Dr Fauci was EXCITED about hydroxychloroquine use for coronavirus 7 years ago, why is he so against it now?
Immunologist Dr Anthony Fauci, who sits on the White House Coronavirus Task Force team, had reportedly said nearly seven years ago that he was excited about lab test reports of a combination of drugs including hydroxychloroquine in antiviral experiments on a SARS-like coronavirus. The report has emerged at a time when the expert is discouraging blatant use of the popularly known anti-malarial drug for the treatment of the novel coronavirus infection plaguing the United States and the world.
President Donald Trump, amid the virus crisis, has touted hydroxychloroquine as a magic drug that can treat COVID-19, despite medical experts, including Dr Fauci, urging a more cautious approach. Fauci pointed out last week that there were no reputable scientific studies showing the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in coronavirus treatment.
However, reports state that Dr Fauci was not as skeptical of the use of experimental drugs on coronavirus-linked infections a few years ago.
"We don't have to start designing new drugs," Fauci had reportedly said years ago referring to the time it takes developing new drugs. "The next time someone comes into an emergency room in Qatar or Saudi Arabia, you would have drugs that are readily available. And at least you would have some data," he had said, according to Zerohedge.
"Even though the treatment hasn't gone through definitive trials," Fauci had said, "if I were a physician in a hospital and someone were dying, rather than do nothing, you can see if these work."
The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr Fauci, who has served under six US presidents, has widely been seen as the country's ultimate authority on infectious diseases. However, recent reports of his prior willingness to use a combination of drugs including hydroxychloroquine have raised speculations. The expert, however, on Friday, April 3, provided a detailed explanation of his views of the particular drug as a coronavirus treatment.
Dr Fauci, during a segment on 'Fox & Friends', was told of a recent Sermo poll of more than 6,000 physicians in 30 countries in which 37 percent rated HCQ as the “most effective therapy” in treating the novel coronavirus.
"We don’t operate on how you ‘feel',” Fauci replied, stating that the survey did not point out facts but merely measured feelings and opinions of the physicians. "We operate on what evidence is and data is."
The hosts of the show also played a clip of Dr Mehmet Cengiz Öz asking for Dr Fauci's thoughts on "Chinese study from Wuhan, reflecting statistically significant improvement in recovering from fever, from cough, and from pneumonia as well." The expert replied with: "That was not a very robust study. It is still possible that there is a beneficial effect, but the study that was just quoted, on a scale of strength of evidence, that’s not overwhelmingly strong. It’s an indication, a hint of it."
“So although there is some suggestion that there is a benefit there, I think we’ve got to be careful that we don’t make that majestic leap to assume that this is a knockout drug," he said. "We still need to do the kinds of studies that definitively prove that any intervention, not just this one, but any intervention is truly safe and effective. But when you don’t have that information,” the doctor added, “It’s understandable, and I grant that … it’s understandable why people may want to take something anyway, even with the slightest hint of it being effective, and I have no problem with that."