NIH Begins Clinical Trial To Test Hydroxychloroquine To Treat COVID-19 (thehill.com) 284
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced Thursday that it's begun enrolling participants in a clinical trial to test the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19. The Hill reports: The first participants have enrolled in the trial at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn. The study will be conducted by the NIH's National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. According to the NIH, the blinded, placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial aims to enroll more than 500 adults who are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, or who are in an emergency department with anticipated hospitalization.
Participants will be randomly assigned to receive 400 mg of hydroxychloroquine twice daily for two doses (day one), then 200 mg twice daily for the subsequent eight doses (days two through five) or a placebo twice daily for five days. Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid conditions such as arthritis. However, its effectiveness at treating COVID-19 has never been proven, despite its embrace by President Trump. The evidence on hydroxychloroquine is conflicting, at best. NIH scientists said urgent clinical evidence is needed. Even so, the study is not estimated to be completed until July 2021.
Participants will be randomly assigned to receive 400 mg of hydroxychloroquine twice daily for two doses (day one), then 200 mg twice daily for the subsequent eight doses (days two through five) or a placebo twice daily for five days. Hydroxychloroquine is used to treat malaria, lupus and rheumatoid conditions such as arthritis. However, its effectiveness at treating COVID-19 has never been proven, despite its embrace by President Trump. The evidence on hydroxychloroquine is conflicting, at best. NIH scientists said urgent clinical evidence is needed. Even so, the study is not estimated to be completed until July 2021.
There's something really ridiculous here (Score:2, Insightful)
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I wouldn't say it's definitely ineffective, but the initial research was retracted for severe flaws, and so far as I can tell there's no reasonable studies showing any benefit yet. If you remove anyone who dies or goes to the ICU from your sample, then claim your sample had better than average results, that's pretty suspicious.
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The study wasn't about patient outcomes, it was about detection of the RNA on nasal swabs using a standard RRT-PCR test - termed "virological cure". It makes sense that you have to exclude patients who don't get tested.
Even if you assume that all 6 of the dropouts would have had positive test results, the HCQ treated group would been under 50% (12 of 26) still testing positive. Meanwhile, essentially all of the untreated group (14 of 16) was still testing positive.
The paper is freely available. There is
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"don't expect me at your funeral." Well, if you're already dead because you relied on an ineffective treatment, I suppose you won't be attending my funeral (which btw I'm scheduling in about 30 years, when I'm 100, although with any luck I'll postpone it; stay tuned).
BTW, I'm not saying hydrocloroquine (w/ or w/o supplements) is effective or not, I'm just saying that telling us not to expect you at our funeral is at least as ambiguous as the evidence for the effectiveness of this drug for treating covid.
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If there was another known effective treatment, it would indeed be stupid to skip that and take chloroquine and a z-pack instead, but that's not the case here.
What's stupid is to skip a treatment that might help and just hope it gets better on it's own.
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"There is a shitload of anecdotal evidence that it works, especially when used in combination with a Z-pack and a zinc supplement. "
There are certainly a shitload of anecdotes but nothing yet that approaches evidence.
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Who to believe? What a conundrum!
A dude from the Youtube video! He won't lie after all!
There are results from (somewhat) controlled studies in China and they appear to show that there is SOME efficacy, but not at the "cure" level. Ditto for New York - physicians have been prescribing azythromycin and HCQ but people still die.
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That's Dr Zelenko...
He said he has largely not had his patients tested for coronavirus, because he worried that waiting for test results to begin treatment would compromise the treatment’s effectiveness.
Source [forward.com]
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And then you look at medical history and find that these quacks are wrong time and again and are often making things worse. That is why an actual professional will insist on a double-blind study.
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Anecdotal evidence has a long history of being dubious. This is the unscientific approach. We already know that placebos are highly effective, the goal is to see what drugs are better than placebos.
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Well, there is also anecdotal evidence that shooting yourself in the head stops Covid-19 immediately! I suggest you do that instead. May also cancel your inane ramblings at the same time so there is at least some real benefit.
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Care to point the way to that evidence?
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While much of this is due to Fox News trying to turn this into a culture war issue
WTF?
