Since the beginning of the Coronavirus pandemic, the flood of false claims on social media has successfully corrupted many minds. But when misinformation or unreliable provocative news comes from a world leader like US President Donald Trump, the impact could be dangerous.
During the Coronavirus pandemic, Trump promoted hydroxychloroquine on several occasions as a treatment for COVID-19, even though scientists warned about its serious side effects. But after contracting the virus, Trump—who returned from the Walter Reed Hospital just a few days ago—posted a video on his social media accounts on Thursday, October 8 in which he claims, falsely, that there is "a cure" for COVID-19.
Coronavirus 'Cure'
Just to be clear—currently, there are hundreds of vaccine candidates which are under development and some of them have reached the final stage of the process. As per the World Health Organization (WHO), there are no drugs that have been shown to "prevent or cure the disease."
After coming out of the hospital the US president told the American public not to worry about the disease. In the 4.53 minute video, while talking about the antibody cocktail which he received at the hospital, Trump highlighted a drug's name—REGN-COV2—which is made by a US biotech company called Regeneron. According to the self-claimed "favorite president" of the US, REGN-COV2 is the answer to all prayers.
"These, I view these, I know they call them therapeutic but to me, it was not therapeutic it just made me better," he said in the video and added his own claim, saying that "OK? I call that a cure."
That is not it, as Trump continued to tout the healing capabilities of the drug cocktail and insisted that people not believe words to the contrary—most probably for the medical experts.
"But they are, in my opinion, remember this, they're gonna say that they're therapeutic and I guess they are therapeutic — some people don't know how to define therapeutic — I view it differently. It's a cure," said the US president.
Will This Video Be Removed?
Earlier, social media companies like Twitter and Facebook have removed several misleading posts from the platforms, most notably Facebook is awash with Coronavirus misinformation.
As of now, none of the social media companies had taken down the multimedia content shared by Trump. As of the time of this writing, the video on Twitter has received over 84,000 retweets, more than 17 million views, and almost 290,000 likes.
However, CNN's report revealed the link between Trump and the biotech company Regeneron. Yes, as per the report, the President "recently owned shares of Regeneron," and the CEO of the company has been a member of one of Trump's golf clubs.
