The White House and Trump himself spent months not just hyping the use of hydroxychloroquine as a miracle cure for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 infection, they also spent millions stockpiling the ill-fated drug that studies show was more likely to kill you than regular treatment alone.
But chloroquine is not the only fake miracle cure that was promoted by the Trump regime according to the Associated Press.
The regime also signed an emergency contract for Pepcid, a heartburn medication they apparently believed could be used in COVID patients.
There were no published data or studies to suggest that famotidine, the active ingredient in Pepcid, would be effective against the novel coronavirus.
And in early April, when government scientists learned of a proposal to spend millions in federal research funding to study Pepcid, they found it laughable, according to interviews, a whistleblower complaint and internal government records obtained by The Associated Press.
But that didn’t stop the Trump administration from granting a $21 million emergency contract to researchers trying it out on ailing patients. The Food and Drug Administration gave the clinical trial speedy approval even as a top agency official worried that the proposed daily injections of high doses of famotidine for already sick patients pushed safety “to the limits,” internal government emails show.
According to the Associated Press, the White House signed this "emergency" contract for Pepcid because a pair of American doctors believed it could be used as a treatment. And that's it. They did not provide any scientific basis aside from their own best guesses and a hunch. One of the doctors claims he took it himself, but anyone can take Pepcid. It's available over the counter.
But how did the claim of a random doctor lead to a big contract for a quack's miracle cure?
It may or may not surprise you to learn than Ron Vara Peter Navarro was involved. I was at least a little bit surprised because what the hell does Peter Navarro know about clinical trials and federal procurement law?
The Press reports that Trump's top trade adviser pressured Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) assistant secretary for preparedness and response Dr. Robert Kadlec to approve the deal.
By the second week of March, after Trump had declared the coronavirus a national emergency, the administration was scrambling for treatments. But the president’s interest in speedy solutions conflicted with the methodical procedures meant to ensure decisions are backed by science, not political influence.
Science and political impatience clashed quickly, documents show. A week after Trump’s emergency declaration, Kadlec received a blunt warning from the White House.
Peter Navarro, Trump’s top assistant for trade and manufacturing policy, said in a March 19 email that he would soon be “flooding” Kadlec’s office with contracts “and I cannot have these kind of bullshit delays at HHS.”
When dealing with the Trump regime, the truth is often dumber than anything you can imagine.
What Navarro referred to as a "bullshit delay" was more of a common sense delay because you don't immediately sign a $21 million contract for using an over the counter antacid to treat a virus just because it appears on your desk.
I can scarcely imagine what other nonsense we will learn about only once the Biden administration opens the books to see what horrors are inside.