When did Fox News do anything regarding this drug?
All I ever saw was MSNBC, CNN, et al claiming it was the same as fish tank cleaner, Trump killed the people who drank fish tank cleaner, it doesn't work, there's no evidence of it working, it's a conspiracy so Trump can make money, etc.
We know from Italy that it's a very promising drug. The drug is safe, widely available, and not encumbered by patents. Does more study need to be done? Yes. If I were a COVID-19 patient going from bad to worse would I de
Re:There's something really ridiculous here (Score:5, Insightful)
All I ever saw was MSNBC, CNN, et al claiming it was the same as fish tank cleaner,
They never claimed that. They claimed it was the same as chloroquine phosphate [aquariumstoredepot.com] which is used to treat fish ich... and... it is [cdc.gov].
The drug just can be fatal if the wrong dose is given.
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All I ever saw was MSNBC, CNN, et al claiming it was the same as fish tank cleaner,
They never claimed that. They claimed it was the same as chloroquine phosphate [aquariumstoredepot.com] which is used to treat fish ich... and... it is [cdc.gov].
The drug just can be fatal if the wrong dose is given.
What an asinine comment. Most drugs are fatal if the wrong dose is given... Many people commit suicide every year using this very method. To say that Chloroquine Phosphate is the same as Hydroxychloroquine is like saying that Polyethylene Glycol (Colonoscopy prep) is the same as Ethylene Glycol (Antifreeze) - It's a very disingenuous comment.
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To say that Chloroquine Phosphate is the same as Hydroxychloroquine is like saying that Polyethylene Glycol (Colonoscopy prep) is the same as Ethylene Glycol (Antifreeze) - It's a very disingenuous comment.
Boy are you going to feel stupid [cdc.gov]
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Interesting. From the link...
Chloroquine (also known as chloroquine phosphate) is an antimalarial medicine. It is available in the United States by prescription only. It is sold under the brand name Aralen, and it is also sold as a generic medicine.
Overdose of antimalarial drugs, particularly chloroquine, can be fatal. Medication should be stored in childproof containers out of the reach of infants and children.
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>"The drug just can be fatal if the wrong dose is given."
Or when you take it in the form of aquarium cleaner that has lots of OTHER possible chemicals in it.
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Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are related naturally, but they're not the same. One of the differences being that regular plain old chloroquine is about three times more toxic than the hydroxy version [wikipedia.org], and if you overdose on it, you stand a pretty good chance of dying, much more than Hydroxychloroquine. The side effects with improper dose can be much more significant as well.
That being said, it's massively irresponsible to draw a false equivalence between a highly purified, precise dosage capsule made a
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The drug just can be fatal if the wrong dose is given.
Yes, just like aspirin, tylenol, and water.
Re:There's something really ridiculous here (Score:5, Informative)
Toxicity
Patients experiencing an overdose may present with headache, drowsiness, visual disturbances, cardiovascular collapse, convulsions, hypokalemia, rhythm and conduction disorders including QT prolongation, torsades de pointes, ventricular tachycardia, and ventricular fibrillation. This may progress to sudden respiratory and cardiac arrest. Overdose should be treated with immediate gastric lavage and activated charcoal at a dose of at least 5 times the hydroxychloroquine dose within 30 minutes. Parenteral diazepam may be given to treat cardiotoxicity, transfusion may reduce serum concentrations of drug, patients should be monitored for at least 6 hours, fluids should be given, and ammonium chloride should be given to acidify urine and promote urinary excretion.
https://www.drugbank.ca/drugs/... [drugbank.ca]
Also - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/b... [nih.gov]
Re:There's something really ridiculous here (Score:5, Informative)
From The Atlantic April 6
"Two weeks ago, French doctors published a provocative observation in a microbiology journal. In the absence of a known treatment for COVID-19, the doctors had taken to experimentation with a potent drug known as hydroxychloroquine. For decades, the drug has been used to treat malaria—which is caused by a parasite, not a virus. In six patients with COVID-19, the doctors combined hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin (known to many as “Z-Pak,” an antibiotic that kills bacteria, not viruses) and reported that after six days of this regimen, all six people tested negative for the virus.
