Here’s what happened when the US president said he was taking hydroxychloroquine

Search data can help us to provide the correct answers people are looking for, writes Lucy Anna Gray

There is no longer a question of whether the media should cover Trump’s lies (Getty)

On Monday, Donald Trump claimed during a press conference that he has regularly been taking the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine.

On Tuesday he confirmed that no, he wasn’t joking, and defended his use of it again to an utterly dazed gaggle of press.

Now’s not the time to go into it, but let’s all just be clear that this medication is not a known cure for Covid-19 and can also have dangerous side effects if taken without proper medical consultation.

With that hopefully unnecessary disclaimer out of the way, let’s have a shallow dive into what happened after this momentous announcement from the president of the United States.

By analysing data from search trends, we can get an insight into what people are thinking in real time, and can even make loose predictions about what’s to come. This graph shows the amount of Google searches for “hydroxychloroquine” in the US over the last seven days.

(Google Trends (Google Trends)

That’s a big spike. Some of the top related search terms to it have been “side effects”, “what is it”, and – as usual with anything of this nature – ”stocks”.

There was a similar jump in searches for “bleach” when the president suggested people inject themselves with it to treat coronavirus (disclaimer: don’t). After this outrageous comment during a White House press briefing where no doctors jumped in to correct him, certain areas of America saw an uptake in people being hospitalised for bleach exposure.

Does this mean we’ll see a similar increase in Americans taking hydroxychloroquine without medical advice? An increase in people suffering from nausea, weight loss, diarrhoea, hair loss, rashes, headaches, mood swings, irritability and nervousness?

Most people are not doctors or medical scientists, so when the leader of the free world says he is taking a drug to stop himself from contracting coronavirus, everyone is going to search for it. They’re going to wonder what it is and whether they should be taking it – and that’s where we have to come in.

People are craving answers, and they’re not getting them from the president. In my mind, there is no longer a question of whether the media should cover Trump’s lies; as the pandemic continues, it has becoming increasingly clear that it is our duty to fact-check him and point readers to accurate, reliable sources and information.

Yours,

Lucy Anna Gray

US Audience Editor