This article was originally published by Common Dreams. You can read it here.
After President Donald Trump claimed Monday that he has been taking hydroxychloroquine on a daily basis for more than a week in an effort to prevent Covid-19—even though the anti-malaria medicine has not been proven effective for that purpose—medical professionals condemned Trump for continuing to recklessly tout the drug and warned the public against following the president's lead.
"If everything else we know about President Trump hasn't proven to you that he does not understand medicine or healthcare, and certainly doesn't have your best interests at heart, this statement and the fact that he's taking this drug should be everything you need to know," Dr. Rob Davidson, an emergency care physician and executive director of the Committee to Protect Medicare, said in a video posted to Twitter following Trump's remarks.
"The FDA recently issued a warning that this should not be used outside of hospital settings because of the risk of death. We know that patients with lupus depend on hydroxychloroquine, and when President Trump was touting it in March, they ran into shortages," Davidson continued.
"We in the healthcare field need to come out in one voice against the use of this drug and against the advice of this president, knowing that he is going to put more people in harm's way," he continued.
"Trump said during a press briefing Monday that "you'd be surprised at how many people are taking" hydroxychloroquine, adding that he has been taking the drug every day for a week and a half as a preventative measure.
"I happen to be taking it," Trump said after claiming without evidence that many frontline workers are also taking the drug. "I'm not gonna get hurt by it."
Asked to provide evidence that the drug is effective in preventing coronavirus infection, Trump said: "Here we go, are you ready? Here's my evidence—I get a lot of positive calls about it."
"I get a lot of tremendously positive news on the hydroxy," Trump continued, "and, you know, I say, hey... what do you have to lose?"
Following Trump's comments, which reportedly "surprised many of his aides," the White House released a memo from the president's physician Dr. Sean Conley, who wrote that "after numerous discussions he and I had regarding the evidence for and against the use of hydroxychloroquine, we concluded the potential benefit from treatment outweighed the relative risks."
The memo, dated May 18, does not explicitly say that Trump is taking hydroxychloroquine.
As Vox's Zack Beauchamp wrote, "the president is either doing something irresponsible or lying irresponsibly."
"On the one hand, if Trump—a notorious liar—is telling the truth about taking the drug, it's certainly newsworthy that the president is taking a dangerous medication for no good reason," wrote Beauchamp.
"On the other hand, Trump may be trying to goad the media into getting bogged down in an issue that's less important than the actual outbreak and Trump's failed response to it," Beauchamp continued.
"At the press conference, he told reporters, 'I was just waiting for your eyes to light up when I said this, when I announced this,' indicating he's perfectly aware that he's starting a controversy," he said.
"Either way," Beauchamp added, "it's terrible behavior that reflects poorly on the man in charge of our country—just one more example of the wild unfitness for office that's been on display throughout the pandemic."
The president's comment certainly sparked alarm across the media, including from his favorite television network, Fox News.
Fox anchor Neil Cavuto warned in a segment following Trump's comments that "if you are in a risky population here, and you are taking this as a preventative treatment to ward off the virus... it will kill you."
"I cannot stress enough," Cavuto said. "This will kill you."
Dr. Steven Nissen, the chief academic officer of the Miller Family Heart, Vascular, and Thoracic Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, told the New York Times in an interview that he is concerned Trump's comments will lead the public to "believe that taking this drug to prevent Covid-19 infection is without hazards."
"In fact, there are serious hazards," said Nissen.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.