Josh Marshall: What’s the Allure of Hydroxychloroquine? https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/whats-the-allure-of-hydroxychloroquine: ‘There’s a growing body of clinical evidence that hydroxychloroquine (alone or with an accompanying antibiotic) not only has no therapeutic effect for COVID but can increase substantially the risk of death.... Trump has been pushing it for months, for reasons which are not altogether clear. What is weird and fascinating in its own right, however, is that what we might call hydroxy-mania seems to be a common feature of right-wing nationalism across the globe.... What could possibly be the connection between rightist-populist nationalism and this until-recently relatively obscure anti-malarial drug?... There must be something about this drug or rather the hope of a quick cure it engenders that resonates with this ideology and mentality. And in any case [Trump's endorsement] doesn’t address why it has such a hold on Trump in the first place. My own hunch is that it is precisely the lure of a quick fix. This is an abiding feature of rightist nationalism, quick fixes to often intractable problems, usually focused on seeking revenge against a designated group of internal or external outsiders. But the desire for quick fixes runs deep. So too does the war against expertise and knowledge elites.... TPM Reader PT... suggests that elite disdain for these nostrums is actually part of the appeal… #cognition #coronavirus #easilygriftedmorons #noted #orangehairedbaboons #publichealth #2020-06-04