After a study showed hydroxychloroquine boosted death rates in COVID-19 patients, the president’s favorite network is suddenly hush-hush on the drug—or attacking the research itself.
As the coronavirus swept across the U.S. last month, top hosts at Fox News described hydroxychloroquine, an immunosuppressive used to treat and prevent malaria, as a solution to the pandemic they spent much of February and early March severely downplaying. And the president followed suit.
“HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine,” wrote Donald Trump on March 21, in just one example of the numerous times he promoted the unproven COVID-19 treatment.
“Hopefully they will BOTH…be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST.”
And yet, after weeks hawking the drug as a miracle cure, both the network and the president have quietly abandoned it amid new studies showing it has no positive effects on COVID-19 patients and, in fact, could result in more deaths.
On Tuesday, a study on coronavirus patients who were given hydroxychloroquine, both by itself and in tandem with the antibiotic azithromycin, showed the treatment to be ineffective.
While the study has not been peer-reviewed and observed a relatively small sample size, it is the first research of its kind. Of the 368 patients, all men being treated at Veterans Health Administration medical centers across the U.S., 27.8% who took hydroxychloroquine along with typical treatment procedures died, while just 11.4% who received standard care died. (Of the group who were given hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin at the same time, 22% died). Use of the drug did not impact a patient’s need for ventilator assistance.
The study was released on the same day that the National Institutes of Health, which funded the study with the University of Virginia, issued a new advisory declaring there is not sufficient data to support or wholly oppose use of the anti-malarial drug to treat COVID-19. The NIH did, however, recommend against stacking hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin—the exact treatment the president has called for—due to dangerous side effects and “potential toxicities.”
Long before any research had been conducted, Trump was pushing the drug cocktail, in search of a miracle cure. Fox News followed suit, with anchors mentioning hydroxychloroquine hundreds of times, according to research conducted by Media Matters. “One patient was described as Lazarus getting up…he was like on death’s door. And they started getting a protocol of hydroxychloroquine…and it suddenly, like Lazarus, up from the grave,” said Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who went so far as to meet with Trump to argue for wide use of the drug, on the March 19 airing of her show.
During the same broadcast, Ingraham took credit for some in the White House supporting the drug, saying her “persistence paid off because today President Trump” announced a plan to make hydroxychloroquine “available almost immediately.”
Days later, Trump’s FDA instituted an “emergency use authorization” that allowed hydroxychloroquine to be used on coronavirus patients, despite the White House’s own Dr. Anthony Fauci warning that its benefits were unproven.
Fox’s top host, Sean Hannity, went a step further than his colleague, advising his fans to “try and get chloroquine, which is an anti-malaria drug. I would urge everyone that thinks they need it to go get it. That’s my advice.”
Following the study’s release, the network’s overall tone has shifted. Many of the drug’s most vocal supporters have fallen decidedly quiet. Hydroxychloroquine has received noticeably fewer mentions on the network’s airwaves in recent days, as Media Matters tallied, noting that mentions of hydroxychloroquine sharply declined between April 16 to April 20 compared to previous weeks in April and March.
Fox News did publish a web article on the study, but some of its chief proponents—including Ingraham and Tucker Carlson—failed to discuss it on their Tuesday programs. As for Trump, he last publicly mentioned hydroxychloroquine last week, telling a group of coronavirus patients who had recovered about it on April 14 and mentioning it during a White House task force briefing the previous day.
Hannity, however, is sticking to his guns. “Notice the mob and media, you know going with this V.A. study, it’s even in the write-ups of it by the A.P. they’re acknowledging it’s flawed,” he said on his Wednesday radio show. “And not a rigorous experiment.” Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, who has also promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine to combat the coronavirus, wrote off the study on Wednesday, calling it “the latest example of the left-wing national media using a headline that doesn’t match the story.”
Caleb Ecarma – Vanity Fair – April 22, 2020.
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