The Intercept: How Trump’s Propaganda Video Backfired

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2020 //
43

A few days ago, Trump opened his daily press briefing with a White House-made video intended to prove that he acted decisively to counter the coronavirus threat. The video was a response to a major story in the New York Times about his failure to take the virus seriously but to compare it to the common flu. Trump
smiled smugly as the taxpayer-funded tribute to Trump played.

As this story in the Intercept by Robert Mackey demonstrates, the video had a fatal flaw. Its timeline showed that Trump did nothing in the month of February, at a time when decisive action as needed.

The reporters were not fooled.

But, as CBS News correspondent Paula Reid pointed out to Trump after the video ended, there was a huge gap in the timeline: It mentioned absolutely no action by him in February and there was, as the Times had noted, a period of “six long weeks” after the travel restrictions until he “finally took aggressive action to confront the danger the nation was facing.”

In fact, the only entry on the video timeline for February — the month Trump held mass campaign rallies and described criticism of his handling of the virus from Democrats as “their new hoax” — was February 6: “CDC Ships First Testing Kits.” The fact that those test kits were defective, a massive failure at a critical moment, seems like an odd thing to brag about.

Having seemed so pleased with himself while the video was playing, Trump looked stunned by Reid’s observation that its timeline showed the period of inaction the Times had described. “The argument is that you bought yourself some time,” by imposing the partial travel ban from China, Reid noted. “You didn’t use it to prepare hospitals, you didn’t use it to ramp up testing.”

As Trump interrupted to denounce her as “so disgraceful,” the correspondent pressed on to ask what, exactly, Americans were supposed to take away from his gauzy video tribute to himself? “Right now nearly 20 million people are unemployed. Tens of thousands of Americans are dead. How is this sizzle reel or this rant supposed to make people feel confident in an unprecedented crisis?”

Trump had no response but to shift back to praising himself for restricting travel from China in January. “But what did you do with the time that you bought?” Reid asked. “The month of February… the video has a gap.”

After the briefing, Eric Lipton, one of the authors of the investigation that so enraged Trump, observed on Twitter that nothing in the video or the president’s comments “undermines even a single fact in the stories we published over the weekend.”

“The truth remains that the nation’s top health advisers concluded as of Feb. 14 that the U.S. needed to use targeted containment efforts to slow the virus spread,” Lipton added. “Trump then waited until March 16 to announce his support for these measures.”

Thank heavens for the free press!

Categories Health, Lies, Propaganda, Trump

Bob Greenberg: Prominent Educators Explain Why Their Teachers Made a Difference for Them

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2020 //
11

Bob Greenberg is a retired teacher who created a mission for himself: He interviews educators and makes short videos about their work. He also asks, in a separate video, which teachers made a difference in your life.

He calls his archive the Brainwave Video Anthology.

Here is a collection of more than 400 educators describing the teachers that mattered most to them.

Scan the list. You will find people you know or authors whose work you have read.

Categories Education Reform, Teachers

Parent: I Refuse to Run a Coronavirus Homeschool

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2020 //
22

This article was written by Jennifer Weiner, an education professor at the University of Connecticut. She explains why she refuses to follow the worksheets and detailed instructions for her twin sons. She recognizes that she is privileged as a person who has economic security, healthcare and is white. But there’s no reason to believe that children who lack her privileges need to be subjected to dull routine.

I read her article with pleasure, a welcome respite from the dire warnings issued by the test-and-punish crowd, by various bureaucrats, by think-tanks underwritten by the Gates Foundation, and many others who are certain that children’s brains will wither if they are not subjected daily to worksheets, test prep, and the holy tests themselves.

What happens if there is a respite in our academic Hunger Games? How will we know who will win and who will lose? This mother wants her children to have a timeout. I’m a grandmother now, but I suspect if my children were still in school, I would be in her camp. School is not a global race to the top. It should be a time to learn and explore and to find joy in reading, writing, thinking, and growing. What children miss most now is the personal contact with their teachers and the social interactions with other students. Jennifer Weiner reminds us that the NCLB pressure-cooker is unhealthy for all children, not just her own. When school resumes, we need to rethink the oppressive and pointless regime imposed on children by federal mandates and groupthink. It’s past time to rethink the status quo and place our faith in real education, students, and teachers, not tests and technology.

She writes:

Thanks to the coronavirus, my third-grade twins are home all day for the foreseeable future. I’m not going to recreate school for them.

Judge me all you want.

