Trump trade adviser, hydroxychloroquine hawk and Deep State conspiracy theory propagator Peter Navarro had a tetchy exchange earlier with Andrea Mitchell of NBC, about the administrations move to approve convalescent plasma therapy for the coronavirus, despite its efficacy being very much in doubt.

On air, the veteran host of Andrea Mitchell Reports said to Navarro: FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn has now apologised. He, along with the president, [Health secretary Alex] Azar, on Sunday night, said that, out of 100 people with Covid-19, 35 were saved by convalescent plasma in a study.

He now says that the criticism of those false claims, exaggerated claims, was entirely justified, and that he should have said there is a relative risk reduction, not an absolute reduction. And, in fact, the study was only a subset of a subset, not a randomized study.

You are a PhD economist. Youre an expert. You know statistics inside and out. Emergency approval of using plasma this way reduces the possibility of having a proper randomized study, and it falsely inflates hopes.

Navarro in fact a China trade hawk who has published books in which he extensively quoted an expert by the name Ron Vara, an anagram of Navarro said he did not accept that premise, which was like a crazy talking point, and added: On the issue of not being able to do randomized trials, I mean, what is the calculus here?

Are we going to wait to use something that can save thousands of lives, just so we can have a study that tells us what we already know, which is that plasma works?

Mitchell replied: Yes, that is scientific practice, sir.

And it carried on from there.

Talking of crazy talking points, Axios reported at the weekend that during attempts by the Trump White House to get Hahn and the FDA to hurry up on vaccines and therapeutics, Navarro aggressively confronted FDA officials, saying: You are all deep state and you need to get on Trump Time.

Heres a paragraph Ive written before: The deep state conspiracy theory holds that a permanent government of bureaucrats exists to thwart the presidents agenda. Former Trump campaign manager and White House adviser Steve Bannon, an enthusiastic propagator of the theory, has also said it is for nut cases and none of this is true.

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