snake oil

Trump, selling snake oil at yesterday’s press briefing:

Last Saturday the FDA also gave emergency authorization for hydroxychloroquine and, the hydroxychloroquine is a, I hope it’s going to be a very important answer; we’re having some very good things happening with it, and we’re going to be distributing it through the strategic national stockpile; it’s going into the strategic national stockpile to treat certain patients, and we have millions and millions of doses of it, 29 million, to be exact; in addition to that, we’re making it, and we’re also getting it from various other locations and countries and, in one case, I called Prime Minister Modi of India this morning; they make large amounts of hydroxychloroquine, very large amounts, frankly, and I said, they had a hold because, you know, they have 1.5 billion people, and they think a lot of it, and I said I’d appreciate if they would release the amounts that we ordered, and they are giving it serious consideration; but they do make, India makes a lot of it; but we have already 29 million, if you look, and that’s a big number, 29 million doses, we’ve got millions of doses that are being made here and many millions of doses that are made elsewhere that are being shipped here, and it will be arriving; we’re just hearing really positive stories and, we’re continuing to collect the data but, I’ll just speak for myself, it’s been out for a long time; it’s a malaria drug; it’s also a drug for lupus and there’s a, there’s a study out that people with lupus aren’t catching this horrible virus, they’re not affected so much by it; now, maybe that’s correct, maybe it’s false; you’re going to have to check it out, but there’s a lot of very positive things happening with that; that’s a game-changer, if that’s the case

Even if this didn’t make him sound as if he and everyone he knows has bought up all the stock in companies that manufacture hydroxychloroquine (and it really does sound like that), how is it at all ethical for the president of the United States to go on television and repeat an unfounded rumor that people with the autoimmune disease lupus aren’t affected by COVID-19 because they’re prescribed hydroxychloroquine? He’s been selling this snake oil since mid-May, and now it’s going into the national stockpile? If this doesn’t turn into the biggest insider trading scandal of all time, I’ll eat my boots.