AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s breathless takes on drugs for virus

tulc said:

AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s breathless takes on drugs for virus

tulc(thought this was interesting)

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That's one of the worst fact checks i've ever seen. I honestly don't see how the fact checker was even paying attention to what was said.

HTacianas said:

That's one of the worst fact checks i've ever seen. I honestly don't see how the fact checker was even paying attention to what was said.

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I wonder how the fact checkers would've handled Roosevelt's old fireside chats.

thecolorsblend said:

I wonder how the fact checkers would've handled Roosevelt's old fireside chats.

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The "fact checker" in this case purposely changed what was said. For instance, Trump said the drug is FDA approved. The fact checker then says Trump is wrong because the drug is not FDA approved "for coronavirus".

That the drug is already FDA approved means it doesn't need a years long study to see if it is safe. We already know that it is. And it has worked against coronavirus. The evidence of that is more than simply "anecdotal".

If, as Trump said, the drug is known to be safe, and there is a chance that it will work there is no reason not to administer it.

If the drug works, "the numbers will come down", meaning the number of deaths will come down. The fact checker changed that to mean Trump claimed the drug is a vaccine and that the number of new infections would come down.

No, this is not good journalism. It is at best malfeasance and at worst it is a lie.

HTacianas said:

The "fact checker" in this case purposely changed what was said. For instance, Trump said the drug is FDA approved. The fact checker then says Trump is wrong because the drug is not FDA approved "for coronavirus".

That the drug is already FDA approved means it doesn't need a years long study to see if it is safe. We already know that it is. And it has worked against coronavirus. The evidence of that is more than simply "anecdotal".

If, as Trump said, the drug is known to be safe, and there is a chance that it will work there is no reason not to administer it.

If the drug works, "the numbers will come down", meaning the number of deaths will come down. The fact checker changed that to mean Trump claimed the drug is a vaccine and that the number of new infections would come down.

No, this is not good journalism. It is at best malfeasance and at worst it is a lie.

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They are the enemy of the American people.

HTacianas said:

That's one of the worst fact checks i've ever seen. I honestly don't see how the fact checker was even paying attention to what was said.

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There is a Dominican molecular biologist, Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, who spoke to this issue:

zippy2006 said:

There is a Dominican molecular biologist, Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, who spoke to this issue:

I was struck by the attempts of these New York Times reporters to dismiss or minimize the impact of the possible use of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) to treat COVID-19.

As a molecular biologist, what is so exciting for me about this claim is that the clinical trial in France was pretty good, given the extreme circumstances. Yes, it was a small trial, but if you read the paper, it was rigorous for what it wanted to do, which is to be a pilot study. And it showed that HCQ significantly shortened the time for the patient to clear virus from his or her system...​

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But apparently Trump's political opponents are going to keep it away from sick people regardless of how many people die before they will agree with him.

If anyone had a relative lying in bed dying from coronavirus with no way of curing them, and was offered a drug that would do no harm whatsoever but *might* help, they would try the drug.

But apparently there is a chorus of people out there who demand that people die without even giving it a chance.

I looked at the fact check. I think it’s right. But the problem is that the President is vague in his statements. It’s possible to explain them, but the sense most people will get is wrong.

Saying this drug is approved and will be immediately available to treat COVID would be understood by most people as saying that it’s approved to treat COVID. The fact check make it clear that it is approved for other things, and can be used for COVID “off-label.” But that’s not what Trump’s statement would imply to most people.

Similarly his statement that the numbers will go down. Obviously an effective treatment would lower the death rate. But I think Trump’s statement would be understood by most people as speaking about a wider range of statistics.

Was the President lying? I don’t think so. I don’t think he knows or wants to know how to be accurate. I think this is as close to truth as he gets.

To my knowledge, no one is proposing to stop the drugs from being used off-label. In desperate situations you do what you can. But there are several possible drugs. We really need to know which work, in what circumstances, before they can be approved officially and we can assess the consequences. A drug that meant no one needed the ICU or a ventilator would be a game-changer. Even a serious reduction in the number would be. It's not yet clear that we have such a thing, but it's also quite possible.

How many times have you read press accounts of a drug that is going to treat a certain kind of cancer or other disease, but after further study turns out not to work? It happens a lot. I'm hopeful in this case, but there's reason to be cautious, and to avoid hype.

What you'd want the President to say is: our research community is mobilizing. There are several promising drugs, but we need to be cautious until tests are finished. You'd also want him to say: by the way, if an existing inexpensive drug is found to work against COVID, we expect the manufacturers not to jack up the price. We have sufficient legal tools to deal with that.