Hydroxychloroquine's false hope: How an obscure drug became a coronavirus 'cure' | The Fact Checker

but one treatment in particular has been getting a lot of attention

hydroxychloroquine

hydroxychloroquine

hydroxychloroquine claims about hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have taken over the global consciousness online conversations media articles and statements from politicians have quickly and incorrectly labeled it as a

cure

for covin a teenager that President Trump has repeatedly defended

hope

in the medications that hydroxychloroquine is. I

hope

it is a very important answer. There are a lot of very positive things happening with that. That's a game changer. That is the case. This

false

hope has led to widespread panic. The prescription

drug

hydroxychloroquine is now. are in short supply, even for people who need them for other serious illnesses, the frenzy around him is causing some possibly devastating consequences for so many people, the president likes to say, well, you know what's going to hurt, well, it could hurt you if you have heart problems. or you have and maybe you don't even know that you have heart problems, you can't just prescribe these

drug

s en masse to everyone because then we will definitely have another kind of crisis on our hands, so how come this drug

became

so in demand and that? are the consequences of the attention people are receiving are eager for good news about how to combat the new

coronavirus

that has claimed tens of thousands of lives around the world chloroquine rocks and chloroquine are decades-old antimalarial drugs that are often used to relieve symptoms of inflammation In patients with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, there were rumors online about the drugs as a possible treatment for Cobain 19 as early as February 2020, in mid-February, and a media outlet in China tweeted about clinical trials of the drug.

A Facebook post in Nigeria mentioned the drug. Videos in the French media appeared calling chloroquine a

cure

. News about the medicine spread throughout the world. Conversation about the potential treatment began appearing online and broke into the media in the US in mid-March. co-wrote the promotion of the possible cure, then Elon Musk retweeted that article. The Google Trends sauce skyrocketed and searched for the drugs and there was a lot more talk about it on Twitter. The hypothesis made its way to conservative-leaning media outlets like Blaze pundit Breitbart Gateway and finally to Fox News by a lawyer and co-author of Google Doc on Drugs, a well-controlled, peer-reviewed study that showed a 100% correct cure against The

coronavirus

even used the term one hundred percent, which we know no medicine works.

One hundred percent and even Tucker Carlson was quite skeptical of these claims, but in my case he immediately blew up a bunch of rumors that something was off. The study mentioned on Fox News was conducted by this French doctor and was not well controlled or peer-reviewed in In

fact

, the journal that originally published the results has since announced that the study does not meet its standards, but interest in the drug He grew to reach the White House. Trump first promoted hydroxychloroquine at a White House press conference, but it has been used in different forms. very powerful medicine in different forms and the first results have been shown to be very encouraging, very, very encouraging.

Trump then tweeted about the drugs and also retweeted a post about the previously touted but flawed French study, attention from the president and mainstream media giving the theory even more oxygen. Social media companies hunted for misinformation about the drugs, removed the original Google Doc, and blocked Trump's private attorney Rudy Giuliani's Twitter account until you removed misleading posts. President Trump talked about drugs again on April 5, and there are signs that he is working on this very The strong sides Social media mentions of drugs spiked again as the hype around drugs continued . Experts were wary of the lack of scientific evidence.

You hear from the president, as we've all heard, what I call anecdotal reports that certain drugs work. Anecdotal evidence is like a Yelp review, but for science there are personal stories that are not controlled clinical trials and I think that has been the problem is that the president and some of his advisors are really giving so much importance to these anecdotes. . or personal stories rather than science, actual scientific studies on chloroquine have been done in the past on different types of coronaviruses. The cdc looked at this in 2005 after the initial SARS virus and found that it was active in cell cultures etc. when they tried chloroquine in a mouse model, it didn't work against the initial SARS virus, which is a bit of a red flag that this is a bit unusual.

Larger clinical trials are being carried out by World Health Organization University laboratories and governments around the world. Trials of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for the treatment of Kovin 19. There is very little evidence that we actually have a clinical benefit, which is a bit bad for something that is being promoted a lot, like we should probably have some data and some science behind it . Yes, actually. There have been and will continue to be negative consequences for over-promising medications. The potential attention around the drug caused a surge in demand from doctors and patients, leading to a shortage. There are people who need this medicine.

It is a life-saving medication for lupus. or rheumatoid arthritis and so if they can't get their prescriptions refilled, it's like they have a personal problem and they would be hurt, so if someone asks me what will happen if they can't access them, frankly, I don't know, but I know. I know it's possibly very detrimental and devastating to my well-being when you're already living with an autoimmune condition and you don't know what's going to happen from one day to the next, hence the

fact

that you don't have your medication. Being dependent on it or the possibility that you won't have it when it runs out is very scary.

There are also potentially fatal side effects of taking the medications for certain people, they cause cardiac arrhythmias and because the coronavirus can also cause inflammation in the heart. The last thing you don't want to do is have an irregular heartbeat and that's what leads to people going into cardiac arrest and dying, however, world health leaders like the World Health Organization and the Food and Drug Administration Drugs are clearly interested in the drugs that even the FDA In late March we gave emergency approval to distribute millions of doses of the drugs to hospitals across the country and we have stockpiled 29 million hydroxychloroquine pills, we are shipping them to several laboratories, our army, we are sending them to hospitals and we are sending them everywhere it is important that we do not put all our eggs in this basket and that we continue to analyze some of these other known drugs politicians are politicizing this particular drug there are other treatments There are other clinical trials that people may not even hear about.

Scientific communication, which is important for us to be able to share findings between orders, was going to be a substantial signal hindered by all this talk about chloroquine over the course of several weeks. After publishing online the media and politicians turned a little-known drug into a 100% cure for the coronavirus the results in France, in China and beyond have been nothing short of impressive there is no doubt that it is certain what you have to lose what you have to lose hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as treatments because koban 19 is not supported by scientific evidence in a pandemic it is important for everyone to follow the example of scientists rumors on the internet are the least reliable source of information and politicians are not qualified to giving scientific advice despite the best of intentions Thank you for watching the Washington Post fact-checking videos we bring to you while we work from home, if you hear something or see a post online that doesn't sound quite right, let us know, send us a email and we will be sure to review it.

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