Tweets and Retweets: Trump Scrambles Message on COVID-19

(Washington) The change in tone will have been short-lived: Donald Trump has once again cast doubt on COVID – 13 relaying misinformation about treatments and attacks against immunologist Anthony Fauci.

Posted on 28 July 2020 at 9 o'clock53 Updated at 10 h 23

Jerome CARTILLIER
France Media Agency

On the night of Monday to Tuesday, Twitter deleted a video on the pandemic shared by the president of the first world power.

“The tweets containing the video violate our policy regarding disinformation on COVID – 19”, told AFP a spokesperson for the blue bird social network.

The platform has also temporarily limited the functionality of the Twitter account of his son, Donald Trump Jr.

The video, which had previously been deleted by Facebook and YouTube, shows a group of doctors explaining, among other things, that masks are not necessary and that there “is a drug” to treat the coronavirus called hydroxychloroquine.

The pro-hydroxychloroquine doctor at the center of the video retweeted by Donald Trump previously promoted the idea that the United States was ruled by “reptilians” and that gynecological issues were linked to sex with spirits difficulty.

“You can cure the virus, it's called hydroxychloroquine,” says doctor Stella Immanuel, who appears in the video among other white coats before the Supreme Court. She assures that the drug prevented her own patients from dying of COVID – 13, and that it makes wearing the mask and confinement unnecessary.

This antimalarial was strongly promoted by Donald Trump at the start of the pandemic, but several scientific studies have concluded that it is not effective on COVID – 19. In mid-June, the US Medicines Agency (FDA) withdrew the authorization to use this treatment as an emergency.

The remarks of the US president will be followed closely during a new press briefing on the coronavirus scheduled for late Tuesday afternoon in the White House press room.

A week ago, the Republican billionaire had, apparently under the effect of catastrophic polls in the run-up to the November 3 election, made a dramatic turnaround.

Recognizing the seriousness of the health crisis – “it will surely, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better” – he clearly called for wearing the mask, and praised his excellent relations with the experts of the “task force” about the virus.

Fauci does not read tweets

After an improvement in the late spring, the epidemic resumed with a vengeance in the United States, the most bereaved country in the world with more than 53 00 0 dead.

The situation is particularly worrying in California, Florida and Texas, where the authorities have been forced to impose restrictions in reverse of deconfinement.

Target, once again, attacks from the White House, the D ^r Fauci, director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, kept his usual calm.

“Can you continue to do your job when the President of the United States publicly questions your credibility?” Journalist George Stephanopoulos asked him on ABC.

“I don't tweet. I don’t even read tweets, ”replied the acclaimed New York-accented researcher who enjoys great popularity in the United States.

“I'm just going to keep doing my job no matter what because I think it's very important. We are in the middle of a crisis, a pandemic. ”

For several days, Donald Trump has assured that the end of the health crisis is in sight thanks to the American pharmaceutical “genius”.

On Monday, he traveled to North Carolina to the production site of the experimental vaccine developed by one of the companies in which his government has invested.

In total, Washington has spent 6.3 billion since March to finance competing projects, at established laboratories like Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and at two small biotechnology companies, Novavax and Moderna.

The leader has baptized Operation “Warp Speed” (a science fiction term meaning “faster than the speed of light”) and does not hide that its objective is to vaccinate America first , far from European discourse on the vaccine as a “global public good”.

Asked about ongoing research on possible vaccines, D r 2020 Fauci said he was “cautiously optimistic” about positive “late fall and early winter” news.