-But one treatment in particular
has been getting a lot of attention.
-Hydroxychloroqine. -Hydroxychloroqine.
-Hydroxychloroqine.
-Claims about hydroxychloroqine and chloroquine
have taken hold of the global consciousness.
Online conversations, media articles,
and politician statements have quickly
and incorrectly labeled it as a cure for COVID-19.
President Trump has repeatedly championed hope in the drugs.
-The hydroxychloroqine is a --
I hope it's going to be a very important answer.
There's a lot of very positive things happening with that.
That's a game-changer, if that's the case.
-This false hope has led to widespread panic.
-Prescription drug hydroxychloroqine.
-Is now in short supply.
-Including for people who need them for
other serious illnesses.
-The frenzy around it is causing some consequences
that are possibly devastating to so many people.
-President likes to say, "Well, you know, what's it gonna hurt?"
Well, it could hurt you if you have heart issues
and maybe you don't even know you have heart issues.
-We can't just go mass-prescribing these drugs
to everyone because then we will have definitely
another kind of crisis on our hands.
-So how did this one drug become so in demand,
and what are the consequences of the attention it's getting?
People are anxious about good news on
how to fight the novel coronavirus,
which has claimed tens of thousands of lives
around the world.
Hydroxychloroqine and chloroquine
are decades old anti-malarial drugs,
often used to alleviate symptoms of inflammation
in lupus and rheumatoid arthritis patients.
There have been rumblings online about the drugs
as a possible treatment for COVID-19
as early as February 2020.
In mid-February, a news outlet in China
tweeted about clinical trials for the drug.
A Facebook post in Nigeria mentioned the drug.
And videos in French media appeared,
calling chloroquine a cure.
News about the drug spread around the world.
Conversation around the potential treatment
started to appear online
and in fringe media outlets in the US around mid-March.
First, a blockchain investor tweeted a link to a Google Doc
he co-wrote, promoting the potential cure.
Then Elon Musk retweeted that paper.
Google Trends saw a spike in search for the drugs.
And it was talked about a lot more on Twitter.
The hypothesis made its way
to conservative-leaning media outlets
like TheBlaze, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit,
and, finally, to Fox News by a lawyer
and co-author of the Google Doc on the drugs.
-A well-controlled, peer-reviewed study
that showed a 100% cure rate against coronavirus.
-He had even used the term "100%,"
which we know no medicine works 100%,
and even Tucker Carlson
was rather skeptical of these claims.
But, for me, immediately it set off a bunch of buzzers
that something was off.
-The study mentioned on Fox News
was conducted by this French doctor
and was not well-controlled or peer-reviewed.
In fact, the journal that originally published the results
has since announced the study does not meet their standards.
Still, interest in the drug grew,
reaching as far up as the White House.
Trump first touted hydroxychloroqine
at a White House press briefing.
-But this has been used in different forms.
Very powerful drug in different forms,
and it's shown very encouraging, very,
very encouraging early results.
-Trump then tweeted about the drugs,
and also retweeted a post on the previously promoted,
yet flawed, French study.
The attention from the President and mainstream media outlets
gave the theory even more oxygen.
Social media companies went
after misinformation on the drugs.
They removed the original Google Doc
and locked Trump's private attorney
Rudy Giuliani's Twitter account
until he deleted misleading posts.
President Trump spoke again about the drugs on April 5th.
And there are signs that it works on this,
very strong signs.
-Social media mentions about the drugs again skyrocketed.
As hype around the drugs continued,
experts were wary of a lack of scientific evidence.
-The President has heard, as we all have heard,
what I call anecdotal reports that certain drugs work.
-Anecdotal evidence is like a Yelp review, but for science.
-They're personal stories.
They're not controlled clinical trials.
And I think that has been the problem
is that the President and some of his advisors
are really taking so much stock, they're putting so much stock
in these anecdotal or personal stories
rather than the science, the actual science.
-Studies on chloroquine have been conducted in the past
on different kinds of coronaviruses.
-CDC looked at this back in 2005 after the initial SARS virus
and found that it was active in cell cultures.
So when they tried with chloroquine into a mouse file,
it didn't work against initial SARS virus,
which is a little bit of a red flag that,
"Hmm, this is a little unusual."
-The World Health Organization, university labs,
and governments around the world are now
conducting larger clinical trials of hydroxychloroqine
and chloroquine in treating COVID-19.
-There is very little evidence that we actually have that
this actually has a clinical benefit,
which is kind of bad for something
that's being very heavily promoted.
Like, we should probably have some data
and some science behind it.
"Yeah, this actually works."
-There have been and will continue
to be negative consequences
of overpromising the drug's potential.
Attention around the drug sparked a surge in demand
from doctors and patients, causing a shortage.
-There's people that need this drug,
that's a life-saving drug for them,
for lupus or rheumatoid arthritis,
and so if they can't refill their prescriptions, like,
they have a personal problem and they're gonna be harmed.
-So if someone asked me "What will happen
if you can't access it?"
frankly, I don't know.
But I do know that it is possibly very detrimental
and devastating to my wellbeing.
When you're already living with an autoimmune condition,
you don't know what's gonna happen from one day to the next,
so the fact that you don't have your medication
to depend on or the possibility that you may not have it
when you run out is a very scary thing.
-There are also potentially fatal side effects
from taking the drugs for certain people.
-They cause heart arrhythmias, and because the coronavirus
also can cause inflammation in the heart,
the last thing you would want it to do
is then have irregular heart beat,
and that's what's leading to people
having cardiac arrest and dying.
-Yet, global health leaders like the World Health Organization
and the Food and Drug Administration
are clearly interested in the drugs.
The FDA even gave emergency approval
to distribute millions of doses of the drugs
to hospitals across the country in late March.
-And we have stockpiled 29 million pills
of the hydroxychloroqine.
We're sending them to various labs, our military.
We're sending them to the hospitals.
We're sending them all over.
-It's important that we don't put all our eggs
in this one basket and that we continue to look at
some of these other well-known drugs.
-Politicians are politicizing this particular drug.
There are other treatments, there are other clinical trials
that people may never even hear about.
Scientific communication, which is important for us
to be able to share findings across borders,
was going to be ostensibly signal-jammed
by all of this talk about chloroquine.
-Over the course of several weeks, posts online, the media,
and politicians turned a little-known drug
into a 100% coronavirus cure.
-The results in France, in China,
and beyond have been nothing short of impressive.
-There's no question that it's safe.
-What do you have to lose?
What do you have to lose?
-Hydroxychloroqine and chloroquine
as treatments for COVID-19
are not backed by scientific evidence.
In a pandemic, it's important
for everyone to follow the lead of scientists.
Rumors on the Internet
are the least reliable source of information.
And politicians are not qualified
to give scientific advice,
despite even the best of intentions.