New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, right, listens as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a news conference Tuesday Nov. 13, 2018, in New York. Amazon said it will split its much-anticipated second headquarters between New York and northern Virginia. Its New York location will be in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Earlier in the week, I reported on a dust-up between President Trump and an NBC News reporter that ended with the President responding “you’re a terrible reporter.” The greater context of the exchange was that the reporter was attempting to paint Trump’s hope in a possible new treatment for Wuhan virus as false hope.

Well, New York has now decided that hope is worth pursuing. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has announced his state will begin trials on the combination of drugs that’s been so discussed the past week.

Breaking: After days of the media mocking Trump for saying that he is very hopeful that those drugs will work against the virus, @NYGovCuomo says that he agrees with Trump & NY hospitals will start trials on those medications & has already secured thousands of dozes for NYS. pic.twitter.com/Ay12jaUe7Z

— Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) March 22, 2020

Here’s the report in a little more detail.

New York will conduct trials for drugs that could be used to treat patients with the novel coronavirus who are seriously ill.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Saturday that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will send 10,000 doses of azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine to New York. Azithromycin is an antibiotic and hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria.

Cuomo spoke to President Donald Trump on Friday and expressed interest in conducting trials in New York.

“There is a theory that the drug treatment could be helpful,” Cuomo said. “We have people who are in serious condition and (state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker) feels comfortable, as well as a number of other health professionals, that in a situation where a person is in dire circumstance, try what you can.”

A limited study in France found that the combination of azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine could be effective in treating patients with the coronavirus. But Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, cautioned that the study wasn’t a controlled trial.

Where this goes is anyone’s guess, although there have been encouraging signs from others around the world using this combination of medications. I’m not a doctor and won’t speculate on how close we may actually be to seeing a highly effective treatment widely available.

As Dr. Fauci said last week, there’s a very big difference between anecdotal claims that a drug is working and actually documenting it via real trials. Every precaution should be taken, while of course being weighed against the urgency of the situation. That means some of those who are out of other options will be the ones to be test subjects here. But the existence of these new trials is undeniably good news.

Despite the positive nature of these latest reports, that hasn’t stopped some “doctors” who also double as left-wing ideologues from chiming in with their typical bile.

From a real doctor:https://t.co/VDMxpp4rUO

— Katie Phang (@KatiePhang) March 21, 2020

Katie Phang is an MSNBC contributor (because of course she is) and she’s quoting a supposed “doctor” named Eugene Gu. He’s as much a real doctor as I am an astronaut. This is a guy who got kicked out of his residency because he wanted to up his left-wing social media credibility. He’s not actually licensed and is not much of an authority on anything, much less the complex nature of drug trials.

But this does show just how far some will go to sow fear and disunity in a time we need to come together. By contrast, I have to give Gov. Cuomo high praise for his response. He’s done the hard thing by putting partisanship aside and working in the best interests of his state. If that means expediting trials on a possible treatment at the behest of the experts around him, he’s willing to do it.

What we don’t need right now are hacks like Phang and Gu publicly breeding distrust in the steps leaders like Gov. Cuomo and the President are trying to take. People’s lives and livelihoods (by virtue of the lockdown) are at stake.