Study Finds Hydroxychloroquine May Have Boosted Survival. Other Researchers Have Doubts (cnn.com) 173
"A surprising new study found the controversial antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine helped patients better survive in the hospital," reports CNN. "But the findings, like the federal government's use of the drug itself, were disputed."
A team at Henry Ford Health System in southeast Michigan said Thursday their study of 2,541 hospitalized patients found that those given hydroxychloroquine were much less likely to die. Dr. Marcus Zervos, division head of infectious disease for Henry Ford Health System, said 26% of those not given hydroxychloroquine died, compared to 13% of those who got the drug. The team looked back at everyone treated in the hospital system since the first patient in March. "Overall crude mortality rates were 18.1% in the entire cohort, 13.5% in the hydroxychloroquine alone group, 20.1% among those receiving hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin, 22.4% among the azithromycin alone group, and 26.4% for neither drug," the team wrote in a report published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases.
It's a surprising finding because several other studies have found no benefit from hydroxychloroquine, a drug originally developed to treat and prevent malaria...
"Our results do differ from some other studies," Zervos told a news conference. "What we think was important in ours ... is that patients were treated early. For hydroxychloroquine to have a benefit, it needs to begin before the patients begin to suffer some of the severe immune reactions that patients can have with Covid," he added. The Henry Ford team also monitored patients carefully for heart problems, he said...
Researchers not involved with the study were critical. They noted that the Henry Ford team did not randomly treat patients but selected them for various treatments based on certain criteria. "As the Henry Ford Health System became more experienced in treating patients with COVID-19, survival may have improved, regardless of the use of specific therapies," Dr. Todd Lee of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Canada, and colleagues wrote in a commentary in the same journal. "Finally, concomitant steroid use in patients receiving hydroxychloroquine was more than double the non-treated group. This is relevant considering the recent RECOVERY trial that showed a mortality benefit with dexamethasone." The steroid dexamethasone can reduce inflammation in seriously ill patients...
Eli Rosenberg [lead author of a New York study of hydroxychloroquine], also pointed out that the Detroit paper excluded 267 patients — nearly 10% of the study population — who had not yet been discharged from the hospital. He said this might have skewed the results to make hydroxychloroquine look better than it really was.
"There's a little bit of loosey-goosiness here in all this," he told CNN.
It's a surprising finding because several other studies have found no benefit from hydroxychloroquine, a drug originally developed to treat and prevent malaria...
"Our results do differ from some other studies," Zervos told a news conference. "What we think was important in ours ... is that patients were treated early. For hydroxychloroquine to have a benefit, it needs to begin before the patients begin to suffer some of the severe immune reactions that patients can have with Covid," he added. The Henry Ford team also monitored patients carefully for heart problems, he said...
Researchers not involved with the study were critical. They noted that the Henry Ford team did not randomly treat patients but selected them for various treatments based on certain criteria. "As the Henry Ford Health System became more experienced in treating patients with COVID-19, survival may have improved, regardless of the use of specific therapies," Dr. Todd Lee of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, Canada, and colleagues wrote in a commentary in the same journal. "Finally, concomitant steroid use in patients receiving hydroxychloroquine was more than double the non-treated group. This is relevant considering the recent RECOVERY trial that showed a mortality benefit with dexamethasone." The steroid dexamethasone can reduce inflammation in seriously ill patients...
Eli Rosenberg [lead author of a New York study of hydroxychloroquine], also pointed out that the Detroit paper excluded 267 patients — nearly 10% of the study population — who had not yet been discharged from the hospital. He said this might have skewed the results to make hydroxychloroquine look better than it really was.
"There's a little bit of loosey-goosiness here in all this," he told CNN.
Simple ruling (Score:4, Insightful)
Was it double blind? No? Chuck it in the bin.
Seriously, with a disease that has SO many variables, you can so easily fudge results that it's at best a honest mistake and at worst an attempt to mislead. At this stage I'm honestly surprised to homeopathetic idiots didn't try to push their snakeoil, claiming that they cured Covid successfully by carefully selecting the patients that get their sugar balls.
