Despite the warnings of the health experts, the US President has planned to reopen the country and resume the economic activity that paralyzed because of coronavirus restrictions. On Thursday, he lashed out at the scientists and experts whose conclusions he does not like.
In the recent week, President Trump denounced reports without any evidence and suggested that the authors of the reports were politically motivated and aim to undermine his administration’s response to the outbreak.
One of the studies that raised alarm bells about the use of an antimalarial drug, hydroxychloroquine, was funded by the government’s National Institute of Health. The study highlighted the high fatality rate among the coronavirus patients who took the drug in veterans administration hospitals.
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Many officials in the Trump administration had been trumpeting the drug as the game changer and a miracle cure.
He also said that he has been taking the drug to ward of the coronavirus. This comes despite the warnings from the FDA over the use of the drug, suggesting that it should only be used in a hospital setting or clinical trials because of serious side effects, including life-threatening heart diseases.
On Thursday, he offered a pushback to a similar study conducted by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. It suggested that if the administration had imposed the lockdown measures a week earlier, nearly 36,000 deaths could have been prevented. In response, the president described this study as a “political job”.
In the face of persistent criticism, Donald Trump has defended his handling of coronavirus outbreak; many accuse him of acting too slowly. The Republican president has long been skeptical of mainstream science, also dismissing climate change as “hoax”.
Many health experts across the country see this as Trump’s move to politicize science, and if it keeps on going like this, the public will be confused and fearful. But when it comes to hydroxychloroquine, Trump has made it clear that he has prioritized anecdotal evidence.
His criticism of the studies also comes amid the eagerness of his allies to refute messaging from public health experts suggesting that the president is risking thousands of lives by moving too fast in reopening the country in an election year.
There were also reports of Republican political operatives have been recruiting pro-Trump doctors to go on TV and advocate reviving the economy, without waiting to meet federal security guidelines.
