b'as the seasonal flu, and that a large percentage of us might have already had it and not known it, we should all feel pretty damned stupid for sinking our economy try-ing to hide from it.We really hate to say that some in the news media, along with some elected of-ficials who promoted and enforced shutdown policies, fear the embarrassment that would come with fewer U.S. deaths from Covid-19 than the seasonal flulest we for-get the inexpert pandemic forecasters who warned of millions of deaths in the U.S. and are in the process of permanently losing their credibility on these matters. While Fox News was predictably in the bag for Trump, defending his actions while ignoring his salesmanship, liberal networks CNN and MSNBC could not resist their impulse to accuse Trump and several outspoken Republicans of racism for using terms like China Virus and Hunan Viruslabels both networks used in describing the out-break while it was still a regional story in Asia. In the next breath, of course, they compare it to the Spanish Flu, that didnt even come from Spain!The general level of Idiocrasy that the Covid-19 crisis has given rise to is truly embarrassing. Trump repeatedly mentioned a French study in which a 70-year-old anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, was used to treat coronavirus patients with encouraging results. Twenty-six patients received the drug in tandem with azithro-Inside the Chinese lab in Wuhan where Covid-19 is suspected of originatingmycin, and one died, one turned out to not have Covid-19, three went into intensive care, and three dropped out of the study. Twenty of the patients, including the three who went into ICU, recovered from the disease, and although the study was too small to be considered anything but anecdotal, the results were encouraging to a President in need of good news to report to the people. A Democratic legislator from Michigan, Representative Karen Whitsett who is from the Detroit area, became ill and a Covid-19 test was administered. Just as the positive result came back, she had crashed. 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, Whitsett said. It all happened in a matter of hours.Feeling desperate, Rep. Whitsett implored her doctor to prescribe hydroxy-chloroquine, and her husband was dispatched to retrieve the prescription. Within hours, she was in full recovery. The elected Democratic official appeared on multiple Trump-friendly news outlets to give credit to the President, saying, If President Trump had not talked about this, it wouldnt have been something that would be ac-cessible for anyone to be able to get right now. Although there is no medically prov-able correlation between her recovery and the drug, the result encouraged many.Not among those were, predictably, far-left political commentators like Mi-chaelangelo Signorile and Rachel Maddow, who ignored Rep. Whitsetts story and concentrated on the lack of public support for use of the drug now, before clinical TheCoastalBend.com THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINEQ2.2020 31'