On July 31, The Washington Post media critic Margaret Sullivan wrote a scathing critique of the recent America’s Frontline Doctors (AFD) “White Coat Summit” event, calling it a grouping of “fringe doctors spouting dangerous falsehoods about hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 wonder cure.” But are these doctors truly wrong as the mainstream media continues to claim?
While the Post and others have continued to cite a single study conducted on U.S. Veterans Affairs patients who supposedly died from the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) after taking HCQ, this study was inherently flawed in that it had an extremely small sample size, and involved giving the drug only to the sickest patients who were already dying due to old age and preexisting conditions.
This study was very quickly debunked, it is important to note, though the mainstream media has continued to cite it as “evidence” that HCQ is ineffective and dangerous. Further, states like Ohio have actually tried to ban the use of HCQ altogether based on this debunked study, falsely claiming that HCQ might kill patients who try to use it.
“It had been posted on a non-peer-reviewed medical archive that specifically warns that studies posted on its website should not be reported in the media as established information,” writes Steven Hatfill for Real Clear Politics. “Yet, the Post and countless other news outlets did just the opposite, making repeated claims that hydroxychloroquine was ineffective and caused serious cardiac problems.”
Why isn’t the Post talking about how coronavirus damages the heart?
What the mainstream media is also failing to tell people is that one of the symptoms associated with Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) infection is heart damage, including irregular heartbeat and sometimes fatal heart rhythms. In other words, a symptom of the disease itself is being blamed on a drug that is sometimes being used to treat it.
In some instances where the mainstream media did not cite this flawed and debunked VA study blaming heart deaths on HCQ, they instead cited another flawed study out of Brazil that was stopped because HCQ supposedly killed 11 patients. The truth, though, is that these 11 patients were given “lethal cumulative doses” of HCQ that would have killed anyone had they been given such unnaturally high doses of this or any other pharmaceutical.
Even Fox News has been on a crusade against HCQ, with host Neil Cavuto infamously claiming after President Donald Trump announced that he was taking HCQ himself that This will kill you!
“The President of the United States just acknowledged that he is taking hydroxychloroquine, a drug that [was] meant really to treat malaria and lupus,” Cavuto went on to explain.
When this, too, failed, the mainstream media then moved on to the infamous Lancet study, which like the other two studies was debunked after it was learned that the authors were paid consultant hacks, meaning the study was fraudulent from the get-go.
Even so, the damage from the repeated media fear-mongering about these three debunked studies has already been done. Millions of Trump-hating leftists refuse to believe that HCQ holds any potential to help Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) patients, and still millions of others are simply too afraid to use it, or simply do not care one way or another.
“Patients were afraid to take the drug, doctors became afraid to prescribe it, pharmacies refused to fill prescriptions, and in a rush of incompetent analysis and non-existent senior leadership, the FDA revoked its Emergency Use Authorization for the drug,” Hatfill adds, offering a more in-depth analysis of the history of HCQ that you can read at this link.
More of the latest news about the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) is available at Pandemic.news.
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