Re:Simple ruling (Score:4, Informative)
At this stage I'm honestly surprised to homeopathetic idiots didn't try to push their snakeoil
They did! The FDA maintains a list of warning letters they've sent out to companies for fradulant claims on COVID-19 be it cures, preventatives, or unapproved home test kits. There's actually oils in the list too, preventative "essential oils".
https://www.fda.gov/consumers/... [fda.gov]
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, various (essential) snakeoils have been released, but so far (at least to my knowledge) their lobbying groups have been surprisingly silent. Probably because they know better.
Re: Simple ruling (Score:2)
Sure because it's one thing to sell high priced water to hypochondriacs, it's entirely different to be responsible for helping to spread a plague.
A friend's gf has been "taking" expensive water for decades. She's dumb as rocks. He's a science genius but eventually gave up trying to explain to her why it's bullshit and all the real science that proves it.
Re:Simple ruling (Score:5, Insightful)
Was it double blind? No? Chuck it in the bin.
That is utterly idiotic. When they say that Covid-19 is more dangerous to elders, did they perform a double-blind to judge that? When they say that Covid-19 is more dangerous to people with certain conditions, did they perform a double-blind to assess that? When they say that Covid-19 is more dangerous to men than women, did they perform a double blind to say that? When they say that the viral load is linked to the severity of symptoms, did they perform a double blind?
Nope, they observed what happened. Like the NY medics who wrote: "Among patients with COVID-19, older age, male sex, hypotension, tachypnea, hypoxia, impaired renal function, elevated D-dimer, and elevated troponin were associated with increased in-hospital mortality and hydroxychloroquine use was associated with decreased in-hospital mortality" [springer.com].
Re:Simple ruling (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you just observe what happens when you get to pick and choose the conditions under which you observe? If you get to choose the patients that get a certain medication, you obviously have the option to skew the outcome in the way you prefer. Unless you can show that your sample group and the control group are actually comparable, any kind of comparison is bollocks.
Re:Simple ruling (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you can show that your sample group and the control group are actually comparable, any kind of comparison is bollocks.
That is exactly what the Henry Ford Health System study and the NY study (and others by the way) tried to achieve: define comparable sample groups, so to get some sensible results.
Furthermore, I'd like to point out the fact that the double-blind is not a method about picking good sample groups. It is about removing biases, but since the biggest bias is intentional fraud (e.g. being paid by some big pharma to get some given results, e.g. advancing someone's career at the expenses of someone else etc.), in the end double-blind gets trapped in the "Who watches the watchers" dilemma [wikipedia.org]. Double blind is like security through obscurity (am I on a nerdy site?) and we all know that security through obscurity does not work in practice even if it sounds good in theory.
Re: (Score:2)
The biggest bias at this point is making headlines. And you will make headlines by having a cure for Covid.
Re: (Score:3)
The biggest bias at this point is making headlines. And you will make headlines by having a cure for Covid.
That is nothing compared to the amount of money you could make with a NEW cure. That is why, while there is a tremendous scientific crisis, because research with negative results is done, but rarely published (e.g. infamously for antidepressants [crossfit.com]), instead you read a lot of negative results published (and sometimes retracted) for Hydroxychloroquine.
Re:Simple ruling (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not a cure for SARS-CoV2. This is a treatment to increase the survival rate of for those suffering from it. You're apparently criticizing the study and drugs used because you don't understand what they're trying to address and how they're being used.
With a typical flu, lots of fluids are recommended as they increase your survivability - you don't dehydrate and die [cdc.gov]. Does that mean that fluids are a cure?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm the last person who'd say that only a perfect cure is worth using. The masks are a great idea because if only one infection can somehow be avoided by them, they already served their purpose because it's side-effect free. Hell, if we only think it might serve a purpose it beats doing nothing.
Chloroquine is anything but side effect free. It is taxing on the coronary system and it can wreak havoc to your glucose levels, making it dangerous to diabetics. And to make matters worse, the chloroquine group of m
Re: (Score:2)
Security through obscurity does not work alone, but can be a fun (and perhaps useful) layer, assuming one does not invest too much time into it. To stall with the hope of detecting (in a security context) if nothing else.
Why double blind? Because people are people even when they're not intentionally being the absolute worst.
IMO,
Re: (Score:2)
Not a controlled study. [Re:Simple ruling] (Score:2)
Unless you can show that your sample group and the control group are actually comparable, any kind of comparison is bollocks.