Out of respect for their amazing teachers, I’m making a good-faith effort to get my kids to do the work that’s been sent home, but that does not come anywhere close to filling what would have been a school day. After accomplishing the bare minimum, the agenda is to survive and watch too much TV. We are eating cookies and carbs and hoping for the best. We are loving one another and trying not to go insane.

When we got the call that our schools were closing, I knew I’d start seeing social media posts with home-schooling schedules and amazing and quite labor-intensive (for adults) activities for children.

My predictions were right: There have been color-coded home school charts with every minute scheduled, online resources on how to lead children through yoga and meditation, French lessons, and building their own rocket ships. Parents are sharing recipes with the right nutritional balance to enhance study productivity. Many have already begun to lament that they’re failing at meeting these new expectations.

I want to send a message to parents, and in particular to working moms, who will inevitably take on most of this home labor along with working remotely: This is going to be messy and that is OK.

I am not an expert in teaching third graders, particularly those like one of my sons, who has special needs and receives numerous services from talented professional educators every day to ensure he can thrive. We are so grateful to them and to our other son’s teachers and their patience, wisdom, and skill. We know that we don’t share these qualities.

I’m also not a parenting expert — a fact that would be clear if you met our wonderful but somewhat feral children. But I do know, from often painful firsthand experiences, that trying to turn mothering into a competitive sport is straight up unhealthy. It’s not a game I want to play.

My husband and I both work full time. Like so many others, we’re attempting to keep our family safe and fed during our state’s Covid-19 shutdown while simultaneously working to convince our boomer parents to practice social distancing, reaching out to other loved ones and friends and trying not to panic. Even when everything in our life is working the way it should, and with all the privileges we have — our solid health care, our economic stability, our whiteness — we often feel overwhelmed. So this pandemic felt like a bridge too far. We had to meet it head on: holding our breath, crossing our fingers. And not judging ourselves.

I’ve heard predictions from other parents about how this time without classroom instruction could lead to my kids (who, remember, are 8) falling behind so far that college will no longer be in their future. I hate to think of how parents who are preoccupied with worry about loss of income and how to provide food and shelter for their families feel.

They must be terrified their children will be unable to keep up as moms and dads with more flexibility, more security, or even full-time help talk about their aggressive at-home enrichment agendas for their little ones. Maybe this is the perfect time to call a timeout on the academic rat-race that was never healthy or fair in the first place.

Yes, we have embraced the need for some schedule, taking turns keeping an eye on the kids as they surf the internet to make sure whatever they are looking at is age-appropriate. (Of course, one of the boys wanted to learn about bombs.)

So far, we’ve seen them digging into mastodons, dwarf planets, the Mars rover and who made Legos and why. They’ve been reading a lot (mostly graphic novels and “Big Nate” books) because my kids were always avid readers and I don’t have to fight with them to do it. But there are no flash cards and no made-up projects to “enrich” them. We do not assign them essays or ensure their explorations are aligned with Common Core standards. There is no official “movement” or music time. We have not set up a makeshift classroom or given our family’s “school” a name.

We bake and have taste tests to see which cookie recipes are the best, because we like cookies and they are among the few things I know how to make. We walk and walk and walk. We eat together. We think about how lucky we are and try to help those who are more vulnerable and without our resources.

So far, the boys have played more video games and watched more television than they did during any given week before schools shut down. It keeps them busy while their dad and I try to finish our meetings before Zoom crashes.

We love each other, we yell, we apologize, we laugh, they punch each other, we yell some more, we make up. We live, we try to be compassionate and we hope this will all be a memory soon. And when it’s over, the schoolwork will be there.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Childhood, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Race to the Top, Testing

SomeDAM Poet on the $2 Trillion Bailout

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2020 //
7

Our blog poet reflects to wistfully on the fate of the $2 trillion appropriated by Congress as coronavirus relief for the American people:

Where have all the trillion$ gone
Long time pa$$ing
Where have all the trillion$ gone
Long time ago
Where have all the trillion$ gone
Gone to Wall Street every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?

Categories Accountability

Nancy Bailey: Beware the Vultures!

By dianeravitch
April 15, 2020 //
55

Nancy Bailey warns us to keep watch for the vultures who want to use the pandemic to attack and control public schools and teachers. They see an opportunity, and they are ready to pounce.

