Treatments, Vaccines, and Testing for Coronavirus: Hype and Hysteria

As I am hunkered down with my family trying to be engaged in activities to keep us occupied, I have decided to only watch the news once a day to get “caught up” on world events. One event I have been watching for the past few weeks during the coronavirus update is the discussions of treatments, vaccines and testing availability. I see physicians, news pundits and governmental leaders talking about treatments, vaccines and testing for the virus. It never ceases to amaze me the number of inconsistencies, inaccuracies and outright lies in many of these discussions. Discussions of facts are so different going from one news station to another. Depending on what news station you listen to you get different set of facts and information.

Based upon these inconsistencies it does not surprise me how the American people have no idea of what the facts are. Factual inconsistencies include some of the following comments I heard on the news:  Hydroxychloroquine “will be a gamechanger” on treating the disease. “I would use hydroxychloroquine, you have nothing else to lose.” “Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin is the drug combination that works, the data looks very good.” A vaccine for coronavirus should be available to the public in the next 6-12 months”. “Anyone who wants a test for coronavirus can have one”. ”There are hundreds of thousands of tests available and governors are complaining that they don’t have enough”. I could go on and on with statement after statement of misinformation.

I am not going to debunk each statement that I have listed above but it tells me the government and media are doing a major disservice to our country. Instead of focusing on the facts and science to support it, we have government leaders and news pundits spreading false information and lying to the American public. Unless our system is fixed in preventing news stations in spreading false information or preventing our highest leaders in saying whatever they want to, the American public will continue to have misinformation and false and misleading stories. I do not see this ever changing, we will continue to see the news media and unfortunately our governmental leaders drive false information leading to hype and hysteria.

Michael J. Cawley, PharmD, RRT, CPFT, FCCM, has more than 25 years of experience practicing in the areas of medical, surgical, trauma, and burn intensive care as both a critical care clinical pharmacist and registered respiratory therapist.