That is exactly what the Henry Ford Health System study and the NY study (and others by the way) tried to achieve: define comparable sample groups, so to get some sensible results.
This is exactly what the two studies did not do.
There was no attempt in either this study or the NY study to match the groups. Read the summary.
That's why this study is so heavily criticized.
Furthermore, I'd like to point out the fact that the double-blind is not a method about picking good sample groups.
Good point. The correctly phrased criticism is that this study was not controlled.
With no matched control group, you don't know what it means.
Re:Simple ruling (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact this is voted up as "insightful" shows how many people have no idea no idea how medicine works. There was no study to determine who COVID19 is more dangerous to because that is not what a study is for. That is an observation and is figured out by looking at the data and extrapolating from it. This is similar to saying "more people die in high speed car crashes than low speed crashes". You looks at the data and see what it tells you. It does not tell you if something works, it tell you what happens based on what has already happened.
Drug studies are meant to determine if a drug first is relatively safe (compared to the results expected), second if it does what it claims, and third if it does it better than other things already available. To determine points 2 and 3, there are very specific rules that must be followed to eliminate bias and bad results. The biggest one is the study being double-blind. This means not only do the patients not know what they are receiving (the experimental drugs, a different drug, or placebo depending on the study) but the doctor does not either. This eliminates any biases based on knowing what the patient is receiving. The second rule is that patients should not be receiving any other treatments that can affect the results (and if other treatments are given, they should be as close as possible across all groups). For example in this case, steroid use in HCQ patients was double that of the other group.This could mean that steroid us, not HCQ, causes better results. If this was the only study to be conducted, these results would be important. But since other studies have already been done with more rigorous standards, these results are fairly meaningless. The fact it is even being talked about is just a result of the politics at play.
Re: (Score:3)
Was it double blind? No? Chuck it in the bin.
That is utterly idiotic.
Unfortunately, it's not. The study was badly done.
Unless the group given the treatment is identical to the group not given the treatment, you can't conclude anything..
Really, this is the very first rule of science.
When they say that Covid-19 is more dangerous to elders, did they perform a double-blind to judge that?
Since the researchers didn't select which elders to expose to the disease, yes. If they had compared, say, people over 60 in France to people under 60 in Germany, that would be a failure.
Since, however, the population of seniors were not necessarily exposed under identical conditions: no. You
Re: (Score:2)
Was it double blind? No? Chuck it in the bin.
That is utterly idiotic.
Unfortunately, it's not. The study was badly done.
Unless the group given the treatment is identical to the group not given the treatment, you can't conclude anything..
And that has nothing to do with double-blind. Cheers.
Re: (Score:2)
Unless the group given the treatment is identical to the group not given the treatment, you can't conclude anything..
Really, this is the very first rule of science.
That's not the first rule of science.
Re: (Score:3)
Ok, then we'll go with the non double blind study in the absence of better evidence.
That is a pitiful reasoning. A study is either informative or it is not: if you remove an informative study, because supposedly you got a new, more informative study, you effectively end up with less information than retaining both. So, no, your excuse does not work here.
Were there double blind studies showing hydroxychloroquine has no benefit? Yes, and with larger sample sizes too.
Yes, and they are (or better: it is) laughably bad. The quite trumpeted "A Randomized Trial of Hydroxychloroquine as Postexposure Prophylaxis for Covid-19" [nejm.org] study shows that the participants were extremely good at guessing what kind of drug
Re: (Score:3)
Ok, then we'll go with the non double blind study in the absence of better evidence.
That is a pitiful reasoning. A study is either informative or it is not: if you remove an informative study, because supposedly you got a new, more informative study, you effectively end up with less information than retaining both. So, no, your excuse does not work here.
I'm not at all sure what you are getting at. I said if we don't have better evidence, then we'll trust the results of lesser evidence. In the case of covid and hydroxychloroquine, we have better quality evidence that contradicts what the lesser quality evidence says. In that case I'm going to stick with what the better quality evidence says. You can try to poke holes in the better quality evidence...to prove that its not better. No study is perfect. The holes you've tried to pick in the double blind study s
Re:Simple ruling (Score:4, Insightful)
If any, this whole topic shows that people will just believe what they already believe in, and selectively absorb information. This confirmation bias leads nowhere, or actually it leads somewhere: polarization.
