Twitter has suspended presidential son Donald Trump Jr. for 12 hours after the younger Trump tweeted a video featuring misinformation about COVID-19 treatment. Also in Twitter’s penalty box: Breitbart News, the publication that originally published the controversial video.
Twitter also removed posts featuring the video that were retweeted by President Trump himself, though it didn’t suspend the president’s account.
The video from Breitbart News showed a press conference outside the US Capitol where several doctors promoted views contradicted by science, including that hydroxychloroquine could cure COVID-19 and that it wasn’t necessary for people to wear masks.
On Monday, the Breitbart video went viral on major social media platforms—especially on Facebook where it racked up 14 million views in a few hours. Like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube also have policies against spreading misinformation about COVID. By Tuesday morning all three platforms had banned the video. It remains available on Breitbart’s website.
“This virus has a cure”
Speakers included Stella Immanuel, a Houston physician who trained in Nigeria.
“Nobody needs to get sick,” Immanuel said. “This virus has a cure. It’s called hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax. I know people want to talk about a mask. Hello. You don’t need mask. There is a cure.”
Critics have questioned Immanuel’s scientific judgment. A Tuesday article from the Daily Beast reported on a sermon that Immanuel (a minister as well as a physician) gave in 2013 claiming that women have “serious gynecological problems” that result from having sex with spirits in their dreams.
“We call them all kinds of names—endometriosis, we call them molar pregnancies, we call them fibroids, we call them cysts, but most of them are evil deposits from the spirit husband,” Immanuel said, according to the Daily Beast.
While Immanuel claims to have successfully treated hundreds of COVID-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine, more systematic data cast doubt on the drug’s effectiveness as a COVID-19 cure. Ars Technica’s Beth Mole wrote last month about “a large, randomized trial in the UK run by researchers at the University of Oxford. On June 5, the lead investigators of the trial announced they were halting the use of hydroxychloroquine after reviewing early data.” The researchers found that hydroxychloroquine made no significant difference in the mortality rate, length of hospital stay, or other health outcomes.
Last month the World Health Organization stopped testing hydroxychloroquine as part of an international multi-drug testing effort after early results showed no signs hydroxychloroquine was effective at treating COVID-19.
At the same time, hydroxychloroquine has long been known to have significant side effects. We noted in April that side effects include “everything from headaches, vomiting, and rashes to loss of vision (retinopathy), seizures, hypoglycemia, heart arrhythmias, and deadly heart damage.”
Hydroxychloroquine has become a political football
In March, Donald Trump began enthusiastically endorsing the drug despite scant evidence of its effectiveness. In May he announced he had begun taking the drug himself.
Trump’s endorsement contributed to surging demand for the drug, creating shortages for patients with conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis for which hydroxychloroquine has long been a standard treatment. Some government officials began restricting the drug to prioritize access for people with these conditions.
That, in turn, has fueled conspiracy theories that the medical establishment is deliberately suppressing access to the drug and evidence of its effectiveness against COVID-19.
https://arstechnica.com/?p=1694730