ANALYSIS/OPINION:

I’ve generally tried to stay out of the hydroxychloroquine debate. My hesitation has been for one reason and one reason only: I have no degree in medicine, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise. As my youngest son has said of my Ph.D., “Dad’s not a real doctor. He can’t really help anybody.”

With my lack of medical credentials noted, however, I have decided it is time to get off the sidelines and engage this issue.

Why?

Put simply, the Democrats’ Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is literally killing people.

Consider the following from the recent news cycle.

On July 23, 2020, the Association of American Physicians & Surgeons (AAPS) provided the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration copious amounts of data showing, among other things, that countries using hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) are attaining far lower mortality rates than the United States. “The mortality rate from COVID-19 in countries that allow access to HCQ,” said the AAPS, “is only one-tenth the mortality rate of countries where there is interference with this medication, such as the United States.”

Did you catch that? One-tenth the mortality rate means that our country’s current death count of about 160,000 could be and perhaps should be, as low as 16,000.

Oh, but I assume you’ve been told that the AAPS is a “fringe group” of “conservative” doctors who should be discredited?

Well, aside from the fact that such a claim is a textbook example of the Socratic fallacy of an ad hominem attack, i.e., “shooting the messenger rather than attending to the message,” there’s more, lots more.

First, there’s the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan, which recently published a study involving thousands of patients where HCQ proved to be both very safe and highly effective in treating COVID-19. This study reports reducing mortality by 50%. Did you catch that? Fifty percent.

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