She writes:

There’s a movement underfoot to end the way children learn. Look carefully at who says “we need to reimagine” or “this is the time to reassess” schools. These can be signals from those who’ve led the charge to dismantle public schools for years. Like vultures, they’re scheming how to use this pandemic to put the final stamp of success on their privatization agenda.

Most parents and teachers can’t wait for public schools to reopen. Children miss their teachers, friends and their public schools. Teachers tirelessly work to assist their students from afar. Heartwarming stories flood social media about how children and teachers are coming together.

Many, including me, have implied that due to the virus there will be a renewed appreciation of what’s been lost. Public schools and the teaching profession we hope will return stronger and more appreciated. It’s especially important to have hope.

It’s also important not to be fooled. A frightening, albeit not unexpected, reality has emerged. Those who’ve foisted their ideology on public schools for years don’t care about heartwarming stories of success. They don’t see teachers as professionals, but as worker bees to carry out their digital transition plans. Their end is not our end.

Here are some signs.

The Controversial Opinion Piece

Thomas L. Friedman’s New York Times opinion piece describes what the next presidential cabinet should look like. He says We need a political system that mirrors the best in us. His idea of the best are billionaires who’ve hated public schools for years. They include Bloomberg, Gates, and a new secretary of national infrastructure, Walmart C.E.O. Doug McMillon. Ask how much infrastructure funding would go to public schools with the CEO of Walmart in charge.

Friedman suggests Laurene Powell Hobs for Secretary of Education, despite the failure of her $100 million XQ Super School Project to reinvent the high school. Just what we don’t need! Another billionaire who was never an educator as Secretary of Education!

Then there is the money grab by the charter industry, which has decided that charter schools are really small businesses and should get a chunk of the $2 trillion coronavirus relief fund, intended for struggling employers.

And even more vultures. Watch out!

As usual, Bailey offers sage advice.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Technology, Vouchers

Independent Study: Most Relief $$ Flow to Richest

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2020 //
32

An independent agency reported on a little known provision of the corona relief legislation, showing that Mitch McConnell took care of the Republican party’s big donors, again:

More than 80 percent of the benefits of a tax change tucked into the coronavirus relief package Congress passed last month will go to those who earn more than $1 million annually, according to a report by a nonpartisan congressional body expected to be released Tuesday.

The provision, inserted into the legislation by Senate Republicans, temporarily suspends a limitation on how much owners of businesses formed as “pass-through” entities can deduct against their nonbusiness income, such as capital gains, to reduce their tax liability. The limitation was created as part of the 2017 Republican tax law to offset other tax cuts to firms in that legislation.

Suspending the limitation will cost taxpayers about $90 billion in 2020 alone, part of a set of tax changes that will add close to $170 billion to the national deficit over the next 10 years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), the nonpartisan congressional body.

The provision has fueled criticism by congressional Democrats and some tax experts who have called it a giveaway to the wealthy and real estate investors, who frequently face large losses on their investments.

Conservatives have said enacting the limitation was a mistake in the 2017 law and suspending it gives badly needed liquidity during the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic by reducing their tax obligations.
What’s in the $2.2 trillion coronavirus Senate stimulus package

An analysis by the JCT found suspending the limit overwhelmingly benefits higher earners. About 82 percent of the benefits of the policy go to about 43,000 taxpayers who earn more than $1 million annually. Less than 3 percent of the benefits go to Americans earning less than $100,000 a year, the analysis found.

The analysis included the impact of another tax change in the coronavirus relief legislation that allows firms to write off 100 percent rather than 80 percent of their losses, reversing another change in the 2017 tax law.
Hedge-fund investors and owners of real estate businesses are “far and away” the two prime beneficiaries of the change, said Steve Rosenthal, a tax expert at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

Categories Accountability, Republicans

Happy Birthday! Noah Webster’s Dictionary!

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2020 //
8

From Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac”:

It was on this day in 1828 that Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language was published (books by this author). Webster put together the dictionary because he wanted Americans to have a national identity that wasn’t based on the language and ideas of England. And the problem wasn’t just that Americans were looking to England for their language; it was that they could barely communicate with each other because regional dialects differed so drastically.

Noah Webster was schoolteacher in Connecticut. He was dismayed at the state of education in the years just after the Revolution. There wasn’t much money for supplies, and students were crowded into small one-room schoolhouses using textbooks from England that talked about the great King George. His students’ spelling was atrocious, as was that of the general public; it was assumed that there were several spellings for any word.

