In the news

The problem is that storage space is running out. Think I read that the US only has a couple of months of capacity left.

If you are a child on Free School Meals in Bristol this is what you get for the week. The school pays the contractor £11 for this. Check out the butter. We have 185 of these to distribute. Shameful!

https://twitter.com/overton66/status/1242534028424753153

£11 for that?

Yup, global capacity is 9 months storage at current production. I understand the US has been caught out and has significa8 less than this.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2020/03/24/oil-prices-could-plunge-to-10-a-barrel-swamp-storage-capacity-report-says/

US exports more than Saudi now but Saudi will be killing that revenue stream for them as they have such a lower cost of production, the bigger issue for the US is that the low price makes all capital investment dry up as not financially economical, they will have to strike a deal with OPEC and Russia at some point to cut global production

That's shocking. 11 quid is basically supermarket prices even if that was a balanced set of meals, which obviously it isn't. I know it's hard to feed a person on 11 quid for 5 meals but surely there's got to be better options.

I didn't say they twisted the facts, I said they twisted the reporting; Uber calls it well.

I'm pretty sure his remarks to the press didn't say "go drink aquarium cleaner and cure yourself of coronavirus" which is the impression that the Graun article gives.

tl;dr anyone who skims the headline and swallows what they read hook line and sinker will leave the article believing that these guys died not because they went out bought poison and drank it, but because Trump mistakenly named or believed this poison is a cure ( because he's an idiot! Of course!) and they were innocents simply following Trump's erroneous advice.

Mea culpa. I read it as a depiction of how the crazies, who believe anything Trump says, behave - but you're right. Some pharmacies in the US are having problems with people turning up demanding anti-malaria drugs, waving their smartphones showing a video of Trump as justification, but that's a different story.

Also

you rang?

lolz

Trump lied and said that the FDA had approved the use of an anti-malaria medication called chloroquine to treat patients infected with coronavirus.

'Even after the FDA chief clarified that the drug still needs to be tested for that use, Trump overstated the drug’s potential upside in containing the virus.'

I think this is very news worthy.

Yes! It is a story. It’s a different story.

The drug is being tested right now. As are many others.

But if you went out and bought it, took it, it probably wouldn’t kill you, regardless of its efficacy as a Corona ‘cure’, unlike aquarium cleaner.

Well yes...the aquarium cleaner they took contained chloroquine and they took it because Trump said that chloroquine is a treatment. I really don't get why you think the Guardian reporting is problematic.

Just to add, there have been three recorded chloroquine overdoses in Nigeria, all citing Trump's "advice".

Apparently in the hours after Trump made that statement the price of chloroquine went up by 400%

I really don't get why you think the Guardian reporting is problematic.

Sure, OK.

If Trump had not lied about the drug, would several people around the world have overdosed on it? I think not.

OK, but that's not what the article is about.

Edit: Trump is mistaken about the process of authorisation. The various bits of the health service in the US can prescribe Chloroquine (big C, the actual FDA approved Drug, not pool cleaner, in the amounts that won't kill you) as a special intervention for patients with C19 symptoms.

It's also under test to see if there is mileage in authorising it as routine intervention for C19.

So people were going to hear about this, Trump or not. And then, unfortunately, they will find out that it's also an active ingredient in pool cleaner that can be bought from a hardware store and... you get the idea.

So it's pinned on Trump because he's an easy target. Had a medical professional stood up and said 'yeah we are testing this stuff as a potential routine treatment for C19 and in some circumstances we might use it now' and a bunch of people gone out an bought the agricultural formulation and then died, I suspect a lot of people would be like 'lol, idiots' rather than 'It's Trump's fault'

I think the point is that this article is the equivalent of dentists stating that calcium helps strengthen your teeth, then someone blaming dentists when they chip a tooth snacking on some limestone.

That was my reading at least.

I was trying to come up with a comparison like that! Pretty much, yeah. I feel dirty for 'defending' Trump on this, but he didn't say to just start taking the stuff in any form available without any medical indication, he was expressing a hope that the combination of two substances might actually end up working out, in a medical context. Not drinking aquarium cleaner or whatever is really what I'd call 'common sense'.

It's a fucking weird time, isn't it?

Yeah I feel bad being on the 'side' of Trump on this. But it definitely comes across as a bit of click-bait with little substance to me.

Yeah you can say that again... !

Out of interest, how do you think it should have been reported?

I've looked for what is clickbaity and just cant see it.

POTUS makes false claim about dangerous drug. (Clearly stupid) people take drug and die.

It's not false to attribute this to him. More than one person heard what he said and did something stupid as a result. If he hadn't have lied about the drug it wouldn't have happened.

It's not blaming him for their actions but reporting that the "victims" said he was the trigger.

Trump said:

“HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine. The FDA has moved mountains – Thank You!,” “Hopefully they will BOTH … be put in use IMMEDIATELY. PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE!”

There's a world of difference between that and a medical professional saying 'yeah we are testing this stuff as a potential routine treatment for C19 and in some circumstances we might use it now'. It's round about now we need politicians to act with a bit of responsibility.

Better question, do you think this Fox article that completely omits the victims saying they were influenced by Trump is better?

Does the press not have a responsibility to warn others?

https://www.foxnews.com/health/arizona-man-dies-after-taking-drug-chloroquine-coronavirus

Absolutely agreed, of course. But you also have to see that what he said still doesn't really justify someone seeing aquarium cleaner and 'self-medicating' with that. But of course we'd all be better off if he just had his Twitter account closed, no doubt about that.

Is the issue that Trump lies about everything, so you are just factoring that into this particular instance, therefore making this story not really news worthy?

HGV driver kills a bloke pushing his bike, stops the truck, climbs out and hides his mobile phone in the lorry's external compartment:

http://news.suffolkvillage.info/2020/03/25/cement-mixer-truck-driver-jailed-for-causing-death-of-cyclist-in-collision-near-long-melford/

He denied a second charge of committing an act with intent to pervert
the course of justice (by concealing the phone) and prosecutors opted
to not pursue this matter following his admission of the other offence
and it will lie on the file.