If Trump jumped off a cliff, would Kansas Rep. Roger ‘Doc’ Marshall copy that, too?
If Dr. Roger Marshall, the Kansas congressman who is running for the U.S. Senate, wanted to copy the president by wearing weirdly long neckties or mainlining Diet Coke or throwing around exclamation points, that would be his own darn business.
But for a physician to recommend risky behavior by ignoring all warnings against hydroxychloroquine, a drug with serious side effects, just to show how Trump-like he is? That’s no harmless genuflection.
Now that Donald Trump has said he’s taking the anti-malarial drug, which is also widely used to fight lupus, to keep from getting COVID-19, well, you’re not going to believe this, but so is Roger Marshall.
The congressman is such a fan of the drug the president has been pushing as a “game-changer” in fighting the coronavirus that his parents and siblings and wife are on it, too, he says.
Assuming that all Marshalls really are sloughing off medical and FDA warnings by gobbling the stuff, which is only supposed to be used for COVID-19 in a hospital or research setting, that too is their right.
But advising everyone over 65 or otherwise at a heightened risk of COVID-19 to consider hitting their doctors up for a prescription is not just cynical but dangerous.
“I would encourage any person over the age of 65 or with an underlying medical condition to talk to their own physician about taking hydroxychloroquine and I’m relieved President Trump is taking it,” Marshall told The Wall Street Journal.
Marshall wants to be listed as Roger “Doc” Marshall on the ballot. But Doc, you seem to have put politics before patient safety.
If there was ever a time when science wasn’t politicized to some degree, it predates Galileo. But it’s discouraging to see “Doc,” an ob-gyn from Great Bend, joining the Trump administration’s long-running war on science in the middle of a plague.
If he prevails in the primary, this will be a major point of contention between him and the only Democrat left in the race, Barbara “Doc” Bollier, the Kansas state senator and a Mission Hills anesthesiologist.
On Monday, Marshall also posted video of himself wearing his mask uselessly around his neck while getting a haircut from the McPherson, Kansas, barber who violated Gov. Laura Kelly’s stay-at-home order by opening his shop. (Great elbow bump at the end of the trim, though.)
Possible side effects from the drug Trump and Marshall want to throw around like Mardi Gras beads include sometimes fatal heart rhythm problems. The V.A. announced that in a study in veterans hospitals, more of those COVID-19 patients who were given the drug died than those who didn’t get it.
Yet the president says he’s taking it “because I think it’s good.” It must be, he says, because after doing so for 10 days, “I’m still here.” He said the problem with the V.A. study was that “people that aren’t big Trump fans gave it.”
Nobody can say that about Roger Marshall, though. Pandemic or no pandemic, Doc’s fandom is beyond dispute.
This story was originally published May 20, 2020 at 5:00 AM.