Dr. Fauci shreds Fox & Friends for asking why U.S. doctors aren’t following Dr. Oz’s advice
Dr. Anthony Fauci has the profoundly unenviable job of helping guide this country through one of the worst health crises it’s ever seen while bound at the hip to the most ignorant president to ever slink into the Oval Office. The good doctor hasn’t been afraid to push back against the president’s misinformation when necessary and has somehow managed to maintain his role as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease despite Trump’s well-demonstrated penchant for firing not based on competency, but loyalty.
Fauci’s difficult job is made more so by Trump’s media apparatus at Fox News, which disseminates and magnifies every untrue thing he says with abject credulity while often stewing in their own falsities. Luckily for the rest of us, Fauci doesn’t take kindly to being made party to nonsense.
During an appearance on Fox News, he addressed claims made by professional snake-oil salesman Dr. Oz, himself a disreputable member of President Trump’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition.
Fox host Steve Doocy asked Fauci why prescribing hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug touted by some in the right-wing media bubble as a miracle solution to COVID-19, isn’t a more widespread practice by physicians. Doocy accompanied the query with a clip of Dr. Oz asking Fauci what he thinks of a Chinese study which claims that the drug is responsible for a “statistically significant improvement in recovery from fever, from cough, and in pneumonia as well.”
“Yeah, you want my response to that? So that was not a very robust study. It is still possible that there is a beneficial effect, but the study that was just quoted, on a scale of strength of evidence that’s not overwhelmingly strong,” said Fauci.
The doctor went on to tear apart Doocy’s observation that a percentage of doctors “feel” that hydroxychloroquine is effective.
“We don’t operate on how you feel. We operate on what evidence is and data is,” said Fauci.
Watch the exchange below.
Dr. Anthony Fauci responds to Dr. Oz's advocacy for HCQ as a covid treatment: "That was not a very robust study." Fauci also says some may "feel" HCQ is an effective treatment, and "there is a suggestion" it could be, but we can't "make that majestic leap" to assume it's a cure. pic.twitter.com/A623tHuPYC
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) April 3, 2020
