Trump's Touting of Chloroquine as a Possible Treatment for COVID-19

[MineralMan]

has resulted in at least one death in the United States. Chloroquine Phosphate has been used to treat aquarium fish for some parasitic and fungal diseases for quite some time. It has been available in tropical fish stores, and can be found with a simple Google search. The problem is dosage control if purchased for human use by stupid people.

And stupid people are just the ones Trump reaches with his idiotic promotion of an almost-untested treatment. So, a man in Arizona is dead and his wife is still hospitalized after they took some of it in the form used for aquarium fish. It is unknown how much they took, but it killed the man.

An overdose of the medication, which is used in humans to treat rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and some other diseases, can cause cardiac arrest, eye damage and other severe problems. Odds are that the stupid people who decided to use it to "ward off" the virus didn't know what dosage to use, didn't measure the dosage accurately, or just winged it and got an overdose.

Now, it's possible that the medication will prove useful, but only after testing to find appropriate dosages and treatment protocols. Instead, Donald J. Trump, on national television, said that it could be the answer to COVID-19. He doesn't know anything about it, just like most things he knows nothing about. But, he said it, and sent people off to Google to find it.

And, find it they did, on many sites from which it can be ordered to treat diseases of aquarium fish. There's no information on how much a human should take for COVID-19, because it gets bought from aquarium supply stores. They don't know. The stupid people who order it don't know. The typical human dosage is measured in milligrams, and the chloroquine phosphate sold for aquarium use comes as a powder of unknown potency or a liquid of unknown concentration, along with directions for dilution in gallons of aquarium water. Without accurate scales capable of measuring milligram amounts or liquid measures capable of measuring an appropriate amount of the liquid, overdosing would be very likely.

Trump knows nothing about this drug. He knows nothing about its dosage. He just speaks its name on national television, so stupid people can look it up on Google and order it from those aquarium supply stores and kill themselves unwittingly.

Thanks, Donwald. I wonder how many other stupid people will die from your own ignorance and lack of judgment.

Feh!

[nature-lover]

1. If the drug works after the trial, he can take credit for the beautiful cure.

[MineralMan]

2. Meanwhile, the stupid people who listen to him will

hoard the stuff after buying out the stocks of aquarium stores and die of cardiac arrest after taking an overdose of it.

Once again, Trump displays his carelessness and ignorance, to the detriment of society.

[andym]

3. It's actually a big win for Trump with zero risk

If it works he will claim credit for curing the disease and saving lives, even though he was chided by the experts. No one will remember the guy who died taking the fish medicine. It has a real chance of working as well--notice that Gov. Cuomo ordered an immediate trial for efficacy in New York. If it doesn't work, there will be further mention and it will fade from everyone's memory.

[MineralMan]

4. The thing is that it won't just be that one man in Arizona.

Trump has many fans who are preppers and assorted other kinds of stupid people. They take great pride in bypassing normal channels for things and often use veterinary medications they can get without a prescription. It's a thing with them, actually. There are guides on the internet regarding such uses of alternate-sourced medications. Typically, the internet sources are inaccurate, guesswork, and are created by other stupid people.

Stupid people do stupid things. So, as this pandemic spreads, you can count on many others relying on "fish medicine" in similar ways. There will be websites guiding people about how much to take and how to measure the right dosages, but most people do not have laboratory scales or graduated pipettes to measure small quantities of things.

As a human medication, this drug is less-used now than it once was. New drugs with fewer harmful side effects are now on the market. Malaria, for which chloroquine was first used, is pretty much unknown in the United States. The reason it is less used now is because of its side-effects and it's narrow range of safe dosages.

Stupid people say stupid things, which other stupid people take as gospel truth. I expect additional deaths.

[andym]

5. Sure others will get sick and die, but to Trump, Fox News and even the mainstream press

these are and will be forgettable tragedies-- no matter the outcome. Notice how little outrage this story is creating on CNN etc. Caveat emptor basically.