The report caught the eye of the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who has since appeared on Fox News to talk about hydroxychloroquine 21 times. As Oz put it to Sean Hannity, “This French doctor, [Didier] Raoult, a very famous infectious-disease specialist, had done some interesting work at a pilot study showing that he could get rid of the virus in six days in 100 percent of the patients he treated.” Raoult has made news in recent years as a pan-disciplinary provocateur; he has questioned climate change and Darwinian evolution. On January 21, at the height of the coronavirus outbreak in China, Raoult said in a YouTube video, “The fact that people have died of coronavirus in China, you know, I don’t feel very concerned.” Last week, Oz, who has been advising the president on the coronavirus, described Raoult to Hannity as “very impressive.” Oz told Hannity that he had informed the White House as much.
More Stories
Anthony Fauci is not among the impressed. "
Re:There's something really ridiculous here (Score:5, Informative)
While much of this is due to Fox News trying to turn this into a culture war issue
WTF?
When did Fox News do anything regarding this drug?
They only promoted it 275 times between March 23rd and April 6th [mediamatters.org].
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LOL "promoted"
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Before you laugh I suggest you look up the word promoted in the dictionary. - This is me promoting your continued intellectual development.
Re:There's something really ridiculous here (Score:4)
Purely personal and anecdotal comment on my part: the 66-year-old cousin of my wife is ill with COVID-19 in Kansas. He has preexisting lung issues, his condition became critical, and he was sent to the ICU. There was no ventilator immediately available for him, so he was given hydroxychloroquine instead.
That was 3 days ago. He is much better now (in fact, he was much better the very next morning), and it now appears he will recover.
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Nobody.
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Please, while the drug has many uses, one of which may well be for corona viruses like C19, it in no way is a safe drug by the common understanding of what "safe" means.
"Safe" drugs are ones that we, meaning the non-medically-trained public, know how to take with or without physician supervision. Ones that don't kill us, and that don't have side effects that we worry about very much.
Hydrochloroquine is NOT one of those drugs. It has a very narrow useful range before it becomes seriously toxic, with side e
Fake news (Score:5, Insightful)
All I ever saw was MSNBC, CNN, et al claiming it was the same as fish tank cleaner
That is a lie! Can you point to one article that claimed hydroxychloroquine was the same as a fish tank cleaner?
Here is the problem. If you lie you can't then go and complain about "fake news" because you are fake news.
I know Trump does this. Trump is changing our culture - changing our attitudes towards ethical failures as normal and OK. The irony is that Trump is destroying the ethical norms that made us great.
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When, indeed:
https://www.foxnews.com/health... [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/media/... [foxnews.com]
https://www.foxnews.com/health... [foxnews.com]
If you want more examples, I'd be happy to provide them.
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While much of this is due to Fox News trying to turn this into a culture war issue
WTF?
When did Fox News do anything regarding this drug?
Well, a lot just in the last few days. Searching on foxnews.com shows these stories just in the last two days! It's almost as though someone at Fox News was trying to orchestrating propaganda, realizing that the base is so easily pliable that they wouldn't even recognize the manipulation.
Laura Ingraham examines the left’s denial of hydroxychloroquine success against COVID-19 [foxnews.com]
Media pundits, medical establishment in denial about hydroxychloroquine? [foxnews.com]
Billy Saracino touts benefits of hydroxychloroquine. [foxnews.com]
Tru [foxnews.com]
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Maybe you could explain to us what you think Fox News gets out of it? What if it doesn't work? What if it does work? Do you think there is a downside if it does work? What makes you think that any "manipulation" on this is worthwhile?
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Maybe you could explain to us what you think Fox News gets out of it? What if it doesn't work? What if it does work? Do you think there is a downside if it does work? What makes you think that any "manipulation" on this is worthwhile?
Well, it's obvious that Fox News tells one side of a story and repeatedly and concertedly pounds on that one side of the story. As I did, searching on foxnews.com or watching the channel or reading the website demonstrates that easily.