Only very few people i know or i encounter on the internet dare to be open-minded and inform themselves of all sides of the story, without judging too fast. How can you be so very sure of what you think? I for myself don't. I have an opinion, but i'm not sure i'm right. But i do observe that many people are loosing their sense of proportionality, or blindly stick to their believes discarding any evidence that not match that world views.
I can summarize this all by asking: Where is the love. Where is the adult debate. Without calling each other idiots.
Personally i try to stick with this quote: 'i disagree with what you say, but i'll defend to the death your right to say it' (Voltaire). But please say it polite and respectful.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't say that chloroquine does not work. I only say that this study proves nothing. If you want to know whether hydrochloroquine is a suitable cure or treatment, you'd have to do a double blind study with a sensibly selection of a study group. Even if the benefit only marginally beats the side effects, it would certainly be a better choice than doing nothing. Unfortunately, hydrochloroquine does have side effects that may even be deadly with patients that have coronary diseases and you better not be a di
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Again, if you have SO many variables as you have with this infection, the potential for abuse is too large to consider any kind of study credible that doesn't ensure that those variables are all taken into account.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know if that is the standard on which this should be based, but this study doesn't even have a control group. So by any reasonable standard, this study is useless at best.
Re: (Score:2)
Not a true control, no. What you actually had was:
But instead of keeping those as separate arms, they combined those groups so that there was an HCQ group in which 78.9% got steroids and a non-HCQ group in which 35.7% got steroids.
Worse, the age distribution of the patients is dramatically different. The "no treatment" group had a mea
Re: (Score:2)
Seems you're overlooking the actual control group mentioned in TFA.
What's being overlooked, intentionally by you, is that the supposed control group and the group receiving the medication are not directly comparable. This is typically disingenuous trolling on your part.
Re: (Score:3)
It wasn't even single blind. Or random. And no control.
This is the type of purely-observational science you resort to only when there is nothing else available to draw conclusions from.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Simple as possible, but NOT simpler? (Score:2)
Well, among FPs on Slashdot 2020, that one is not too bad. However I think your [Opportunist's] focus was rather too narrow for the Insightful moderation, even though you were focusing on a key aspect. Let me try to clarify, then I can look deeper to see if anyone went there...
There are two research paths we can consider. For hypothesis-driven research, you [a scientist or researcher (selected at random?)] figure out IN ADVANCE what the specific research question is and then you design an experiment or stud
Re:Simple ruling (Score:5, Insightful)
You obviously didn't read the study.
Of the 120,000 who died in the US due to Covid19, about 80,000 could have been saved.
You obviously don't know how science works if that's the conclusion you came to. But you are right about one thing, 80000 less people could have died if the government actually took the virus seriously.
Badly Done Experiment (Score:3)
This data is worthless.
It's not a controlled experiment.
Unless the group given the treatment was identical to the group not given the treatment, you can't conclude anything.
If you're in 5th grade. All Google's data worthles (Score:4, Insightful)
> Unless the group given the treatment was identical to the group not given the treatment, you can't conclude anything.
If you're in 5th grade that would be a perfectly reasonable answer, because at that level you aren't expected to be able to do any statistical analysis or control for any variables - you're suppose to just eliminate all variables but one. Rather than ANALYZING data, you are only expected to be able to report it, so experiments have to return perfectly clean data.
Of course, if you take 5th grade science experiment design at face value, you can't possibly know if the girl next to you likes you, because you haven't done a double-blind experiment with a perfect control group. Heck, you can't even know whether or not you like football or baseball, because the circumstances around each game were different. So you can't come to any conclusions, per the 5th grade science fair rules. (And yet somehow, magically, you DO know that you prefer football). You even know that your dad's motorcycle is faster than the school bus, though you've never seen them drive the same route.
Once you graduate grade school, if you continue on you might learn that the data Google has is not exactly "worthless" - it's actually worth a couple hundred billion dollars, because it predicts future events, though it's collected without any of the study design parameters that you learned about in grade school.
