WorldNetDaily is still — still! — pushing hydroxychloroquine to treat despite the complete lack of credible evidence that it works. Joel S. Hirschhorn ranted in a Nov. 11 column:
Hard to believe, but very few Americans have doctors who are using a safe, proven protocol for early home/outpatient treatment for those with COVID-19 symptoms or a positive test result. If they had, some 180,000 deaths could have been prevented so far.
How could this happen? Two main reasons. First, The National Institutes of Health have not sanctioned any treatment for home/outpatient use – but only treatment promoted for hospital use. Second, the Food and Drug Administration does not approve of the use of the key cheap, safe and generic drug used in the U.S. since 1955, namely hydroxychloroquine (HCQ).
Hirschhorn cites the usual dubious suspects in support of his argument: Harvey Risch, Vladimir Zelenko, and the bogus HCQ statistics assembled anonymously and touted by the group to which Hirschhorn belongs, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. And as befits a guy who put Anthony Fauci before a “grand jury” impaneled in his own fevered brain, Hirschhorn ranted that “The media-hyped meme that Fauci is a trusted expert is nonsense.”
A Nov. 19 “news” article by Art Moore touted a congressional hearing that was designed to defend hydroxychloroquine — Risch testified at it — with one congressman claiming that “the drug hydroxychloroquine was used as a “weapon” in the presidential election after it was promoted by President Trump. While Moore gave some space to Dr. Ashish Jha, the sole witness who accurately testified about studies showing not only that hydroxyvchloroquine didn’t work but also that some studies showed patients who took HCQ had a higher death rate than those who weren’t, he also let another witness attack Jha’s testimony as “wreckless [sic] and dangerous for the nation.”
Hirschhorn returned on Nov. 24 to complain that “The leftist press has totally ignored the hearing and the main messages delivered by senators and distinguished doctors who testified.” He attacked Jha as a “shill” for Democrats and accused Fauci of “malpractice,” then proclaimed: “The big reveal of the hearing was that Democrats have no interest in expanding access to proven home treatments for COVID and saving lives. Right now, leftist Democrat politics are causing tens of thousands of preventable COVID deaths. All those who voted for Biden should know that Democrats are a fundamental cause of the rising numbers of COVID hospitalizations and deaths.”