That’s the headline on a Washington Post report by Debbie Cenziper and Shawn Mulcahy from July 7, 2020. It’s a horror story in so many ways.
The nurses and aides at the Southeastern Veterans’ Center in the suburbs of Philadelphia had watched so much go wrong since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The communal dining that lasted into April, the nights that feverish patients were left to sleep beside roommates who weren’t sick yet. “Merry Christmas,” one nurse told another when they finally got N95 masks, weeks into the crisis and just before administrators stopped staffing the isolation rooms because too many people were feared infected.
But what worried some nurses most was what they called the “covid cocktail,” the widespread, off-label use of one of the antimalarial drugs touted by President Trump in March as a potentially game-changing treatment for covid-19.
For more than two weeks in April, a drug regimen that included hydroxychloroquine was routinely dispensed at the struggling center, often for patients who had not been tested for covid-19 and for those who suffered from medical conditions known to raise the risk of dangerous side effects, interviews, emails and medical notes and records obtained by The Washington Post show.
The WP story paints a horrific story of a facility overwhelmed by the virus. It would have been bad enough, but the HCQ story adds an extra element of disaster. From the description of what was happening in the facility, cocktails of HCQ along with other drugs were being given out of desperation, without regard for whether patients were actually sick with the virus, and despite medical conditions that should have kept them from getting the drugs. The monitoring that should have been done was not. From the description of how the drugs were administered and the lack of guidance on their use, it appears that it was a “Hail Mary” play in hopes it would make up for all the other failures at the center.
The drug regimen appeared to conflict with guidance from the Food and Drug Administration, which issued an emergency-use authorization for the drugs in late March but stressed they should be administered only during clinical trials or in hospitals providing “careful heart monitoring” and only after detailed discussions with patients and families about the risks. At the 238-bed nursing home, the treatment was given over the objections of some nurses, at times with little knowledge among patients’ families and largely hidden from lawmakers who have been probing the matter, according to interviews and emails.
It’s not known how many unnecessary deaths may have resulted, but the story makes clear there were failures at multiple levels from the center all the way up through government agencies that are supposed to oversee the facility. The cocktails were only discontinued after a nationwide study of 368 hospitalized Veterans Affairs patients with covid-19 reported that the death rate was higher for those treated with hydroxychloroquine. Investigations are ongoing. Estimates are 30 patients got the drug cocktails, but the actual number is still being determined.
Despite FDA warnings that HCQ was unproven as effective in treating Covid-19 and that there was little information on how safe such use was, in Mid-March President Trump had been promoting it enthusiastically, which is why its off-label use had been authorized.
The president pressed forward during a series of televised press briefings. “It’s a very strong, powerful medicine, but it doesn’t kill people,” Trump declared in early April. “We have some very good results and some very good tests.”
Those statements were lies.
The verdict on Hydroxychloroquine is not completely settled, but there have been no definitive studies to date proving its effectiveness against the coronavirus. Studies have been discontinued given the lack of proof and the known hazardous side effects.
This has not persuaded those who have made belief in HCQ part of their belief in Trump, nor has it stopped the unscrupulous from cashing in on their credulity. An example can be found on Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network, which as recently as July 3 was claiming: New Hydroxychloroquine Study Proves Trump Right, Says It 'Significantly' Cuts Death Rate. I am not going to link to it, but I will note the study cited was also covered by CNN, who found a number of problems with it. None of those were mentioned by CBN of course.
What happened in that veteran’s center is likely to be repeated as the situation becomes desperate in states where the pandemic is spiking and people seek whatever remedies they believe can help them. This example via Digby shows how Trump’s lies are killing people. As for individuals, so for the nation and the world.
Assuming you can get through the paywall, read the whole Washington Post article.