In a tweetstorm late Monday, Donald Trump retweeted and shared a viral video of quack doctors touting the dangerous and potentially lethal anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a “cure” for COVID-19. Some of Trump’s tweets (more than a dozen pushed false claims about hydroxychloroquine) were removed by Twitter and the video was taken down by Facebook, but not before millions saw it. In one video, Dr. Stella Immanuel, said “you don’t need a mask” and said she was treating people with hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and Zithromax.
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In the tweets, Trump suggested “the use of hydroxychloroquine to tackle COVID-19 is being suppressed in order to keep deaths high and the economy shutdown ahead of November’s election.”
“The tweets also ramped up Trump’s attack on Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID),” PharmaPhorum reports.
The Daily Beast reports: “The video, which also featured the doctors dismissing mask-wearing, was eventually taken down by Facebook for “sharing false information” about the virus, after racking up millions of views in a matter of hours. Several right-wing outlets and personalities, however, continued to promote the clip of the doctors’ press conference on Twitter, eventually reaching the president’s timeline. Besides retweeting the clip several times, Trump—who recently said his retweets tend to get him “in trouble”—went on to share several other posts promoting hydroxychloroquine, which the FDA has rescinded for emergency use for the virus.”
Stella Immanuel, the “doctor” seen in the video above, raged at Facebook after it deleted her quack advice.
More on Immanuel, from The Daily Beast: “She has often claimed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are in fact caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches. She alleges alien DNA is currently used in medical treatments, and that scientists are cooking up a vaccine to prevent people from being religious. And, despite appearing in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress on Monday, she has said that the government is run in part not by humans but by ‘reptilians’ and other aliens.”