Re: (Score:2)
If you're in 5th grade that would be a perfectly reasonable answer, because at that level you aren't expected to be able to do any statistical analysis or control for any variables
The variables that affect COVID death rates are still not entirely clear, so controlling for variables is difficult, so your criticism has little validity.
Re: (Score:2)
> The variables that affect COVID death rates are still not entirely clear, so controlling for variables is difficult,
There is a slight difference between "most new science is difficult" and "most new science is worthless".
Ps - you are amazing (Score:3)
Let me put this another way:
The variables that could effect your commute are nearly infinite and unknown. There could be wrecks. A protest could block your path. A funeral procession. The traffic light could be broken. Animals could be in the road. A 92 year old grandpa could be in front of you.
Yet, you are so amazing that you still manage to pretty much get to work on time AND you even choose best route, or ine of rhe best routes, almost every morning.
Coming up with solutions that work well in the face
Re: (Score:2)
Btw, if you managed to understand my crappy post, full of stupid typos, you just developed effective meaning from very imperfect input data. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Spurious analogy.
There are many instances in science and medicine where an apparent effect has been due to an unknown additional variable which the initial study did not account for because the evidence was not gathered because it was assumed irrelevant or the information gathering incomplete. In medicine it is why particularly complete, longitudinal studies are so valuable and often mined for additional information other than the purpose of the original study as such complete information is rarely availabl
Re: (Score:2)
In a perfect experiment the raw observation *is* the answer, perfectly. No thinking needed, no math needed. In the real world, you have to use intelligence to think about the observed data, and think about which order of magnitude variation would be expected from the unknown unknowns, etc.
Indeed, this is what is done. But since we don't know what the order of magnitude of variation is for COVID risk factors, then it's much harder to say any particular study that is not double-blind (and double-blind is not ethical) is sufficiently large and diverse that unknown factors are equalled over study populations. Already in the study in question, there was a difference in steroid usage, so at best the conclusion can be regime A versus regime B, not HCQ versus no HCQ as the groups were not distinguis
Re: (Score:2)
You have some idea it is. That's why you're resting it.. It's why you're not double blind testing treating people with covoid-19 dirt.
Re: (Score:2)
They can become unethical. For example, there was an aspirin study on heart attacks, after a while it became obvious the aspirin helped, and the people given the placebo were given aspirin as continuing the study would have been unethical.
Speaking of aspirin, it was the miracle drug during the Spanish flu, quite a few people died from too much aspirin.
Re:If you're in 5th grade. All Google's data worth (Score:4, Informative)
> Unless the group given the treatment was identical to the group not given the treatment, you can't conclude anything.
If you're in 5th grade that would be a perfectly reasonable answer, because at that level you aren't expected to be able to do any statistical analysis or control for any variables - you're suppose to just eliminate all variables but one.
Precisely. This study was so badly done that even a fifth grader should be able to see what's wrong with it.
And, you know what? There's a reason that scientists want to see controlled experiments. The reason is, selection effects matter. This is fucking well known and every scientist ought to know that. If you don't have a record of what the selection criteria are-- why some patients were prescribed HCQ and others weren't-- you can't "analyze" out the confounding factors.
If your belief is, oh, we can "analyze" out the selection effects, what you are actually saying is "I'm not a scientist, and I don't have a really good notion of how god science is done."
Re: (Score:2)
Fucking A Man. Motherfucking A.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, if you take 5th grade science experiment design at face value, you can't possibly know if the girl next to you likes you, because you haven't done a double-blind experiment with a perfect control group. Heck, you can't even know whether or not you like football or baseball, because the circumstances around each game were different. So you can't come to any conclusions, per the 5th grade science fair rules. (And yet somehow, magically, you DO know that you prefer football). You even know that your dad's motorcycle is faster than the school bus, though you've never seen them drive the same route.
Once you graduate grade school, if you continue on you might learn that the data Google has is not exactly "worthless" - it's actually worth a couple hundred billion dollars, because it predicts future events, though it's collected without any of the study design parameters that you learned about in grade school.
Wow, what an incredibly dangerous and incorrect way to deal with experimental results upon which people's lives depend. I fear you are a medical researcher. What you are describing isn't science. When setting up an experiment in a controlled way isn't ethical, you are right that you can use statistics to tease out information. However, if you believe most medical researchers are capable of this, then I have a bridge to sell you. They follow the one or two statistical recipes they know, ignore or avoid
Re: (Score:2)
> either medical researchers (for one of the most common cancers) either don't know how to setup an experiment correctly or just don't care.
