Sort of. Since Trump tweeted and mentioned the drug, hydroxychloroquine has become politicized.
Some scientists and doctors say it might have some use.
But the media is critical of it because Trump mentioned it.
Politician A does something outrageous for political gain. A's opponents in party B decry this outrageous action as being outrageous and done for political gain. Decrying things A does is to B's political advantage! Conclusions: everyone is politicizing this issue.
Maybe we need a better metric for evaluating political action than whether the actors see some political benefit.
What an odd conclusion to draw.
I think it would be more accurate to say: Trump is being criticized for hyping a medication that has not yet undergone medical trials.
There's an established method for bringing medication to market. Trump is ignorant of that method. That's why he's being criticized.
Beyond its standard antiviral and immunomodulatory activity, it's thought that hydroxychloroquine protects red blood cells' heme molecules from having their iron ripped out by Covid.
"widely available globally" and "has been used as an antiviral therapeutic" is not the correct criteria to use here.
That doesn't give you carte blanche to claim that your drug does wonderful things for condition X when the evidence supporting your claim is non-existent, extremely weak, or obviously fraudulent.
> That's why doctors have to use their best judgement and try different things and write down what seems to work and what doesn't.
Which is completely different to POTUS recommending HCQ because he or his friends have financial interest in a company that makes that drug.
It's also extremely negligent to try popularising a particular drug which is already in short supply and needed by people with existing life-threatening conditions. If something looks promising, you finance some trials to provide more certainty, and then you look at ways to ramp up production because you know demand is going to increase.