Elon Musk: ‘I Would’ve died for sure if not for chloroquine’

With hundreds of people dying daily from the deadly coronavirus, many people are turning to the Internet to find information about the treatment for COVID-19 virus. There is a lot of news out there about potential and promising drugs to treat COVID-19 patients. But the issue is that many of them cannot be trusted. The best way is to always source from reliable and authoritative sources like WHO and CDC. Unfortunately, these two organizations are behind the curve in their response to the disease.

There’s been some hope around antimalaria drugs like chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine that had held promise as a potential treatment for the coronavirus. These two drugs have been in use since World War II. As we reported early this week, a small trial by French researchers found highly positive results from hydroxychloroquine combined with azithromycin — “75% patients turned #coronavirus negative after 600mg hydroxychloroquine treatment for 6 days vs only 10% in control group.

” The problem with the study was that it had such fatal methodological flaws that no scientific conclusions could be made. For example, the trial involved only 24 patients, it was not randomized, and the control patients were treated in a different medical center from the untreated patients.

However, people here in the U.S. are still very skeptical about these anti-malaria drugs. On Thursday, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk highlighted chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine as potential treatment drugs for COVID-19 (or C19 as he calls it). Musk said in a series of tweets, saying: “Maybe worth considering chloroquine for C19.” In another tweet, Musk added: “Hydroxychloroquine probably better.”

Then, in a response to one of Musk’s earlier tweets, Jessica Meckmann in Q (@meckimac) asked: “have you been treated with chloroquine when you were infected with Malaria?”

Musk later replied: “Yes, I received chloroquine via central line through my chest & both arms. Had near fatal case of falciparum. Would’ve died for sure if not for chloroquine. Doesn’t mean it works for C19, but maybe better than nothing.”

Just to be clear, Musk did not claim choloroquine is a definite treatment for coronavirus, but rather said “maybe worth considering” regarding chloroquine and “probably better” regarding hydroxychloroquine. He also referenced this document for your self-isolated reading pleasure.

https://twitter.com/meckimac/status/1239651479432105993

Yes, I received chloroquine via central line through my chest & both arms. Had near fatal case of falciparum. Would’ve died for sure if not for chloroquine. Doesn’t mean it works for C19, but maybe better than nothing.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 16, 2020

In closing, Musk alone in talking about chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, a New Jersey medical worker is convinced chloroquine indeed saved his life. The story about the New Jersey medical worker was first reported in NY Post.

The NJ Medical worker who got Covid-19, James Cai, said that using Chloroquine was essential to his survival.https://t.co/DqtqWmKkMl

— Kris G. (@Gundament) March 16, 2020