Speaker 1: It's Wednesday. I'm Oscar Ramirez from the Daily Dive podcast
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, and this is your daily coronavirus update.
Speaker 1: President Trump caused a stir when he announced that he
Speaker 1: is taking hydroxy chloroquin as a protection against coronavirus. He
Speaker 1: said he began taking it right around the time that
Speaker 1: news broke that two White House staffers had tested positive
Speaker 1: for COVID nineteen. While the drug has been around for
Speaker 1: a long time, there is no proof that it prevents
Speaker 1: someone from contracting the virus, and there are concerns about
Speaker 1: side effects. Lenny Bernstein, health and medicine reporter at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post, joins us for more. Thanks for joining us, Lenny,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me back. I wanted to bring you
Speaker 1: on to talk about President Trump. He caused the stir
Speaker 1: on Monday when he announced that he's taking the drug
Speaker 1: hydroxy chloroquin along with a zinc supplement as protection against
Speaker 1: the coronavirus. Obviously, we know the backstory with hydroxy chloroquine.
Speaker 1: The President was pushing really hard for it. The f
Speaker 1: d A let doctors prescribe it to their patients in
Speaker 1: hopes that it can help treat it. But we've had
Speaker 1: some studies that show that it really provides no benefit there.
Speaker 1: So when the President said he was taking it right away,
Speaker 1: everybody went into a tizzy about it. Let me tell
Speaker 1: us some more about it. As you said, there is
Speaker 1: no evidence that hydroxy chloroquine helps prevent or treat COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: There are some studies that actually show that it may
Speaker 1: have a little bit more tendency to endanger you if
Speaker 1: you take this then if you don't take it. So
Speaker 1: this is again the president sort of defying medical wisdom.
Speaker 1: He's wants to do and to go with his instincts.
Speaker 1: He's got his intuition, whatever it is you'd like to
Speaker 1: call it. That is his right. Doctors can prescribe this
Speaker 1: off label, although the FDA does not want them to
Speaker 1: do that. But it is problematic because he is such
Speaker 1: an example for the country and everything he does is
Speaker 1: covered so intensely that many people worry that there will
Speaker 1: be a clamor in the public to get this medication.
Speaker 1: That's what happened the first time around, when he was
Speaker 1: pushing pretty hard for it. Prescriptions rose quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Also when he suggested that disinfectant might prove a possible
Speaker 1: treatment for the virus. When he suggested that you be
Speaker 1: able to object infectant into your lungs and get rid
Speaker 1: of the virus, there was actually a surge in calls
Speaker 1: to poison control centers about whether or not that was
Speaker 1: an idea. So everything the President set is so widely disseminated,
Speaker 1: especially in the midst of a crisis like this, that
Speaker 1: there's a great deal of concern. Now what are the concerns?
Speaker 1: Number one, if you have hard issues, this can be
Speaker 1: dangerous for you. The medication can goes a rather dangerous
Speaker 1: arrhythmia that will throw at the beating of your heart
Speaker 1: out of whack. So that's one thing. And if you
Speaker 1: haven't had any KG and your doctor hasn't examined you,
Speaker 1: I don't know what other medications you're on, it could
Speaker 1: be dangerous. But the other thing is that this medication
Speaker 1: is a legitimate treatment for lupus and saw autoimmune disaands
Speaker 1: and if there's a run on it, those folks may
Speaker 1: find that they can't obtain it. So what happened after this,
Speaker 1: too is the White House went into overdrive kind of
Speaker 1: defending the decision. There. They brought out the Press Secretary
Speaker 1: to say, you can only get hydroxy clerquin in consultation
Speaker 1: with your doctor. You need a prescription for it, so
Speaker 1: it's not like people can just get it really nearly
Speaker 1: out and about. So this brought into the conversation the
Speaker 1: White House physicians Sean P. Conley, and he actually had
Speaker 1: to put out a statement saying that he had numerous
Speaker 1: discussions with the president for and against its use, and
Speaker 1: they said that the potential benefit outweighed the relative risks. Now,
Speaker 1: he said he started taking it maybe about a week
Speaker 1: and a half ago, and that's when we were getting
Speaker 1: reports that a few other people in the White House
Speaker 1: there had contracted COVID nineteen. So I guess that's what
Speaker 1: they meant by the potential benefit, right if if the
Speaker 1: virus had gotten into the White House and the President
Speaker 1: was potentially exposed, they thought to the selves, why not
Speaker 1: put the president on this will keep an eye on him.
Speaker 1: Maybe doesn't have these kinds of predispositions too hard a
Speaker 1: rhythmy is that other people would have to worry about.
Speaker 1: I don't really know, we've never really been told about that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, they did a risk benefit analysis of a
Speaker 1: guy who really wanted to take this, and they decided, okay,
Speaker 1: they could do it safely, but that may not be
Speaker 1: true of everybody else. So you have to exercise abundant
Speaker 1: caution not to get yourself into a situation where you
Speaker 1: might have a hard rhythmy you and your doctor. The
Speaker 1: other interesting thing about this, just a sort of a
Speaker 1: little bit on the side, is that Dr Connelly never
Speaker 1: actually said that the patient is taking it, even though
Speaker 1: the President himself has admitted it. I suspect that's because
Speaker 1: hip h privacy laws prevent him from saying anything as
Speaker 1: I think about what a patient of his is taking.
Speaker 1: But it did create a little bit of a fudge factor,
Speaker 1: a little bit of a vagueness about what the President
Speaker 1: had said exactly. And it's unfortunate because a lot of
Speaker 1: this has become very political. And then you also get
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi saying, oh, he shouldn't be taken this because
Speaker 1: of his age group and and his weight group, and
Speaker 1: should call morbidly OBEs. You get all this stuff rolled
Speaker 1: into it, and it just amplifies the rest of the story.
Speaker 1: But I didn't want to ask one particular thing because
Speaker 1: President Trump said that he's taking hydroxy chloric quin as
Speaker 1: long as a zinc supplement, and that's an important part
Speaker 1: of it too, because up until then it was either
Speaker 1: hydroxy chloric quin by itself or with the antibiotic azethromycin.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of a slightly different dosage that
Speaker 1: he's taking. There is again some belief among some people
Speaker 1: that zinc may help you. It's not proven, and so
Speaker 1: the president's attitude on these substances is, you know, what
Speaker 1: the heck, what do you have to lose? And you
Speaker 1: do have something to lose from taking hydroxy chloric quin
Speaker 1: indiscriminately with zinc. I don't think there's a whole lot
Speaker 1: of danger. It's not proven to do anything for you.
Speaker 1: But the President again is saying, well, we're in a crisis,
Speaker 1: and in the absence of proof that it doesn't, in
Speaker 1: the absence of proof that it's gonna harm me, I
Speaker 1: might as well take it. And that's not really great
Speaker 1: medical science. It's not the way doctors approached their jobs
Speaker 1: the care and treatment of patients in any regard. So
Speaker 1: it's his philosophy. He's allowed to do it. A lot
Speaker 1: of people are just concerned about the example he's setting.
Speaker 1: Lenny Bernstein, health and medicine reporter at the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for joining us. Oh you bet.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. I'm Astar Ramirez and this
Speaker 1: has been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that. For
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