I’m sure this is a lie, or that he’s getting a micro dose, but:
President Trump told reporters Monday that he has been taking hydroxychloroquine for about a week and a half and that the White House physician knows he is taking the anti-malaria drug despite the fact that he continues to test negative for the coronavirus.
Let’s see here. The FDA has advised against using hydroxychloroquine because it causes QT elongations and/or ventricular tachycardia, both heart rhythms that lead to faints and (if we were all very good boys and girls this year, and Santa is feeling veerry generous) death. So if Trump keels over on the toilet, we know why.
(Just in case you aren’t keeping up with failed treatments, hydroxywhatever, in addition to perhaps killing you, doesn’t fucking work for COVID.)
dmsilev
I’m guessing either he’s lying or he’s actually getting a placebo because his doctor figured that was, by far, easier than talking him out of taking hydroxychloroquine.
debbie
Other side effects of hydroxychloroquine are deposits on the lens in the eyes which are not reversible. There’s also possibility of damage to the liver.
rafah
My guess? His doctor is giving him some sugar pills to get the guy off his back.
Steeplejack
I’ve been off line all day, and I did a full Danny Thomas spit-take when I came home a little while ago and saw this. Twitter is going nuts.
One gem (among many):
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Somewhat related: apparently, the predicted second surge of cases in states such as Texas, Florida, and Georgia hasn’t happened (yet?) and any increase in numbers is allegedly because of increased testing. It’s been 3 weeks since these states have opened up. Is this true?
Johns Hopkins Data Shows COVID-19 Deaths Have Declined in the US for the 4th Consecutive Week
Texas reported its highest single-day increase in new COVID-19 cases as restaurants, salons, and cinemas open to the public
Reddit comment in that thread given gold:
Edit:
Later on:
download my app in the app store mistermix
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yeah, for two reasons:
Also, I should have followed the link: deaths are a lagging indicator. We wouldn’t see an uptick from deaths yet.
feebog
This really is the ultimate “boy cries wolf” situation is it not? On the one hand you want to count it as lie number 18,543. On the other hand you have visions of the fat orange bastard face planting into a rosebush during a press conference.
MattF
The odd thing about the claims for a hydroxychloroquine treatment is that it’s probably a scam, promoted by a physician gone rogue. I guess Trump sees promoters of scams as allies and fellow-geniuses– however, reality may intrude, whether Trump believes in it or not.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
g
Josie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
The part of Texas I’m in has only been open for a week. It is true that the meat packing plants have been increasing the numbers due to more testing. The thing is, however, that those cases will probably spread to the communities around them pretty soon.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
He also snorts Adderall daily. Which is really the preventative?
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Cases, tests and deaths are all increasing rapidly in Texas, but I don’t know how they can conclude that therefore the increase in cases isn’t real. When Massachusetts was in the exponential-growth phase, for a while tests and positive cases were growing at about the same rate so the positive fraction was roughly constant, but it certainly didn’t mean nothing was increasing for real.
Roger Moore
In other bizarre conspiracy theory news, DHS is warning cell phone providers that they need to guard their cell towers because idiots are convinced 5G mobile networks spread COVID-19. We really live in the dumbest timeline.
debbie
@MattF:
A scam led by Sharyl Attkisson. She interviews a couple of “doctors.”
BGinCHI
@rafah: Beat me to it.
Placebo, but with financial gains.
Baud
@Roger Moore: I believe such vandalism has already happened in England.
MattF
@Roger Moore: That’s spectacular stupidity. Here’s an article from Ars on the subject.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@rafah:
I’d like to think that was true because it would mean someone was behaving with ethics and sense. But those things seem to be less widely spread than I assumed. So who knows.
JMG
If the President’s heart went blooey, any physician who gave him that drug would be on the fast track to SuperMax. I bet the hardest part of the treatment is telling Trump why each dose looks like a little Fred, Wilma or Dino.
