Donald Trump speaks at a White House daily appearance, August 23, 2020 (Erin Scott/Reuters)
UPDATE, 1700 GMT:
Donald Trump’s unfounded conspiracy theory, that the “Deep State” is delaying a vaccine to prevent his re-election, appears to have come from his White House economic advisor Peter Navarro.
The hard-right Navarro, best known for his anti-China positions and rhetoric, has previously been a loud proponent of Trump’s declaration that the ineffective and potentially dangerous hydroxychloroquine is a wonder cure for Coronavirus.
Last Monday Navarro told senior health officials, in a meeting purportedly about the Strategic National Stockpile, that they were part of the plot.
Two participants in the meeting quoted Navarro, “You are all Deep State and you need to get on Trump Time.”
A third senior administration official said Navarro remains angry at the FDA for saying hydroxychloroquine does not work.
A source said, “People just listened. A lot of the quote ‘Deep State’ people are shocked. But Navarro is Navarro.”
Navarro declined to comment to Axios.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Seeking a PR victory amid his dismissal of medical experts and on the eve of the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump announces he has approved a treatment which is already being used for Coronavirus patients.
The Food and Drug Administration confirmed on Sunday that it has granted emergency approval for expanded use of antibody-rich blood plasma to help hospitalized coronavirus patients.
The treatment has been administered to more than 70,000 patients, but some Government experts have expressed doubts about the data claiming effectiveness and the plasma’s availability is limited by blood donations.
On Saturday, Trump claimed that the “deep state” was holding up a vaccine until after November 3 to hinder his chances of re-election. The tweet tagged FDA Administrator Stephen Hahn, who said two weeks ago that the agency would not “cut corners” on safety and efficacy to bring out the vaccine quickly.
White Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany then announced Trump’s White House appearance for Sunday, with Hahn and Health Secretary Alex Azar accompanying him.
The US death toll reached 176,808 on Sunday, with 5,703,585 confirmed cases.
Medicine and Politics
The FDA said its data, with more than a dozen published studies, indicate “it is reasonable to believe” that the treatment “may be effective in lessening the severity or shortening the length of Covid-19 illness”, especially if administered early.
Patients less than 80 years old who received plasma with a high level of antibodies within three days of diagnosis, and who were not on a respirator, were about 35% more likely to be alive a month later compared with those who received low-level antibody plasma.
However, there have been no randomized trials. Senior medical officials, including National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis S. Collins and the Government’s top infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci, questioned if the data was sufficient.
The President of the Infectious Disease Society of America, Dr. Thomas File, said the data on the treatment shows “some positive signals”, but “we lack the randomized controlled trial data we need to better understand its utility in Covid-19 treatment”.
Trump stripped out all the caveats in the FDA’s assessment to claim the convalescent plasma has been “proven to reduce mortality by 35%”. He said the agency had “really stepped up,” especially “over the last few days”.
Hahn cautioned that the 35% reduction will be established “if the data continue to pan out”.
Trump also contradicted his experts in proclaiming “you’ll be hearing about” a successful vaccine “very soon, very shortly”.
NIH Director Collins said it “would be astounding” if a vaccine was ready for approval by October and November or December is highly optimistic. Last week Fauci expressed cautious optimism that a safe and effective vaccine would be confirmed by the start of 2021, with sufficient doses available by the end of the year.
