RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/coronavirus-hydroxychloroquine-patients-should-be-able-to-try-any-potential-cure/

We still have a lot to learn about hydroxychloroquine, but we know that restrictions on personal liberty are unwise.

There’s a raging debate over the use of hydroxychloroquine to fight the novel coronavirus. Amid the controversy, it may seem like there is absolutely nothing we can agree on.

To be fair, the fact that there has been debate on this issue isn’t surprising, nor is it unhealthy. Although the Food and Drug Administration has granted an emergency-use authorization for hydroxychloroquine (and I believe rightly so; more on that later) as a coronavirus treatment, we still know quite little about its efficacy for this usage.

What is unhealthy, though, is the kind of debate we’ve been having. As my colleague Jim Geraghty pointed out on Monday, most of the conversation about the drug has been two politically motivated sides shouting at each other, framing their arguments as if any of this is a clear-cut, black-and-white issue. President Trump and his supporters tout it as a sort of medical marvel, while his detractors cry that it’s dangerous quackery. This, Geraghty explains, is the wrong approach — there are “many factors” at play when it comes to determining how a drug will or will not work. The results will vary from person to person; “nuance” is necessary. Partisan politics already play an outsized role in our conversation. When it comes to matters of life versus death, it is especially disgusting.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/04/the-lefts-ugly-reaction-to-hydroxychloroquine/

The idea that he is promoting the drug to boost the price of a mutual fund in which he owns shares is perhaps the most ludicrous conspiracy theory yet.

A  widely shared, four-person-bylined, “wow”-provoking New York Times story today informs us that Donald Trump is personally benefiting from his “aggressive advocacy” of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine because he owns stock in one of the companies that manufacture the drug.

The story might be one of the most ridiculous articles published by mainstream media in the Trump era — though, admittedly, the field is highly competitive. But while knee-jerk anti-Trumpism is expected, the angry obsession over the president’s championing of hydroxychloroquine is uniquely ugly.

For one thing, and I realize this might be difficult for some people to comprehend, it’s plausible, even likely, that Trump advocates for chloroquine because he is legitimately optimistic that a therapeutic answer might help Americans. Even if you feel he’s being reckless when speaking about the drug, you can accept that his intentions are good.

It’s also possible that Trump is hopeful about hydroxychloroquine because he thinks it will help his reelection. Desiring an outcome that benefits the vast majority of Americans, but also benefits you, is a perfectly sound moral position. Hoping for negative outcomes to strengthen your partisan position, on the other hand, is pretty nefarious.

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/rabbi-yaakov-perlow/91084/

The death today of the Novominsker rebbe, Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, will lend a sad note to the Passover seders of tens of thousands families the world over. The rabbi, a towering figure in the world of Torah Judaism, was carried off from his home in Brooklyn by the coronavirus. He perished at 89, two weeks after issuing an important warning to Jews that religious law required them to heed medical doctors during the pandemic.

We did not know Rabbi Perlow personally, though we’d once met him briefly at the offices of the Agudath Israel of America. We admired him enormously for setting a standard to which fervently orthodox Jews could repair. The Aguda is the largest grassroots organization of fervently religious Jews. Rabbi Perlow had been its president since 1998 and also chaired its Council of Torah Sages.

The Novominsker dynasty that Perlow headed was founded in Poland by his grandfather and later headed by his father, whom Perlow succeeded. In 2015, at the Aguda’s annual banquet at the Hilton in New York, Rabbi Perlow surprised attendees by suddenly declaring he felt “compelled to address the president of this great country,” meaning President Obama. Yeshiva World reported that a “deafening silence” came over the hall.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/04/african-american-dem-rep-wcoronavirus-credits-daniel-greenfield/

In the tribal age, even medication can become a partisan issue. That’s been the fate of hydroxychloroquine, alternately praised or touted, depending which party you’re in. In the middle of a pandemic, you would think that a drug which showed some potential would be welcomed by everyone. Instead, we have oddball posturing by the media and Democrats that there’s something wrong with this particular experimental treatment, as opposed to the other experimental treatments, because President Trump was touting it.

On the other hand, there’s this story.

A Democratic state representative from Detroit is crediting hydroxychloroquine — and Republican President Donald Trump who touted the drug — for saving her in her battle with the coronavirus.

State Rep. Karen Whitsett, who learned Monday she has tested positive for COVID-19, said she started taking hydroxychloroquine on March 31, prescribed by her doctor, after both she and her husband sought treatment for a range of symptoms on March 18.

“It was less than two hours” before she started to feel relief, said Whitsett, who had experienced shortness of breath, swollen lymph nodes, and what felt like a sinus infection. She is still experiencing headaches, she said.

Whitsett said she was familiar with “the wonders” of hydroxychloroquine from an earlier bout with Lyme disease, but does not believe she would have thought to ask for it, or her doctor would have prescribed it, had Trump not been touting it as a possible treatment for COVID-19.

“It has a lot to do with the president … bringing it up,” Whitsett said. “He is the only person who has the power to make it a priority.”

https://thefederalist.com/2020/04/07/optimism-is-dawning-in-new-york-city/

There is a strange thing about New York City that anyone who has ever lived here has experienced, but which is hard to quantify and explain. Oft times the city has a mood. That is to say that from your door, on the subway, around the streets, bars, and restaurants, for an entire day New York can take on a collective attitude. Sometimes it’s fun, sometimes it’s annoyed, but over the past day or so, it is beginning to feel optimistic.

Monday night it was announced that the number of cases and deaths from the novel coronavirus had slowed. While both Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have expressed caution, it is mixed with hope. As expected, the curve of cases in Gotham is flattening and maybe, just maybe, the worst will soon be behind us. For the first time in weeks, a future seems to be opening up.

I could feel it in the street yesterday. To be sure, it was a small cross sample. I haven’t left my little Brooklyn neighborhood in more than a month, but on my regular constitutional to the bodega to buy tobacco, and the grocery store to purchase my less pressing needs, something was in the air. In fairness, it was a nice day, the first in some time: low 60’s, sunlight speckling the sidewalks through clouds. But it was more than that — a spring in the step, the faint return of a twinkle in the eye.