JPL
We are having spikes in both positive cases and deaths due to the virus in rural areas of GA
Of course we have having an increase of folks saying that how do we know it was Covid-19 that caused the death.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
hydroxychloroquine would be, like, a triple-digit score on Scrabble, man
Montanareddog
I will bet my house that Trump is not taking hydroxychloroquine. This is Mr “Sharpie a weather map” doubling down on his bullshit again.
dmsilev
@Roger Moore: At least that’s a global idiocy, proof that we don’t have a monopoly on stupidity.
BruceFromOhio
Snake oil don’t care, nor does the snake oil salesman.
@feebog: This would make me believe Gaia loves her children, and wants them to be happy.
NotMax
This is your president.
This is your president on drugs.
//
dmsilev
@JMG: I dunno, Pence probably would pardon him.
danielx
@feebog:
Oh please oh please oh please….
West of the Rockies
A church in a town 20 minutes from mine defied the governor’s order and had a service on Mother’s Day. The next day a member (a member alright!) tested positive. So, while I hope they didn’t create a very local hotspot, if no one else tests positive, all the god botherers will strut around pleased with themselves and inspire others to follow/folly in their footsteps.
Who would Jeebus infect?
Elizabelle
@JMG: The Dino ones are extra strength.
Jeffro
Brit Hume is trying to downplay this on Twitter: “does anyone REALLY believe trumpov is taking hydroxywhatever?”
silly us, taking the president* at his word, Brit!
NotMax
@Roger Moore
Silly crazy zealots. It’s not the towers, it’s the devices.
Did anyone ever hear about covid-anything before we had cell phones?
//
Jeffro
@Jeffro: I mean, talk about the banality of evil
MattF
@Elizabelle: Yabbadabbbadoo!!!
Mikeindublin
Tom Hanks’ wife took hydroxychloroquine for Corona Virus if I remember. Said the side affects were so bad she had to crawl across the room it was so painful.
Baud
Good headline.
japa21
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Just wanted to update you. Surgery went well. We need to wait a few days for pathology results but the doctor was using the term benign in terms of what he thinks the results will be.
BruceFromOhio
With Ohio joining the covidiocy, I’m looking for positives, hospitalizations, ICU admittance, and deaths to curve upward starting the day after Memorial Day, and then continue climbing into mid-June. June 8 is two weeks after MD, that will be the next peak. Will be an interesting anthropological exercise to see if Governor DeWine keeps his word, or, as I will, let Gaia and Darwin conclude.
Am enjoying the covidiocy cross-over with the ammosexuals in the political cartoons, could be a two-fer bonus round. For those tsk-tsk’ing about wishing for harm to others, I say, be prepared to be hit by a car if you insist on playing in traffic.
West of the Rockies
@Montanareddog:
I agree. Clump is pissed off for looking stupid over the hydro shit, so he’s blathering on to demonstrate how he knows more than the doctors (and generals, physicists, football players, soda jerks, teachers, rabbis, biologists, plumbers–basically, anyone ever).
khead
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Georgia doctored their data.
Mary G
I took it for 30+ years and was fine with regular blood tests and eye exams. Only feeling slightly worse without it. Trumpov said at one time that “we have” 29 million doses, which are certainly no longer worth what they thought, so he’s hyping it so he can recoup some of the losses.
NotMax
@MattF
Smoke ’em if you got ’em.
:)
BBA
I have no idea whether next week he’ll say he was being sarcastic, or he’ll say he’s been taking HCQ for decades and that’s how he’s stayed so healthy.
Steeplejack
@Montanareddog:
It’s classic Trump distraction/misdirection from the Pompeo scandal blowing up.
rikyrah
He is not taking that drug ??
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Having watched the video now, I think this person from twitter dot com is on to something
one thing I haven’t seen mentioned much is he stumbled into this revelation while whining about Dr Bright .
rikyrah
debbie
@BruceFromOhio:
DeWine read the riot act to the restaurant/bar owners who earned citations from the Health Department over the weekend. And then Husted stepped up and read it to them realllll slow so that they would understand.
(It was fun listening to today’s press conference.)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@JMG:
Not if President Pence grants the doctor a pardon
Elizabelle
@MattF: Shhhhh. That’s his new Secret Service code name.
