Yesterday the media reported a story about a man dying from chloroquine and blamed it on Trump:
An Arizona man has died and his wife is in critical condition after ingesting an anti-malaria drug in an attempt to treat the novel coronavirus https://t.co/Yqb6Xm7mOF
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) March 23, 2020
An Arizona man is died of a heart attack and his wife was hospitalized after the couple ingested a type of chloroquine, a chemical that has been hailed recently by President Trump as a possible "game changer" in the fight against novel coronavirus. https://t.co/ItBLKqac8B
— NPR (@NPR) March 24, 2020
An Arizona man died and his wife was hospitalized after officials said they ingested a fish tank additive that contained the same active ingredient as an anti-malaria drug, which President Trump has referred to as a coronavirus “game changer" https://t.co/WPZ8fazDYG
— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 24, 2020
Those are just a few examples from Twitchy.
CNN even took it to air…
This is not accurate @JohnBerman. It was aquarium cleaner pic.twitter.com/IBXjxcILVm
— Greg Pollowitz (@GPollowitz) March 24, 2020
Drudge also ran with this story with the headline “Man dies after taking chloroquine…”
But this is incredibly misleading! The man and his wife ingested a cleaner for their aquarium that happens to have chloroquine in it. It’s called chloroquine phosphate. The Reuters article that Drudge linked to at least had the details in the story even though they still indirectly blamed Trump…
An Arizona man has died and his wife is in critical condition after they ingested chloroquine phosphate – an aquarium cleaning product similar to drugs that have been named by President Trump as potential treatments for coronavirus infection.
The couple, in their 60s, experienced immediate distress after swallowing the drug, an additive used at aquariums to clean fish tanks, according to Banner Health Hospital in Phoenix.
Chloroquine phosphate shares the same active ingredient as malaria drugs that President Trump has touted as possibly effective against COVID-19, the potentially life-threatening disease caused by the coronavirus.
On Saturday, Trump tweeted about the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, saying it had “a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine.”
The nation’s top infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, played down that claim, saying the therapy must be tested to assure its safety and efficacy.
These two things have nothing to do with each other. Trump has NEVER advocated ingesting a fish tank cleaner at all. It’s patently absurd to lead people to believe this has anything to do with the president.
Axios, who also ran the story, has now deleted their tweet and corrected their story:
We have deleted this tweet and corrected our story because it did not reflect the full nature of the self-medication done with an additive commonly used to clean fish tanks. https://t.co/0zucqRaIkI pic.twitter.com/3YY86rju2w
— Axios (@axios) March 24, 2020
I don’t understand how they could have gotten this so wrong in the first place. It’s a fish tank cleaner. This is not hard. It’s as if the media are so zealous to blame Trump for the coronavirus that they aren’t even paying attention to the details of a story. They just run with it. Either that or they hope that people will just read the headlines and blame Trump. Either way it’s completely irresponsible.
Axios has deleted their tweet and corrected their story. Who is next?