Sunday, April 05, 2020

BTW: Trump attracts idiots the way rotten meat attracts flies


According to Axios:

Then Navarro got up. He brought over a stack of folders and dropped them on the table. People started passing them around.

"And the first words out of his mouth are that the studies that he's seen, I believe they're mostly overseas, show 'clear therapeutic efficacy,'" said a source familiar with the conversation. "Those are the exact words out of his mouth."

Navarro's comments set off a heated exchange about how the Trump administration and the president ought to talk about the malaria drug, which Fauci and other public health officials stress is unproven to combat COVID-19.

Fauci pushed back against Navarro, saying that there was only anecdotal evidence that hydroxychloroquine works against the coronavirus.
....
Most members of the task force support a cautious approach to discussing the drug until it's proven.
Navarro, on the other hand, is convinced based on his reading that the drug works against the coronavirus and speaks about it enthusiastically.

In a fight over medical research, my money is on Dr. Fauci, not layman Navarro:

Dr. Schaffner cautioned that the results applied only to patients with relatively mild illness, like the ones in the study, and could not be generalized to advanced cases.

“If you want to treat people who are already seriously ill, we don’t know how well this will work,” he said.

If the drug is helping, it is not clear how. There are two possible ways. In laboratory studies, it can stop the virus from invading cells. But hydroxychloroquine can also dial back an overactive immune system, which is why it can treat autoimmune diseases. And a powerful immune reaction to the coronavirus is suspected of playing a role in some of the severest cases of the disease.

“We don’t know which of the pharmacologic aspects of hydroxychloroquine are most active, the antiviral part, or the immunomodulatory part,” Dr. Schaffner said. “We don’t know, but it does reinforce the notion, as the authors say briefly, it reinforces the thinking about the nature of many of these pneumonias we are seeing, which seem to have an immune basis, as opposed to being secondary bacterial pneumonia, which we see so often in influenza.”
So, a very strong "Yeah, maybe, who knows?" which Peter Navarro, non-scientist, wants to turn into "MIRACLE CURE!"  Apparently Navarro thinks he's working for Jim Bakker.

Then again, he might as well be.

1 comment:

  1. I think they are far more cynical, they're looking for FOX-Sinclair pushed narratives that if only everyone had taken their advice, the disaster which is upon us and, perhaps, worse, would have been averted. They don't have to tell the truth about it for that to work for them, they can blatantly lie and they have every reason to believe it will work for them with enough people who buy the FOX-Sinclare line on that. I wouldn't be surprised if the "one one hand, on the other hand" of NPR and CNN wouldn't help them in that way. The media is the tool of liars unless it is forced to serve the truth and reality.

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