I don't doubt that what you've said is true.
And yet, somehow we have medical treatments that do in fact work. Apparently, neither perfect technique not perfect circumstances are required to get useful information. Apparently, there is something in between perfection and worthless.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
...says the study. You might deduce from my posting that I question the validity of a study that is trivial to forge.
Re:Simple ruling (Score:4, Insightful)
Good thing that there are a thousand other scientists on five continents confirming the results, then.
The standard isn't actually sharing data; the real test for science is, do other scientists confirm the results?
I like this study (Score:2)
Hopefully it will put to rest the stupid goal shifting since the mortality rate of HCQ is lower than the mortality rate of HCQ when combined with whatever goal shifting medicine is in vogue for Trump supporters to promote today.
The result was due to anti inflamatory drugs (Score:4, Informative)
"concomitant steroid use in patients receiving hydroxychloroquine was more than double the non-treated group. This is relevant considering the recent RECOVERY trial that showed a mortality benefit with dexamethasone"
Re:The result was due to anti inflamatory drugs (Score:5, Informative)
Personally I would go with the double blind placebo controlled trial that says steroids cut death rates by 30% for ventilated patients and 20% for patients on oxygen. The retrospective study reported here is unable to distinguish what benefit any of the treatment regimes might have had..
Re:The result was due to anti inflamatory drugs (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually there's more to it than just that. The steroid dexamethasone appears to be only useful when patients have to be put on a ventallator, I.e. at later stages of the disease and not before. Whereas the HCQ as stated above was done early as possible in the course of the disease. By time later stages of the disease have arrived, HCQ (and remdessivir also for that matter) was ineffective.
So, all those studies that "proved" that HCQ was ineffective may be outright wrong without taking the "stage" of the disease in account. Considering the rancid political environment it does beg the question if this carelessness was purposeful or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So far, every study I saw that 'proves it works' was for relatively low dose early intervention (400 ug) to dampen a cytokine storm and every study that 'proves it doesn't work', was for late stage high dose (2000 ug) treatment when the patient was almost dead already. So all the studies are quite correct. It just depends on what the doctors want to achieve: Help people = small doses early; Kill people = high doses too late.
Yes, that's the hypothesis which needs to be tested:
Unfortunately, because there were selection effects and no control group, this particular study does not confirm that hypothesis (nor contradict it).
So far, there isn't any study that confirms that hypothesis. It's still a hypothesis.
Re: (Score:2)
Can we agree with a slight rewording? (Score:2)
Personally I would go with the double blind placebo controlled trial that says steroids cut death rates by 30% for ventilated patients and 20% for patients on oxygen.
Given that the claimed benefit was more than twice that of the RECOVERY study, the numbers don't argue that that the steroid benefits observed there are the full explanation. Nor do they argue that this plus the difference between a double-blind and a retrospective data-mining inadequately controlling correlated differences between the groups
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No-one is as deaf as he who doesn't want to hear. Please thank your Democrat friends for killing about 80,000 Americans with their TDS anti-HCQ propaganda.
And in actual reality, the rest of the world also found that hydroxychloroquine has no effect. Hint: The rest of the world is a bit larger than the US and not controlled by the US democrats. There are liars, damned liars and then there are people like you.
Coronavirus successful treatment: Costs only $20 (Score:5, Interesting)
Coronavirus successful treatment: Costs only $20. [slashdot.org]
Quote: "We know that hydroxychloroquine helps Zinc enter the cell. We know that Zinc slows viral replication within the cell."
Research, published June 12, 2020: Zinc, a micronutrient required for immunocompetence, is found deficient in populations. [medrxiv.org]
Re:Coronavirus successful treatment: Costs only $2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Note that the first link provided is a link to another one of the OP's bullshit posts while the second link does not discuss HCQ at all.
Thanks for the input, comrade.
Re: Coronavirus successful treatment: Costs only $ (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know or even have an opinion on hcq or hcq+anything. Completely outside my field.
But, I was convinced by your fact filled, well cited and highly logical reply.
