A Democratic Michigan state lawmaker is grateful to President Donald Trump for bringing attention to a drug that she said eliminated her COVID-19 symptoms within hours of taking it.
State Rep. Karen Whitsett of Detroit praised the president and when asked by The Detroit Free Press if she believed he may have saved her life, answered “Yes, I do.” She credited Trump with publicizing the drug hydroxychloroquine during his daily press briefings and getting it expedited through the Food and Drug Administration’s approval process.
(Source: Fox News)
“I really want to say that you have to give this an opportunity,” she told Fox News host Laura Ingraham during an interview via Skype on “The Ingraham Angle” on Monday.
“For me, it saved my life. I only can go by what it is that I have gone through and what my story is, and I can’t speak for anyone else. So that’s not what I’m trying to do here. I’m only speaking for myself,” she said.
The drug, normally used to treat patients with malaria and lupus, has been touted by the president on several occasions and has shown to be a promising treatment against the coronavirus. While a survey conducted recently with thousands of doctors found it to be the “most effective” treatment for COVID-19, the president’s hope that the drug showed “tremendous promise” in helping treat the novel coronavirus was slammed by the liberal media and some Democratic lawmakers.
For Whitsett, however, it made all the difference after her deteriorating health last month. The Democrat was in attendance at a session at the State House in Lansing on March 12 and self-quarantined immediately after as she found herself feeling ill.
Thinking she may be battling pneumonia, she was put on the anti-viral drug amoxicillin but explained how long it took for her to even be seen by her doctor.
“It took the longest [time] for me to actually be able to get an appointment and getting with my doctor, which was the 18th of March, and then actually getting the COVID test,” she told Ingraham, who was, herself, told to take down a tweet about hydroxychloroquine because it allegedly violated their misinformation policy.
Whitsett shared that she tested positive for COVID-19 on March 31, and recounted how her health “just plummeted.”
“It went from the headaches being severe to fluid building up in my lungs, to sweats breaking out to the cough and my breathing being labored,” she said. “It all happened in a matter of hours.”
But under the state’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs had issued an order banning the use of hydroxychloroquine and threatening doctors with “administrative action” if they continued to use it.
Whitmer did an about-face a few days later, however, and requested an emergency supply of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine from the federal government after the FDA granted an emergency use authorization.
“I did have a difficult time, even that day, obtaining the medication because of an order that was put down in my state,” Whitsett, who has chronic Lyme disease, told Ingraham. “And it was on that day so you can imagine how terrified I was that I had to beg and plead and go through a whole lot to try to get the medication.”
She explained that within a few hours of taking the medication after she got her prescription she was feeling better.
“If President Trump had not talked about this it wouldn’t have been something that would be accessible for anyone to be able to get right now,” she said.
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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.
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