Why does Fox News pound on one side of the story? I'm not Fox News, so you'd have to ask them. The stories are there, and they're obviously heavily promoting one side of each story. That fact is easily shown. Why do they go it? I don't know. Maybe they seeking for ratin
You don't know the drug (Score:2)
Do i need to bother reading the rest of your argument if you are so wrong on that one alone ? Well I still checked for hydroquinone+italy and no surprise : no answer. To my knowledge there are clinical test in various countries but no result whatsoever. They take weeks at best , if not month to a
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Just like I don't know if hydroxychloroquine is effective against COVID-19, I cannot say for certain that 7-Up and mentos isn't an effective treatment. With a study we cannot say for certain, and every day that goes by without a 7-Up study means we have potentially lost human lives!
While I haven't tried a study with 26 patients reporting from several different hospitals, my gut, as tremendous as it is, says it might maybe could be a game changer.
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I demand a study into the effectiveness of a 14 day regimen of dandelion juice and rendered snake fat.
Without a study, all we have is a forest of straw men burning while people die. People are so scared of the 1800s they think a salesman is going to time travel to steal their cheesy poofs just because it comes from a snake. Get over the phobia, people! Without a study, the complaints are baseless. This treatment could work!
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Pretty accurate. It is a sad state of affairs that so many people have so little clue about this.
Re:There's something really ridiculous here (Score:5, Insightful)
I half agree. But: on one side you have the President, his cabinet, Barr, and Fox News saying that Democrats don't like hydroxychloroquine because the President touts it; on the other side you have groups of people who think anything the President says is untrue. The partisan bias is asymmetrical on several axes.
Re:There's something really ridiculous here (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, a statistical case can be made.
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If anything the orange moron says were untrue, then his statements would at last have some value. The problem is that his statements are random, because he has no actual insight into anything.
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Partisan politics to our detriment (Score:3)
Who would've thunk it? We are so galvanized, politically, that at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, simply preparing properly for the known threat of an especially virulent virus became an issue of for/against the current administration.
Both US parties are so close to equally responsible that it's akin to splitting hairs to issue more blame to one side over the other, but the Democrats, in a final moment of as close to sanity as they could muster, chose their most moderate, popular, flawed candidate to co
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We are so galvanized, politically, that at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, simply preparing properly for the known threat of an especially virulent virus became an issue of for/against the current administration.
I think you'd acknowledge that if he had done anything like prepare properly for this threat we wouldn't have the federal government seizing PPE in April. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I understand that you see the divide as partisans for and against Trump, but Dems do not generally abandon policies just because Trump endorses them, while Republicans (with rare and well-publicized exceptions ) will eat three meals a day of whatever shit sandwich Trump decides to serve up.
That is why it is farcical to sa
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The plain truth of the partisanship matter is that it's neither unique, nor new to, the current US administration... it is merely magnified by the current administration's not so especially competent handling of the reins.
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Americans are hoarding toilet paper and flour, Finland is hoarding hydroxychloroquine.
The apocalypse is weirder than I expected. And slower.
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I expressed doubts about taking this until more tests are done, but I never said it wasn't going to work. And I'm in the center. I think there are many who have a very strong political motive against any government and government regulation, and they see the FDA as slow and cumbersome and getting in their way of having unproven treatments.
I'm not trying to give a partisan argument, I'm trying to be logical and scientific. If some people think that logic and science are political, then so be it. The FDA
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There's something really ridiculous when something as a clearly scientific question of whether a specific drug is useful for a specific disease has become an essentially partian issue. But this is apparently where we are. While much of this is due to Fox News trying to turn this into a culture war issue, there's also been a segment of the left concluding that it must be completely ineffective,
No this is a false equivalence. You can also find a "segment of the left" that worships Stalin and space aliens. Meaningless drivel.
rather than either group acknowleding that the evidence right now is complicated and unclear
It's the process not the underlying facts that are at issue and what makes this so sad.
Even if it were subsequently shown to be an amazingly effective wonder cure that still wouldn't absolve the Trump/Fixed news propaganda machine from peddling unproven bullshit on national television.
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Well, both sides mistakenly believe they know how reality works. That is not good at all. Fortunately, some actual scientists still know how to get a good approximation of the truth. For now. If they find that the stuff is not effective, some orange moron will probably at least fire all of them. If they find the stuff works at least to some degree, the same moron will think he is the second coming. Now take into account that around half the citizens have voted for that moron and the scale of the problem bec
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It is fairly simple...
This is a known anti-inflammatory and the wuhan-flu causes inflammation.
The street reports and fast track are in itself enough to justify the usage.
This is just more political posturing and what is sad is they don't care how many people they kill.
Re: There's something really ridiculous here (Score:5, Insightful)
Zinc ions prohibit RNA duplication in some viruses, like malaria, the common cold, and most likely COVID-19.
The chloroquines work against viruses by attaching to free zinc ions in the blood stream, which much more easily crosses the cell barrier, and releasing the zinc ions inside the cells where the zinc does it's work.
You spout pure fake news.
Re: There's something really ridiculous here (Score:5, Informative)
Malaria isn't a virus, it's a protozoa.
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Lupus isn't a protozoa, yet it is used to treat Lupus. Heck, it used to be used to treat leg cramps, which is also not caused by protozoa, last time I checked.
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Wow, sounds like you have the cure to the flu too!!!!!!
You do know that covid isn't new right? Covid-19 is actually called SARS 2 by some professionals.
Re: There's something really ridiculous here (Score:4, Informative)
Covid-19 is actually called SARS 2 by some professionals.
The disease is named COVID-19, the virus is called SARS-COV-2 (previously 2019-nCoV).
The name of the virus is given by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV), the name of the disease is decided by the World Health organisation (WHO).
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-2019)-and-the-virus-that-causes-it [who.int]
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Oh god, now you did it! My mom is going to call and insist I take a zinc tablet twice a day! If someone said it on the internet then she thinks it must be true.
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You must have skimmed his post. The chloroquine helps transport the zinc already present in the blood stream into the cells.
Don't be fake news. (Score:3)
Papers describing method of action of Zn ions against viruses:
Antiviral Activity of the Zinc Ionophores Pyrithione and Hinokitiol against Picornavirus Infections [asm.org]
The Role of Zinc in Antiviral Immunity [oup.com]
Zinc for colds: The final word? [mayoclinic.org]
Zinc Salts Block Hepatitis E Virus Replication by Inhibiting the Activity of Viral RNA-Dependent RNA Polymerase [asm.org]
Efficacy of zinc against common cold viruses: an overview. [nih.gov]
Review on The Role of Zn2+ Ions in Viral Pathogenesis and the Effect of Zn2+ Ions for Host Cell-Virus Growth [biomedgrid.com]
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Actually, a gun probably doesn't kill coronavirus, it just splatters it all over everyone in the room.
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Become? I think they've been that since they started selling Supply Side "Economics".
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Re:There's something really ridiculous here (Score:5, Informative)
We'll wait while millions of arthritic hands demolish your ignorant lefty fake news face.
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We're looking for evidence here. Dr Zelenko isn't even testing his patients to confirm they have COVID-19 [forward.com]
He said he has largely not had his patients tested for coronavirus, because he worried that waiting for test results to begin treatment would compromise the treatment’s effectiveness.
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Like I said, utter bullshit.
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Which particular study are you talking about?
I assume it's not the Chinese study starting in early February?
I also assume you are not quoting this one?
https://retractionwatch.com/20... [retractionwatch.com]
In vitro (Score:3, Insightful)
... means in a test tube. Chloroquine worked against SARS in a test tube -- and we knew that years ago.
Lots of things work in vitro but don't work in vivo (on humans). I wonder if they can be made to work though through adifferent structure or being taken with other drugs.
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Reminds me of this meme.. http://i.imgur.com/PeIRKEg.png [imgur.com]
"When you see a claim that a common drug or vitamin kills cancer cells in a petri dish keep in mind, so does a handgun."
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that study is bunk. It does not list a sample size of actual people and their status after taking it.
It does. Zero on both counts. This was done in a Petri dish. The key term is "in vitro".
Re:There's something really ridiculous here (Score:4, Insightful)
For anyone with an ounce of critical thinking skill it was obvious that this medication is effective as of February 24th when first study was published.
For NIH to take over 6 weeks to begin a trial during a pandemic is stupid and should be criminal.
Because every medication that looks promising in a preliminary study turns out to be just as effective in the general population and have no side-effects serious enough to outweigh its benefits!!
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Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are already prescribed prophetically to people who will be traveling in areas where malaria is endemic. It is prescribed long term for people with rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
The only open question is will covid-19 patients do better on the drug than they do with none.
You might think we could immediately give a bunch of people who seem to be destined for the ICU a course of the drug and see if less than predicted wind up in the ICU, but apparently that would be too easy
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I can not get over the double blind test with patients suffering from the virus and pneumonia, unbelievable, yeah those dumb dead fuckers over there, they failed the test, like what the fuck. You give everyone the treatment and adjust down for placebo affect (which is driven by psychological adjustment and people being less stressful and recovering more readily). It is sick and perverted to allow people to continue to suffer permanent lung damage because you can not do a proper test otherwise, they are sick cunts and deserve the suffer they way they are making, what slaves suffer, the poor who can not afford to get prescribed the treatment off the books, it is disgusting.
And you are completely wrong on all counts here. Please shut up is you have absolutely no clue. They do it this way because it is THE ONLY KNOWN WAY THAT WORKS.
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I can not get over the double blind test with patients suffering from the virus and pneumonia, unbelievable, yeah those dumb dead fuckers over there, they failed the test, like what the fuck. You give everyone the treatment and adjust down for placebo affect (which is driven by psychological adjustment and people being less stressful and recovering more readily). It is sick and perverted to allow people to continue to suffer permanent lung damage because you can not do a proper test otherwise, they are sick cunts and deserve the suffer they way they are making, what slaves suffer, the poor who can not afford to get prescribed the treatment off the books, it is disgusting.
There's protocols and exceptions that try to deal with this (one of the reason why doctors are able to use it off-label to treat COVID-19).
But the caution is unfortunately a lesson born from experience.
Patients are desperate for help, and Doctors are desperate to help. So whenever a potential new treatment shows up both sides want to give it a try.
This causes people to latch onto any possible sign (or statistical fluke) that something is effective and overlook possible side-effects. It feels like you're mor
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Until you have done a double blind test, how do you know it's even a treatment? As soon as you are confident that it is a treatment, you can stop the test and give it to everyone. I can list several remedies I suspect might be effective treatments for other conditions, but it's all conjecture until there is a test.
By the way, this stuff is slightly toxic so the positive effect needs to be better than the chance of negative effects. If it turns out to be a placebo, it would not be okay to start giving this d
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Tthe sample size of the original research was too small to be meaningful and the anecdotal evidence of Physicians prescribing it ad-hoc is completely unreliable. To add to all that since this drug is not even a antiviral researchers can't even think up a mechanism by which it might work against the virus.
In-fact the likely the (unspoken) reason for the trials is to prove that the drug
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I believe there are more studies showing it to be ineffective, and that French Raoult guy is apparently well-known to fake results.
It's therefore unlikely that's it's a miracle drug, unfortunately. Hoping remdesivier does better.
Re:There's something really ridiculous here (Score:5, Insightful)
No.. it wasn't. It wasn't a double blind study. The fact that you don't consider that *mandatory* says something about your level of critical thinking.
This substance is *highly* likely to be the real world's version of "filidia" from the movie "Contagion".
This is *NOT* a study
"You look like you are probably going to make it and so as a doctor, I gave you hydroxychloroquine."
"You look like you are definately dying in the next 24 hours and so as your doctor, I'm going to save the hydroxychloroquine for someone else."
Oh look! -- 80% of the people given hydroxychloroquine survived. And the people who didn't get it died! Well that's good science... NOT!
And plus we have information linking administration financially to companies that make hydroxychloroquine which means their judgement is compromised.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]
Trump *owns* stock that will benefit from hydroxychloroquine sales. He has *NO DAMN BUSINESS* pushing hydroxychloroquine and he and anyone in his administration should have sold their Sanofi stock and any stock with ties to that stock.
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For anyone with an ounce of critical thinking skill it was obvious that this medication is effective as of February 24th when first study was published.