Keep spreading the good word!
There is no way this was not botched (Score:2)
A difference _this_ large would have shown up in other studies, even if smaller. It did not. This study was either botched due to incompetence or due to gross scientific misconduct.
Re: (Score:3)
For example, the different treatments were chosen on an ad hoc basis - while there may not have been a formal protocol for choosing a treatment, the prescribing doctors may have been going on "gut instinct" - this person is high
Re: (Score:2)
A difference _this_ large would have shown up in other studies, even if smaller. It did not. This study was either botched due to incompetence or due to gross scientific misconduct.
I wouldn't say botched as much as all these studies may have uncontrolled factors that affect the conclusion. Under controlled circumstances, these factors can be minimized or removed by selection or experimental design; however, during the current pandemic, some factors are beyond the study's control.
Re: (Score:2)
But the findings ... were disputed (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
One of the problems with hydroxychloroquinine is the very narrow theraputic window - the amount you need to be effective is only slightly less than the lethal dose, so the doctors have to pay close attention to dosing and monitoring patients. Perfectly safe, if you have well-trained and attentive doctors - but not safe if unqualified quacks are handing it out, or even in a hospital environment operating far above capacity where there is an increased probability of error.
Re: (Score:3)
Any drug would be politically convenient. If there were a drug that would cure the disease with a quick pill, then the whole lockdown mess would be instantly pointless - the economic disaster could be averted, and life would go back to normal. So a lot of people are really desperate for such a magic bullet, and not above clutching at straws.
Would you turn down HCQ+Zinc ... (Score:2)
... if your elderly parent or child got infected with COVID-19?
Re: (Score:2)
Would my doctor recommend it? No he wouldn't and yes I would. Also, why would I be offered a treatment to "turn down" when someone else got infected?
Yes, it does fight the virus (Score:2)
I can cure you completely with a spoonful of arsenic, but the side effect is death.
Whose survival? (Score:2)
May be someone other than the covid-19 patients.
Re:Why can we ask the Chinese how they did it? (Score:4, Insightful)
China seems to have done a pretty good job in putting COVID-19 under control. Why can we simply ask the Chinese how they did it?
Well there are a couple easy steps we could take here in the US.
Step 1 - Become a totalitarian state
Step 2 - Have a surveillance apparatus that actually works
Step 3 - Charge anyone who breaks quarantine [leaving their home for any reason] with a crime
Step 4 - Make the punishment for the crime horrific. Such that dying of starvation is better.
There you go.- the Chinese method for stopping the virus. Not sure it would work in the US. Pretty sure that WOULD start a civil war.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Step 1 - Become a totalitarian state
Step 2 - Have a surveillance apparatus that actually works
Step 3 - Charge anyone who breaks quarantine [leaving their home for any reason] with a crime
Step 4 - Make the punishment for the crime horrific. Such that dying of starvation is better.
Trump and Barr is working on Step 1 and Facebook/Google et al have already completed Step 2. So, all that needs to be done is implement 3 and 4? I guess that is technically good news?
Re: (Score:2)
My random draw of three things would be:
1. Reduced sentences for friends who commit crimes. It encourages more criminal behavior in his favor (even if he doesn't explicitly ask for it).
2. Replacing prosecutors and investigators for political reasons.
3. Not stopping voter suppression measures. (insufficient polling places, difficult voter registration etc).
4. Claiming vote by mail would lead to widespread fraud and working to prevent it (and not proposing any fixes or alternatives).
Oh, our four... I'll come
Re: (Score:3)
The USA is already a totalitarian state, controlled by corporate interests. When was the last time you purchased a gallon of milk without paying a tithe to Big Oil? The little corner stores where you used to be able to buy your daily necessities are all but extinct.
And try to build anything without setting aside some of your own land for parking. Most cities in North America won't let you. That's Big Oil again. We've legislated the charm out of our cities and turned them
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you joking or do you actually think parking lots and driveways are not hazards?
Re: (Score:2)
That's true, the synthetic leather covering of a cheap disposable volleyball is made of petroleum, and the synthetic rubber bladder is also made of petroleum. And the fact that so much stuff is made of plastic is why it's now in our food supply.
That's right. You've been eating Wilson. How does he taste?
