Trump to scientists: everything you know is wrong

Subscribe to the Daily CurveFlattener. It's free. Just enter your email address above.

April 08, 2020 — Good morning, everyone. Here's your hump-day edition of the Daily CurveFlattener, typed with speed and accuracy by Chronicle publisher Mitch Shannon, from deep in the Swansea neighborhood of west Toronto, somewhere near Grenadier Pond. 

History records it was Hippocrates of Kos, the progenitor of modern medicine, who set an early standard by being first to promote the use of unproven nostrums. It's said he was persuaded to recommend quack elixirs from watching the ancient Greek equivalent of Fox News, known as "ειδήσεις αλεπού."

Much later, William Harvey advanced patient care by instructing the ill and infirm to remove the light-bulbs from table lamps and insert their tongues into the live electric socket, a curative process that became known to succeeding generations of doctors as "Harvey's Method of Charcoal-Broiling." The seminal physician thus rationalized his research principles: "What do you have to lose?" 

Alright. Those were two examples of fake medical history. Neither Hippocrates nor Harvey adhered to that form of thinking -- but that's only because they were deprived the benefits of receiving their medical degrees from Trump University.

This week, the U.S. president continued his bizarre tub-thumping for hydroxychloroquine, insisting quite fraudulently that the warhorse Rx, used as anti-malarial and lupus Tx, is a valid antidote for Covid-19. According to press accounts, he said: “We don’t have time to go and say, ‘Gee, let’s take a couple of years and test it out,’ and let’s go out and test with the test-tubes and the laboratories. I’d love to do that, but we have people dying today.” 

 Trump really did say that, and you really need to let the quote sink in. 

 "We don't have time to test... with the test-tubes and the laboratories." 

So, if you take the word of this lumpen yutz, poof, there goes every scintilla of knowledge humankind has accumulated through the millennia concerning the primacy of clinical evidence. 

There is, of course, such a thing as fast-tracking research, and in many cases technology has notably streamlined the discovery phase of the bench-to-clinic process, viz. "real-world data." But that ain't what the Flim-Flam Man is out there pitching. 

In his seeming view, it's time to settle old scores left over from high school, time to re-air grievances against the four-eyed dweebs and geeks who spent sunny afternoons indoors at Science Club meetings. In Trump's view of things, the very mention of a test-tube is an invitation to smirk, and the introduction of any form of complex thought is a call for the rejoinder, "Ah, shaddup, brainiac." 

There have been reports of fatalities in the USA and abroad resulting from credulous individuals heeding Trump's previous advice and ingesting forms of chloroquine. In that regard, he is in a unique position to observe that people are dying.

If circumstances could be reversed ever so slightly -- say, in the imagined event that Big Pharma had openly encouraged the off-label use of a particular drug -- regulators would pause less than a moment before organizing a lynch mob. Things have obviously changed. Currently, while Covid-19 is ravaging humanity, the U.S. president seems delighted to perform the same act on all established norms of human health research.

COVID CHRONICLE 04/08/2020

• Researchers from the Universities of British Columbia, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, along with McMaster U and 35 other centers will conduct a national 1,000-patient trial aimed at developing an injectable Tx derived from the plasma of patients who have recovered from Covid-19. Trials using a similar approach have been initiated in the far east and U.S.A., although the size of those studies has been small, reports The Globe & Mail. [note: article is behind a paywall]. 

• Meanwhile, University of Pittsburgh medical school researchers report initial success in animal trials for an investigatory Covid-19 vaccine, according to findings published in EBioMedicine, a publication of Lancet. The vaccine resulted in SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in mice, the university says in a media release. 
• What happens international travelers returning to Canada refuse to comply with the federal Quarantine Act, requiring 14 days of self-isolation? In at least one case in British Columbia, absolutely nothing. The mayor of North Cowichan, B.C. tells Global News a local couple "told our bylaw enforcement officers, ‘Sorry, but we’re just not going to do that.'” No action was taken; enforcing the law seems to be in a limbo between local, provincial and federal agencies. The pair of Island scofflaws notwithstanding, CBC reports that B.C. seems to be flattening the curve to a greater extent than the rest of Canada.
• The Ontario government will provide compensation of between $200 to $250 to parents while Ontario schools and child care centers are closed during Covid-19 pandemic, according to an announcement from Queen's Park.
• It might stand to reason that the current shelter-in-place requirements would be good for newspaper circulation, with a bored citizenry eager to receive pertinent local information, and all that. But in the case of the Torstar group, not so much. Torstar, which produces the Toronto Star, Hamilton Spectator and other southern Ontario daily papers, said this week it's cutting 85 jobs due to ad revenue lost as a result of the pandemic.

STORIES CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON TODAY...

There's growing medical interest in micro-dosing of psychedelics for a variety of conditions. Our John Evans is busy chasing down interviews for an article he's developing for The Chronicle of Healthcare Marketing.

RIGHT NOW WE'RE LISTENING TO... 

"Storm Windows" by the great singer-songwriter John Prine, who died yesterday from Covid-19. Later, The World Tonight podcast from BBC Radio 4. It's the 50th Anniversary of this nightly newscast, which maintains the worldwide standard of excellence in audio journalism.

TONIGHT WE'RE READING..

Nothing. Tired. Plan to stare blankly into space and not answer the phone, and sure as hell not pick up Woody Allen's just-published autobiography. 

TONIGHT WE'RE COOKING...

See previous section. This seems like a good night for a can of Chunky Sirloin soup, unless someone else managed to get to it first. In which case, it might be the better part of a bag of Hawkins' Cheezies. Really need to go shopping.

AND HOW ARE YOU DOING?

Please make use of the comments section at the Daily CurveFlattener to let us know what you're up to today. Or feel free to check in via LinkedIn, email, or your choice of connector. Pass this newsletter along to your colleagues, won't you?

That's it. Stay in touch, and stay safe until tomorrow.