I see that the skeptics movement, sub-section quack-chasers, is going to have to create a new sub-category for the damage that can be done by consulting with quacks:
Not In This Issue, though. The next issue, maybe.
These days, Plaquenil is better known by its generic name, hydroxychloroquine. It is the medication Trump has been hyping as a potential treatment for the novel coronavirus, even though it is not approved for this use and there is scant medical evidence so far that it works to treat the virus.
Trump’s push to use hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 has triggered a run on the drug. Healthy people are stocking up just in case they come down with the disease. That has left lupus patients like Valdez and those with rheumatoid arthritis suddenly confronting a lack of medication that safeguards them, and not only from the effects of those conditions. If they were required to take stronger drugs to suppress their immune systems, it could render them susceptible to more serious consequences should they get COVID-19. [ProPublica]
I had never expected that I’d be typing Quack-In-Chief, and yet here we are. Now legitimate consumers of a medication are at risk because the President indulged in unjustified speculations, all in service of his political career. Endangering his own constituents.
This is appalling. It should be grounds to impeach him all over again, but I suppose that’s out of the question. Hopefully he’ll be on the short end of the Nixon-McGovern stick in November.
