White House industrial adviser Peter Navarro on Tuesday advocated President Trump’s emergency approval of convalescent plasma cure as a remedy for COVID-19, even after Food and Drug Administration commissioner Stephen Hahn admitted that he had overestimated its effectiveness.
When pressed in an MSNBC interview about Hahn’s tweet the night before that his criticism of his comments on the benefits of convalescent plasma were “totally justified,” Navarro responded to the concept that the emergency approval of COVID-19’s unproven remedy “falsely inflates hopes. .
“I don’t settle for that, ” said Navarro. “This, to me, is like a crazy topic of discussion.”
After noting that Hahn and the Mayo Clinic stated that emergency approval of plasma use to treat COVID-19 reduced the option of having a proper randomized study, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked Navarro if Hahn was wrong.
“On the question of not being able to do randomized trials, what is the calculation here?” Navarro says. “Are we going to wait to use something that can save thousands of lives just to take a test that tells us what we already know?”
Mitchell interrupted to point out “yes, it’s a clinical practice, sir” because that’s how vaccines and drugs are approved.
Navarro responded by returning to ask if he values waiting for treatment that “probably works.”
“This is a debate for other Americans and their viewers: Do you need to expect treatment that is likely to work to get the clinical studies that will take three, six months, doesn’t it matter?” Navarro says. “Or do you need to have the right to try?”
After Navarro boasted that Trump was “the right to make a judgment about the president” and that the debate about convalescent plasma “was frankly disconcerting” because it had been used as a priest for more than a century, Mitchell responded that it was a remedy for others. COVID-19 is a new virus.
Navarro went on to say that the chances that the plasma remedy “may harm you are close to zero, so that’s safe” while “the chances that I can help you are close to 100%.” Mitchell called it an incorrect statement.
Navarro said Hahn had “misrepresented” himself before doubling his claim that the effectiveness of the plasma remedy for COVID-19 was almost 100%.
“It’s not going to help everyone, ” said Navarro. “Hahn essentially used absolute numbers than relative numbers. I’m not going to protect Stephen Hahn.”
Mitchell then talked about how Hahn, President Trump and HHS Secretary Alex Azar promoted the effectiveness of the plasma remedy at a White House news convention on Sunday.
Navarro has resumed his reluctance to wait longer for COVID-19 treatment.
“The question for your audience is simple: other people die there. Is convalescent plasma likely to save lives? And I think the answer is yes,” Navarro said. “The question of how much remains to be determined. But I think it’s smart that he’s there.”
Navarro’s comments come after Hahn also denied that the authorization, which had been promoted through President Trump in an effort to increase his chances of re-election, was a political resolution as Trump continues to pressure the FDA to approve the cOVID-19 remedy until November.
“We at the FDA allow politics to go into our clinical decisions,” Hahn tweeted Monday night. “This is a political season, but the FDA will remain data driven.”
See Navarro’s comments below:
– Talking Point Memo (@TPM) August 25, 2020