Re: (Score:2)
Not just China. Japan and South Korea are doing very well too. No reliable data from North, of course. The region is so remarkable unaffected that there is some speculation that it may have been previously subject to a much milder disease that went unnoticed, but bestowed a partial immunity to covid-19.
Re: (Score:3)
Step 1 - Become a totalitarian state
Step 2 - Have a surveillance apparatus that actually works
So these practices are called contact tracing in other countries but called totalitarian when practiced by China?
Step 3 - Charge anyone who breaks quarantine [leaving their home for any reason] with a crime
So it is OK for a US state to charge anyone breaking quarantine with a crime [cdc.gov] but it is evil for China to do that? Note: there were no report of China actually charge anyone with a crime for breaking quarantine. A Chinese-American Biogen employee triggered a storm of criticism in Chinese social media for refusing to cooperate with quarantine, and was subsequently fired [fiercepharma.com] by the Boston-company for vi
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
many studies showing it harmful
Those studies aren't doing too well. Infamously the biggest one that made all the rounds had to be retracted because it was full of shit.
Re: (Score:2)
Once Trump started promoting it, it became a very political thing for the American left who couldn't that, so research into this drug for COVID-19 was essentially shut down.
Among the things Trump claimed, that HCQ might be effective isn't something anyone really has problems with him stating. What they objected is his claims that it was some sort of miracle drug. What they objected to his outright lies that people who took HCQ for other ailments were immune to COVID. What they objected to was the lack of attention to other matters of the pandemic like ensuring hotspots around the country had adequate medical supplies. What they objected to was his cavalier attitude that COVID
Re: (Score:2)
Charles Babbage was aware of number bases and considered a variety of different ones, but settled on base 10. He didn't use binary.
Konrad Zuse built a binary mechanical computer a century later. Zuse got around the problem of requiring too many moving parts for large numbers by inventing floating point.
Re: (Score:2)
Binary math is great if you are working in electronics. If you are working with mechanics, no need - easy to make a gear with ten teeth.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not convinced that's the case; the most advanced mechanical computers made were binary machines.
It would apply if your way of storing information is rotational, but then 10 teeth is pretty small, you might well be better off with a higher base. If your information is stored as a sliding position, then binary may well be a good choice.
In fact, Konrad Zuse's mechanical marvel was pretty unreliable, except for the mechanical main memory, and as a result, the Z4 (the first commercial digital computer) used
Re: (Score:3)
The biggest discoveries of our time started as "Dingbat Ideas". You do not change the paradigm by doing what everyone else is doing.
“But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.” --Carl Sagan
I agree that HCQ needed to be studied. Hell, since we're low on treatments (and incompetent at social distancing in the US) we probably still need to study HCQ. But the highest quality studies have not shown good results; only low-quality ones (like
Re: (Score:2)
Odd way to bring Babbage into it. I think his relevance is different. I'm thinking about the times when someone asked him about getting the right answers from the wrong data.
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
Not sure if that's what we have here, but there certainly is a lot of GIGO going around these days.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Errr... yes? Of course? The tests are "does HCQ help treat COVID-19", which is uncertain (though looking unlikely).
The "List of Essential Medicines" is NOT "the safest" anything; plenty of medicines on it have serious side effects. Like HCQ. HCQ is very effective at treating malaria, but it has serious side effects. Those side effects are rare, detectable, and far less bad than malaria. That does not mean that it is helpful against COVID, and does not mean that the side effects are outweighed by the
Re: (Score:2)
A drug that's been around for 65 years, and used by the WHO, suddenly needs to be tested.
Only if you are ignorant on drugs work. Drugs are not safe for every single medical issue. Some drugs like OTC analgesics are effective for wide variety of minor ailments and don't need prescriptions. Prescription drugs like HCQ are approved and tested for very specific ailments like malaria and lupus as they have issues with being generally used. HCQ had not been tested as a treatment for a virus like COVID. So by " suddenly needs to be tested", what is really being said is "We've never tested this against
Re: (Score:2)
Public masturbation of 701917 (Score:2)
Z^-2
Public masturbation of 966895 (Score:2)
Z^-1
Re: (Score:2)
No, that didn't answer my question. Can't decide whether or not it is trollage. Care to try again?