After Trump blurted out at a press conference last week that he's supposedly been taking hydroxychloroquine preventatively for two weeks, despite FDA warnings, a recent Lancet study found there were no benefits to treating patients with the hydroxychloroquine, and patients were more likely to die in hospital and develop heart rhythm complications than those who were not treated with the anti-malarial drug drug.
CNN's Dana Bash asked Trump economic adviser Kevin Hassett about the dangerous medical advice being given by his boss on this Sunday's State of the Union, and in an obvious effort to appease Trump, Hassett refused to acknowledge that what he's been doing could very well get people killed.
BASH: “It's not going to kill anybody.” Well, we now know according to this study, a major study, that is not true. The president has been giving medical advice on hydroxychloroquine. Do you think that that is putting American lives at risk?
HASSETT: The problem right now is that we're going up against this enemy, the virus, that we don't know how to treat yet and we're watching treatments go through the pipeline at hospitals all around the world and aggregating data to try to learn about it.
As Dr. Fauci said at press conferences, what we really need is a controlled randomized trial so that we can figure this out. I think until we see a large scale controlled randomized trial, there will be questions. Ans, so unfortunately we're in a world, where doctors all around the world are anecdotally trying things and watching to see what works and doesn't work and they're treating their patients accordingly.
And, I wish we were in a better world where we had all these treatments that have had the gold standard trials and everybody --
BASH: Have you taken it? You're in the White House, and --
HASSETT: You know it's --
BASH: -- would you take it or are you?
HASSETT: We're really not supposed to talk about our personal health here. The thing I can say though is, the only reason I do actually talk about my health in this case is that I talked about it with my doctor because I think there is a lot of evidence in the lab that this could help.
And then he said oh, looking at the other stuff you're taking, the interaction, it gives me a concern, so I don't think you should take it. And so the point is, just like the doctor, people who are out there who are wondering about it, they need to talk to their doctors about it and make sure it doesn't interact with other things they're taking.
And that's why I gave... otherwise I would have just said, why are you asking about my personal health? I thought I should use it as an opportunity to remind people that everybody needs to go talk to their doctor about it if they think they want to take it.
BASH: Well, that is very good advice.
No Dana, that's called weasel words. "Good advice" would be following Neil Cavuto's lead on this one.
