Donald Trump has insisted that Plaquenil/hydroxychloroquine will cure COVID-19. The drug is commonly used to malaria, as well as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. While there have been some successful results with drug after treating patients infected by the novel coronavirus, there's just not enough reliable information available right now.

But the President's endorsement of the drug has caused a bit of panic around it. First, there are people who have died after mistakenly taking related drugs. Now, according to Buzzfeed News, so healthcare providers are refusing to give the drug to people with conditions that it has been proven to treat:

A 45-year-old woman with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) said she received an online message from her health care provider stating it will no longer refill her vital hydroxychloroquine prescriptions because that drug is being used to treat the "critically ill with COVID-19," the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

It gets worse. Here's the kicker:

The letter thanked her for her "sacrifice."

A sacrifice, it should be noted, that she had no choice in making — if it's even a sacrifice that actually works.

Like Alabama denying treatment to people with "severe mental retardation," it seems that all the conservative fearmongering around the made-up "Obamacare Death Panels" is finally coming true under the Trump Administration's handling of the coronavirus epidemic.

A Woman With Lupus Said Her Health Care Provider Is Stopping Her Chloroquine Prescription And Thanked Her For The “Sacrifice” [Tanya Chen and Dan Vergano / Buzzfeed News]

What We Know — and Don’t Know — About Possible Coronavirus Treatments Promoted by Trump [Charles Ornstein / ProPublica]

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Bill Gates has a long, complicated and showy relationship with malaria eradication, and in a new letter, he makes a case that mosquitoes are Earth's deadliest animals, outkilling even the murderous h. sap.. Read the rest

In this episode of the Flash Forward podcast we travel to a future where humans have decided to eradicate the most dangerous animal on the planet: mosquitos. How would we do it? Is it even possible? And what are the consequences?

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We talk to experts on mosquito ecology, public health, and a guy who’s trying to genetically engineer mosquitoes to eliminate themselves. We talk about everything from how hard it would be to exterminate mosquitoes, to which species we should target, to what the potential side effects might be. Listen for all that and more!

▹▹ Full show notes

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Earlier this week, scientists announced that they'd found evidence suggesting malaria-carrying mosquitoes are more attracted to the smell of human flesh than healthy mosquitoes. This research — which, I'm sure you'll agree, has some important implications — grew out of research that could be deemed very silly. In fact, this new finding was built on IgNobel-winning research published back in 1996, which found that malaria mosquitoes are attracted to the smell of stinky cheese. Read the rest

Don't get too excited about the RTS,S malaria vaccine, the development of which is being funded by the Gates Foundation. At present, the vaccine doesn't seem to work well enough to make a difference and nobody knows what it's going to cost (a big deal when you're talking about a disease like malaria, which goes hand-in-hand with poverty). Beyond that, several leading vaccine researchers are questioning the methodology used to analyze the results of RTS,S trials. The vaccine may be even less effective than previously thought. Bottom line: The research is valuable, but this particular vaccine probably won't be the breakthrough people are hoping for. Read the rest