Yes, Trump Should Be Taking Hydroxychloroquine Right Now

I’m sure this doesn’t need to be said, but I’m going to say it anyway: President Trump needs to be taking hydroxychloroquine right now.

From a statistical standpoint, the odds of President Trump recovering from COVID-19 are very, very high. But, his age and other factors technically put him in the high-risk category, and him taking hydroxychloroquine will increase his odds of recovery even further.

Back in May, Trump reported that he was actually taking hydroxychloroquine prophylactically, so I suspect he will continue to take it. But as was the case then, I suspect that if Trump announces he’s taking the drug as a COVID-19 therapeutic, the left will once again go crazy.

But Trump would be absolutely right to continue taking the drug, especially now.

Studies have proven hydroxychloroquine’s efficacy in treating COVID.

There are currently over a hundred studies on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19 (76 of them peer-reviewed) that overwhelmingly show positive results, particularly when administered early.

For example, a study published a month ago out of Saudi Arabia found that “Early intervention with HCQ-based therapy in patients with mild to moderate symptoms at presentation is associated with lower adverse clinical outcomes among COVID-19 patients, including hospital admissions, ICU admission, and/or death.” Another study published in early September of nursing home patients found that patients not treated with hydroxychloroquine had a mortality rate more than five times higher than those who were treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. Back in July, a large-scale, peer-reviewed study conducted by the Henry Ford Health System concluded that hydroxychloroquine successfully lowered mortality rates for hospitalized coronavirus patients.

Of all the studies, the average reduction in mortality for hydroxychloroquine was 64 percent when it’s administered early.

Just another friendly reminder that countries widely using hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 are doing better than those that aren't. (https://t.co/GxJ1ZKbPcf) pic.twitter.com/27aWzLvwze

— Matt Margolis 🇺🇸 (@mattmargolis) October 2, 2020

Back in April, it was noted that countries with high rates of malaria have significantly lower COVID-19 mortality rates. Hydroxychloroquine is a decades-old anti-malaria drug.

Democrat and media fearmongering killed people

When you consider the statistically significant reduction in mortality hydroxychloroquine has, it calls into question the Democrats’ and the media’s motives for immediately criticizing Trump when he suggested back in March that hydroxychloroquine could be a gamechanger in treating the virus.

A Democratic state lawmaker in Ohio said that Trump should be tried for “crimes against humanity” for touting the drug’s potential. The New York Times even alleged that Trump’s motivation for touting it was self-serving because he holds “a small personal financial interest” in Sanofi, even though the drug is out of patent, and he only owned $29 – $435 in the stock as part of a mutual fund.

The media largely ignored success stories from coronavirus patients who recovered after being treated with the drug. In April, Democrat State Rep. Karen Whitsett from Detroit, Mich., credited the drug and President Trump with saving her life. Other coronavirus patients have reported dramatic recoveries after taking the drug.

Had Democrats cared more about saving lives than winning the presidential election, more people would have been comfortable taking hydroxychloroquine as treatment. More people would have participated in clinical trials. More people would have recovered from the coronavirus. Instead, immediately after Trump started touting the drug, he was criticized and mocked by Democrats, the media, and even government officials. They ignored studies that showed it worked, pretended not to hear anecdotal evidence from patients who were successfully treated by the drug, and told people that hydroxychloroquine could kill them.

The war on hydroxychloroquine has been very real and very damaging.

Even the CDC has downplayed hydroxychloroquine

Despite all the evidence of hydroxychloroquine’s efficacy in treating COVID-19, scientists at the CDC have similarly suggested that it doesn’t work. Contained in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) from September 4, which details the increase in hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine prescriptions this year, is the following false claim in its summary: “Earlier this year, [hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine] were widely reported to be of potential benefit in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. However, current data indicate that the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks.”

The most commonly cited claim against hydroxychloroquine (echoed in the CDC’s MMWR) is fatal heart damage, which was reported in two bogus studies, the debunked VA study, and another flawed study in Brazil from April. But as veteran virologist Steven Hatfill explained, the media never mentioned that the Brazilian doctors in that study “were giving their patients lethal cumulative doses of the drug.”

Two other studies followed linking hydroxychloroquine to higher mortality, but those studies were based on faulty data, and two well-respected medical journals had to retract one of them.

I am fully confident the president and first lady will recover quickly, and maybe get us to reassess the deadly war on hydroxychloroquine.

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Matt Margolis is the author of the new book Airborne: How The Liberal Media Weaponized The Coronavirus Against Donald Trump, and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis