Trump's HCQ ticket to the tropics won't sell

Trump has been self-prescribing the tablet for more than a week now despite concerns that it affects heart rhythms

"What do you have to lose? Take it," said US President Donald Trump in April, setting off a surge in sales of the anti-malarial drug Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) across the world. "It works in all places," claimed Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. What sets these two men apart is that they are science-deniers who are peddling the modern iteration of a 400-year-old drug originally meant to treat malaria, and also rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. 
Trump has been self-prescribing the tablet for more than a week now despite concerns that it affects heart rhythms. He pops a couple a day, does his gig that has some people aghast as his support base applauds his every move and holds on to every word he utters.
I would call the two presidents the world's prescribers-in-chief, who are willing to put lives on the line to push a remedy that has its origins in Peru in 1638. The Countess of Chinchon contracted malaria back then and the blood therapy treatment was eschewed by a local Incan doctor who gave her a concoction mixed with the bark of a tree that was believed to have medicinal properties. The tree was later renamed cinchona after the countess recovered from fever, thanks to the novel treatment. It took two centuries to derive the compound quinine from the bark of the cinchona tree in a Paris lab in 1820.
Quinine was widely used by the British and French troops in the Indian sub-continent in the 19th century. The British East India Company troops prevailed over both the French and local Indian armies in the mosquito-infested region. Experts say they discovered tonic to make the bitter-tasting quinine go down smoothly.
The British Empire was helped by a healthy dose of quinine as colonial power expanded across the world. The compound was made more effective when Chloroquine, a more potent version was derived in a German lab in 1934. It was further modified in 1945, and HCQ was the result. The formula was used by American troops during the World War II campaign in the Pacific as they fought both the Japanese and malaria.
Trump's faith in the seven-decade-old HCQ could stem from that successful Pacific campaign. It is true that HCQ managed to keep malaria under control, but the disease claimed 150-300 million lives in the 20th century alone. It remains endemic, and affects poorer regions, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. 
Malaria has been with us for thousands of years and a vaccine was never seriously attempted to root it out. Covid-19 has all the makings of another malaria, and the World Health Organization now says Covid-19 could be endemic, a cure may not be found in the short or medium term. 
However, work on a vaccine is continuing in right earnest; billions of dollars in funding have been pledged by different countries and hundreds of labs are working night and day for a jab for the disease.
The repercussions of popping HCQ pills against medical advice could be tragic. For Trump, this is his ticket to the tropics. Just don't buy it from him.
-allan@khaleejtimes.com