Donald Trump, however, ran with it. Last Thursday, at a press conference, he declared that chloroquine had “been approved” by the Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for covid-19. (It hadn’t.) On Friday, he said that he is “a big fan” of the drug. (The F.D.A. commissioner, Stephen Hahn, issued a cautionary statement about spreading “false hope.”) On Saturday, Trump tweeted, “hydroxychloroquine & azithromycin, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.” He added that the drugs should be used “immediately” to treat the coronavirus. HCQ is also used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, which are autoimmune diseases; at one of his pressers, Trump had said, “If you wanted, you can have a prescription,” adding, “What the hell do you have to lose?”
Physicians responded instantly and publicly. Sam Ghali, an emergency physician in Lexington, Kentucky, tweeted that the President’s recommendation involved “a dangerous combination of drugs with tons of side effects,” and that “together they can make your heart go into abnormal rhythms and even kill you.” Rob Davidson, an emergency physician in western Michigan, who chairs the Committee to Protect Medicare, tweeted, at Trump, “Leave the medical advice to doctors. You can’t even do your own job correctly, stop trying to do ours.”