For NIH to take over 6 weeks to begin a trial during a pandemic is stupid and should be criminal.
For anybody with at least a bit of insight into how Science actual works in this case, you are completely full of crap.
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Worse, thery anticipate results in July of 2021
While I agree that carefully controlled studies are necessary, we don't have that kind of time. This is the sort of thing where we have a pretty good baseline of statistics for COVID-19 treated with supportive care only, so if we treat a decentish number of patients in a few different places with hydroxychloroquine, we should have a decent preliminary answer in a matter of 2 weeks. Really we should already have that result now.
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Actually no way they could do any sort of trial till testing before wider spread. Step 1, confirm patient has Covid 19, record all other health comorbidities. Step 2, assign to control or test group. Step 3, record outcoms for all group Step 4: once a probable statistically large enough group has been tested to conclude something publish results. You need 1000's of patients to make this work. unfortunately we are only having those patients in the last month The idea to slow spread is good, give more time to
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It's not just about whether it works or not, even if it was just a placebo and nobody was jacking up prices then I'd say go for it. But we don't know what the effects are on covid-19 patients. It's safe to proscribe for some conditions, yes. However we don't really know how it works on someone with severe respiratory problems.
Sure, this can be fast tracked. But fast track doesn't mean tossing it out to the mob blindly which is the attitude I sensed from a lot of people.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And people who need this medicine for approved conditions are finding it incredibly difficult to find. This is because some doctors started prescribing it to family members so that they could build up their own little stockpile. It's proven to work for some conditions, not yet proven for covid-19, so common sense and not politics says to please try to hold off and let people who need it have access first (covid-19 is not the only health condition that exists).
Re: (Score:2)
Over a million doses have been given out to hospitals for use in covid-19. They're just sitting in boxes doing nobody any good right now.
When you put your hand on the stove and note that it hurts, do you insist on a year long controlled study on the alleged relieving procedure of moving your hand, or do you give it a try and see if the situation improves?
Re: (Score:3)
Sweden gave it a try. Bad side effects made them stop.
1918 all over again (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this the right treatment to be pursuing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Hydroxychloroquine might be a critical part of the treatment for COVID-19, or it might not.
The problem is that Trump's obsession with it means that a disproportionate number of resources are being focused on this one drug. Even if it's effective they may end up overlooking treatments that were more effective because this is the one getting the big push.
There's a reason that leaders try to coordinate the big things (like disaster relief) and leave the technical details (drug cocktails) to the experts. The US
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that Trump's obsession with it means that a disproportionate number of resources are being focused on this one drug.
Not really. Quinine and various related compounds have been around for a long time and are inexpensive. There are many companies making them, and in some cases they are donating large numbers of doses
.
Bayer Is Donating Its Malaria Drug That Could Help Coronavirus Patients In The U.S. [fool.com]
Novartis, Mylan and Teva to supply tens of millions of chloroquine tablets to fight COVID-19 [fiercepharma.com]
Novartis has pledged a global donation of up to 130 million hydroxychloroquine tablets, pending regulatory approvals for COVID-19. Mylan is ramping up production at its West Virginia Facility with enough supplies to make 50 million tablets. Teva is donating 16 million tablets to hospitals around the U.S. On Friday afternoon, Amneal pledged to make 20 million tablets by mid-April.
Investigation into other drugs continues.
I take it you will be gutted if it turns out to be helpful.
Re:Is this the right treatment to be pursuing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me guess, you aren't a doctor and have no clue how medicine works. See, there are people called doctors that decide the best course of treatment for a patient, and then they treat them. Pretty simple to understand, right?
No I'm not a doctor... but I understand how medicine works better than you do.
Doctor's aren't walking medical encyclopedias, doing nothing but what's prescribed by the most rigorous science.
They're also susceptible to hype, peer pressure, the impassioned pleas of patients. Remember the years of news reports trying to get people to stop taking antibiotics to treat colds because of the rise of antibiotic resistance? Those were doctors prescribing those antibiotics with a viral infection, prescriptions that were useless.
That doesn't really fit with your model.
The medical supply chain isn't falling into chaos, that's just your ignorance showing. We can cure that. It isn't in chaos. If you want to be absolutely certain, read a report of the state of the supply chain, how it's functioning and how it presently is deviating from norms.
