Scientist are just saying “tap the brakes.” No condemnation yet.
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Trump Fans Gobble Up His Favorite, Unproven COVID Drug—Some Are Even Trying To Cook It Themselves
On Tuesday, talk radio host and former Trump White House adviser Sebastian Gorka went further than Trump, announcing that he had been taking the drug in an attempt to avoid contracting COVID-19 for a month and posting a picture of his prescription bottle.
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Gorka isn’t alone. Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS), a doctor and Kansas Senate candidate, said Tuesday that he and several family members are taking hydroxychloroquine in an attempt to ward off the virus. “I’m relieved President Trump is taking it,” Marshall said.
Fringe right-wing activist Michael Coudrey, who Trump has retweeted in the past, claimed on Twitter on Tuesday that he’s been taking the drug prophylactically for a month—and even claimed it’s helped his skin. “My face is also very plush and vibrant,” Coudrey tweeted.
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The enthusiasm for hydroxychloroquine among Trump fans has taken on such broader meaning that it has even inspired criticism of competitors, including remdesivir, a more expensive drug that’s also being researched as COVID-19 treatment.
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Other Trump fans desperate for hydroxychloroquine have turned to unconventional, potentially dangerous methods. Last week, promoters of the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory—which posits that top Democrats run pedophile sex dungeons and eat children—boosted a “home recipe” for hydroxychloroquine that consisted of steeping various fruit rinds. While the recipe’s proponents claimed that it would help people avoid “big pharmas fillers,” the fruits suggested in the recipe, like grapefruit, could react dangerously with other medications.
That’s not the only dubious recipe for replicating hydroxychloroquine’s still-unproven effects. In April, a video from Missouri chiropractor Eric Nepute raging against “fake news” went viral, racking up more than 1 million views. In his video, Nepute claimed that people with COVID-19 symptoms should just drink Schweppes Tonic Water for the quinine, wrongly claiming that its effects were “similar-ish” to hydroxychloroquine.
I’m going to Spec’s to buy some whiskey. I’m thinking it’s 50/50 that they will be sold out of tonic water. Plus only 20% of the customers will be wearing masks. Damn.
Gin and tonic is a stereotypical British drink, because Brits used to drink it in India on the basis that the quinine helps stave off malaria. It does, just not in the doses provided in tonic water. It is, however, extremely refreshing so there is that.
Also, from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
It is a curious fact, and one to which no-one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonyx, or gee-N’N-T’N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand variations on this phonetic theme.
The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian ‘chinanto/mnigs’ which is ordinary water served just above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks’ which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the only one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that their names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds.
You’re obviously not drinking enough.
The Brits also gave the world its first cocktail…essentially a mojito, to stave off scurvy and sea sickness. Clever chaps, those limeys.
The Royal Navy used to give out a ration of watered-down rum, known as grog, to sailors. It sounds like a quaint old-fashioned seafaring tradition from the days of pirates and galleons…but it was discontinued only in 1970.
Here’s the Vermont infection trend, 5 days after full scale, unrestricted testing started 5 days ago. Test results are available to the State as well as those tested in 8-18 hours after the test is administered so the data is very fresh. The 5 day rolling average of infections prior to full-scale testing was 1.2 infections per day. The 5 day rolling average since is 2.6 infections per day.
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Back at my other place in Maryland, unrestricted testing, similar to Vermont, starts in two days. Infection rates are much higher there, on par with other high-population density states, so it will be interesting to compare the trends between such a state and the best-in-the-US numbers here in Vermont.
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Russia wins the race to become the first country (not called “USA”) to break the 300,000 cases mark. Their numbers remain wholly untrustworthy, though, as their death rate is about the same as for journalists falling out of open windows. I imagine the actual cases and deaths are far worse than Putin is letting on.
Heard this guy talking on NPR last week. Brave guy.
Russia is currently second in the global rankings for infections but 18th in mortality — with just over 2,300 deaths from COVID-19 reported.
Some statisticians have long eyed those figures with suspicion.
“I think it’s safe to say that if you multiply official death count by a factor of three, you will get a more or less true picture,” says Aleksei Raksha, an independent demographer in Moscow.
“I work with numbers, and numbers tell me what’s going on, not people,” he tells NPR.
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He should probably stay away from windows for a while.
And cans. Just to be sure.
In three to four weeks this increase will show up in the morgue.
One of the confounding things about Covid 19 is the time factor. One to two weeks before symptoms, another five to seven days to see if it takes a bad turn, and, for about 1.5%, another five or so days until the end.
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And so many places are still using symptoms as a threshold for testing.
We will never be free of it until we embrace the science of it.
Not in Houston, anyone can go get a test now. Had a friend whose daughter went 2 days ago, took 45 min.
Looking through the data at Worldometers I see a correlation between spikes in new cases and three weeks later, spikes in fatalities. I looked at NY, CA, TX, and a couple of other states and the connection is unmistakable.
In Texas, today’s record deaths of 63 was seeded on May 1st, with a then record new cases of 1438.
At what point is the pushing of hydroxychloroquine criminally negligent homicide?
Antimalarial drug touted by President Trump is linked to increased risk of death in coronavirus patients, study says
A study of 96,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients on six continents found that those who received an antimalarial drug promoted by President Trump as a “game changer” in the fight against the virus had a significantly higher risk of death compared with those who did not.
People treated with hydroxychloroquine, or the closely related drug chloroquine, were also more likely to develop a type of irregular heart rhythm, or arrhythmia, that can lead to sudden cardiac death, it concluded.
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For those given hydroxychloroquine, there was a 34 percent increase in risk of mortality and a 137 percent increased risk of a serious heart arrhythmias. For those receiving hydroxychloroquine and an antibiotic — the cocktail endorsed by Trump — there was a 45 percent increased risk of death and a 411 percent increased risk of serious heart arrhythmias.
