The press has just made what must have been a humiliating one-eighty.
According to the Daily Caller, after initially criticizing President Donald Trump for mentioning hydroxychloroquine as a possible coronavirus treatment, major news outlets — including the New York Times –– are now publishing articles in agreement with the president.
Initial response
It has been a couple of weeks since President Trump, during a White House briefing on the coronavirus, revealed that research shows hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, may be a possible treatment for the coronavirus.
“It’s been around for a long time, so we know if things don’t go as planned it’s not going to kill anybody … It’s shown very, very encouraging early results, and we’re going to be able to make that drug available almost immediately,” the president said.
As the Daily Caller put it, this is when “the press attacked. Vox called Trump’s comments ‘reckless promotion.’ The New York Times blared about Trump’s ’embrace’ of ‘unproven’ drugs.”
The sudden change
This all changed in the past few days after a new study showed that the president and his team may have been right about hydroxychloroquine.
Here’s the New York Times article from earlier this week: “The malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helped to speed the recovery of a small number of patients who were mildly ill from the coronavirus, doctors in China reported this week.”
“Cough, fever and pneumonia went away faster, and the disease seemed less likely to turn severe in people who received hydroxychloroquine than in a comparison group not given the drug,” the Times report continued. “The authors of the report said that the medication was promising, but that more research was needed to clarify how it might work in treating coronavirus disease and to determine the best way to use it.”
The Times went on to try to explain away its initial criticism by saying, “The earlier reports from France and China drew criticism because they did not include control groups to compare treated versus untreated patients. Researchers called the reports anecdotal, and said the lack of controls made it impossible to determine whether the drugs worked.”
That’s not all
In addition to the New York Times, the Daily Caller cites a plethora of instances in which mainstream media sources went after the president for his comments on hydroxychloroquine.
Thanks to the Trump administration’s efforts, the FDA has already approved the use of hydroxychloroquine for emergency coronavirus cases, and the success stories are already out there.
It may not be a cure-all, but it is better than nothing.
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