Ok, here's the report [npr.org].
"Some facilities stated that they turned to non-traditional sources of medical equipment and supplies [...] such as online retailers, home supply stores, paint stores, autobody supply shops, and beauty salons."
"Hospitals reported insufficient inventory of essential cleaning supplies, such as disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer, and hand soap. One hospital [...] described making disinfectants, such as bleach, out of on-hand chemicals, such as chlorine."
Yeah, that sounds like a functional supply chain.
Or are you talking about Trump taking an order of 500 ventilators away from Colorado so he could give 100 of them back as a favour to political allies [cpr.org].
And high quality doctors already know how to effectively treat covid-19 and are doing so today. It's rather trivial for them. The data is out there, exactly what to do, what to prescribe and why, compete with expected outcomes are available. The can do this regardless of your believe system, your ignorance and the level of Fake News that circulates [...] Now, you might be skeptical. This is trivial to cure,
Wow, thousands of people are dying and you actually managed to make me laugh.
Are you actually so ignorant that you think you know "the cure" for COVID-19 that all bit some mysterious group of doctors know? Well then what are you sitting here for??
I mean New York had about 5000 extra deaths last month [nytimes.com] so they clearly could use your medical insights.
I actually am a little pissed off right now. Your country had multiple opportunities to prepare for this pandemic and Trump pissed away every one of them. Now as thousands of your fellow citizens are dying you're just leaning into the ignorance and conspiracy theories that got them killed in the first place.
I'm tired of people dying in your quest to troll liberals.
June? (Score:2)
>"Even so, the study is not estimated to be completed until July 2021."
It seems like in an emergency such as this, they could find 500 candidates pretty quickly, start the trial immediately, and know something in just a few weeks.
hydroxychloroquine == forsythia (Score:3)
All politics, no science (Score:2)
It's amazing how almost all of the time this drug comes up, the only thing people talk about is the politics of it. So far, the only actual scientific article in the press I've read was in the Wall Street Journal. The article describes in detail what the drug really does in this case. One of the effects is that it keeps the alveoli from absorbing too much water which is what kills you in this case. It's not a cure. It does, however give your body time to fight it off. There is evidence that people tak
It’s about Trump (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: It’s about Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
What, that an issue regarding public health is decided based on ideological stance?
Hmm..yes? Why doesn't it bother everyone?
Cytokine storm (Score:5, Interesting)
The main aspect of COVID-19 that kills people is what is called a cytokine storm. That is basically when the immune system becomes so active in the lungs it floods the lungs with fluid, and can also destroy lung tissue. That is a response to COVID-19. Google cytokine storm and you'll find vast amounts of information. Now, look at hydroxychloroquine and why it is used to treat lupus and malaria... surprise, surprise, both of those diseases also cause cytokine storm. So this drug is not some antiviral, or lupus cure or malarial antiviral, but it helps control that overwhelming immune response which causes respiratory failure.
So it is no small surprise that doctors, upon discovering a prominent mechanism of death from COVID-19, would immediately key on a drug like hydroxychloroquine.
Re: (Score:2)
Chloroquine exerts direct antiviral effects AND suppress the production/release of tumour necrosis factor alpha. So both.
The cytokine storm is also why Adalimumab is being trialled. Adalimumab is a TNF Inhibitor specifically. Not that it'd help much even if it works, Humira is extremely expensive and in very short supply.
The cost of the drug (Score:3)
"In the United States the wholesale cost of a month of treatment is about US$25 as of 2020." - Source WIKI
Wanna bet that won't be the price when all is said and done.
Also, I have two nagging questions which may explain why Trump is pushing this drug...
What side-effect conditions may result which can only be treated by high priced patent pending drugs? And which company owns them?
Re: (Score:2)
They've been repeating it online for weeks, even using ALL CAPS because you WON'T BELIEVE.
Every time they demand that you agree, that's a whole additional study having happened, another time that they were Proven Right. This is how the neckbeard parasite thinks. There is no reasoning with it. All you can do it sedate the host, cut it off, and hope for the best.