LeftCoastYankee
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
LOL. This made me snarf my water. I think it’s because you’ve captured where what’s left of my brain is at….
Mai naem mobile
I hope I am around for when the real documents come out about Donny and the hydroxyquinone. I am guessing that will be decades into the future like Nixon’s stuff. You can take super small doses prophylactically for malaria but it’s got the big side effect for the wrong people. The big company pushing this is owned by a couple of South Asians who belong to Donny’s NJ Golf Club. I’m waiting for when Steve Bannon decides it’s time for the South Asians’ time in the barrel because you know that little fact will be used then. First he came for the muslins, then Messiicans…gays…black wimmens….Chinese…we got lots of time till November for every group.
debbie
@rikyrah:
Gotta love that nanny who’s ambling around thinking that having already had COVID-19 meant she had immunity. smh
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Doesn’t affect any in-state actions, from medical certification boards pulling his license on up to criminal charges.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@khead:
I believe something along those lines was suggested in one of those threads I linked to and it was dismissed as a conspiracy theory. These people absolutely love to think of themselves as even-handed and super-logical. That redditor I quoted in #5 is an example; the smugness just radiates from the screen
Karen
I have Rheumtoid Arthritis and took Plaquenol for two years. You have to get your eyes checked all the time or you can go blind. Hopefully…
Ten Bears
Manipulating the market.
Lacuna Synecdoche
Deleted by author. @dmsilev speaks for me (and already posted the same thing).
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
Even in a GOP-controlled state?
jimmiraybob
@Steeplejack:
I enthusiastically clap in your general direction.
Sloane Ranger
@Baud: Correct, it has. Some people will believe anything.
In another story, a woman was interviewed who said she wasn’t scared by something that didn’t even have a “real name” yet. Presumably, either she’ll take it seriously if it is officially named Lungpox or she believes that COVID-19 is powerless if it doesn’t have a name she thinks of as “real”.
Montanareddog
@West of the Rockies: next he will announce he is snorting Lysol and shoving UV incandescents up his ass.
He is a full-time idiot but on the rare occasions even he realises he has made a fool of himself, he cannot bear it and has to revisit it, like a dog to his vomit.
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: LOL. They aren’t allowing reader comments on that story.
JPL
Pompeo on trump’s orders sold military arms to Saudi, and now trump says he is taking hydroxychloroquine. okie dokie.
Mai naem mobile
I’ve been watching Sarah Cooper’s version of Donny enough that I am going to wait to see her do it. He’s just way more palatable with Sarah Cooper lipsynching him. She will probably be sniffing a can of spray paint not just a sharpie when she does this one.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@JPL:
Not surprising in rural areas. I bet most rural Georgians don’t take the virus seriously
And that argument is the most stupid and maddening one possible. “They were going to die anyway. COVID didn’t really kill them!” ?
Lacuna Synecdoche
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
Yep. Any uptick would start off slow and asymptomatically snowball a few weeks later. We probably won’t notice it until there are a lot of people infected, AND they start showing symptoms severe enough to require hospitalization. Say 6-10 weeks after relaxing constraints.
Scuffletuffle
@Roger Moore: People doing this kind of vandalism really should be made to wear a scarlet “I.”
Another Scott
@BruceFromOhio: The UW historical numbers latest are from May 10, but deaths weren’t past a peak, and daily infections were clearly rising from a local minimum a few weeks earlier in Ohio.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/ohio
It’s understandable that people want to assume that it’s less dangerous now that some places successfully passed a peak. But too many people are ignoring the fact that:
The only thing that flattens the curve is people being smart, meaning:
I fear that 2-3-4 weeks from now, we’re going to have many, many people getting sick and dying for no good reason.
:-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Josie:
Exactly. Same with prisons. The staff and their families will still go out into the community for groceries
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Partisan control may (or may not) dictate any actions taken (or not taken) by the government but partisan control in and of itself does not stretch the legal umbrella of protection to encompass it ipso facto mooting any actions by or within the state.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
That tracks with everything I’ve read. Sometimes I think I’m living in a bubble on BJ when I come across contrary information that sounds reasonable on the surface (it helps with a tone that suggests you’re the crazy/hysterical one). Then I find out they’re full of shit
NotMax
@Sloane Ranger
Donpox.
