that's something that public figures have a responsibility to take into account. As I keep pointing out, that's why pharma ads have to have so many warnings in them. You think they wouldn't rather just say 'try this, it'll cure what ails ya!' But bitter experience has shown that people need to reminded about side effects and safe dosage and listening to their doctor over and over and over again.

In case you follow up on this thread, please listen to this - an interview with the woman whose husband died, describing how they came to try the medication: https://twitter.com/VaughnHillyard/status/124225399700566425...


That's completely unrelated to the person you responded to. You can't blame someone for simply mentioning something and not even advocating for it. Good grief.


He didn’t recommend people self medicate. And their are doctors in New York using these drugs right now. Some dumbass self medicating with any prescription drug without a doctor’s supervision gets what he gets.

And the drug does show promise. Trump could cure cancer and people will be mad about it. If Obama had mentioned this drug people would react completely differently. During H1N1, 4000 Americans died from that; it isn’t like Obama had a stellar track record in quelling a pandemic either.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/03/22/new-yo...

https://www.insidernj.com/press-release/top-doctors-join-pen...

All of this concern that this treatment is “unproven” — well of course it is, this is all happening very fast, but to immediately oppose this drug because Trump is just political nonsense. It seems almost as if people want it to take years to find a solution to this thing. This constant anti-Trump vitriol is getting tired and old. People are dying right now, yet we are going to quibble on a drug that is showing promise just because Trump suggested it?

https://veltnews.com/no-deaths-at-lennox-hill-hospital-from-...


I too find it inappropriate to use a drug that hasn't first been properly tested by the president. Do lead the way, president Trump! :o)


He didn’t recommend using the drug. And even if he straight up told people to eat massive doses meant for fish, that still wouldn’t absolve anyone from the consequences of their actions.


I watched all of the press conferences. He never recommended it. He said that it showed promise and he had high hopes that it would work. One day he even clearly said that it might or it might not work.

This is hardly what I call a recommendation.

The point was to give the American people some hope that we are on the right track to finding something that helps.


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