Media on Anti-HCQ Panic Mode after Trump Says He’s Taking the Drug to Fend off Covid-19

By Staff, Agencies

Media outlets rushed to denounce hydroxychloroquine after US President Donald Trump revealed he was taking it as a prophylactic against the coronavirus. Pundits called the drug dangerous and ineffective based on selected studies.

“I've been taking it for about a week and a half now and I'm still here,” Trump said Monday during an event at the White House, adding he had heard good things about the drug from medical professionals.

Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto immediately reacted by bringing up one long-documented side effect of the drug, used for decades to treat malaria and lupus.

If you are in a risky population here, and you are taking this as a preventative treatment ... it will kill you. I cannot stress enough. This will kill you.

Cavuto proceeded to interview two physicians, quickly cutting off the one that said the drug “may be beneficial and potentially life-saving” for some patients, while allowing the other to argue that no one should take anything without consulting their personal doctor.

Relatively, the Washington Post, the Guardian, NowThis, and many others put front and center last month’s warning by the US Food and Drug Administration [FDA] that no one should be taking HCQ without a prescription, citing the danger to people with heart problems.

The reaction mirrored media coverage from early April, when Trump first mentioned the possible benefits of the drug. There were conspiracy theories about his possible financial interest in the medication – which has been cheap and off-patent for years – and even an attempt to blame the president for a suspicious poisoning of a Nevada couple who ingested fish tank cleaner that contained a different chemical altogether.