//
Spanky
I’m gonna guess that that placebo is in the form of a red pill. At least it would be if I was prescribing it.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
You’re probably right on that count. Do you think Trump’s lying about taking hydroxi then? He has to have some financial stake in a pharmaceutical company that manufactures it
BBA
@Another Scott: No good reason? Being trapped in your home for months on end carries severe mental costs, to say nothing of the financial impact of losing your job. Combine this with the fact that we aren’t any closer to curing or containing the virus than we were when we locked down, and I have to wonder what the hell the point of all this was.
If we could do what Korea has done, there’d be a point. But we can’t.
tokyokie
@Mai naem mobile:
According to my pharmaceuticals reference, hydroxychloroquine only comes in 200 mg tabs. A normal dose is 3 or 4 times that. I guess you could use a pill splitter to get a 100 mg dose, but I’m not sure whether that would be “super small.” But I’m guessing he’s getting a placebo and being told it’s hydroxychloroquine, if he’s taking anything at all.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Self-answering query.
Magic 8-ball sez: “Are you kidding? Ask a tough one.”
;)
Geoboy
Best potty death since Elvis.
debbie
@tokyokie:
They could have him on a related drug, chloroquine. It comes in different strengths.
I think Trump’s just calling it hydroxychloroquine because he’s so proud of himself for saying the name without stumbling.
Uncle Cosmo
@NotMax: I have fond memories from >20 years back of the Flintstones Cave Bar in Göreme, Turkey, which you just ruined. Tessekurler!
Martin
I love that he (claims he) didn’t start taking it until the studies came out showing it causes more harm than good.
norepli
@JMG: are you sure? perhaps the medal of freedom would be more appropriate
Uncle Cosmo
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): One of the side benefits (to the current Misadministration) of classifying COVID-19 deaths as due to something else is that it reduces the number of people who know someone who died from the virus. It’s easy to dismiss the pandemic as “a hoax” or “nothing worse than the flu” until and unless reality shoves its way into your circle of acquaintances. I get the impression this was Putin’s aim as well in classifying so many Russian deaths as due to “pneumonia” rather than COVID-19.
Another Scott
@BBA: Trouble is, the choice isn’t between a) stay locked down and b) open up. The choice is between a) do sensible things to minimize deaths while minimizing damage to the economy and b) rush ahead willy-nilly and say, “eh, whachagonna do?, so let’s open on Tuesday!”.
The economy is going to be hurting until people are confident that they won’t be hospitalized (or die) 2-3-4 weeks after going to the store or going back to work. Only sensible policies will give people that confidence.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Melusine
He sounded rather congested during the presser.
Thoughts and prayers. To Cthulhu.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Uncle Cosmo:
Yeah, I thought the Russian numbers were bullshit. 200,000+ cases and only like 3000 deaths? In RUSSIA? Pull the other one Vlad
@NotMax:
Joking aside, I find myself hoping he is taking it. It would serve him right if he suffered serious health defects from it after he hyped it up and got several people killed
trnc
No reason for Hume to believe his bs any more than we do. It’s the Facebook data security phenomenon – people assume a company is doing something unethical (stealing your data and profiting from it), so they throw up their hands and say, “Waddya gonna do?”
Chris T.
Small-hands-pox?
Ceci n est pas mon nym
“I’m not just the owner of the Trump Hydroxychloroquine Company… I’m a customer!”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think doctors falling out of windows after complaining about shortages don’t count as Covid-19 deaths.
J R in WV
@Another Scott:
For one very good reason — they listened to Trump, did what he recommended, didn’t wear a mask because Trump doesn’t wear a mask, didn’t shelter at home, because Trump doesn’t do that…
Everyone who dies of Covid-19 from here on out dies in part because trump spreads lies and superstitions about the disease.