So in 1783, he published the first part of his three-part A Grammatical Institute, of the English Language; the first section was eventually retitled The American Spelling Book, but usually called by the nickname “Blue-Backed Speller.” The Blue-Backed Speller taught American children the rules of spelling, and it simplified words — it was Webster who took the letter “u” out of English words like colour and honour; he took a “g” out of waggon, a “k” off the end of musick, and switched the order of the “r” and “e” in theatre and centre.

In 1801, he started compiling his dictionary. Part of what he accomplished, much like his textbook, was standardizing spelling. He introduced American words, some of them derived from Native American languages: skunk, squash, wigwam, hickory, opossum, lengthy, and presidential, Congress, and caucus, which were not relevant in England’s monarchy.

Webster spent almost 30 years on his project, and finally, on this day in 1828, it was published. But unfortunately, it cost 15 or 20 dollars, which was a huge amount in 1828, and Webster died in 1843 without having sold many copies. The book did help launch Webster as a writer and a proponent of an American national identity. Webster had a canny knack for marketing, traveling around to meet with new publishers and booksellers, publishing ads in the local newspapers for his book wherever he went. He also lobbied for copyright law and served for a time as an adviser to George Washington, and wrote his own edition of the Bible. And his tallies of houses in all major cities led to the first American census.

In his book The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster’s Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture Joshua Kendall argued that Noah Webster would today be diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive

Categories Education Reform, Literacy

Brazil Halts Trial of Trump’s Favorite Drug Because of Risks

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2020 //
36

Brazil halted a trial of the drug cocktail that Trump and Giuliani have endorsed:

A small study in Brazil was halted early for safety reasons after coronavirus patients taking a higher dose of chloroquine developed irregular heart rates that increased their risk of a potentially fatal heart arrhythmia.

Chloroquine is closely related to the more widely used drug hydroxychloroquine. President Trump has enthusiastically promoted them as a potential treatment for the novel coronavirus despite little evidence that they work, and despite concerns from some of his top health officials. Last month, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency approval to allow hospitals to use chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine from the national stockpile if clinical trials were not feasible. Companies that manufacture both drugs are ramping up production.

The Brazilian study involved 81 hospitalized patients in the city of Manaus and was sponsored by the Brazilian state of Amazonas. It was posted on Saturday at medRxiv, an online server for medical articles, before undergoing peer review by other researchers. Because Brazil’s national guidelines recommend the use of chloroquine in coronavirus patients, the researchers said including a placebo in their trial — considered the best way to evaluate a drug — was an “impossibility.”

Despite its limitations, infectious disease doctors and drug safety experts said the study provided further evidence that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, which are both used to treat malaria, can pose significant harm to some patients, specifically the risk of a fatal heart arrhythmia. Patients in the trial were also given the antibiotic azithromycin, which carries the same heart risk. Hospitals in the United States are also using azithromycin to treat coronavirus patients, often in combination with hydroxychloroquine.

Categories Accountability, Health, Trump

South Dakota: Governor Refuses to Take Action to Protect Against Coronavirus

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2020 //
35

The governor of South Dakota is determined not to take any action to restrict individuals’ freedom of movement, like telling them to stay home, closing gatherings, or imposing any limits on freedom of action. Meanwhile the giant Smithfield pork processing plant has closed down because of the spread of the virus, and Sioux City has become a “hot spot.” But the Governor has a plan that she has worked out with Jared Kushner.

As governors across the country fell into line in recent weeks, South Dakota’s top elected leader stood firm: There would be no statewide order to stay home.
Such edicts to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, Gov. Kristi L. Noem said disparagingly, reflected a “herd mentality.” It was up to individuals — not government — to decide whether “to exercise their right to work, to worship and to play. Or to even stay at home.”


And besides, the first-term Republican told reporters at a briefing this month, “South Dakota is not New York City.”


But now South Dakota is home to one of the largest single coronavirus clusters anywhere in the United States, with more than 300 workers at a giant ­pork-processing plant falling ill. With the case numbers continuing to spike, the company was forced to announce the indefinite closure of the facility Sunday, threatening the U.S. food supply.


Increasingly exasperated local leaders, public health experts and front-line medical workers begged Noem to intervene Monday with a more aggressive state response.
“A shelter-in-place order is needed now. It is needed today,” said Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken, whose city is at the center of South Dakota’s outbreak and who has had to improvise with voluntary recommendations in the absence of statewide action.
But the governor continued to resist.

