On Friday, July 31, in a column ostensibly dealing with health care “misinformation,” Washington Post media critic Margaret Sullivan opened by lambasting “fringe doctors spouting dangerous falsehoods about hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 wonder cure.”
Actually, it was Sullivan who was spouting dangerous falsehoods about this drug, something the Washington Post and much of the rest of the media have been doing since for months. On May 15, the Post offered a stark warning to any Americans who may have taken hope in a possible therapy for COVID-19.
In the newspaper’s telling, there was nothing unambiguous about the science — or the politics — of hydroxychloroquine:
“Drug promoted by Trump as coronavirus game-changer increasingly linked to deaths,” blared the headline.
Written by three Post staff writers, the story asserted that the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19 is scant and that the drug is inherently unsafe.
This claim is nonsense.
Biased against the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 – and the Washington Post is hardly alone — the paper described an April 21, 2020, drug study on U.S. Veterans Affairs patients hospitalized with the illness. It found a high death rate in patients taking the drug hydroxychloroquine. But this was a flawed study with a small sample, the main flaw being that the drug was given to the sickest patients who were already dying because of their age and severe pre-existing conditions. This study was quickly debunked. It had been posted on a non-peer-reviewed medical archive that specifically warns that studies posted on its website should not be reported in the media as established information. – READ MORE
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