Friends,

This isn't how science works. If there has actually been a "major therapeutic breakthrough" on the SARS-CoV-2 #coronavirus* it would be subjected to the scrutiny of the scientific community. We would be hearing from scientists, not press flaks. https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1297373454262571008

*there hasn't been a scientific breakthrough.

What there actually is? A major @JoeBiden / @KamalaHarris interview on the eve of the Republican National Convention, scheduled to air Sunday at 8pm. https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1296223366056235008?s=20

The phrase that Trump's press secretary used, "major therapeutic breakthrough," implies some major new advancement in the treatment of #COVID19 (therapeutic is a fancy way of saying "therapy" which is, itself, a fancy way of saying "treatment").

The way that we know whether a treatment actually works (i.e. is safe and effective) is by putting it through rigorous scientific tests called "clinical trials."**

Trump has shows us, time and time again, that he doesn't actually care about clinical trials.

**I'd point you to a livestream I did on trials, but my tweets have been de-indexed

We saw the absolute clusterfuck that Trump caused when he touted hydroxychloroquine, even though it was unproven

Clinical trials are actually monitored by a separate team of experts who are constantly looking to see whether the therapy being investigated is SO EFFECTIVE that it would be unethical to continue the trial.

If that has happened? One of two things would be true

1. We’d know about it right now because it would be the biggest breaking news story in the world and word would need to get to every single physician treating #COVID19 on the face of the planet

2. Donald Trump is responsible* for the deaths of everyone who dies between now and his press conference

*he’s already responsible for all of the deaths in America

“But” you may quite reasonably be wondering “maybe there’s been some sort of ‘major breakthrough’ on a vaccine”?

Perhaps. Here’s the thing, the US candidate that’s furthest along is still in the recruitment phase of widespread clinical trial https://news.yahoo.com/moderna-says-more-40-participants-013835711.html

It seems to me even more unlikely that there’s been a major therapeutic breakthrough on the vaccine front - unless, tomorrow night, Trump is announcing challenge trials.

(To those in the field, I’m not going very far out on a limb by assuming that the Trump White House press flak doesn’t necessarily know the difference between a therapeutic and prophylactic vaccine...)

There is nothing I want more than for this to be over because humanity has a safe and effective therapeutic that moves #covid19 from an incredibly serious pathogen to a non-issue.

I am 99.99% certain that’s not what’s happening.