Instead, she used a media briefing Monday to announce trials of a drug that President Trump has repeatedly touted as a potential breakthrough in the fight against the coronavirus, despite a lack of scientific evidence.
“It’s an exciting day,” she boasted, repeatedly citing her conversations with presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Categories Health

The Washington Post Gives Trump 4 Pinocchios for Touting Unproven Drug

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2020 //
12

The Washington Post Fact Checker has reviewed Trump’s relentless promotion of an anti-malaria drug and determined that his advocacy is misleading ungrounded in science. Trump received a four Pinocchio rating, the highest possible lie.

But I think it could be, based on what I see, it could be a game changer.” 
— President Trump, at a White House news briefing, March 19, 2020
“

Hydroxychloroquine — I don’t know, it’s looking like it’s having some good results. That would be a phenomenal thing.” 
— Trump, at a White House news briefing, April 3
“

What do you have to lose? I’ll say it again: What do you have to lose? Take it. I really think they should take it.” 
— Trump, at a White House news briefing, April 4
[[

“It’s this powerful drug on malaria. And there are signs that it works on this. Some very strong signs.” 
— Trump, at a White House news briefing, April 5


The world is looking for answers in the search for a treatment for covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives across the globe. President Trump has repeatedly touted the anti-malarial medications hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as that much-needed solution.


Even before Trump started talking about the drugs, studies abroad sparked interest in them as a potential cure. News about the drugs spread quickly online, percolated to the media and the White House.
Scientists have since pointed to major flaws in those original studies and say there is a lack of reliable data on the drugs. Experts warn about the dangerous consequences of over-promoting a drug with unknown efficacy: Shortages of hydroxychloroquine have already occurred, depriving lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients of access to it.

Doctors say some patients could die of side effects. Other potential treatments for covid-19 could get overlooked with so much concentration on one option.


The Fact Checker video team has reconstructed how the claim spread online and illustrates the troubling consequences of such misleading hope in the drugs.


The Facts


Conversation around hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as potential treatments for covid-19 started in China in late January. According to Kate Starbird of the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, tweets from media organizations — including Chinese state outlets — and investors highlighted past studies in which the medications were tested as cures for severe acute respiratory syndrome. (The 2005 tests never made it to human trials.) They also pointed to statements from the coronavirus research center in Wuhan, China, suggesting the drugs could be used to fight covid-19.



Renée DiResta, technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory, found similar trends on Facebook and Instagram in February. The number of total posts and interactions increased, and Internet speculation spread beyond China to Nigeria, Vietnam and France.


A large portion of activity online at the end of February and early March appeared in French and centered on a study published by French researcher and doctor Didier Raoult.


The spread in the U.S.


Raoult’s findings helped bring the theory to the United States. However, scientists have since discredited the trial, pointing to major flaws in the way it was conducted. The journal that published the study announced on April 3 that it did not meet its standards.


Yet before the record could be set straight, the hypothesis spread widely on U.S. social media. The Fact Checker has refrained from linking to original posts on the drugs to avoid giving further oxygen to misleading information.
According to Starbird, the first viral tweets were posted by Paul Sperry, a staunchly conservative author, on March 9 and 11.

A blockchain investor, James Todaro, then tweeted a link to a Google document he co-wrote with Gregory Rigano about the potential cure on March 13. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk retweeted that Google doc on March 16, writing, “Maybe worth considering chloroquine for C19.”

The faulty research then appeared in the Gateway Pundit, Breitbart and the Blaze. It ultimately made its way to Fox News, first appearing on Laura Ingraham’s program on March 16. Fox News shows hosted by Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson went on to promote the drugs and continue to do so.


On March 19, Trump first mentioned hydroxychloroquine at a White House news briefing. DiResta’s analysis showed that the following week, the claim started to spike in the United States, with 101,844 posts on Facebook. Starbird reports Trump’s first mention set off a surge in attention, seeing tens of thousands of tweets per hour in late March.
Data from Brandwatch, a digital consumer intelligence company, as well as DiResta and Starbird, show the total number of mentions about hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine increased in late March and early April.




Trump and his allies, including his son Donald Trump Jr. and his personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, tweeted about the drugs in late March. These posts saw the highest percent of reach, according to Brandwatch data, at some of the sharpest spikes in social media mentions online.



Trump again spoke about the drugs at news conferences on April 3, 4 and 5. Mentions on Twitter skyrocketed on April 6.


