Miami man said unproven drug helped him beat COVID-19. Pro-Trump media gave him star treatment
Life took a surprising turn for Miami Shores resident Rio Giardinieri after he says he almost died of a case of COVID-19.
He’s been interviewed on Fox News wearing a hospital gown and broadcasting from what he believes was nearly his death bed. News outlets across the country have run stories on his recovery. Earlier this week, President Donald Trump even tweeted a New York Post article about him.
The reason?
Giardinieri says he was cured after being prescribed the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, which Trump has touted as a “game changer” when used with antibiotics to fight the coronavirus and secondary bacterial pneumonia.
“I’m not a doctor. I’m not a scientist,” Giardinieri said in a phone interview with the Miami Herald Friday. “I’m just glad I got dosed.”
There’s so far little other than anecdotal evidence that hydroxychloroquine is effective in that way, apart from a preliminary and limited French study, according to Vox. Clinical trials are set to begin in the United States. The website described claims about the drug and COVID-19 as “quackery” and doctors say there is little to no clinically proven evidence that it works. That hasn’t stopped people from hoarding the medicine, which is also used to treat auto-immune disorders, putting sufferers of lupus and similar conditions in danger. Nevada’s governor banned doctors from prescribing it to treat COVID-19 — as well as a similar drug called chloroquine — outside of hospitals. The drug can also have serious psychiatric side effects.
Trump’s message — “HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE & AZITHROMYCIN, taken together, have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine ... PEOPLE ARE DYING, MOVE FAST, and GOD BLESS EVERYONE!” he tweeted — is clearly being lost on some Americans. A man in Arizona died after drinking a fish-tank cleaner with the same active ingredient.
In a divided country, Giardinieri’s story — which lacks some important details, including the name of the doctor who wrote his prescription — is cause either for celebration or skepticism, often depending on a person’s political leanings and belief in science versus hope.
But the 52 year old, a vice-president at a commercial kitchen equipment manufacturer, says he believes the drug was his salvation.
The amount of media attention he’s received since a Los Angeles television reporter brought his story to the world “got out of control really quick,” Giardinieri said.
“There’s a lot of scared people out there,” he added.
There is no proven treatment for COVID-19. Though numerous trials are underway, and many show promise, it’s too early for doctors to know what’s safe and effective for patients, said Maria Alcaide, a physician and infectious disease specialist with the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine.
“If somebody is recommending treatment, that doctor needs to be aware of what is the latest data, what is the status of the current trials that are ongoing, and certainly what are the potential side effects for each of the drugs being used,” Alcaide said.
Alcaide said doctors have reported giving very ill patients drugs traditionally used to treat other disorders, such as malaria and HIV, and described some success.
But she emphasized that experimental treatments are not recommended for everybody. There’s only one thing that has been proven to protect people from COVID-19, she said.
“When people ask me, ‘What is working? What treatment can I take?’, I tell them, ‘We don’t know what treatment is working but what we do know is that all the measures we are taking now, including social distancing and stay at home orders and avoiding people who are sick, that works. We know that works.”
Worth the risk?
Giardinieri’s says his ordeal began after he took ill following a conference in New York earlier this month.
He came back home and ended up at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood. An unbreakable fever. A pounding headache. A rasping cough. All the classic symptoms of COVID-19, which he says he tested positive for.
By March 20, he says, he was struggling to breathe. He says he started saying goodbye to friends and family, who posted about his situation on Facebook. One of them sent him an article about hydroxychloroquine. His doctor at the hospital said he couldn’t prescribe it, but agreed to put him in touch with another physician who specializes in infectious diseases.
“There’s no tests. There’s no trials,” he says the second doctor told him. “This is not approved for what you have.”
“Look, doc, to me it’s worth the risk,” Giardinieri says he replied. “I want to try it.”
In the evening, he says, he took a small pill he described as roughly the size of Tylenol. His heart started pounding. But when he woke up the next morning, he realized he could breathe. After nine days of sweats, the fever was gone. He says he kept getting better.
A reporter from a Fox station in Los Angeles, who shares a mutual friend, heard about his recovery on Facebook. She reached out and did a story. Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham called. Giardinieri did an interview on her show from his hospital room.
“I am so happy that you seem to be doing so much better,” Ingraham said.
“I feel fantastic,” he replied. “I know it sounds unbelievable, people are questioning me about it. But I know what I feel.”
“You need to keep in touch with us,” the Fox News host said. “I want to track how you’re feeling every day.”
Glenn Beck weighed in too. So did the Christian Broadcasting Network.
GOP political operatives and Trump’s allies in the right-wing media, including a group called Trump War Room, have been amplifying Giardinieri’s story, even if some important details are hard to verify.
Speaking to the Herald by phone from his home, Giardinieri said he did not know the name of the doctor who prescribed him hydroxychloroquine or if he worked at Memorial Regional Hospital. He said he took his final dose Thursday.
The hospital says it follows guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on treating COVID-19 but would not say anything about a patient’s treatment.
“There are no U.S. Food and Drug Administration [FDA]-approved drugs specifically for the treatment of patients with COVID-19,” a CDC website states, adding that while the drug may show promise there is no currently available data “to inform clinical guidance on the use, dosing, or duration of hydroxychloroquine for ... treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
The president’s optimism has been severely tempered by public-health experts.
“Doctors have known for decades that chloroquine and related medications like hydroxychloroquine and mefloquine can cause psychiatric side effects even after just one dose,” a group of psychiatrists wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “While some patients experience mild anxiety, insomnia and nightmares, others have severe symptoms like personality changes, paranoia, hallucinations and even suicidal thoughts.”
Even Trump administration officials have urged caution.
“We’re trying to strike a balance between making something with a potential of an effect to the American people available,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, said at a news conference with Trump. “At the same time that we do it under the auspices of a protocol that would give us information to determine if it’s truly safe and truly effective.”
At the center of an international media spotlight, Giardinieri declined to comment on his political leanings. He is not registered to a political party in Florida and a federal elections database does not show he has made contributions to a candidate or cause.
He now says he gets as many as 500 messages per day from people around the world.
They want to know how much hydroxychloroquine to take.
That’s not a question he can answer.
“Don’t be a fool,” he said. “You’ve got to go through a doctor.”
This story was originally published March 28, 2020 at 9:30 AM.