The DC Fishwrap's Dana Milbank has field day with the latest zig (or zag) by the star of the 5 O'clock Follies (press briefings of the Coronavirus Task Force) into medical fields out of his lane. The *ILK makes recommendations that actually are the spiels of a patent medicine huckster. "Try it — what do your have to lose?" the huckster proclaims and the answer is... not life, but certain death. The *ILK did nothing in response to repreated warnings from US intelligence sources about the likelihood of a COVID-19 pandemic. From January through most of March 2020, the US government did not respond as the contagion spread across the namtion. It would be funny if we had not suffered 2,940,715 Iinfected Cases and 203,814 Deaths to date. The USA is #1 in the world in these categories. That is nothing to cheer about; it is something to mourn. If this is (fair & balanced) further proof of maladministration as an impeachable offense, so be it.
[x YouTube]
"The Liar Tweets Tonight" (Parody of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight")
By Roy Zimmerman and The ReZisters, featuring Sandy Riccardi
This genius parody has become this blogger's current earworm and Resistance Anthem. So, if this is a (fair & balanced) first step toward doing the right thing, so be it.
[x WaPo — DC Fishwrap]
Trump Is Exhibiting All The Symptoms Of A Hydroxychloroquine Overdose
By Dana Milbank
TagCrowd Cloud provides a visual summary of the blog post below
My study hasn’t been peer reviewed yet, but my evidence — based on a hunch that originated in my gut — is very strong: President Trump has overdosed on hydroxychloroquine.
Trump, who claims a “natural instinct for science" not from formal training but because his late uncle was a scientist, once used this innate ability to determine that climate change was a hoax and that windmills cause cancer. More recently he mobilized the US government to make sure thousands of COVID-19 patients were treated with the antimalarial Hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic Azithromycin — because Trump’s instinct told him the drug cocktail would be a “phenomenal” “game changer.”
Sadly, evidence from all over suggests that the drugs cause heart problems and worsen death rates.
No matter! The stable genius dropped his hydroxychloroquine hypothesis faster than you can say “snake oil” and is now touting a new miracle cure for the virus: injecting the lungs with bleach, alcohol or other common disinfectants, possibly along with massive doses of heat and ultraviolet light.
Noting that disinfectants kill the virus “in a minute” on inanimate surfaces, Trump asked: “Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside? Or almost a cleaning? … It would be interesting to check that.”
Government scientists dutifully promised to investigate the boss’s lung-bleaching idea.
As it happens, I, too, have a natural instinct for science (my brother is a urologist [italics supplied]) and I have used it to conclude that Hydroxychloroquine abuse has caused Trump and some top aides and allies to suffer a condition we experts [italics supplied] refer to as acute nuttiness.
First, it is scientifically obvious from Trump’s enthusiasm for Hydroxychloroquine that he has been using it himself. While taking the drugs, he has not succumbed to Coronavirus. He has concluded, therefore, based on his study population (N=1), that the drugs prevent Coronavirus 100 percent of the time.
To this I can add clinical evidence, derived from searching the Mayo Clinic’s website for side effects of Azithromycin, Hydroxychloroquine and its cousin, Chloroquine. Among them, I found: “change in hair color” (Trump has recently faded from orange to gray), “discoloration of the skin” (originally and mistakenly attributed to tanning beds), “trouble sleeping” (see his overnight tweets), “noisy breathing” (that gaspin during his Oval Office address), “difficulty with speaking” (whenever using a teleprompter), “runny nose,” (the sniffing!) and “unusual facial expressions” (‘nuff said).
Also, consider the mental side effects the drugs can cause: Irritability. Confusion. Aggression. Anger. Hostility. Quickness to react or overreact emotionally. Unusual behavior. Unsteadiness. Severe mood or mental changes. Restlessness. Paranoia. Depersonalization (an emotional “numbness”). Feeling that others are watching you or controlling your behavior. Feeling that others can hear your thoughts. Feeling, seeing or hearing things that are not there.
Confusion, paranoia, aggression, unsteadiness, severe mental shifts: These would seem to describe not just the president’s actions of late but those of some top aides and allies.
Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services, Reuters just reported, had initially installed as head of the agency’s coronavirus response one Brian Harrison, who among his other qualifications was until April 2018 a Labradoodle breeder.
Trump officials ousted the man who until recently led the federal government’s effort to come up with a vaccine for coronavirus, Rick Bright, because, Bright said, he had declared that hydroxychloroquine treatments “clearly lack scientific merit.”
They also removed Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from her job leading the coronavirus response after saying (correctly) that Americans should expect “significant disruption” to their lives.
HHS has just hired, as its chief spokesman, former Trump campaign operative Michael Caputo, who, CNN found, authored an array of racist tweets and trafficked in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
New White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has “cried while meeting with members of the White House staff on at least two occasions,” the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman reports. “Crying” is another of the listed side effects.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell proposed that states file for bankruptcy rather than receive emergency funds — potentially devastating public health, not to mention millions of Americans’ pensions.
Nervousness and “general feeling of discomfort” are side effects. This can be seen in Robert Redfield, head of the CDC, being forced to recant warnings about a second wave of coronavirus in the fall. And Tony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, walking back his claim that lives could have been saved if the federal government acted more quickly.
And now we have Trump talking about killing the virus by scrubbing the lungs with household disinfectant.
Where does it end? French researchers have speculated that smokers may have protection against the virus. Perhaps Trump will distribute to every ICU in America a case of Marlboros from the national stockpile?
Patients, after a rejuvenating lung cleaning, can enjoy a smoke with their Chloroquine cocktail. ###
[Dana Milbank is a nationally syndicated op-ed columnist at The Washington Post. He also provides political commentary for various TV outlets, and he is the author of three books on politics, including the national bestseller Homo Politicus (2007). Milbank joined The Post in 2000 as a Style political writer, then covered the presidency of George W. Bush as a White House correspondent before starting the column in 2005. Before joining The Post, Milbank spent two years as a senior editor at The New Republic, where he covered the Clinton White House, and eight years as a reporter with the Wall Street Journal, where he covered Congress and was a London-based correspondent. He received a BA cum laude (political science) from Yale University (CT).]
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