The science 


As attention on the drugs became even more prolific — online, in the media and from the president — scientists say there is only “anecdotal evidence” on the drugs. To a layperson, that may not sound bad, but it’s actually an insult in the scientific community.


Anecdotal evidence refers to people’s personal stories about taking the drugs and has no basis in scientific data. It’s akin to a Yelp review. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a member of Trump’s coronavirus task force, has consistently said there is not enough evidence to support the drugs as a viable treatment for covid-19.


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted tests on the drugs in treating SARS in 2005. Results showed the drugs had anti-viral effects on cell cultures. However, it did not work in studies on mice. According to David Boulware, professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota, that “is a little bit of a red flag.” Moreover, it was “not a clinical trial and did not look at the effect of chloroquine on humans,” according to a CDC spokesman.


Boulware is conducting a clinical trial on using hydroxychloroquine for prevention or early treatment of covid-19 in humans, but he says it is too early to know whether the drug works.
“

That’s our goal, to really rapidly identify as quickly as possible, does this actually work or not? Because there’s a lot of hubbub about it now,” Boulware said. “But there’s very little evidence that we actually have that this has a clinical benefit, which is kind of bad for something that’s being very heavily promoted. We should probably have some data and some science behind it.”


Yet the World Health Organization, university labs and governments around the world are conducting larger clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in treating covid-19.


Asked whether chloroquine was a possible cure for covid-19, Janet Diaz of WHO told reporters on Feb. 20 that the organization was prioritizing other therapeutics: “For chloroquine, there is no proof that that is an effective treatment at this time. We recommend that therapeutics be tested under ethically approved clinical trials to show efficacy and safety.” A few weeks later, both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were included in a mega-trial WHO launched.



The Food and Drug Administration granted an emergency use approval to distribute millions of doses of the drugs to hospitals across the country on March 29.
“

During the evaluation of the criteria under which to issue an EUA, it was determined, based on the scientific evidence available, that it is reasonable to believe that the specific drugs may be effective in treating COVID-19, and that, given there are no adequate, approved, or available alternative treatments, the known and potential benefits to treat this serious or life-threatening virus outweigh the known and potential risks when used under the conditions described in the EUA,” an FDA spokesman told the Fact Checker in an email.


Luciana Borio, the former head of medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council, criticized the FDA’s EUA announcement and has called for a randomized clinical trial of the drugs.
“

I think that it was a misuse of emergency authorizations of the authority that the FDA has. Because it gives this credence that the government is actually backing, and it’s so common for people to equate that with an approval,” Borio said.


When asked whether any of the completed studies have provided substantial evidence that the benefits of the drugs outweigh the risks, Borio responded, “Not at all. No study was done in a way that would allow that conclusion.”


The consequences


Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are commonly used by patients with lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. The attention around the drugs caused a panic, in which doctors and patients rushed pharmacies, resulting in a major shortage of the drugs. Consequently, some patients have reported not being able to access the medicine they need.


There are also potentially fatal side effects, such as sudden cardiac death, from taking the drug without proper oversight from a doctor. These dangerous yet rare side effects are often overlooked in conversation around the drugs.


Separately, some people have mistakenly taken other drugs that sounded like hydroxychloroquine after hearing about it so much to try to prevent covid-19. A man in Arizona died after taking chloroquine phosphate — a drug that sounds similar to chloroquine but is used to clean fish tanks.


Experts warn of the dangers of too much focus on one particular drug in a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic. The attention could blind researchers and scientists to other promising treatments.


“It’s important that we don’t put all our eggs in this one basket and that we continue to look at some of these other well-known drugs,” said Katherine Seley-Radtke, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County.


The White House did not respond to our inquires.


The Pinocchio Test


Over the course of only a few weeks, posts online, the media and politicians turned chloroquine from an unknown drug to a “100% coronavirus cure,” misleading the public on its effectiveness and engendering unintended but negative consequences.



Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as treatments for covid-19 are not yet backed by reliable scientific evidence. In a pandemic, it’s important for everyone to follow the lead of scientists. Rumors on the Internet are the least reliable source of information. And politicians are not qualified to provide scientific advice, despite even the best intentions.
In particular, Trump’s incorrect comments on the drugs and his role in advocating for their use, based on minimal and flimsy evidence, sets a bad example. His advocacy for this unproven treatment provides potentially false hope and has led to shortages for people who rely on the drugs.

The president earns Four Pinocchios.


Four Pinocchios



Categories Health, Lies
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »