It started with a Google Doc.
On March 13, cryptocurrency investor James Todaro and New York City lawyer Gregory Rigano tweeted out a link to a paper they’d put on the file-sharing service. In it, the men described a drug they’d been following, chloroquine, that in early trials in China and France appeared to show promise as a COVID-19 treatment. Long used as a treatment for malaria, the drug is cheap and plentiful and available to combat the pandemic immediately. Not only has it been deemed “effective in treating COVID-19,” they wrote, but it “also has strong potential as a prophylactic (preventative) measure against coronavirus.” The pandemic, they suggested, could be snuffed out in one stroke—if the authorities would just take action. The paper ended with a call for readers to disseminate it and translate it into other languages.
At a time when public anxiety about the pandemic was snowballing, the paper offered a rare ray of hope. As its authors had urged, the paper was quickly disseminated over the internet. On March 16, Elon Musk tweeted a link to the Google Doc, writing: “Maybe worth considering chloroquine for C19.” On March 18, right-wing websites Breitbart and The Blaze picked up the story. On March 19, Rigano went on Fox News and told Tucker Carlson that a chloroquine study had shown “a 100% cure rate against coronavirus.”
From there it was a short leap to the biggest bullhorn of all. Continue reading Vanity Fair: Experts: Trump’s Touting of an Untested “Game Changer” Coronavirus Drug Is Dangerous