Models of viruses are seen during President Donald J. Trump’s tour of the viral pathogenesis laboratory Tuesday, March 3, 2020, at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Remember when media beat the heck out of President Donald Trump for daring to talk about the potential of the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine for dealing with the Wuhan coronavirus?

Media claimed Trump was selling “false hope.”

They even went so far as to suggest he was somehow at fault for a couple allegedly taking a fish tank cleaner that happened to have chloroquine phosphate in it.

Now, doctors around the world who have been treating people with the disease are weighing in, according to a global survey, and they’re saying the anti-malarial drug is the most effective therapy they have had.

According to the Washington Times, Sermo, a global health care polling company, conducted a survey of 6,227 doctors in 30 countries including countries in Asia, North American, South America and Australia.

ANNOUNCEMENT: To create a centralized & dynamic knowledge base we published results of our COVID-19 study, which over 6.2K physicians in 30 countries participated in: https://t.co/ppewwdo8wl pic.twitter.com/Fg5B6FMUCQ

— Sermo (@Sermo) April 2, 2020

37% said that hydroxychloroquine was the “most effective therapy” from a list of 15 choices. Azithromycin was the second choice at 32 percent.

Some doctors in the U.S. already had been using the drug for the virus as an “off-label” use. But the FDA just approved it for emergency us for the virus on March 28, with restrictions, including that the drugs had to come from the national stockpile.

But other countries are using it for people who aren’t in an emergency situation, although generally it’s being used for more high risk patients. 72% of physicians in Spain said they had prescribed it, followed by Italy at 49%, and least popular in Japan, where 7% had used it to treat COVID-19. 23% have prescribed it in the U.S.

Debate about hydroxychloroquine has raged in the United States since President Trump touted it two weeks ago as a potential “game-changer” in the fight against the deadly pandemic, prompting critics to accuse him of peddling unproven remedies, or “snake oil,” as USA Today put it.

Sermo CEO Peter Kirk called the polling results a “treasure trove of global insights for policy makers.”
“Physicians should have more of a voice in how we deal with this pandemic and be able to quickly share information with one another and the world,” he said. “With censorship of the media and the medical community in some countries, along with biased and poorly designed studies, solutions to the pandemic are being delayed.”

The media has barely recognized the FDA approving it for use for the virus, albeit for emergency use only. Will they report on this study of doctors from all over the world touting the drug’s worth?