But in the United States, HCQ was embroiled in the Republican-Democratic rivalry. On March 12, Michigan State Representative Karen Whitsett, a Democrat representing the 9th Michigan House District in Detroit, went into quarantine for cornavirus symptoms, and by March 31 got her test results and was diagnosed with such a serious case of COVID-19 that she thought she was dying. She and her physician, Dr. Mohammed Arsiwala, sought permission to use HCQ but could not get it, because the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, under Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, had issued an order prohibiting the use of HCQ for COVID-19.
What an interesting twist: Plagues always give rise to new customs, practices, and regulations. If the State can give a medication to some poor decent citizen on compassionate grounds, indeed why can’t it withhold it on vindictive grounds from a traitor and a fool (as someone who wanted the Trump drug must obviously be)?
Karen Whitsett didn’t feel like assenting to this new reality. Her physician got his hands on some and dared to put her on it. After she recovered, in early April, she thanked President Trump for having spoken out about the drug, and visited him at the White House to look into ways it might be made available for others.
In response, her Michigan Democratic colleagues voted unanimously to censure her, the resolution stating she had “misrepresented the needs and priorities” of the Michigan Democratic leadership to the president and public “in contradiction with the scientifically based and action-oriented response” of themselves—i.e., the Michigan leadership—thereby “endangering the health, safety and welfare of her constituents, the city of Detroit, and the state of Michigan.”
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/hydroxychloroquine-morality-tale
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How ironic.
Lengthy but excellent article on HCQ for whatever minds are still open on it.