There…is…only…one…truth…and…Lord…Trump…is…its…messenger. All others are false. You must never accept so-called facts from non-believers. Lord Trump will crush them and their evidence beneath his holy feet. The only truth comes from Lord Trump. To deny this is heresy most foul.
This message was brought to you by the Church of Trump, Our Lord And Savior.
[laughs in legalese]
But setting aside the titanic, un-punishable fuckup of what Dr. Trump did by peddling this, we might ask if your local ICU doc could be sued. And the answer is no, for two reasons (and also others).
It’s SOP to throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks in cases like this. The premise behind this wasn’t totally implausible (drugs do lots of crazy things they’re not “supposed” to) and the first weak-ass study said “…maybe?” So you do a second weak-ass study.
This is also a weak-ass study. Not bad, not incompetent, not wrong, but weak by the standards of “we can now prove that drug X is good/bad for disease Y.” That’s not a complaint; no methodologically rigorous trial could even have started by now. We’re a long, long way away from knowing if this drug is of much help, or what the associated risks are. The difference between most doctors and Trump is that they get that even if this still IS a miracle drug, we’re years away from being able to know that it is one.
tl;dr: Trump was insane to say “hey, this is probable a cure!” But it’s only slightly less insane to now say “OMG this murder-drug is definitely killing people.” [glances at headline]
It’s been a real game changer.
Mass Murderer Trump should rot in Hell, if such a place existed.
That it overlaps with a meme somehow isn’t even surprising, now. The Trump administration continues to be self-parodying in the most unlikely ways.
I’m willing to settle for him rotting in prison.
The Brazilian study was not really a failure of hydroxychloroquine. It was a catastrophic failure of institutional oversight.
From what the original article says it sounds like a desperate attempt to be the first out there with blockbuster results, pushing the doses so aggressively that they produced a well-characterized toxicity.
Declaration of Helsinki be damned, I guess.
Can’t sue the dictator. Can’t sue the doc.
Can sue the manufacturer who, in this case, isn’t really to blame but that’s the way the game in played in this country.
I would love to see an actual lawyer on this, but maybe? It gets complicated because Trump is doing a government duty (not well, but y’know). Misrepresentation (both Intentional and Negligent), while generally a matter of contract law, also applies to torts. The link I included is to California civil jury instructions, but as far as I’m aware, misrepresentation comes directly from English common law, so should be applicable in similar forms nationwide.
If someone
a) Makes a claim of fact,
b) the claim is false,
c) the person knew it was false, or made the claim recklessly and without regard to its truth,
d) the person intended the plaintiff to rely on the claim,
e) the plaintiff’s reliance on the claim was reasonable,
f) the plaintiff was harmed,
g) and the harm was caused at least in part by the reliance on the defendant’s claims…
Then baby, you’ve got a suit going.
yup, rob’s write up makes it a bit confusing. to summarize: two closely related drugs – hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine – have been studied for covid-19 treatments.
both drugs seem to have killed more people than they helped. it’s preliminary of course; but there doesn’t seem to be any miracle cure for covid-19.
not that it’s a surprise. by random chance trump would be right some of the time. that he’s wrong so often… that takes work. pretty much, therefore, if you take the opposite of what he says then you’re good to go.
Here is a video that discusses both drugs and how they work at the molecular level. Posted on Apr 10, 2020. No updates in the video description as of 4/21/2020
I know Alfalfa always put up he hand when you say ‘Underclass,’ but stop it. Chloroquine has a taste and it’s on panel as a dosage guide.
I think the actual Trump quote was “What the hell do you have to lose?” Which is interestingly what he said to black voters in 2016:
He’s truly a self-serving, vulgar, manipulative and harmful man.
Remdesivir is a hard word to say. I’m guessing he does not own stock in Gilead, so not worth his time learning. I also have to wonder if he is actually done with hydroxychloroquine yet. We shall see.
Nazi communist elderly veterans of the US military. The very worst kind! (/s)
Gaah. Poe’s Law applies even to that post. Can I have another timeline? Please?
That’s true from a statistical standpoint, but I can tell you from spending more than a decade working on clinical trials that if a small, early trial like this existed, no IRB would approve a subsequent trial of the same drug or device for the same disease state without massive political or economic pressure. Even then, the IRB would require an “instant stop” trigger built into the study to put a halt to the study the moment a single patient’s condition started going sideways.
That’s too bad. It would be nice to have an effective treatment. The fact that this would have been cheap (ISTR that the patent has long since lapsed) and the side effects (although potentially severe) are well known would have been a bonus. Despite my hatred of Trump, I was rather hoping that this was one of those broken clock moments when he turned out to be right. And cheap might be nice in this country, but it would be a REAL life saver in the third world.
Yup, hydroxychloroquine actually being useful in Covid-19 would have been hugely helpful. Let’s hope the researchers find something else that actually works.
Recommending hydroxychloroquine and other bizarre pronouncements are a direct reflection of White House staff meetings.
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