President Trump
shares a video containing misinformation about hydroxychloroquine.
President Trump
shared on his Twitter account Monday night a viral video containing a series of
false or misleading medical claims about the coronavirus, as social media
companies scrambled to halt the video’s rapid spread.
Facebook and
YouTube removed versions of the video, and Twitter later removed the post
shared by the president. At least one version, which was shared on Facebook by
the right-wing Breitbart news site, had garnered over 13 million views before
it was removed. Other versions of the video, including shorter, edited clips,
were still online Monday night.
The video featured
what appeared to be a group of doctors in white coats, standing in front of the
Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., in what appeared to be a news
conference. The doctors made a series of misleading claims, including that
hydroxychloroquine could be taken as a preventive measure.
The use of the drug
to treat or prevent coronavirus has been widely disputed by the medical establishment. The Food
and Drug Administration revoked its emergency
authorization in June after deeming it “unlikely to be
effective” while carrying potential risks, and the National Institutes of
Health halted clinical trials of the drug in June. But Mr.
Trump repeatedly boosted the drug in the early months of the crisis, and said
in May (not in June, as an earlier post said) that he was taking
it himself.
It was the most
recent example of misinformation that has spread about the coronavirus,
at times being shared by Mr. Trump and others in the White House. A YouTube
spokesman said in a statement that the video had been removed for “violating
Covid-19 misinformation policies.”