WH Trade Idiot Peter Navarro’s Got Some Hydroxychloroquine In The Trunk Of His Car For You
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a respected medical expert, warns that we're still “knee-deep" in the COVID-19 pandemic, but White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, who is neither a medical expert nor respectable, had some good news to share Tuesday with people dumb enough to listen to him.
NAVARRO: Yesterday, the four doctors at the Detroit hospital system, led by William O'Neill, filed a request for an emergency use authorization for the medicine known as hydroxychloroquine.
Jesus, not this shit again. The Food and Drug Administration determined last month that hydroxychloroquine isn't an effective treatment against COVID-19.
NAVARRO: The FDA decisions that they made, which I think were precipitous, and based on bad science, had a tremendously negative effect on two things — one is the ability for American people to use this medicine to protect themselves.
A review of safety issues related to hydroxychloroquine was released last week, and hospitalized COVID-19 patients treated with Donald Trump's wonder drug suffered "heart rhythm problems ... blood and lymph system disorders, kidney injuries, and liver problems and failure."
NAVARRO: Two, the ability for hospitals, like the Detroit hospital system, to recruit patients for the kind of randomized blind clinical trials that everybody wants to settle once and for all the questions of efficacy and safety.
We think it's been settled. Navarro told CNN anchor John Berman that as COVID-19 cases continue to rise, hydroxychloroquine could prove an important “tool in the toolbox." The Trump administration is obsessed with quick fixes, but if we'd just social distanced and wore masks, we wouldn't be in this mess.
Asked why Covid cases are spiking in many states, WH adviser Peter Navarro claims that "the assumption I think amon… https://t.co/eXw1nmDDvF— Aaron Rupar (@Aaron Rupar) 1594125864.0
When Berman asked him about the surge in coronavirus case, Navarro reminded us that the virus started in China, which is brand new information. He claimed everyone assumed the virus would just pack up and leave when summer came, like an Arizona retiree, but that was Trump's wishful thinking. Experts, none of whom had cheated on their SATs, cautioned early on that we didn't know how a novel coronavirus would behave, and researchers stated in May that warm weather alone wouldn't control COVID-19. States opened prematurely anyway.
Last Friday, Navarro suggested during an MSNBC interview that COVID-19 looked like a “weaponized virus" because it didn't take the summer off like a respectable pandemic. There's no evidence that China “weaponized" a virus that killed tens of thousands of its own people. However, there's ample proof that Americans are weaponizing their own stupidity by refusing to take simple precautions against the spread of COVID-19.
Berman asked Navarro how come COVID-19 cases are dropping in other countries — France, Germany, South Korea, Japan, even Italy — but they're surging in the US. We also have a record number of hospitalizations. Navarro was befuddled. He'd only come here to sell hydroxychloroquine.
NAVARRO: That's not my lane to answer that kind of question. All I can tell you is that we got a virus from China that's highly asymptomatic.
BERMAN: So did they!
Navarro insisted that his job was to “save lives" by getting people “hydroxychloroquine and ventilators." He called hydroxychloroquine the “poster child of a politicized medicine," because for 60 years it appeared to work on unrelated ailments and now these partisan doctors are claiming it's no good against a virus that didn't exist until late last year.
I’m a Californian. Because of my race, my family was sent from LA to an internment camp in Arkansas. Don’t whitew… https://t.co/AnDwrjUHif— George Takei (@George Takei) 1594143485.0
But Navarro thinks if he says “China virus" enough people will forget that American exceptionalism failed to contain the coronavirus. It's not just gross. It's not working. More Americans blame the president for this shit show as more Americans needlessly die.
What's funny is that yesterday, Navarro claimed he didn't see race because he's from California — you know, the home of noted civil rights activists Daryl Gates and Mark Furhman.
NAVARRO: I live my life in a race-blind world, and it troubles me that we have so much of this discussion when in fact we have got real problems in this country.
Navarro willingly uses xenophobic, race-baiting terminology to scapegoat China and by extension the Chinese people for the failures of (white) American leadership. Maybe he's also blind to irony, as well.
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Stephen Robinson is a writer and social kibbitzer based in Portland, Oregon. He writes make believe for Cafe Nordo, an immersive theatre space in Seattle. Once, he wrote a novel called “Mahogany Slade,” which you should read or at least buy. He's also on the board of the Portland Playhouse theatre. His son describes him as a “play typer guy."
